Mark Balabanian

Love this - AI is the Oppenheimer moment for marketing. It fundamentally collapses the time and cost of production. A $2.5 million campaign that used to take four months can now be delivered for $500,000 in four weeks. Legacy firms that charge based on hours with the 'time-driven' model are existentially threatened by this.

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Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

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It's been interesting to watch the journey of Dstillery. An AI native company (in the last wave of predictive AI) well positioned to capitalize and accelerate growth with the current wave of generative AI. It's clear that companies that have strong AI talent can adapt much much faster.

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Big milestone for Firmable. We’ve raised $14m Series A led by Airtree. Sales has moved through a few big waves: intuition-led, CRM-led, data-led. We’re now entering the next one – intelligence-led sales. The opportunity isn’t just better data. It’s turning that data into clear direction and action, without adding more work for sales teams. That’s what we’re building at Firmable: a foundation of trusted external data, layered with intelligence that helps sellers know who to focus on and when. Led by Airtree, this round supports our expansion across Asia and into the US – and accelerates the build-out of AI agents that take the admin work off sales teams so they can focus on what they do best. Proud of the team, grateful to our customers and investors. We’re just getting started. Read the exclusive in the AFR. https://lnkd.in/gr66uknb Leigh Jasper | Tara Salmon | Karthik Venkatasubramanian| Chester Thompson| Chath Widanapathirana

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Project Vend reads less like a capability story and more like a governability story. Phase two improved because institutional scaffolding (tools, procedures, role separation) reduced predictable judgment failures—persuasion, compliance blind spots, boundary confusion, values drift. The board-level question isn’t “can an agent run a business?” but “what governance primitives must exist before we delegate authority.” Until incentives, escalation rights, and refusal boundaries are structurally enforced—not merely prompted—agents remain high-performing managers, not autonomous executives.

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🚨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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Broadcasters didn’t lose the audience. The audience outgrew the operating model built to reach them. And here’s the part most underestimate: Gen Z and Millennials now are the majority — and they spend 1.5–4× more on streaming, content, and eCommerce than older cohorts. This is the most valuable audience in media history, and they are accessible everywhere any time.. But they don’t tune in — they flow: short-form → YouTube → OTT. And the most counterintuitive insight? Your archive — not your newest show — is your biggest untapped growth engine. Algorithms reward relevance, not recency. Broadcasters that align with how the New Majority already behaves will lead the next decade. Check out my latest blog (and download the full white paper for the blue print operating model)

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Many marketers are applying first-order thinking on how to take advantage of emergent AI channels to grow their business. Optimizing for LLM visibility, building crawlable sites for AI traffic, eventually buying ads on these platforms -- this is the conversation. Our discussion with Dmitry at Perplexity delved into second-order effects of the shift that's underway. In a world of agent-based discovery and native checkout inside Perplexity’s new Comet browser (where the agent sees user's full context and can transact), "personalization" looks very different. A few topics we delved into: - Optimizing for decision quality vs transaction friction - How Comet turns every tab into a shopping agent, and which signals it weights in surfacing hyper-personal recommendations. - The role of AI browsers & sidebar agents in threatening display ad real estate - Moving from keyword-orientation to dynamic offers/discounts - Trust remains the hard currency. How to think about AEO and Ads wrt trust Hope this is a valuable episode. Feedback welcome. cc Rishabh https://lnkd.in/gmYtigaC

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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🎙️ New Podcast Episode: A Deep Dive into the Ad Tech Ecosystem with Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify Really enjoyed this one! We had the pleasure of sitting down with Mark Zagorski for a wide-ranging conversation covering his incredible journey including trade sales, a merger, an IPO, and major acquisitions of comapnies like OpenSlate, Scibids, and Rockerbox. From the evolution of the LumaScape to the convergence of the buy and sell sides, Mark breaks down how the ad tech ecosystem is transforming — and how DoubleVerify is moving well beyond brand safety into measurement, pre-bid optimisation, and the emergence of what we like to call Super Signal Aggregators (SSAs). We also talked about DV’s strategic investment into FirstPartyCapital — their first-ever VC fund investment — and why they see it as a way to fuel innovation, access early-stage tech, and deepen partnerships with the next generation of ad tech pioneers. 👇 Link in the comments. #AdTech #MarTech #VentureCapital #Measurement #Optimisation #SSA #DoubleVerify #FirstPartyCapital #FPCpodcast

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Even the most skeptical voices are starting to acknowledge the value of LLM generated code. Not as a replacement for deep expertise, but as a practical tool for acceleration, exploration, and iteration. When someone as famously disciplined about code quality as Linus Torvalds publicly acknowledges that AI generated code can be useful, it signals a shift worth paying attention to. The takeaway is not that AI writes better software than humans, but that good engineers are learning where and how these tools create leverage. https://lnkd.in/eFbNFqYN

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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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Bezos reentering the arena as co-CEO of Project Prometheus signals a shift, elite founders formerly devoted to bits are now building atoms or AI for the physical economy, not just software. With $6.2 billion raised and nearly 100 researchers from Meta, OpenAI, and DeepMind, Prometheus aims to industrialize engineering and manufacturing with simulation-driven AI. https://lnkd.in/drkFdqzG

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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Worth considering when you're contemplating whether the podcasting ad sales, ad management, ad measurement, and ad delivery / targeting are up to snuff relative to what media buyers want in every other media category. (Excerpt below from Acast's recent financial call.)

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I spoke w/ Cloudflare co-founder & CEO Matthew Prince for the latest ep of the Slow Hunch podcast. Since 2010, Matthew and his team have built Cloudflare into one of the most important companies on the internet: powering and protecting vast portions of global traffic. I’ve known Matthew since Union Square Ventures’ investment in Cloudflare’s Series C back in 2013, and it was really fun tracing his slow hunch, right from those early days. We covered: - how he met co-founders Michelle Zatlyn and Lee Holloway - the early experiments and risks that shaped Cloudflare - stories from the company’s pre-IPO days - the decision to make encryption free - how their infra ended up running 2 of the internet’s 13 root servers - his thoughts on AI (esp the transition from a search-driven internet to an answer-driven one) Hope you enjoy!

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Powerful work here. The 18-month CRO tenure stat is eye-opening and is surely a strategic misalignment problem. The shift from "which AI tool" to "what should be human-led vs. AI-led" is the exact reframe revenue leaders need right now. That's a strategy question that separates operators from order-takers. Excited to dig into the Six Traits framework. If GTM Operating Partners across top-tier funds are converging on common patterns, that's a signal worth heeding.

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With the launch of Claude Co-Work (and tools like it), I feel like every week in 2025 carries the weight of a decade. Some thoughts: 1. The technology is genuinely different this time. Claude Co-Work isn't an incremental improvement — it's a 100x leap over what existed 12 months ago. If you haven't used it yet, stop what you're doing. 2. Markets. Software and advisory businesses face an existential reset .Not decline. Reset. Consulting, legal, accounting, financial advisory — these industries aren't disappearing, but they're heading toward 80% fewer people doing the same work. KPMG just told auditors to cut costs by 50%. This is the beginning, not the exception. 3. Real-world industries aren't safe either — they're just next. Industrials, energy, consumer goods, travel all have a natural (physical) moat. But consumer brands being built today are doing it with 80-90% less headcount than their predecessors. Any company older than 6 months that isn't adapting is already behind. Jack Dorsey's Block cutting 50% of its workforce despite strong growth is a preview, not an outlier. 4. The new bottleneck is energy, not labor. Once labor becomes abundant and cheap, the constraint shifts. Whoever can produce energy at scale and reasonable cost will have the most important infrastructure asset of the next 20 years. 5. The job market is being structurally changed for good and this is not a minor adjustment. Bankers, lawyers, accountants, software engineers — some roles will survive the way painters survived the printing press. Most won't. The talent that moves fastest onto new tools will capture a disproportionate share of the upside. We're entering a period of massive productivity unlocks and equally massive collateral damage. The future is bright. The transition is not going to be comfortable. Go test out some of those new tools.

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