Jim Payne

🚨NEW EPISODE: Recorded live at FUTURE TITANS 2026 - Jeff Perry of Carta sat down with the iconic Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry. Seth has been in venture for 25 years, built Foundry from scratch as an emerging manager himself, and has backed about 50 emerging manager funds through his fund of funds. He has genuinely seen every side of this table. They went deep on building Foundry, why VCs are in the influence business, not the decision business, and why the concentration problem in venture is not only bad for LPs, but also for the innovation ecosystem overall. And why Seth's new book, Capital Evolution, is so important for the future of America. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/ehQUQ2EM Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eU4FExpg

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💥 Metropolis Technologies Raises $𝟭.𝟲𝗕 💥 Funding comes in 2 rounds: $500M equity round led by LionTree and $1.1B from J.P. Morgan. Metropolis is now 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 $𝟱𝗕. With the fresh funding, the plan is to take their "recognition and payment-automation" tech beyond parking assets. This would include retail stores, drive-throughs, gas stations, hotels and partnerships with real estate/asset owner. Congrats to Alex Israel, Peter Fisher, Courtney Fukuda, Travis Kell, Ryan Hunt,Chris Sherman, Robert Bland, Paul Rooney, Lookman Olusanya and the rest of the Metropolis family. #fundraise #parkinginvestment #parking #parkingindustry #metropolois Parking Today Media Parking Network B.V. National Parking Association International Parking & Mobility Institute (IPMI) Tim Maloney Advisory Tim Maloney Reservations Lab

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If you look at the early-stage fundraising funnel, conversion rates are tightening, but the companies that do raise are doing so at higher valuations and with larger checks. The market seems to be betting on fewer winners, but those winners will be bigger. I’m not convinced. I do believe the very biggest winners will be larger than ever as AI expands the reach of technology, largely by replacing labor. But I don’t believe there will be fewer winners overall. Most B2B solutions are moving toward verticalized, specialized use cases that deliver superior value compared to generalized horizontal platforms. That shift should create more winners. While these vertical players may not reach the scale of the horizontal mega-winners, they can still generate the kind of multibillion-dollar outcomes that venture is built to fund.

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In 2026, everything I do will be in service of founders. Specifically: helping founders cross the line from 'builder' to 'operator.' It’s the first Sunday, and I felt inspired to share a mini-manifesto for the year ahead. This transition (from builder to operator) is where I see many high-potential founders struggle most. Building is the easy part (for most of you). - You can ship. - You can hustle. - You can close early deals. Where companies actually die? Business systems and operations. I’ve helped build three different businesses past $20M ARR. Never alone. Always with teams. Always with systems. At a certain point, founder-led everything becomes the bottleneck. Sales is usually the first place this shows up. When sales lives in the founder’s head + inbox, growth caps. Not because the founder can’t sell, but because the business can’t operate without them. From ‘Founder Chapel’ to ‘David Beats Goliath,’ and through the projects and partnerships I take on this year, everything will serve one goal: Helping founders transform into EXCEPTIONAL operators. The kind people want to work with, follow, invest in, and trust with real responsibility. Builders are common these days. Operators are much rarer. Companies scale when systems carry the weight founders were never meant to carry alone.

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We were recording a podcast episode last week and the question came up: why do studios actually fail? I expected the conversation to land on bad venture selection. That's what most people point to. But three quieter patterns kept surfacing — and they're the ones that actually kill studios. Sequencing failure. Doing the right things in the wrong order. Raising before you have a track record. Hiring a full team before validating a single venture. Everything looks productive — you're shipping, hiring, raising. But the order is wrong, and the compounding works against you instead of for you. Incentive misalignment. The studio operator wants equity upside. The institutional sponsor wants de-risked innovation. The founder wants autonomy. None of those are wrong. They're just different objective functions in the same room. The misalignment doesn't surface in year one. It surfaces the first time someone has to make a hard call — and the people in the room realize they want different outcomes. The governance gap. Studios start lean, which is smart. Then they stay lean on governance, which is fatal. No kill criteria. No stage gates. No framework for when to double down or shut down. Death by accumulated decisions that nobody had the structure to stop. What stuck with me after that conversation: all three of these are invisible from the inside. Bad company selection is loud. These are silent. And by the time you feel them, they've been compounding for months.

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Every #VentureStudio GP knows some portfolio bets won’t hit. That's expected - and it's one of the reasons studios are such a powerful vehicle for innovation. And while a venture's failure might be what's visible to the outsider, what keeps them up at night isn’t failure at the venture level — it’s failure at the systemic level within the studio. One bad entity design. One IP misstep. One governance gap. That’s how studio operations fall apart. We break down how to spot (and fix) these cracks before they turn into fault lines in our latest paper, "The GP Dilemma" - DM me and I'll send you a copy!

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Seed VC isn’t just in a downturn—it’s facing extinction unless it evolves fast. Great read from Rob Go & David Beisel at NextView Ventures... - YC and mega-funds now dominate the early-stage landscape, squeezing out traditional seed investors - Power law thinking has gone mainstream—everyone’s chasing trillion-dollar outliers - AI isn’t helping seed VCs—it’s raising the stakes, crowding the field, and disrupting VC itself - The middle of the market has collapsed, and excess profits are gone - Hope isn’t a strategy—seed needs a new model, now Link here... https://lnkd.in/ek2MZGhm And if you like this topic, I wrote a piece on venture bifurcating into inception funds and mega funds here: https://lnkd.in/eJz5DmX6 #ai #venturecapital #vc

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The Headline family is experiencing incredible momentum, and today our portfolio company DeepIP is announcing a $25M Series B, bringing total funding to $40M.  This is the kind of company that doesn’t just add AI to a workflow, but it sets the standard for an entire category. The momentum speaks for itself: 1️⃣ 10x ARR growth in < 18 months 2️⃣ Trusted by 400+ law firms and leading corporate IP teams globally 3️⃣ 2M+ chats on the DeepIP platform We’ve had the chance to back FX (Francois-Xavier) L. and Edouard D., leading their Seed round with Headline. Watching them take on a problem as complex and high-stakes as patent work has been genuinely impressive. And working with them has been an absolute pleasure: these 2 are coupling very high ambition and humility. Tech built in Europe, but opening the US office very early and FX starting a life in NYC with his family with 0 hesitation in order to build a global category leader in the IP industry. What convinced me early is still what stands out today: patent teams don’t need another standalone AI tool. They need something that fits the way the work actually happens: documents, long-running matters, multiple stakeholders, and zero room for sloppy context handoffs. Big congrats to the whole DeepIP team + Korelya Capital, Balderton & Serena Proud that we’re doubling down at Headline and continuing the support for what’s next!

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30+ VCs Backing Marketplace Startups Below is a cross-stage, cross-sector mix of firms that back marketplace and platform companies early and support them as they grow. Consumer and platform investors Upfront Ventures 1752vc (Formerly Pegasus) BAM Ventures Forerunner Brand Foundry Ventures Maveron BoxGroup Greycroft Alumni Ventures Marketplace natives and network effects specialists FJ Labs NFX Great Oaks Venture Capital RiverPark Ventures Left Lane Capital First Round Capital Lerer Hippeau Precursor Ventures Seed partners building two-sided platforms early Founder Collective NextView Ventures Uncork Capital Slow Ventures Bling Capital Gaingels Initialized Capital Felicis Multi-stage firms backing marketplace winners at scale Accel Bessemer Venture Partners Lightspeed General Catalyst New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Kleiner Perkins Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) Founders Fund

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I’m Andrew Clark, founder of Summit Bullion. I am proposing a low-risk pilot for the State of Florida to hold allocated gold in U.S. depositories with daily public proofs, monthly CPA attestations, and scripted redemption drills—a modern, transparent version of a depository receipt in digital tokenized form. Title remains with the State at all times; no rehypothecation. Tokenized gold could help the transferability of physical gold to better align with Florida's new HB 999 (2025) program initiatives. Two reasons the timing is right in Florida: Legal-tender pathway: Florida enacted HB 999 (2025) recognizing gold and silver as legal tender (effective 2026), creating a clear policy signal for sound-money infrastructure. Tax treatment: Florida also removed the $500 threshold—all bullion sales are now tax-exempt—broadening market access and market depth in-state. Pilot mechanics (state first, retail later): Custody: Allocated bars in U.S. depositories; serial-numbered; dual control; insurance. Transparency: Public dashboard (circulating supply, bar lists, variance policy), auto-pauses on out-of-tolerance. Transfers: Instant on-chain transfers between approved state wallets; conventional wire/ACH rails remain as fallback. Redemption-first: Physical redemption remains the primary right; drills executed on a cadence to prove it. Income angle (optional, policy-gated): If permitted under Florida’s investment statutes, the State could provision limited liquidity to the regulated secondary market and earn a pro-rata share of transaction fees, without surrendering title to its metal. Parameters (caps, slippage bands, kill switches) would be codified, and all counterparties are KYC’d with provenance controls. Use cases we can enable in phase 2 (subject to the HB 999 timeline and agency adoption): Agency-to-agency transfers (treasury ops, escrow/permits). Vendor settlements via approved payment partners. Wallets for municipalities or state funds with policy guardrails. Blaise Ingoglia State of Florida City of Jacksonville

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8 months to $100M ARR. That’s not a growth story. That’s a platform shift. What Mukund Jha, Madhav Jha and the Emergent team have proven is simple: software creation just crossed a structural inflection point. The distance between idea and deployed product is collapsing — to natural language, across platforms, for anyone! Becoming one of the fastest-growing startups ever couldn’t have come at a better time. With India AI Impact Summit 2026 putting the country firmly on the global AI map, this moment feels symbolic — a world-class AI company, built from India, scaling at global speed. We at Together are proud to have backed Emergent from day one. This is what the early innings of a generational company look like. 🚀 #AgenticAI #NextBillionBuilders #IndiaAI

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This Abram Brown piece captures something I'm seeing everywhere: Tools like Claude Code are giving founders way more agency. For many, it's a reminder of the old days when they were ICs or running tiny companies. To be clear, this is not every founder. But those that were already hands on, in the weeds, in the codebase have just been handed Thor's Hammer.

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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Two trends in fundraising that I’m seeing on a daily basis: 1/ The "we'll monetize later" era for infrastructure startups is dead "We'll figure out revenue once we have users" / "we're focused on adoption first"/ "monetization comes later" This worked in 2021. It doesn't work now. Today’s market won’t reward research organizations or companies that believe in perfection over getting it in users' hands. If you don't have a clear path to revenue… you won't get funded. period. VCs aren't writing checks hoping you'll figure it out later. 2/ "Vibe ARR" is everywhere Remember Jasper? hyper growth, but the model companies ate them alive. We're seeing this again. Companies growing really quickly on point-in-time technology that isn't defensible These companies look amazing on paper. Growth charts going up and to the right. But if you think models are getting better and becoming platform companies, many solutions become obsolete. 

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Getting into the VC-side of the game gets you introduced some jaw-dropping mechanics! The latest now in my notebook: Liquidation Preference. This got to be one of the worst clauses ever invented for founders and employees who don’t understand what they’re signing up for. Let me tell you a story that will make your blood boil. Early 2025. Divvy Homes, a rent-to-own startup, gets acquired by Brookfield Properties for $1 billion. The big B right, sounds like champagne and early retirement. Wrong. The founders got $0. The employees got $0. Even most of the VCs got $0. How the hell does that happen? Liquidation preference. Here’s how it works: in cases like this, they don’t just buy regular shares. They buy preferred shares with a liquidation preference - which means they get paid first when the company exits. A 1x liquidation preference means they get their money back before anyone else sees a cent. A 2x means they get double their investment back first. And it can go higher. Divvy raised over $700 million. They had debt on top of that. When the company sold for $1 billion, the money went like this: First, debt holders got paid. Then, preferred shareholders with their liquidation preferences. And lastly, transaction costs. By the time all that was done? Nothing left. The people who built the company for years walked away with absolutely nothing. Now, for the employees(!) - here is a big lesson: if you are considering joining a startup for equity, then ask about how much has been raised so far and at what terms.

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Ride the fractious horse 🐎 Had a blast talking with Harrison Chase from LangChain the other day to a great group of founders, builders and investors about building agentic systems. One learning I shared: our team builds effective agentic systems by spending way more time doing than speculating. 🏇 In other words, we "ride the fractious horse": New models drop daily. New frameworks emerge constantly. Best practices get declared and discarded overnight. By the time you survey the landscape and theorized about how today's reasoning models can serve your system, both the landscape and capabilities have shifted. So we write playbooks instead of adopting them. The only way to develop those playbooks? Build and experiment at the fastest possible rate. ✈️ Wilbur Wright laid a great analogy back in 1901: He'd just realized that existing "standard" measurements of lift and drag were wrong, and that solving flight meant spending serious time actually trying to fly (previous "pilots" had logged minutes, at most, of cumulative airtime across all experiments). From his Chicago speech (this guy was such a clear writer btw): "There are two ways of learning how to ride a fractious horse: one is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast awhile, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks." "The latter system is the safest; but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger proportion of good riders." As for planes: "It is very much the same in learning to ride a flying machine; if you are looking for perfect safety you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial." We're not inventing flight, but constantly evolving LLMs and probabilistic workflows won't behave as you hope on first contact. If you want to figure out how to build effective products around those fractious beasts, get on the horse (keyboard) and start riding.

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Consolidation is creating compounding chaos. Every acquisition adds another tech stack. Another CRM. Another portfolio system. Another layer of complexity. Most aggregators just absorb the mess and move on. Jim Dickson didn't want to repeat that cycle. When he launched Elevation Point, he built an accelerator—not just another roll-up. That means taking control of data from day one and putting it to work in a compounding, impactful way for partner firms. We're honored to be their data infrastructure partner. Already deep in the build—connecting Practifi, Salesforce FSC, Addepar, Orion, Goldman Sachs FICC and Equities and everything in between into one unified layer and a world class application and workflow layer. Real-time dashboards. Automated workflows. Data that compounds value instead of chaos. This is what intentional growth looks like. Excited for what's ahead with Jim and the entire Elevation Point team. 🔗 ThinkAdvisor coverage in comments

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🚨 Founders: If you're not exploring cross-industry alliances, you're playing the wrong game. Some of the biggest breakout companies didn’t scale by outspending the competition they scaled by out-partnering them. 🚀 Think Figma embedding into dev workflows. 🚀 Calendly riding the rails of Zoom and Salesforce. 🚀 Zapier integrating with Trello and Slack before raising big money. 💡 The playbook? Fuse your solution with another industry's infrastructure and unlock distribution, data, or demand without burning capital. Cross-industry alliances do 3 things: 1. Collapse time by borrowing someone else’s audience. 2. Unlock non-obvious use cases that give you strategic moats. 3. Increase your valuation before the first funding conversation. If you're a startup founder and you’re stuck thinking, “We need capital to grow,” you’re asking the wrong question. Ask instead: 👉 “Who’s already serving my customer in a different way and how do we win together?” That’s how exponential growth actually happens. 💬 Founders: Which alliance would double your reach in 90 days? #Startups #GrowthStrategy #VC #EarlyStage #FounderTips #Platform #AI

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