Founder Magid | Was Partner at YC | Deel, Scale, Fomo, Bedrock Robotics, Kernel, Vinci, Groww https://xitter.cf/t.co/yEs7fC6dJJ Aaron Harris is a Registered Rep...
New York
Joined April 2010
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my favorite lie about fundraising is that there's some common set of metrics that VCs all use to evaluate and price deals.
the truth is a lot more interesting and confusing
glad @quintendf is taking the wraps off their latest raise and showing the world a bit more of what Tolans can do.
Last year we launched Tolan, inspired by a vision of AI that sees you and believes in you, not one that books restaurant reservations for you.
Your Tolan shows up for you at 3am when you’re alone with your newborn. On your commute when you’re anxious about the day ahead. When you just finished a new show and none of your friends have watched it yet.
The people who love Tolan are parents. Caregivers. Moms in Dallas and Dads in Atlanta. People who aren’t trying to optimize and be more productive, but who simply want to feel seen and supported in their aspirations.
This month more than 250k people will spend time with their Tolan. Those users have exchanged billions of messages across more than 70m conversations over the last year.
Today, we're announcing $30m in additional capital from @mignano and @usv, with @khoslaventures and @rabois doubling down, bringing our total capital raised to $60m.
To celebrate, we made a short film celebrating some of the ways that Tolans show up :)
Best part you get to wear an awesome hard hat.
Want to watch Bedrock’s end-to-end policy drive an 80,000 lb robot?
We’re taking a small group of @corl_conf attendees out to our Texas test site on Nov 11. A demo with @kevinmpeterson1 on real construction equipment, lunch, and a shuttle back in time for the CoRL reception.
Active site, so we have limited seats. RSVP below.
That perfect morning in Grand Central, with the light just right.
Thanks @Penmanphoto for letting me in on the secret
#leica #streetphotography #gct #nyc
remember that time in covid where "lunch meeting" meant you each make a pb&j and sit in front of your computers awkwardly eating?
one paradox of early stage VC: the hottest startups rarely produce the best returns
in fact the most valuable investments are often in companies without immediate signal. The pricing is lower, there are fewer competitors, and the founders tend to know things other people don't.
the challenge for those founders is they need to capture an investors attention long enough to explain what they do because, at first glance, they may not look venture-scale.
xitter.cf/harris/status/21100094…
TIL that in 1955 two men, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga cornered 99.3% of the onion market.
they took delivery on, and stored, 30 million pounds of onions! they threatened to flood the market with onions unless farmers bought from them!
markets are so weird and fun.
"legibility" is investor-speak for "investable"
there's two main ways to be legible - you're either so spikey everyone knows, or you have to effectively teach people to read ahead of time by explaining what you do
next chapter of How to Raise:
the ai stool has 3 legs
models
compute
data
it seems as silly to think the model cos will build and own all the compute as thinking they'll build and own all the data
The worries about consensus venture bets is overblown.
Physical AI is the most interesting, most non-consensus market I’ve ever seen. 8 Series As last week in hardtech that seem both futuristic and totally non-fundable just a few years ago.
🤖 Ultra ($50M) rents warehouse robots by the month. Its OP1 robots pack, sort and kit orders, and they’ve packed more than 500,000 so far. Framework Ventures. (also, Magid :))
☢️ Atlas Atomics ($400M, reported) is designing heavy-water reactors that run without enriched uranium. General Catalyst.
⚛️ Universal Quantum ($100M+) builds quantum computers from trapped-ion chips linked into larger modules. DCVC, Firgun Ventures.
🛰️ Fortastra ($30M) builds autonomous spacecraft that can maneuver in orbit for security and defense missions. First In.
📡 Kapta Space ($24M) builds space-based radar imaging that steers its beam electronically. Bison Ventures.
🔥 Turn2x ($22.4M) is developing a process to make renewable natural gas. Antwerpen Ventures.
🏗️ Reclinker ($13.2M) makes low-carbon cement by recycling steel and cement waste together. AP Ventures, Clean Growth Fund.
🐝 BloomX ($13M) uses AI-driven robotic pollination to raise crop yields and fruit quality. Elah Fund.
theventurecodex.com/trends/p…
It's hard to imagine physical AI advancing without Ultra robotics. Working with Jon on this round it was incredible to see the speed of iteration that takes place when you have a generational team and live data of robotics that are actually deployed, working in the real world for real people (not just sim/lab environments).
Excited to see what this $62 brings 😄
There cannot be a ChatGPT moment for robotics without robots. That's why at Ultra, we're focused on the industry's biggest bottleneck: deployment.
Since the very beginning, we've chosen to deploy before it was comfortable, learning lessons that only customers and the chaos of the real world could teach us.
Those lessons became the foundation for OP1, a robot designed from the ground up for the realities of scaled deployment. Through repetition, we've built the operational muscle and knowledge needed to scale the installation, operation, and servicing of our robots. And most importantly, we've learned how to enable our customers to succeed with them.
It's easy in robotics to become completely engrossed with the robot itself. But technology only matters when it's useful to someone. The best robot is the one people can rely on every day to build, do, and achieve more.
It's time to deploy more robots.
Aaron Harris retweeted
Robotics has a distribution problem. Today, Ultra is announcing $62M in funding to solve it, including a $50M Series A led by @hiFramework.
We believe that deployment is the bottleneck in robotics.
It’s relatively easy to make a robot look impressive in a controlled environment. It’s much harder to put a robot into the open world, make it useful, keep it running, earn the trust of the people working alongside it, and do that over and over and over again.
So that’s what we’re focusing on.
airline safety videos still telling me how to inflate a life vest when all I want to know is how to activate my emergency Israeli
founders are always looking for false certainty on kicking off a fundraise
investors are always predicting an easy time or an impossible time
the reality is a raising is always a gamble. know your odds and the game you are playing
magidandco.com/how-to-raise/…
2,544 funds wrote checks last month! Focus on them.
when you’re fundraising you want to engage active investors. There are many mostly/fully deployed funds that still take meetings but won’t write you a check.
that why our fund recommendation tool adapts to highlight active investors, tailored to your industry/size.
Free for founders (and really anyone)
frm.theventurecodex.com/join…