Vertex Ventures US

Tonight we’re gathering 150+ of the brightest minds in infrastructure software in SF for the launch of the InfraSF community 🎉 We’ve been blown away by the response and have quite a waitlist 🚀🚀🚀 can’t wait to see you all there! Thanks again friends Richard Crowley, Andrew Fong and James Cowling for sharing a lightning talk 🫶 they’re going to be spicy 🔥

The Vertex US team just got back from Singapore, where we presented on the state of the American startup market. Some key takeaways: Valuations for growth-stage startups are only seeing modest gains, making it that much harder for any but the absolute cream of the crop to successfully go from Series A to B or B to C. This crunch has shone a spotlight on private equity as an acquirer, as it snaps up mature companies that can't raise more capital. It's not all bad news, though. As the US continues to decouple itself from the Chinese economy, and AI presents a headwind for anybody trying to disrupt the professional services sector, there's lots of startup opportunity to be found. We also expect to see the exit environment improve over the next several months, as markets settle after the uncertainty in the months leading into the US election. (Editor's note: This edition of the newsletter originally published to our e-mail subscribers on Tuesday night, while votes in the US presidential election were still being counted.) #startup #venturecapital #investing #vc #newsletter

Building an infrastructure software startup in SF? Leading engineering teams working on complex systems? Join 80+ of the brightest technical minds in SF for our first ever InfraSF meet-up !! 🚀 Thursday 11/7 @ Convex HQ https://lu.ma/wf41cqdw We have lightning talks from infra MVPs sharing live technical challenges they're working to solve: ⚡️ Richard Crowley - Infrastructure, PlanetScale “avoiding the CPU overhead of serialization” ⚡️ James Cowling - CTO & Co-Founder, Convex “stop giving up consistency guarantees so easily” ⚡️ Andrew Fong - Storage Platforms, Databricks "managing multi-cloud systems at scale" I'm so excited to catch up with friends and engineering leaders from LinkedIn, Render, Hasura, Netflix, Orkes, WorkOS +++ see you there!

Last night infra.nyc hosted the brightest minds in infra software for a meet-up in Brooklyn from Cloudflare, Vercel, Bloomberg, LaunchDarkly 🚀 big thanks to everyone that came down! The quality of the lightning talks was exceptional 🤩 a HUGE thanks to these stars for sharing a technical challenge they're working on for the group to discuss: ⚡️ Andrew Werner / Co-Founder, Data Ex Machina - "safely reading memory in dynamic probes" ⚡️ Dan Manges / CEO & Co-Founder, RWX - "severless cold start acceleration" ⚡️ Richard Hart / Product Owner, Antithesis - "optimizing scatter-gather DB queries" Our next meet-up will be in San Francisco launching InfraSF, next week 11/7 ! Sign up here - https://lu.ma/wf41cqdw 🎉

Join 100+ of NYC's brightest minds in software infrastructure for our next infra.nyc "fright night" next Tue 10/29 - this time with 5min lightning talks ⚡️🚀👻 https://lu.ma/54v8qdp3 We have 3 infra MVPs sharing unsolved technical challenges they're working on in real-time, to get Qs and ideas from the group: ⚡️ Andrew Werner / Co-Founder, Data Ex Machina - "safely reading memory in dynamic probes" ⚡️ Dan Manges / CEO & Co-Founder, RWX - "severless cold start acceleration" ⚡️ Richard Hart / Product Owner, Antithesis - "optimizing scatter-gather DB queries" This is a close community of infra founders and senior engineers from companies like PlanetScale, Gitpod, Vantage, Datadog 🚀 come for drinks, pizza and technical discussions 🍻🍕🌟 see you there!

With much of the Vertex US team on the road this week, it's a good time to recap some of our recent news, announcements, and content you may have missed. As a programming note: The Vertex Angles newsletter will be off next week as we attend an event with our colleagues in the global Vertex network of independent funds. #startup #startupadvice #ai #venturecapital #investor

Great insights shared at #LATechWeek 2024! It was a privilege to join Spencer Rascoff and Elissa Grossman on the M&A/Exits panel, where we discussed how founders can navigate strategic acquisitions and create successful outcomes. Big thanks to Benjamin King for expertly moderating the conversation. Exciting times ahead for LA's thriving tech scene! #LATech #M&A #Founders #Exits

Thank you, Nasdaq, for featuring HUMAN on the screen in Times Square for our recent $50+ million in growth funding to protect the digital customer journey and defend against bots, fraud and risk. We’re so grateful to our investors at WestCap, Goldman Sachs, ClearSky, NightDragon and Vertex Ventures US for believing in our vision and doubling down on their commitment to our cause. Read more about the future of HUMAN from CEO Stu Solomon in our blog: https://bit.ly/48eWglX #KnowWhosReal Kevin Marcus, Dave DeWalt, Anthony Arnold, Gabby Secretov, Natassia Nettleman, Sarah Kuranda Vallone, Madison Bench, Matt Weinberger, Jay Leek, May Mitchell, Isaac Itenberg, Kirsten Canton, Sarah Acker

The history of tech is littered with examples of innovative companies that failed to capture the value they created in the market. Simon Tiu breaks down his Warren Buffett-inspired philosophy on how AI startups can learn from the lessons of the past to create durable value and long-lasting companies in the present. To compete with Big Tech, it's important not only to have the best technology, but also a sales and go-to-market that enables you to enjoy the benefits of having pricing power. Read more in this week's Vertex Angles newsletter: #ai #startup #startupadvice #aistartup #venturecapital

When your friends become friends. 🤝 Vertex Ventures US family photo with HUMAN, Testlio, and VGS at Payments Leaders' Summit! 🤗 Ft. L2R ➡️ Austin Clark Richard Fridge Arthur Bedel 💳 ♻️ Summer Weisberg Kristel Kruustuk Tom Chmielewski Daniel Bond Jennifer Marshall🔥