Venture with Grace

Josh Aharonoff, CPA, is the founder of Your CFO Guy (450k+ followers) and Mighty Digits.~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.~~~~~Josh and his company serve as a fractional CFO for fast-growing companies and startups. With over 450,000 followers on LinkedIn, Josh is a highly influential voice in finance, known for sharing practical insights on financial strategy, cash flow management, and Excel mastery. He combines deep financial expertise with hands-on experience to help businesses scale efficiently through expert financial modeling, reporting, and strategic guidance. Passionate about empowering leaders, Josh provides the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive in today’s fast-paced business world.Topics: Building a personal and company brand on LinkedInKey fundraising tips for foundersTurning financial data into a compelling growth story#StartupGrowth #FounderTips #VCInsights #FinancialModeling #BrandBuilding

Tony Stubblebine is the CEO of Medium. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.~~~~~He took the helm in July 2022 after a career as a serial entrepreneur and tech leader, including founding Coach.me and publishing Better Humans on Medium. Known for his focus on substance and human storytelling, Tony led Medium through a dramatic turnaround by prioritizing personal, thoughtful content and human curation over algorithm-driven clickbait and AI-generated material. Under his leadership, Medium surpassed one million paying subscribers and is on track to become profitable for the first time, thanks in part to strategic cost-cutting and a shift to a subscription-based model that values quality over hype. Topics: The evolution of online publishingNavigating AI in contentBuilding authority and audience#VC #Podcast #Medium #TonyStubblebine #Entrepreneurship #Tech

Prashanth Chandrasekar is the CEO and Board Member of Stack Overflow, the world's largest and most trusted community and platform for developers and technologists. With over 100 million global monthly visitors and market-leading, fast-growing collaboration and knowledge-sharing Enterprise SaaS and AI products, Stack Overflow enables the world to develop technology through collective knowledge. In 2021, Stack Overflow was acquired by Prosus for $1.8Bn.Previously, he served as Senior Vice President & General Manager of Rackspace's Cloud & Infrastructure Services portfolio of businesses, including the Managed Public Clouds, Private Clouds, Colocation and Managed Security businesses. He also held a range of senior leadership roles at Rackspace including Senior Vice President & General Manager of Rackspace's high-growth, global business focused on the world's leading Public Clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Alibaba Cloud, which became the fastest growing business in Rackspace's history.Topics:AI's impact on developer workflowsLeadership approaches for transforming tech platforms into enterprise giantsMaintaining developer trust while evolving commercial strategies#StackOverflow #TechLeadership #DeveloperCommunity #SaaSThis episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit Verivend.com and see how easy it can be.

Morgan Blumberg is a Principal at M13. Morgan spent five years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. She worked on a presidential campaign, at Bloomberg Philanthropies and consulted for start-ups in the political media space.Topics: Healthcare and future of workEmbedded AI, productivity tools, and infrastructureFrontier investing trends#AI #FrontierTech #VentureCapital #StartupInvesting

Manish Patel is the founder of Nava Ventures. He led teams that have designed, developed, and scaled products with global impact, from enterprise advertising systems like AdWords to consumer experiences like Google Maps. Prior to that, he was a GP at Highland Capital Partners. Highland has raised over $3B in committed capital and invested in more than 270 companies, resulting in category-defining businesses across consumer and enterprise technology. Investments include companies such as Rent the Runway, 2U, Catalant, Harry's, Malwarebytes, nuTonomy, Clearbanc, Scopely, ThredUP, and Turbonomic.Topics: Enterprise AI adoptionBridging traditional industries with AI The future of work and automation #VentureCapital #AgTech #EnterpriseAI #GoogleToVC

Anna Sarnek leads Cyber Startup and Venture Capital Business Development at AWS, working at the intersection of investors, startups, and the CISO community. With 15+ years of experience and a technical background, she excels at identifying unique go-to-market opportunities in enterprise IT and cybersecurity. At SecurityScorecard, she single-handedly built the Cloud Partnership program, achieving 8x marketplace growth, securing a record 6-day deal cycle, and earning recognition at re 2022. Previously Head of Technology Alliances at RSA, Anna's strategic vision and partnership expertise drives innovation across the cybersecurity ecosystem.Topics: Strategic partnerships as growth accelerators for early-stage companiesNavigating the cybersecurity ecosystemTranslating technical innovations into enterprise-ready solutions#CyberBD #StartupGrowth #CloudPartnerships #VCStrategy #CISO

Tim Shi is the Co-founder of Cresta (1.6B+ Valuation). Backed by top investors (sequoia, greylock & a16z), they are building AI agents to transform customer experiences. Tim dropped out of Stanford PhD program in 2017 to change the nature of work with AI, starting with copilots and expanded into a full platform of augmentation, automation and insights. In 2019, Cresta started deploying a GPT-2-based generative AI system in production for Fortune 500 customers. Their work is featured in the recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on the impact of GPT on boosting productivity.Topics: The Evolution of AI in Customer ExperienceMeasuring AI's Business ImpactThe Future of Work with AI#AIInnovation #CrestaAI #CustomerExperience #GenerativeAI

Deedy Das, Principal at Menlo Ventures, shares his insights on the future of AI and startup strategies. He discusses emerging trends in enterprise AI infrastructure and the significance of customer-centric product development. Deedy also delves into innovative funding strategies like seed strapping and the impact of AI on hiring practices, emphasizing a shift toward problem-solving skills. With a wealth of experience in building successful tech products, he passionately advocates for creating quality solutions that resonate with users.

Chungin "Roy" Lee and Neel Shanmugam are the founders behind Cluely AI, a startup that recently secured $5.3 million in seed funding to develop their "real-time coaching" technology that provides suggestions through a hidden overlay during professional interactions. Their project began at Columbia University where they created Interview Coder, which later evolved into Cluely—now generating over $3 million in annual recurring revenue. Roy and Neel describe their technology as the natural progression of productivity aids, drawing parallels to how calculators and spell-check were once considered disruptive but are now standard. Roy leads the company's business strategy and product vision, while Neel applies his technical expertise to develop the platform's algorithms and user interface, as they expand their AI assistant's capabilities from technical interviews to sales calls and everyday conversations.Topics: The Evolution of Professional AssistantsDigital Natives Rebuilding Work CultureThe Future of Human-AI Collaborative Interfaces#AICoaching #InvisibleTech #RealTimeAssistant #FutureOfWork

Colton Dempsey is a Partner at Next47. Colton joined Next47 in 2018 and is a Partner on the Palo Alto investment team. He helped lead the firm’s investments in Halcyon and Harmonic Security, Noname Security, Armorblox, DataGrail, Brilliant, Software.com, and Pando, among others. His primary areas of focus are IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, robotics, and connected devices. Colton’s interest in B2B tech began prior to Next47 while working on M&A and IPO transactions at Morgan Stanley’s Technology Group in New York. He graduated from Stanford with a BSc in Symbolic Systems, an interdisciplinary major focused on cognitive science.Topics: Evolution of IT Infrastructure InvestmentsCybersecurity Investment Thesis B2B SaaS Valuation Trends#VentureCapital #Next47 #CybersecurityInvesting #B2BTech #ITInfrastructure