Tanner Merrill’s Post

Excited to lead a breakout session at the All Raise Summit with Erica Brescia tomorrow. Come share your Life Hacks as we talk through the art of Balancing Family, Investing and Everything Else! #AllRaise #VCSummit #ACutAbove Magnify Ventures Redpoint Ventures

👋 Hi network, we're back from our family sabbatical! It was all we imagined and more (DM me for tips about traveling with twin toddlers, Dubai, Bali, Lombok, Koh Samui & Bangkok). 🌟 Back to reality, as my husband and I settle back and look for our next big gigs, I am happy to start contributing my talents to help others, so I've started consulting and freelancing, so you'll see more about me on this journey. 🛑 First stop: the world of VC Platform --> Through my experience in tech entrepreneurship I've had the chance to meet new (and reencounter old) friends in the world of VC. And while I'm no investor, it turns out that VC funds with an edge do way more than fundraising and investing. In fact, many funds are leaning on the new-ish "Platform" function to add additional value to portfolio companies and help them accelerate the path to Product Market Fit and beyond. 🙌 I was very excited when Anke Huiskes at NP-Hard Ventures talked to me about her idea to "productize" their newly announced fund and how Platform could be the answer. I'm stoked to leverage my experience building brands and communities to help Anke and her co-founders set up the platform and community for NP-Hard Ventures. 🍿 We'll be hosting a gathering in our office in Amsterdam to dive into this role with a select group of VCs. If you have successfully implemented this role at your fund, or if you're keen on integrating platform capabilities within your fund, we would love to learn from you and swap notes! Let me or Anke know if you like to join us on January 25th from 18-20.30hr for an in-depth discussion. 👋

I looked at Harlem Capital’s companies to see how long it takes between rounds or to wind down Seed to Seed+ | 14 months Seed+ to Series A | 10 months Seed to Series A | 20 months Seed to Wind down | 26 months These are historical so I would expect longer time periods in this bear market We are telling all of our new founders to assume 24-30 months for Seed to Series A, which means we need 30-36 months of runway when we invest

Welcome to our new quickfire Q&A series, Meet the Managers. Our first interview is with Reece Chowdhry of Concept Ventures. Concept Ventures is a dedicated pre-seed VC fund that invests in software companies with a people-centric approach. The first question we asked Reece was which individuals helped him the most in his journey, and he answered: Sam Ettelaie (we promise we did not influence his choice!), Matt Penneycard and Dr Arjun Patel. Find out more about Reece's journey below 👇

The LA Ecosystem event last night, organized by Plug In Ventures, Cooley LLP, and Cake Equity, was an enlightening experience. It was fantastic to gain insights from industry leaders like Derek Smith of Plug In Ventures, Qiana Patterson of NAYAH, Marcos Gonzalez of VamosVentures, and Priya D. Patel of Cooley. The discussions centered around building a cohesive and expansive VC ecosystem in the Los Angeles area, moving beyond smaller, overlapping, and sometimes siloed communities. Key takeaways for founders included the importance of strategic storytelling, using data to demonstrate market potential, showing growth in underserved markets, and ensuring scalability of the business. Equally important was the emphasis on building strong relationships with investors and finding your community, especially as a minority or woman founder in LA. The collective wisdom shared will undoubtedly help shape a more inclusive and robust venture capital landscape in our city. Here's to fostering connections, supporting diverse founders, and growing the LA VC ecosystem together!  #VentureCapital #InvestInDiversity #SupportingFounders

🚨Josh Felser, Raj Kapoor and Peter Sun closed their Climactic I fund of $65 million 🚨 The fund already invested in 13 portfolio companies and will focus on the intersection of software, AI and climate. The most important part is that the team include founder with real entrepreneurial experience to help founder build software for our planet earth 🌍. climactic also has two advisors who are helping navigating science and environment by Paul Hawkins🚀 and policy by Van Jones. Some of their LPs include Reid Hoffman from Greylock Chris Sacca from Lowercarbon Capital and. Ev Williams from Obvious Ventures and funds like Mayfield Fund and NFX (Gigi Levy-Weiss ). I believ that we must use the experience we have in building software to accelerate the energy transition and fight on climate. Hardware alone will not solve it and definitely not in the right pace. https://lnkd.in/e-VH-edN #venturecapital #newfund #software #funding #startupfunding #impactinvesting #climatetech

More big news from RealReports!

Considering a career in startups or VC? Starting today, I'm available for 1:1 calls on @Intro to help startup founders and aspiring VCs think through the path ahead. As the founder + managing director of Red Sea Ventures, we invested early in companies like Allbirds (IPO), Sweetgreen (IPO), Nest (acq. Google), Casetext (acq. Thompson Reuters), and Prose to name a few. What topics can we cover? ✔️ Finding product-market fit ✔️ The different paths to funding ✔️ Determining how much you need to raise ✔️ Building a VC firm ✔️ Careers in VC ✔️ Celebrity partnerships Honored to be alongside world-class Experts like Chris DeWolfe (co-founder of MySpace (sold for $675M), Scott Saunders (founder of Happy Money, valued $1B+) & Geraldine Martin-Coppola (former President of Goop). I’ll be donating 100% of the proceeds to Seeds of Peace

Join the True Ventures team for an IRL talk on the ups, downs, twists, and turns of the entrepreneurial journey. Moneta Founder Paul A. Campbell and LoanSnap’s Founder Karl Jacob and I will share our experiences in raising venture capital, selling our stories to investors, the power of asking the right questions, what VCs look for in pitches, and more. Bites and bevs will be served following the conversation. RSVP: https://lnkd.in/ggJNQN3i

The Ultimate #VC list... a useful list to screen which investors can be a fit for your company!