Kate Aveline Edwards

Excited to share that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to acquire tvScientific, a leading connected TV (CTV) performance advertising platform. This acquisition will build on our existing partnership with tvScientific and expand how Pinterest can help advertisers reach people across multiple screens, including connected TV. By combining Pinterest’s AI-powered intent signals with tvScientific’s outcome-focused CTV technology, advertisers will be able to measure how TV drives results alongside search, social and Pinterest campaigns. This is another step forward in our mission to help people move from inspiration to action while giving brands the tools to reach them more effectively. Integrating tvScientific’s technology into our automation and AI-powered advertising products will accelerate our work to build a full-funnel, multiscreen performance solution. I’m thrilled about the possibilities ahead and what we’ll build together with tvScientific. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gXcqFTU7

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Some news: Finch has raised a $20M Series A, led by Satish D. and Meera Clark at Redpoint. We’re grateful to welcome them as partners alongside Alfred Lin at Sequoia Capital, Matthew Mulvey at Liquid 2 Ventures, and generational operators like Tony Xu, Christopher Payne, and Jason Boehmig backing Finch. This funding helps us move closer to our mission: ensuring every American has access to the counsel they deserve. More than 75% of Americans can’t access counsel when they need it. At the same time, law firms are buried in admin work that limits their capacity to serve more clients. Finch is the first AI-powered pre-litigation team for personal injury, combining exceptional legal operators with AI agents to handle cases from intake to outcome. We help plaintiff firms say yes to more cases, without additional overhead. In the last 6 months, we’ve grown more than 10x. Firms we’ve worked with have tripled their case volume, secured seven-figure settlements, and expanded into new markets. We are a team of talented, curious, customer-centric operators, recently adding folks like Taylor Welch, Thea Feeney, Stacey Matheson, Jasmine Harris and (soon) Kelly Jacques, Rachel Fuld Cohen & Alex Gouchtchina. If you’re looking to shape the future of legal tech, we’re growing fast and hiring across the board. And if you’re an attorney ready to serve more clients, book a demo in the comments below. Let's get to work.

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Kicked BBG Ventures Breakfast Series for 2025 with Flybridge & OMERS with a discussion on Vertical AI with Nick Ornitz (CEO Topline Pro) and Julisa Salas (GTM, Toast) talking about customer discovery, GTM, hiring your first head of sales and building a moat. Full discussion at the link below, but here are the 6 top takeways on scaling Vertical AI for SMBs: 1. Customer feedback is the holy grail - don't solve the problem YOU think exists; solve the hair on fire problem for your customers. Nick Ornitz's company went from Dwelling (home maintenance) to ProPhone (business phone lines) to Topline Pro (a better way to grow your home service business) before it nailed their unique value proposition. And keep that customer closeness even as you grow - even today as they grow everyone at the company has a workflow touchpoint for customer feedback and pain points. 2. GTM for SMBs is notoriously hard - your playbook has to understand them as consumers AND businesses. Nick's strategy at Topline mirrored that with a founder-led sales strategy that incorporated creative tactics like targeted Facebook DMs, a database of potential customer profiles and a "sales lab" to test new sales tactics. Use data and iterate quickly to optimize for the right acquisition channels. 3. When building out your sales team hire at least two sales reps to compare their performance and tactics. Then, even as your team grows make sure you've built out a version of a repeatable sales motion/playbook that is working before you hire a Head of Sales; that hire can then work to improve your playbook and help coach/lead your sales team. 4. Consider the appropriate way to grow your ACV - in some industries moving upmarket might work, but there is often an undertapped opportunity to increase prices as you deliver increasing value - you just never know whether you're under-pricing. Topline actually saw their growth increase when they increased their price point: customers can associate a higher price with better quality. 5. Make sure you have a moat: 1) own the workflow - automate an end to end process, not a feature so you can differentiated from the pack; and 2) think early about what your proprietary data can be - that's the clearest moat. A word of caution? Don't forget that customer experience and brand differentiation can supercharge all of that in the game of defensibility - it's easy to leave it by the wayside 6. Leverage AI in company building - AI isn’t just powering the product — it’s transforming how AI companies sell and support customers. It can unlock a more efficient GTM strategy from live coaching during sales calls to AI for customer success. https://lnkd.in/gSZPDn-q Claire Biernacki Carol Magalhães Isaacs, CFA Julia Maltby

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Excited to announce $20m in funding led by Garry Tan, Aydin Senkut, and George Bousis, to build the next generation AI gaming platform. Big thank you to all our investors for believing in the vision: Justin Kan, Steve Huffman, Jack Altman, Nikki Farb, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, Kyle Vogt, Oliver Cameron, Richard White, Vinnie Liu, Robert Pazornik, Tikhon Bernstam, Matthew Fong, Miles T. Bird, Jared Heyman, Merrill Stillwell, Erik Bjornson, Chris Fanini, Peter Gao, Brian Pokorny, Peter Deng, Mike Sho Liu, Finbarr Taylor, Jon Dishotsky, Davin Chin, Amitt Mahajan, Kevin Carter, Nate Bosshard, Timothy Chen, Sarah Coyne, Michael Brown, and Cynthia (Cindy) Clarfield Hess) With the rise of social isolation and declining in-person interactions, we need connection and fun more than ever. Games have always been a source of connection and community, yet creating them has historically been limited to those with specialized skills and knowledge. We’re entering a new era in game development. The boundary between creator and player blurs, and ideas move from imagination to playable reality faster than ever before. AI isn’t just a tool for professional creators anymore. Everyone can refine and execute their creative vision in a few minutes. It shouldn’t be any different in game development. What once required large studios is now accessible to small teams or even solo creators. AI gives everyone the ability to build anything you can imagine, not just those who have the time and energy to spend. Why shouldn’t you be able to create games for your friends, for your family, for your classmates with specific content that interests you. The future of gaming will be AI generated, and it starts with Fifth Door. Create. Play. Anytime.

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Plural is doubling down on our commitment to Metaview as part their $35m Series B led by GV (Google Ventures). For any founder who has built anything of substance hiring is at the same time one of the highest priorities and biggest sources of frustration as we lack relevant tools & solutions to remove unnecessary friction and drive better hiring decisions. We have been blown away by the execution of Siadhal, Shahriar & the Metaview team since our investment early last year, as kept shipping and releasing amazing features to their expanding roaster of blue chip, and very demanding, customers pushing way past their already ambitious budgets. It has been particularly gratifying to see an increasing number of Plural companies adopt Metaview (often in spite of early skepticism driven by the state of the industry) and overhaul their hiring processes.

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Remember Hot or Not? Here's our ecom version and discussed: Retail, Organic Growth, Live Shopping and EBIDTA. This week on the ASOM Pod we share our replay live from SubSummit - where John Roman, Bryan MacDonald, Amer Grozdanic, and I discuss what's actually working (and what's not) in ecommerce right now 5 topics. 4 perspectives. Some brutal honesty. Here's the breakdown: RETAIL: Lukewarm (5/10) Everyone wants it. Not everyone should do it. The brands winning? They're being strategic about partnerships instead of spray-and-pray everywhere. COMMUNITY/ORGANIC: Blazing Hot (10/10) While everyone's crying about rising CACs, the brands investing in community aren't sweating. Social media isn't a product showcase - it's where humans connect through entertainment and emotion. LIVE SHOPPING: Getting Hotter! BattlBox is doing $4,300/hour on Whatnot. That's potentially an 8-figure channel in under a year. On a single platform. The behavior is shifting. People don't want to be sold to - they want to buy WITH someone. TOP LINE GROWTH: Ice Cold Nobody raised their hand for this one. Finally. "I don't care how much money you make. I care if you have a healthy business." - Bryan MacDonald The Big Takeaway: The brands thriving right now aren't the ones with the biggest ad budgets. They're the ones building communities, optimizing margins, and creating genuine connections with their customers. Stop chasing vanity metrics. Start building something sustainable. It's now streaming on all your favorite platforms today! Watch it in 4k with our 27.8k subscribers here: https://lnkd.in/gMeQFD5q

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We've partnered with Snap Inc. for an exclusive SXSW masterclass to unveil findings from our data-driven Snapchat Playbook - distilling insights from billions of $ in annual ad spend. Snapchat has emerged as a critical channel for diversification and new customer acquisition, across its 453M daily active users. Brands are catching on to the opportunity here, as seen in Snapchat’s latest earnings report on advertising revenue growth. But most are only scratching the surface: Snapchat consistently shows up as one of the channels most underreported by click-based attribution. Our latest benchmarking report identified an average of +78% headroom for brands to profitably scale the channel. On Friday, join Fospha's Jamie Bolton 💡 and Snap Inc.'s Colin Duethorn as they break down the "Snapchat Golden Rules" that are helping brands like Oh Polly and Cove drive measurable growth. You'll discover: > How to target effectively in Snapchat's unique ecosystem > Secrets to creating scroll-stopping content that converts > Advanced AR innovations driving engagement > Automation strategies for full-funnel optimization Don't miss this opportunity to transform your Snapchat strategy. Our masterclass is happening tomorrow at Industrious (just 5 mins from all SXSW venues). Limited spots available - register now using the link in comments 👇

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