Edwin S.

Venture funding isn't success of course, but it's nearly impossible to win big markets without it. Unlike the AI hype, Ando is very, very real. And unlike others, Ando is here to make lives genuinely better for everyone. (*) #proudinvestor #micdrop #oversubscribed Big thx to Bradford Oberwager and James Kairos, Ben Metcalfe, Andy Mutz, Joseph Chittenden-Veal, Scott Sanders, Massy Ghausi, John Lyman, Thomas Wesley, John Holder… and of course Phoenix Toews and Paul Wellons (to name a few) — (*) Yeah yeah, some pencil-pusher will use AI to over-optimize profits over people, but as American Airlines is learning the hard way (WSJ: https://lnkd.in/ePz_QNzt ), net of competition, "people businesses" don't work that way. You HAVE to care for people or you lose. Ando plays a beautiful collaborative role in that dialogue, helping profit-focused management more clearly see the effects of a motivated labor force. That's why I'm truly #proudinvestor --- Posts co-authored with my LinkedIn secret weapon Dennis Buckley

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I wrote a long form piece on individual agency and team dynamics in startups. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think its an important sea change. https://lnkd.in/gsCiPCM6 Preview: I think the abilities that models develop along different vectors - as measured through various benchmarks - interact in non-linear ways that aren't always obvious. For example, if a model excels at coding but struggles with long context windows, it's going to have a very difficult time understanding a large codebase or a problem that's connected to many conceptual areas within your codebase. If it's bad at tool use, it's going to have a difficult time utilizing semantic search to make the intuitive leaps - or what we think of as intuitive leaps - that humans make to go find specific concepts within the codebase. This matters for making sure you're being DRY, not reinventing concepts that are already solved elsewhere, following standards in your own codebase, and so on. Hat tip to Anthropic's research around interpretability [16] - I think it's extremely important for the industry to understand why and how emergent behavior is happening. Think of where we were a year ago compared to now. It's no longer single one-shot chat interface style editing, but rather very extended multi-shot, think-time compute-driven, rule-building, sub-agentic processes. The tooling in software development has gotten so much more advanced than almost any other field, and these tools are building up this massive ability to amplify your own impact. These high-context individuals who may have previously gone down a fairly narrowing track to scale their effectiveness across an organization now have to measure their opportunity cost in a different way. They need to look at evolving new structures around themselves to uninhibit their throughput so the organization can take advantage of how much these individuals can produce in a short amount of time.

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Building a startup is hard. It is especially hard in a country like Nigeria, where the ecosystem is yet to mature, and there are still many challenges to navigate. It is confusing, lonely, and full of uncertain decisions. Founders, especially early-stage founders, need as much support as they can get. Not “inspire to perspire” posts, but practical support on hiring, operations, funding, customer research, and navigating the regulatory landscape. Too many founders are surrounded by noise, surface-level advice, and generic content that does not reflect their current realities. What they need is a community that understands exactly what they are going through and can offer context that is immediately useful. Sierra Collective exists to be that community. A space where founders learn from one another’s live experiences and shorten the painful trial and error that usually defines the early stages of building. At Sierra, we believe that the most valuable support comes from those who are active in the trenches, navigating the same obstacles. If you are an early-stage founder, you should join the Sierra Collective. You do not have to figure everything out alone. As the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Join Sierra: https://lnkd.in/d-Nzmtkq

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Lessons from the Pitch: Standing Out in a Sea of Startups In San Francisco, every day brings another pitch event, mixer, or founder gathering. The competition is fierce, but the learning is exponential. The best founders aren’t just pitching—they’re storytelling, connecting, and adapting in real time. My advice: Focus on clarity, authenticity, and the unique value you bring. Investors see thousands of decks; make yours unforgettable. #Pitching #StartupAdvice #Founders #SFStartups

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Stardew Valley meets Enterprise RAG? 🚜 🤖 One of the hardest challenges in moving Generative AI from prototype to production is authorization. How do you ensure the LLM only retrieves data the specific user is allowed to see? Our friends Sohan Maheshwar at AuthZed and Rohit Ghumare at motia just dropped a fantastic reference architecture solving exactly this. Using a Stardew Valley "harvest logbook" as the use case, they demonstrate how to build a complete, multi-tenant RAG pipeline. The Stack: ⚡ Orchestration: motia (Event-driven workflows) 🧠 Memory: Pinecone (Vector search & storage) 🔒 Security: #SpiceDB (Fine-grained authorization) This is a masterclass in building secure, context-aware AI applications. Check out the full tutorial below. 👇 #GenerativeAI #RAG #VectorDatabase #Pinecone #Authorization #Engineering #KnowledgeableAI

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Ontologies remain one of the most effective ways to ground AI memory, keeping extracted knowledge anchored to existing structures and adaptable through feedback. As memory systems evolve, their role remains essential, and a core focus at Cognee.

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What if launching a custom lending automations and products took days, not months? We're building that. timveroAI just passed its first real test - 2 features implemented, tested, and documented in <10 min. And this is the first overview:

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U.S. energy demand is surging — don’t get left behind. New gas projects and large industrial loads are reshaping power markets at breakneck speed. In this high-stakes landscape, timely and accurate data is essential. Halcyon’s Data Products, powered by a regularly updated authoritative data catalog of 4.5+ million documents from all 50 public utility commissions, ensure you always have the latest energy market intelligence. Download this guide to see how AI can help power sector stakeholders find new growth opportunities first.

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For the first time in US History, it's now possible to search for land based on exactly what you intend to develop. Introducing SearchAI Intentions, by Prophetic. When we started building Prophetic, one of the things that frustrated us most about land search was the invisible prerequisite: before you could find a site suitable for your townhome, hotel, data center, warehouse, etc. project, you had to already intimately know the market. You had to know the zone codes. You had to know which municipalities allowed what uses. You had to translate your vision into zoning language and then go hunting. If you didn't have that local expertise, you were starting from scratch or waiting for a broker to call you. That has been true for every developer, in every asset class, since the beginning of the industry. We just changed how the industry works - nationwide. SearchAI Intentions now lets you search by exactly what you want to build with 120+ development type categories, any market, any jurisdiction, and results in seconds. A hotel developer searches "Hotel - Full Service". A data center developer searches "Data Center". A senior living operator searches "Senior Living - Active Adult" or "Senior Living - Assisted Living". SearchAI reads the actual zoning codes across every zone and jurisdiction in your search area and returns every viable parcel, ranked by fit. It cites the specific municipal code section behind every result so you can act with confidence. What this means practically: for the first time, hotel developers, energy companies, warehouse and logistics operators, data center site selectors, cell tower companies, senior living operators, medical facility developers, commercial and retail developers, economic development agencies, and major brokerages have a land search tool built for how they actually think about acquisition. They can find sites that meet their exact criteria, in any market, in seconds - instead of literal weeks. If you have ever spent days in county GIS systems trying to find viable sites for a project, I would love to show you what this looks like now. For a deeper look at how it works and how Prophetic unlocks development across all verticals, read the full breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/gPzJbt3w #PropTech #LandAcquisition #RealEstateDevelopment #SearchAI #Prophetic #DataCenters #SeniorLiving #EnergyInfrastructure #IndustrialRealEstate #HospitalityDevelopment #homebuilding #cre #realestate #commercialrealestate #realestatebrokerage https://lnkd.in/gz-zrt2P

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Seattle VC panels are not exactly known for being spicy, which is why my AMA with Brooke and Rolanda at AI House last night was so refreshing. We got into the questions founders are too embarrassed to ask out loud. How do VCs actually decide behind closed doors? What counts as traction when you have zero revenue? Is enterprise SaaS dead? Do Seattle founders actually have a shot against the Bay Area? A few takeaways that stood out: ✅ Associates can't get to yes without a partner sponsor — but partners often can't reach deals without associate diligence. Arm them with the facts to fight for you internally. ✅ Expect 50-70 investor conversations before a term sheet. Send your deck a day early but assume nobody read it 😎 ✅ Enterprise SaaS isn't dead, but it's shifting from seat-based to usage and outcome-based pricing. Large orgs still need governed software. ✅ Traction isn't just revenue. How excited are your customers? Would they advocate for you? Paying pilots with automatic, KPI-specific conversion > free trials, every time. ✅ Learning slope > starting background. The strongest founders they've backed adapted fast — not started perfect. Brooke and Rolanda WILL take a second meeting even if you whiff the first one! ✅ Seattle has fantastic enterprise buyers and founders with sales relationships into them. But the equity-vs-cash culture gap is real, and hiring against big tech is still hard. What made it different was how candid Brooke and Rolanda were about what actually happens after your pitch ends, aka the internal deal dynamics most founders never see. Shoutout to the room full of 100+ early-stage founders who went against the Seattle grain and asked hard questions live to the VCs. That energy is what makes AI House work. Huge thanks to Brooke B. (FUSE) and Rolanda Fu (Madrona) for keeping it real! More AMAs like this coming. Tag a founder who we should invite for the next one! #AIHouse (photo credit to Jonathan G. Blanco 🛠)

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Valuations Are Vanity, Runway Is Sanity I’ve spent the last few months advising some Bay Area preseed-stage founders on their first fundraise. Seed funding now seems to be split into two camps: profit-first bootstrappers who ship instead of pitch, and “priced-to-perfection” startups with $50–500K ARR snagging $40–60M post-money term sheets from multiple VCs. From my experience, I’ve seen the fallout, higher burn, bigger milestones, and a flat round when growth stalls. My advice is straightforward. Price for runway, not headlines, leaving room for a 2–3× step-up before Series A. Build real revenue momentum and keep churn low before chasing sky-high valuations. I also suggest founders vet investors on how they’ll help you hire, ship, land customers, and reserve follow-on capital, because cash is fuel, not confetti. A true VC partner still answers the call if the market cools or gets competitive, and that’s dilution worth taking. #startups #startupfunding #venturecapital

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As a founder I too am a big fan of writing investor updates - it's hard when you're just a few people to keep track of time - some days it's absolutely bonkers crazy, and other days you're waiting for leads to mature. Your constantly changing/pulling in new information until you get to PMF and Investor updates gives you a trusted audience to reflect and synthesize with and for.

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Today we’re excited to share that Ezra has raised an $8M seed round led by Congruent Ventures. Before starting Ezra, we spent years building and scaling Mosaic, a fintech platform that financed $15B+ in clean energy and home improvement loans. One thing was consistently clear: The process of raising and deploying capital is far too slow, costly and fragmented. At the same time, private credit has grown into a $6T global asset class, with investors actively searching for high-quality opportunities across energy, infrastructure, fintech, and other real-world assets. Ezra is building the connective infrastructure for this market. Our platform helps companies structure deal information and connect directly with institutional lenders actively deploying capital - while helping investors evaluate opportunities more efficiently. We’re grateful to be backed by Congruent Ventures, alongside Planeteer, Wireframe, KDX, Stepchange, Designer Fund, Leap Forward and others. And especially grateful to the early partners already working with us to shape the platform. If you're raising capital for real-world assets or deploying capital in private credit, we’d love to connect. More: ezra.fi

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🚨 New episode drops tomorrow (Tue) at 8:00am PT: a deep dive with Clement Pang, EIR at Sutter Hill Ventures and serial founder (co-founded Wavefront, $400M exit). Why this episode of Inside the Silicon Mind is unmissable: - AI is the next cloud-level shift. Clement lays out why this wave doesn’t just speed teams up - it rearranges who wins. - Don’t build a wrapper the model can ship tomorrow. How founders should pick problems foundation models won’t commoditize. - From armies to agents. What a “one-person army” startup really looks like and the new concentration-of-risk nobody’s talking about. - Engineers aren’t going away - they’re moving up-stack. Ideate with AI, write design docs first, then let code assistants execute. - Speed vs. endurance. Why zero-to-demo is easy now, but enduring companies still hinge on architecture, scalability, resilience, and real IP. - Open core > black box. If he rebuilt observability today, Clement would go open core + SaaS so customers keep data control without losing performance. - PMF is timing + truth. The early “no trades” story to $1T/day volume - how persistence and timing turn “wrong” into “right.” - Storytelling and engineering. How to sell the outcome (not “we added AI”), while using AI as a research partner to create actual moat. 🎧 Listen tomorrow at 8:00am PT. #InsideTheSiliconMind #ClementPang #SutterHillVentures #AI #Startups #ProductMarketFit #FounderJourney #EngineeringLeadership #Observability #OpenCore #Venture #PMFPlaybook

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Love it or hate it, being in the SF Bay Area is still one of the biggest hacks for First Builders to discover huge opportunities before anyone else. But what can you do if you’re not here? Cecilia for example moved here in 2001 and instantly joined Yahoo after feeling the palpable energy around early internet. And it’s been nonstop ever since as she later joined Amazon, Cruise, Replit, and her own breakout company GC AI. She credits a lot to the emerging tech density and optimism in the Bay Area. But she also mentions additional ways people can identify these opportunities early on: - Follow intuition around big waves - Follow your envy - Never lose curiosity - Watch the teen hackers - Talk to peers early and often (builds long term networks/insights)

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