Saad Khan

"So what exactly is a venture studio?" I'm not sure how many times I've had this conversation over the last few years. At least a few times / week. For aspiring venture builder - especially those in institutional settings, 'getting' the model - and understanding how it differs from others - is critical. So, we're starting at the beginning. On March 19, I'm sitting down with Matthew Burris for the first session of the The Venture Studio Forum's University Track Speaker Series. Matt is widely credited for helping to define the venture studio asset class - he co-authored the Venture Studio Index and built the Three-Role Framework that the industry uses to classify studios. He's spent more time researching what makes a studio a studio than anyone I know. If you're at a university, research institution, or economic development org trying to figure out whether a venture studio makes sense for you, this is where to start. Note, this event kicks off a five part-series we're running through the VSF, all focused on helping institutions understand and evaluate the model. Here's the full program: Mar 19: What Is a Venture Studio? Apr 16: University Studio Examples May 21: Funding Mechanisms Jun 18: Finding & Working with Studios Jul 16: Sourcing & Evaluating Founder Talent Registration link in the comments!

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It is incredible what care.fi has built - an OS for healthcare players —unifying RCM, claims intelligence, and embedded finance into a single execution layer. Welcome to July Family, Care.fi

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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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HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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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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I’ve known David Meister for years and backed him at Sydecar, so I’ve seen his ability to build through complexity. Axiom Trust is taking on one of the most outdated parts of wealth infrastructure, trust administration, by pairing a regulated trust company with AI-native workflows. We're proud to invest again and congrats to the team on the launch!

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💡Emerging GP Fundraising Insight #8: Rolling Closes Keep You Moving Small funds can't always afford to sit still until the target is hit. Rolling closes let you start deploying earlier, build a track record, and show momentum to prospective LPs. One GP told me that for Fund I ($5M target), he took capital as it came, signed, wired, and got to work. It wasn't perfect, but it kept the lights on and the deals moving. Sometimes the "sign and wire as it comes" approach is the only way to get moving. Takeaway: Momentum is a fundraising asset and rolling closes can help you keep it. Has anyone here used rolling closes as a strategic advantage?

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Camber Creek led the $3.7 million Seed round for TwinKnowledge, which is tackling an important problem in the built environment. Construction projects get delayed and rework is required because of discrepancies across construction documents, submittals, requests for information, design, and other plans. TwinKnowledge’s AI Agents absorb structured and unstructured project data, surfacing and preventing conflicts before the work begins. We’re excited about our partnership with CEO Ivan Panushev and his team. #construction #AEC #AI #technology https://ow.ly/mBYX50VtaVG

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Institutions don’t fail all at once. They fail when design can’t keep up with change. In Davos this week, I’ll be joining the inaugural gathering of the Institutional Research Network, a new initiative convened by The Digital Economist. The focus is not another set of conversations but the patient work of connecting research, markets, and governance so ideas can take institutional form and hold under real-world pressure. Some initiatives are about visibility. This one is about durability. #Davos2026 #InstitutionalDesign #IRN #TheDigitalEconomist

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Great conversations at our WillowTree Ventures dinner with leaders across fintech and AI. A few themes stood out strongly: enterprises are leaning into AI for real efficiency gains, product and engineering orgs still set the agenda, and the whitespace in “boring” industries is wider than most people assume. It’s clear that the next breakout companies in AI for financial services won’t come from the obvious places. Thanks to everyone who joined - excited to keep working alongside founders building in these non-obvious, high-impact wedges.

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I spoke with Christien Louviere of BDE Capital about his journey from a $330mm exit to becoming an independent sponsor. Christien shared excellent insights for folks looking to partner with business owners, rather than buy sellers out completely. Below are a few of the topics we covered: - Why he moved from “zero-to-one” startups to a buy-then-build strategy - How Christien's background shaped a focus on growth vs. cost-cutting - Why 20–40% rolled equity is central to his deal structures—and how it builds trust with sellers - Using scenario analysis with AI tools to evaluate management teams and uncover hidden key-person risks - How to identify when a $3–5M EBITDA company truly has a middle management layer—or is still founder-reliant For anyone investing in or buying small businesses, Christien’s approach provides a fresh lens on growth, alignment, and deal structuring. 🎥 Watch the full interview here → https://lnkd.in/ekfkaiej 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e86Agx6V

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Three years ago, we launched Wisdom Ventures with a clear intention to support founders building at the intersection of well-being, human connection, and transformative tech. Since then, we’ve made 37 investments from our oversubscribed "minimum viable" $10M Fund I, backing early-stage companies in physical and mental wellbeing, women’s health, ethical AI, and human connection-centered innovation. We’ve always known we are on to something—what we didn’t expect was how quickly the data would back it up. Recent industry benchmarks show that most 2022-vintage emerging funds are experiencing the usual J-curve dip. In contrast, Wisdom Ventures is showing strong early performance: 📈 Net IRR (internal rate of return): >10% 📊 MOIC (multiple on invested capital): ~2x* ⏰ Median investment age: 18 months 💥 ....and # of our companies have a diverse founder by gender, race, or sexual orientation: 75% As we get ready to make our 38th and final investment out of Fund I and start deploying out of our significantly larger Fund II (first close May 1st), we’re filled with gratitude—for our founders, our LPs, our early supporters, our early believers, and this growing movement toward a more conscious, connected future, fueled by innovation from the ❤️ *Based on most current reports **Not in photo: Our fantastic operating partner, Zoe Rogers #WisdomVentures #ImpactInvesting #ConsciousTech #Wellbeing #AIForGood #FutureOfWork #VentureCapital

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Boards are supposed to help founders. Over the past 19 years, I've watched many trap them instead. As companies scale, many boards turn from insight to oversight and stop doing what founders actually need: Help making big, hard decisions. Early boards tend to be small, the board members are close to the business and highly invested in it. They argue from first principles. They help founders think. Later-stage boards often look more impressive on paper - they have more independent directors, committees and process. Somewhere along the way, collective problem solving gets replaced with oversight. The board shifts from helping the CEO make better decisions to monitoring decisions that have already been made. Strategy discussions get safer, real debate gets rarer and meetings become more about risk management than judgment. This usually coincides with the introduction of more professional board members. For better or worse, they often optimize for governance, optics, and liability management. That’s their job. But it’s not always what the company needs in moments of real uncertainty. Then, CEOs stop using them as thought partners. That’s a problem. So what should founders do? A few principles that help: • Keep the board as small as you can for as long as you can • Add directors for new insight they bring, not what boxes they check • Treat board seats like senior hires, not trophies • Design meetings for debate rather than reporting • Be explicit about when you want input vs approval Good boards should improve decision-making. If your board isn’t making you think harder, it’s probably not doing its job.

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Much of the money and time in healthcare happens past the point of diagnosis. The money: $200B of spend on specialty drugs. The time: putting patients on therapies requires clinical judgment, and navigating a labyrinth of paperwork and people. The result is a byzantine status quo where patients get life saving therapies denied or delayed, and hospital systems capture only $80B of the $200B of drug spend that they originate. Latent’s groundbreaking clinical AI is a portal into the future. Patients get therapies quickly with personalized care, and hospitals transform their bottom line. As a result, Latent has seen extraordinary traction, working with over 50% of the top 20 U.S. health systems in under a year. Latent is one of the biggest and most strategic opportunities in healthcare, sitting in between providers, payors, patients, and pharma. Spark Capital is delighted to support Rishabh Jain and Sriram Somasundaram and this consequential company and to work with Sarah Guo and Michael Dixon.

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Here at Rocketship.vc, we run our algorithms across millions of early-stage startups to identify themost promising companies in the ecosystem right now. While AI is everywhere (and it shows up heavily in our list), a deeper look reveals three emerging themes that go far beyond the usual headlines: 🔬 1. Health + Bio is Breaking Out Startups at the intersection of biology and software are gaining serious traction. Terms like health, bio, care, and diagnostics appeared frequently, pointing to innovation in digital health, computational biology, and personalized diagnostics. We're seeing founders tackle problems like fertility, mental health, and chronic care—often using tech-native, platform-first approaches. This could be the beginning of a golden era for bio-software convergence. 🔧 2. Infrastructure & Deep Tech Are Back Not everything is app-layer AI. A surprising number of startups reference compute, cloud, fusion, security, and materials—signaling a return to technical infrastructure and deep science. These are the builders creating foundational tech: novel compute paradigms, advanced materials, secure data layers, and new physics. It’s a clear sign that hard tech is having a moment, with founders embracing complex engineering problems again. 🌍 3. Climate Is Quietly Scaling Climate-focused startups aren’t always loud—but they’re increasingly world-class. Words like energy, earth, zero, and blue hint at fusion energy, carbon removal, and next-gen sustainability infrastructure. These aren’t grant-funded science projects—they’re fundable, scalable, and climbing the ranks based on real traction and ambition. — The next wave of breakout companies may not just be AI wrappers. They’ll be science-forward, mission-driven, and technically deep. The data says it’s already happening. Let’s keep building. #startups #venturecapital #deeptech #healthtech #climatetech #seedstage #founders #vc #AI

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**Navigating Change in Venture Capital: Lessons from a16z's TxO Fund Pause** The recent decision by Andreessen Horowitz to pause its Talent x Opportunity (TxO) Fund raises critical questions about sustainability in venture initiatives aimed at supporting underserved founders. At ElevenX Capital, we recognize the importance of adaptability in our strategies and maintaining robust support systems for diverse entrepreneurs. How can funds better navigate economic uncertainties while still prioritizing inclusivity and innovation? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

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I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement Vertical AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably and unlock generational returns. Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

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What could the future of fund administration look like with a tech-forward approach and the application of AI? Fresh off of a $130M Series D round led by Ribbit Capital, Juniper Square CEO and Co-Founder Alex Robinson came on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share fascinating and thought-provoking perspectives on the future of fund administration and why post-investment processes need a combination of both automation and human touch. Alex and I covered both the current and future states of fund administration and how GPs can navigate a new world of tech and finance. We discussed: ➡️ Why Alex started Juniper Square and how his two entrepreneurial endeavors has informed how he’s built the firm. ➡️ The problem Alex set out to solve by building Juniper Square. ➡️ After dealing with FedEx’s to make investments, how he set out to build an investor experience that was digital. ➡️ How AI will impact fund admin. ➡️ Why every GP should have an AI agent according to Alex. ➡️ Why Juniper Square decided to move from a technology firm to add fund administration capabilities in-house. ➡️ Does AI benefit larger firms or smaller firms more? Thanks Alex Robinson for sharing your wisdom and unique perspectives on private markets, fund administration, and AI. Thanks Juniper Square for your support of Alt Goes Mainstream. https://lnkd.in/eetYyce2

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