Drew Fabrikant

Most startups sell into verticals. We’re taking over one. Ohanafy is rebuilding the operating system for a $7.6B industry, starting with beverage alcohol, a $1.2b wedge. Legacy players are drowning in disconnected systems: Sales. Ops. Finance. All running on tech that doesn’t talk to itself. The Frankenstein software approach means everything breaks and lags. •⁠ ⁠Fragile integrations •⁠ ⁠Delayed reporting •⁠ ⁠Missed decisions Ohanafy didn’t ask: “What’s the next feature?” But: “What would it take to replace the whole stack?” So they built it: → Native on Salesforce → Multiple tools consolidated into 1 → Customers save 20+ hours/week → Field teams onboard in days, not months → Sales, ops, and finance run from the same screen This isn’t just a product. It’s a platform play. We’re now raising a $3M bridge round to scale faster into enterprise, double down on AI, and shorten our time-to-profitability. If you want to back a vertical category winner, this is the full-scale land grab to look at. DM me to look at the full deck!

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Last week AZ-VC Managing Partner, Jack Selby, posted about a significant corporate loss for the State of Arizona. While the post isn’t specifically about the state of the VC market in Arizona it highlights some of the shortcomings of a market we love – but when it comes to our relationship with AZ (like other active V.C.s in the state), well… it’s complicated. Here is a redacted rundown (due to length) of my full take on the AZ Venture Ecosystem. (Full article linked in the comments.) Those of us in the Arizona market have heard the rumblings of the sleeping giant in “The Silicon Desert“ for decades, only for those promises to continually fall short. It feels like there is momentum to some, but the reality is there are some serious shortcomings in this market marked by three key factors. Corporate Involvement From where I sit, this is the biggest issue with the State of Arizona, and it’s a real blocker to success. We have very few fortune 500 companies headquartered here, currently 10, if you walked into any restaurant or bar in the state and surveyed the guests, I’d set the over under at ‘1’ for the number of people who can name the biggest company in our state. Therein lies the problem. The biggest company in our state, Freeport McMoran (a global mining company) is not involved. They have no community presence and certainly aren’t supporting the venture community... Access to Talent Arizona State is the largest research and innovation university in the country, yet I rarely see talent bursting out of their doors to start a homegrown company. Even when great talent does emerge from ASU, they’re often bursting through those doors and right on out of the state to chase more established ecosystems in other regions. The University of Arizona boasts a massive and highly accredited medical college, despite that I am hard pressed to think of a SaaS founder to come out of the program looking to solve one of the umpteenth problems in the medical profession... Founders with Exits Which leads me to the third and final ingredient, founders with exits. Highly visible and successful founders who have a massive exit is a win, it must be celebrated and also re-invested, in order to grow the ecosystem. Gregg Scoresby, Managing Partner at PHX Ventures is a great example of this. He successfully exited CampusLogic and now gives back to the ecosystem through his Seed fund at PHX Ventures... How do we awaken the sleeping giant that is the “Silicon Desert?” A unified and intentional effort, driven and curated by our capital allocators, with backing from our corporates, schools, and successful founders would be one hell of a start.

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🔥 I raised $40M in venture capital for my last startup. But getting a ~$2.5M SBA loan? Way harder. 💸 (Read that again.) 👀 With venture, you can go from term sheet to close in 30 days. Good luck getting an SBA loan funded on a business acquisition in under 3 months from start to finish. The SBA and the bank will do more diligence and paperwork on you and the business than all your VCs combined. 🔍📑 The closing process is night and day. Raising VC is like having TSA Precheck and skipping the 3-hour line ✈️. With a government-backed loan, you’re in that long line, piles of paperwork, rounds of diligence, and countless steps before you get the green light. 🛂 And yet… I’d still choose an SBA loan to buy a boring, profitable business over raising venture capital again. Why? Because with VC you’re dependent on investors and chasing runway, where 99% of startups never turn a profit 📉. With ETA, you step into a business that already throws off cash 💵 and you actually own your destiny 🔑. Owning a business that generates real profits beats relying on the next round of funding to survive. 🚀💪

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A Venture Studio ignored venture and won. They built for Cashflow, not Venture. Here is how they did it: 20 years ago, an Atlanta-based venture studio operated with a unique approach. Instead of targeting VC or Private Equity, they  focused solely on cash-flow businesses like  professional service firms.  Here are 2 powerful lessons every studio can learn from their model: ------ 1. Funding Mechanism: A Line of Credit - Companies were funded via a line of credit, not equity capital.  - Portcos had to become cash flow neutral within 18 months—recycling capital quickly.  - Reduced funding needs = Faster scalability. This setup created discipline. Each month, portfolio founders had to justify every dollar spent. Want to hire McKinsey? Nope—do it internally.  Result? Founders learned to obsess over cash flow—an essential entrepreneurial muscle.  --- 2. Picking Founders Wisely  Successful founders were not running from bad employers. Instead, they were executives who always dreamed of building something but lacked the timing or resources earlier in life.  These proven leaders had:   - Strong networks   - Deep domain expertise   - Relentless drive to finally fulfill their vision  They thrived almost every time.  P.S. Which of these lessons resonates with you? 👇 Best, Matthew Burris

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Searching for startup investors here on LinkedIn, Google, or Reddit? Stop. You might be wasting months and precious runway. Here's what to do. After 7 startups and helping raise over $100M, I know finding the right investor is an infuriating process. But there’s a system to it. Here’s my investor-finding tier list, based on 25 years in the trenches (I've tested them all): Google & Reddit: You’ll get flamed, ignored, or worse, scammed. Serious investors aren't scrolling Reddit for deal flow. This is the fastest way to waste your time. Google is also filled with services that will leave you disappointed. Who can you trust? PitchBook: A powerful tool with great data. The problem? It costs tens of thousands of dollars. It's overkill for most early-stage founders who need to be scrappy. LinkedIn: The approach everyone should be using. You can research investors, understand their thesis, and build real relationships. But it's a major commitment. You have to be active and build your personal brand for it to work (which you should be doing anyway). Crunchbase: A fantastic, cost-effective starting point. You can find out who invested in similar companies, download lists, and cross-reference contacts. It’s a huge step up from guessing. Smart Tools: This is why I joined Startups.com. We built an investor-matching tool where I essentially baked my brain and entire process into an AI. It analyzes your deck and matches you with verified, relevant investors. It automates the outreach I used to do manually for hundreds of hours. Try our pitch deck analyzer and investor matching tool for free here: https://lnkd.in/ds2HPMZ3 The Combo: The real magic happens here. Use a smart tool like Startups.com to build your target list and automate initial outreach. Then, use LinkedIn to warm up those leads, build relationships, and show them you’re a founder worth backing. It’s not just about finding an email address. It's about combining intelligent automation with genuine human connection. Watch this video for my full tier list: https://lnkd.in/dbxsNmTT

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When people talk about tokenizing real estate, they talk about fractionalization. We don’t. We talk about control. The goal isn’t to break down the cap table for retail buyers. The goal is to structure access and reporting in a way that scales without compromising governance. That starts with digitizing trust structures, legal wrappers, distribution logic, and ownership records. We built our first blockchain-enabled real estate vehicle around a stabilized asset. Fully leased. Long-term tenant. Clean books. Predictable yield. We didn’t market it to crypto-native investors. We underwrote it like a traditional deal, then embedded tokenized rails into a compliant, closed loop. That meant: Every investor had to complete KYC/AML. Tokens were locked into wallets with compliance triggers. Transferability was restricted under Rule 144 for secondary events. Distributions were issued via smart contract triggers backed by on-chain payment logs. The result wasn’t speed. It was traceability. Every dollar in. Every dollar out. Logged, traceable, auditable. Not one LP asked for innovation. They asked for transparency. Blockchain helped us deliver it, not promise it. When tokenization is treated as a feature—not a product—you get systems that last. We’re not building for hype cycles. We’re building infrastructure that earns trust under pressure.

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