StandUp Ventures

This International Women’s Day, we’re spotlighting leaders who are shaping the future of artificial intelligence and innovation. “Technological shifts reward leaders with strong judgment, obsessive drive, and the ability to rally others around a vision before it’s obvious. That’s what defines enduring companies in uncertain markets. This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the women building and backing those companies and shaping what this era of AI becomes.”— Michelle McBane, Managing Director, StandUp Ventures At CIBC, we’re proud to support women who lead with vision and courage, driving progress in technology and beyond. #InternationalWomensDay #CelebratingWomen #WomenInLeadership #Innovation #CIBC Amy Olah

When we started AssistIQ, the goal was simple: make the work that happens inside the OR more visible, more accurate, and take away the administrative documentation burden for clinicians. Hearing Russ R. share Owensboro Health's results at HIMSS last week — 13,000+ surgical cases, 98–99% capture accuracy, a 24% increase in gross revenue — is exactly why we do this work. Health systems are operating under real pressure. The problems we're solving aren't abstract. We're proud to be a partner that's showing up in the results. https://lnkd.in/empjqnnV

Software is easier to build and harder to defend. But the "software is dead" take is overblown. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀: 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗻𝗼𝘄? Our team at StandUp Ventures has spent the past year building a thesis on this. We believe the most valuable software companies will be the ones that were hardest to build — 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅, 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱. Here's what I mean. Construction is a $16 trillion industry that runs on word of mouth, gut feel, and fragile institutional knowledge. General contractors lose out on high-margin projects they never knew existed. The data to fix this actually exists in municipal records, but 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁. One of our portfolio companies spent years building a system to capture that data before it disappears. Snapshotting every filing, every day, city by city, and reassembling it into a temporal dataset that has never existed before. 𝗡𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗻𝗲. That infrastructure is now powering AI products that 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 can build. 𝗪𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗮 "𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝘂𝘁" 𝗺𝗼𝗮𝘁. Not based on a single breakthrough but dozens of hard-won, unglamorous innovations stacked into a product that just works, compounding in value and incredibly difficult to replicate. AI is a tailwind to these businesses, not a threat. 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗮𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲: painful to build, but with structural advantages that deepen over time. Full thesis linked in the comments. If you're a founder building something that fits this framework, I'd love to hear from you.

We raised $5M to rebuild how finance teams make decisions!! Pluvo is now proud to be backed by a16z speedrun, Deel, Christopher Martin, StandUp Ventures, AltaIR Capital, and an incredible group of operators and angels who believe finance deserves better tools. This one is personal. I’ve lived the problem we’re solving. I’ve been the VP Finance staring at a model late at night knowing the decision lives or dies in the analysis. Not in the boardroom. Not in the narrative. In the numbers. In the assumptions. In the “why did this actually move?” Analysis is where confidence is built (or lost). Getting the chance to rebuild that layer from the ground up feels like an absolute dream. Because finance people are builders at heart. We architect systems, we model futures that don’t exist yet, we pressure test strategy before anyone else sees the risk. But far too many of us are stuck maintaining spreadsheets instead of engineering better decisions. Pluvo is changing that. We’re building a way to run deeper analysis, capture context, and move from question to answer without burning hours (or days) on manual work. When it clicks, it’s an “oh wow” moment. You stop chasing numbers, and instead start building with them. That’s the future I want to help create. Huge thank you to the people who shaped me along the way. Ben Daniele, for always picking up the phone. Greg Henry at 1Password and Charly Kevers from Carta for tolerating my endless questions, and the countless others for the perspective and high standards. You’ve all influenced how I think about this role more than you know. And to early believers like Ethan Low at Nooks and Ashley & Britton at Xclusive Services, Nick Jones, John Fong, Brianne Bryant, and so many others. Thank you for trusting us before it was obvious. If you’re in finance and you feel like your tools are holding you back from the kind of impact you know you can have… Come see what we’re building. We’re just getting started ✨ Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/esSueKKq

Excited to share that StandUp Ventures has invested in Pluvo's $5M USD seed round alongside a16z speedrun, Deel, The Perseverance Fund, and AltaIR Capital! Every financial forecast is built on assumptions. A growth rate adjusted because last quarter was noisy. A hiring plan revised because sales slipped. A churn number debated in a tense board meeting. Assumptions are the actual intellectual content of financial planning, but they have almost always existed exclusively in someone's head. When the output is saved the reasoning disappears. When results diverge there’s no memory of why. AI can analyze variance and surface anomalies, but it cannot explain decisions if the decision logic was never captured in the first place. It is forced to reason over shadows. Pluvo treats assumptions as first-class data: structured, versioned, queryable, and preserved alongside the numbers they shape. Over time, that creates something financial planning has never had: a longitudinal record of decision logic. Which is exactly what AI actually needs to move from describing what happened to explaining why. As Alexandre Labreche, Vanessa Galarneau, Andrew Ingram, and seb fallenbuchl have executed over the past year our conviction has only grown. Would love to hear from any/all CFOs and finance leaders who recognize this problem! ALSO!! StandUp Ventures has a new Substack - link below 😊 #fintech #funding #seed #ai Michelle McBane Lucas Perlman Jess Weisz Meredith J. Powell

We’ve been floored by the response to our #TorontoTechWeek event! We’re so excited to bring together this powerhouse group of founders, funders, and operators to talk about what it means to build and invest in an AI-native world.

We were thrilled to partner with The Cansbridge Fellowship to host the Young Founders Cocktail alongside Inovia Capital and Google—an evening full of energy, ideas, and possibility. What a wonderful group of ambitious, curious, and kind humans! Here's to the next generation of builders. 🌱