Sim Blaustein

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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🚨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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It was great to see Red Krypton Chairman Mitch Stoller quoted in the New York Times regarding the growing importance of AIO and GEO. As direct search traffic continues to decline, this remains a significant area of focus for our clients. Red Krypton currently works with several innovative global brands to address these challenges, including Google Fiber, Bain, Atlas Gas & Oil, Cirque du Soleil, and Jefferies. https://lnkd.in/eqHgCyP6

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Announcing our portco Zeno has raised next round of $25mn with participation from Congruent Ventures Lowercarbon Capital Trifecta Capital ! Advantedge Founders continues to back the team with $2mn additional investment. Its been terrific working with Michael Spencer & Greg Moran to establish the full stack model in Africa. With this raise expansion in new markets and planning for India launch is next steps. https://lnkd.in/gGr6qiBj

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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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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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Got to have a great call today with Jonathan Hakakian. Jonathan is the co-founder and Managing Partner of SoundBoard Venture Fund - an early-stage fund investing primarily outside major coastal hubs. They've built a portfolio of 40+ companies across the US in underserved geo., with notable exits including Jump (acquired by Uber). We didn't talk enough about what he's doing - because we got wonderfully sidetracked. We talked about The Fulcrum; Work. About Iranian food. About food as both a love language and a window into culture. About learning and the 2nd part of life journey... And then we got into something I care deeply about: how to fund the companies that aren't "VC backable" by traditional standards but are absolutely worth backing. Not every great business fits the venture mold. Jonathan gets that. SoundBoard is built on character over skill, close founder relationships, and creative structures that meet founders where they are. That's my kind of investor. Heidi Knoblauch you should be in this conversation. I think you'd connect on much of this part! I'm excited by Jonathan's approach. His thoughtfulness. The way he shows up for founders outside the usual corridors. Ive learned quite a bit from him. Very much looking forward to our next call - and to his next fund. This is how ecosystems get built. One good conversation at a time.

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This piece from Morgan Beller and Daniel Museles gets at something important — the social, emotional, and market forces that push founders to optimize for the present instead of building for the long term https://lnkd.in/dTVSd7-Q

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Today Isembard announced a $50m Series A fundraise led by Union Square Ventures, less than a year after Notion Capital led their Seed round. 💥This is a company right at the intersection of AI & supply chain sovereignty & they’re exceeding even our most optimistic expectations. By the end of the year they will have 25 factories across the UK, US, Germany, France & Ukraine. 💥Isembard is rapidly scaling its network of AI-first factories for precision manufacturing at the same time as market demand is accelerating. Macro forces (reshoring, rising defence spend, concentration risk in Asia, and the growth of neo-primes) are structurally increasing demand for fast, local, flexible manufacturing that the current industry is unable to deliver on. 💥The innovation is in the way the company builds and franchises factories as a product with tightly integrated units of machines, software, robotics, & process intelligence that turn design files into certified components with speed & reliability. 💥Their AI software platform, MasonOS, connects all sites into a single operating system, replacing fragmented shops with standardised, high-performance industrial nodes & enabling real-time quoting, predictable delivery, & low defect rates. By owning the full production stack, Isembard delivers premium manufacturing performance with the scalability & flexibility of a software platform. 💥We are at the top of the AI hype cycle and there are understandable concerns about the ROI on the vast sums of money being invested into this new super-cycle. But, the ROI for Isembard is both clear and compelling. They will deliver components 10x faster and at 50% of the cost of current suppliers. They will also build a de-centralised, global network of factories to meet the growing demand for national or regional sovereignty. 💥This is a company with a clear vision to disrupt a massive, fragmented $1.8tn component manufacturing market. Today marks another huge stride towards that vision. And they are only just getting started. We’re thrilled to be on this journey with Alexander Fitzgerald & the team & we’re also excited to welcome Rebecca Kaden & USV into the investor base. Notion Capital Union Square Ventures Alexander Fitzgerald Rebecca Kaden Maximilian Eichler Stephen Millard Britt Mulder

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In our latest NPU Advisor Q&A, David Stone-Resneck shares how early founders can measure what matters: • Start qualitative → move quantitative • Use ChatGPT or Claude to find patterns in interviews • Track early signals, not vanity metrics • Treat marketing like product discovery “Early-stage marketing isn’t about brand or virality. It’s about finding a real problem and communicating that value clearly.” Read the full Q&A: https://lnkd.in/g7rbdGpW

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The SMS interactions between brand & consumer contain incredibly rich context for 1:1 personalized commerce experiences. Postscript is the platform enabling such experiences. On this week's episode, Rishabh and I sat down with Adam Turner to explore how SMS evolved from an abandoned-cart afterthought to a 1:1 sales & marketing channel. We covered: - Category creation and the rise of the “SMS marketer” - Compliance and quality as product design principles - Moving from broadcast to conversational journeys - Building distribution in the Shopify ecosystem, then scaling a sales-led motion - Where AI has augmented vs reinvented both marketing products and teams Link in comments

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From the beginning, we believed Lumana was building much more than a smarter surveillance tool. Lumana's platform reflects the next evolution in video intelligence — physical AI. This approach enables systems to go beyond basic detection capabilities to understanding context, infer intent, and deliver real-time insights that improve safety and operations at scale. Further, we decided to take the longer and more difficult direction of building a whole new generation and fully featured Video Management System (VMS). With the company’s $40M Series A, led by our friend Peter Wagner from Wing Venture Capital and our seed partners from SCAPITALVC, we’re doubling down on a platform that’s already proving its value in the real world. We are serving now close to ten thousands enterprise cameras in production! Founders like Sagi Ben Moshe bring a rare mix of vision and execution to the table. From our earliest conversations as an EIR at Norwest, it was clear that Lumana had the potential to reshape how organizations use video. Congratulations to the team on this well-deserved milestone. https://lnkd.in/gwHdaGPZ

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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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At Vibe Capital, we believe we're at a major inflection point. For the last 40 years, the highest-leverage work was in manipulating bits. That era is maturing into a utility. The new frontier is the physical world, and the race to program it has begun. In my latest Dave's Quick Hits newsletter, I map out the three fundamental stacks for rebuilding reality: 1. The Biological Path: Using AI to turn evolution into an engineering discipline, creating new materials and medicines at an incredible speed. 2. The Mechanical Path: Deploying AI-directed robots and self-replicating factories to trigger a new industrial explosion. 3. The Cybernetic Path: Building the final API to the brain, merging human cognition directly with our biological and mechanical creations. The generational alpha won't come from funding the next app, but from financing the means of physical creation. You can read the full analysis and the investment theses for each path here. https://lnkd.in/gAXNDaZF #FrontierTech #VentureCapital #Investing #DeepTech #AI #Manufacturing #Biotech #vibecap #vibecapital

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🌟 Grateful to Speak at CAIS (Series C): Women in Product & Innovation 🌟 I had the privilege of joining Jacqueline Koerner, MD of Funds Product Management at CAIS, last month for an intimate conversation with an incredible group of women across product, operations, and tech in general. For those who may not know CAIS, it is one of the fastest-growing fintech platforms in the alternative investments space. They’re building the infrastructure that gives financial advisors access to alternative products with the same ease and transparency as traditional assets, no small feat. Being welcomed into a room of such sharp, curious women building the future of fintech was an honor. Jacqueline guided our conversation through: ✨ Career Through-Line From startups to venture, consulting, and now enterprise AI at Adobe, the red thread has always been solving scaling problems: systems, people, partnerships, and the messy middle between vision and execution. ✨ Startup → Scale-Up Lessons Having supported 27 companies through growth stages, one thing is universal: scaling breaks non operational companies. Setting yourself up Day 1 for scale is easy, just need to do it. Tech and product teams win when they embrace structure, cross-functional clarity, ruthless prioritization, and the courage to evolve their operating system. ✨ What I’m up to at Adobe I’m focused on how AI delivers real value in content performance and retail media, and being a community builder at heart pushing partner ecosystem acceleration. National Retail Federation starting this weekend will be a true hub for these topics and looking forward to connecting with folks in Ad Tech there. The hype cycle is loud but the practical applications are already transforming marketing workflows and customer engagement. ✨ Skills for an AI-First Future - Product managers and operators will thrive if they master: - Systems thinking - Cross-functional cadenced communication - Comfort with ambiguity - Experimentation and iteration at Speed - AI-powered workflow design ✨ Personal Brand My personal brand wasn’t planned, it emerged by showing up consistently across communities, giving before asking, and sharing the journey with honesty. My biggest advice: start before you feel ready, be generous, and stay human. Folks prefer seeing and learning about the messy, not the perfect. ✨ What’s Inspiring 2026 feels like a year of convergence: AI maturity across industries, startup innovation now more needed by Corporates than ever, and global collaboration coming together in ways we’ve never seen before. And personally, it’s the rooms like this one that energize me the most.  Supporting and pushing the curious to take their next stretched step. Thank you, Jacqueline, Olivia Turi and the CAIS team for creating such a thoughtful space for women building the future. Here’s to more conversations that elevate, empower, and accelerate us all. 🚀 #innovation #technology #venturecapital #startups #careers

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🚀 Secondaries Are the New Frontier of Liquidity TL;DR The U.S. VC secondary market hit $61.1B in annual deal volume in Q2 2025. With IPO timelines stretching 12–15+ years, secondaries are no longer a side market they are becoming the backbone of venture liquidity. 💡 The Opportunity Unicorns are staying private longer, creating unprecedented demand for alternative liquidity. Secondaries offer access to elite late-stage companies while providing liquidity for employees and early investors. The infrastructure is catching up fast: SPVs, tender offers, and secondary trading platforms are building the pipes for a new era of private-market liquidity. ❓ Why This Matters For decades, IPOs defined venture capital’s big win. But today: IPOs are fewer, later, and concentrated in only a handful of sectors. Secondary trading channels are stepping in as the bridge repricing assets, creating transparency, and allowing institutions to participate earlier. What was once opaque and gated is now becoming structured, scalable, and investable. 💰 Implications for LPs & GPs LPs: Secondaries are evolving into a strategic allocation, providing earlier exposure to winners, portfolio diversification, and quicker liquidity. GPs: Partnering with platforms and structuring liquidity events is no longer optional it is a competitive edge for retaining talent and managing cap tables. 🌇 The Future of IPOs & Secondaries Secondaries aren’t replacing IPOs they are reshaping the path to liquidity. As trading channels mature and scale, secondaries will become a permanent, institutionalized asset class, redefining how private markets deliver returns. At Inspire Global Ventures, we believe companies building the infrastructure for this market will be some of the most important enablers of the next decade of venture investing. 👉 Come join Inspire Global Ventures at #SFTechWeek, where we’ll be diving deeper into the rise of secondaries and the tokenization of private assets two trends transforming the future of capital markets. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ge-XB8bd #VentureCapital #LiquiditySolutions #PrivateMarketInvesting #SecondaryMarketTrends #InvestmentOpportunities #FinancialInnovation #FutureOfFinance #TechWeek2025 #AssetTokenization #InstitutionalInvestors #Secondaries #IPOs #VentureInvesting #LP #GP #Tokenization #SFTechWeek

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Banking industry continues its efforts to suppress the crypto industry. Here's a comment of Cody Carbone, the CEO of The Digital Chamber:

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Jazzed for this keynote by Jeff Erhardt at our 12th annual LDV Capital Vision Summit: The Materials Innovation Gap: Why AI Predictions Aren't Enough — And What It Will Take to Transform a $6 Trillion Industry RSVP: https://lnkd.in/eeUHN_m AI is transforming industry after industry, and generating enormous excitement in the world of materials science. Machine learning models can now predict millions of new material candidates with unprecedented speed and accuracy. At the same time, programmable material classes, including those recognized by the 2025 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, could unlock breakthroughs in some of the most pressing challenges facing civilization, from environmental remediation to the energy transition. But their impact is constrained by something prediction alone cannot resolve: new materials must be physically produced, scaled, integrated, and qualified within the larger systems into which they are deployed, a journey that remains extraordinarily long, expensive, and unpredictable. Jeff will argue that closing this materials innovation gap requires treating AI and physical experimentation as equal partners, and building a new model of collaborative development that connects materials innovators and industrial partners far earlier in the discovery process.

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