Maks Khurgin

I’ve long believed that LP liquidity is one of the most critical yet under-discussed parts of Israel’s venture ecosystem - so I was excited to put it in writing for CTech by Calcalist. When LP distributions are delayed, capital stays locked for longer, pacing slows, new funds raise in tighter conditions, and the venture cycle - from LP to GP to founder - feels the strain. Like we have become more comfortable with employee secondaries, so should we with all of our ecosystem players. Give it a read, and as always, I’d be glad to continue the conversation. Thank you Ctech, for giving space to this important topic!  https://lnkd.in/dyCAuNWC

40

7 Comments

Hexcel Adds Independent Director in Deal With Activist Investor "Hexcel added a new independent director to its board in a move that avoids a potential proxy fight for the aerospace materials company with activist investor Vision One Fund. "As part of an agreement between the two sides, Vision One will withdraw their nominees to the board that were to be voted on at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Vision One will also support Hexcel's board nominees, and agree to certain standstill restrictions and mutual non-disparagement provisions, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. "The new director, former Kaman Chief Executive Officer Neal Keating, was appointed effective Tuesday." Keating's experience in aerospace may make him an ideal director choice. Yet from a bigger picture perspective, I wonder if this settlement is the right move for investors. More and more activist campaigns are settling rather than running the full process of a proxy fight with typically a greater number of directors nominated by the activist. Hopefully, activists are becoming like the public company boards they battle, i.e. more focused on reaching consensus than big results. #governancearbitrage #proxyfights #corporategovernance #activistinvesting #valuecreation https://lnkd.in/gazBUGFp

4

Packy McCormick is one of the best, most engaging writers on the field today. Honored he chose to do a deep dive on Andreessen Horowitz, our business model, portfolio companies, return drivers, and culture. Thought he nailed it. My favorite part of the piece is the interviews with our founders and that the idea that providing as much innovative and impactful value for your portfolio is an a16z fingerprint. With AI enabling teams to do more while often staying leaner than ever, this operating model has only become more important. "a16z is doing something different, bigger, less… understated. It doesn’t feel like venture capital is supposed to, in part, I think, because I don’t think a16z cares if it’s doing “venture capital.��� It just wants to BUILD the future and eat the world." Full piece below.

52

3 Comments

Recently, there has been much discussion over what forms of capital can be destructive to company value. Most arguments center around specific nuance of sub-categories, structural details, etc. I am not going to engage on that level in a public discussion as it is not the right venue. As someone who has invested across the capital structure, I can say that any form of capital can harm a company depending on the situation. An overfunded equity round at an irrational valuation can be just as destructive as an over-levered debt transaction with poorly constructed covenants. What really matters is the who behind the capital. Who you choose as a capital partner and how they behave after the euphoria of close is more important than the form of capital in my view. The same goes from the investor seat as well, who you back as a founder and management has such an incredible impact on the eventual outcome. That discussion must be front and center in any diligence process. Understanding the other party and developing that relationship at a level where you know you can work together through a difficult situation is just as important as sensitivity analysis. From either side of the table, the variable that decides the outcome rarely shows up on the term sheet. It is in who shows up when things get hard, as they always do. 

45

1 Comment

**Grammarly’s ‘Expert Review’ Lacks True Expertise** Grammarly’s new feature aims to elevate user writing through insights from notable thinkers. However, the effectiveness may hinge on whether the available feedback genuinely reflects expert-level scrutiny. At ElevenX Capital, we advocate for a blend of data-driven insights and genuine expertise in both product development and investment strategies. As investors, identifying authentic value in offerings is key. How do you assess the quality of resources when making investment decisions? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

1

Big news for Nscale: We are delighted to welcome Lauren R Hurwitz as our new Chief Operating Officer. I’m excited about what Lauren will bring across the whole business as we scale. And on a personal note, I’ve known Lauren for a long time and we have often debated how best to architect for government needs, reconciling sovereignty/policy requirements with truly cutting-edge technology. That’s why, from my vantage point in Europe, I’m particularly energised by what her experience leading Palantir’s international public sector business can bring to Nscale. While public sector AI adoption across EMEA is accelerating, success depends on more than raw compute — it requires a trusted, compliant way to utilise AI services with strong governance and operational excellence. We’re also aligned on how agents embedded within operations can help advance localised compliance. By codifying and automating process & controls (access, approvals, drift checks, logging/evidence), they reduce ad-hoc human intervention and the risk of error or interference — while improving auditability and consistency at scale. Welcome, Lauren—can’t wait to build & solve together.

107

2 Comments

One of the things I appreciate most about our Entrepreneur In Residence model is the ability to develop a true partnership with a founder and really understand how they think before they start building. Viral Shah joined Deciens Capital as an EIR after co-founding Better.com. Before he even started building June Point Lending, we got to see firsthand how he approached hard problems — the rigor, the ambition, and the operating instincts that you only develop through having already built to scale. June Point Lending went from initial funding to a live lender in eight months. It's focused on Non-QM mortgages — a $232B market where institutional capital demand far outpaces the supply of originators who can meet it at scale. They're automating with AI what the rest of the industry still does manually, and secured tier-1 capital markets partners out of the gate, creating a powerful technology + capital combination and condensing what would ordinarily be years of work into the company’s formation. We're proud to have backed Viral and co-founder William DeVar from the start, and in a world increasingly focused on short-term profit taking, we're excited to be on this journey with them for the long term. https://lnkd.in/ecGQtMx7

76

4 Comments

From the beginning, we believed Lumana was building much more than a smarter surveillance tool. Lumana's platform reflects the next evolution in video intelligence — physical AI. This approach enables systems to go beyond basic detection capabilities to understanding context, infer intent, and deliver real-time insights that improve safety and operations at scale. Further, we decided to take the longer and more difficult direction of building a whole new generation and fully featured Video Management System (VMS). With the company’s $40M Series A, led by our friend Peter Wagner from Wing Venture Capital and our seed partners from SCAPITALVC, we’re doubling down on a platform that’s already proving its value in the real world. We are serving now close to ten thousands enterprise cameras in production! Founders like Sagi Ben Moshe bring a rare mix of vision and execution to the table. From our earliest conversations as an EIR at Norwest, it was clear that Lumana had the potential to reshape how organizations use video. Congratulations to the team on this well-deserved milestone. https://lnkd.in/gwHdaGPZ

65

4 Comments

Thrilled to announce that Together Fund is investing in Sentra, alongside a16z speedrun! You track results in Jira. Decisions in Notion. Conversations in Slack. But the reasoning, the debates, trade-offs, and context behind why you chose A over B, disappears into what we call "Dark Matter." A decision made in March looks insane by July because no one remembers the constraints that made it smart. I lived this firsthand at Twitter scaling from 800 to 8,000 employees, and at Google while launching AI Overviews to billions at planet scale. The problem isn't process. Process is compensation for something deeper: organizational amnesia. An organization’s "Systems of Record" doesn’t solve this, they encode it. They store what happened, never why. That's why we are investing in Sentra. Sentra is the always-on collective memory that eliminates organizational amnesia by maintaining accurate context for all members and agents, functioning as an operational nervous system. It connects to every channel where work happens, meetings, Slack, email, code commits, docs, calendars, and treats them not as artifacts to search, but as living signals to synthesize. The fleeting and the permanent, unified into a memory that understands. The founding team is built for this: - Jae Gwan Park (CEO): Product-first founder, memory systems research at UofT and MIT - Ashwin Gopinath (CSO): Former MIT professor, created "Reflexion" (NeurIPS 2023), agents that learn from mistakes, 2x founder - Andrey Starenky (CTO): Early Vapi engineer, ex-IBM, built to process enterprise-scale data firehose Together is an operator-led fund. We invest in problems we've lived. This is one of them. Many congrats Jae, Ashwin and Andrey, we are so excited to partner with you! Read the full thesis: https://lnkd.in/gixj9cE4 Book a demo: https://www.sentra.app/ #OrganizationalMemory #AI #Sentra #TogetherFund #a16z #ContextGraphs

71

3 Comments

Interesting tidbit from the Women in VC Summit at Half Moon Bay. You wouldn’t necessarily think Deep Tech / AI and Consumer investors have much in common—beyond being founder-first. But post-2021/2022, the convergence is real. Across stages and sectors, the shift is toward: • Disciplined unit economics • Proof over possibility Whether it’s consumer or deep tech, the bar has moved from credible possibility to credible execution (credit to deep tech investor Kelly Chen for the phrasing). What that looks like in practice: - Deep Tech diligence → customer calls, pilots, real demand pull - Consumer diligence → channel checks, repeat purchase, retail velocity Different inputs. Same question: does the product actually work? The punchline for founders: everyone is underwriting outcomes now—not narratives. #WomenInVC #VentureCapital #Fundraising #UnitEconomics #StartupExecution #DeepTech #ConsumerVC

17

Big milestone for Firmable. We’ve raised $14m Series A led by Airtree. Sales has moved through a few big waves: intuition-led, CRM-led, data-led. We’re now entering the next one – intelligence-led sales. The opportunity isn’t just better data. It’s turning that data into clear direction and action, without adding more work for sales teams. That’s what we’re building at Firmable: a foundation of trusted external data, layered with intelligence that helps sellers know who to focus on and when. Led by Airtree, this round supports our expansion across Asia and into the US – and accelerates the build-out of AI agents that take the admin work off sales teams so they can focus on what they do best. Proud of the team, grateful to our customers and investors. We’re just getting started. Read the exclusive in the AFR. https://lnkd.in/gr66uknb Leigh Jasper | Tara Salmon | Karthik Venkatasubramanian| Chester Thompson| Chath Widanapathirana

147

20 Comments

San Diego-based Manifold (AI Detection and Response platform) has raised $8 million in seed funding; lead backer Costanoa Ventures, along with several institutional investors including Cherry Ventures, Rain Capital, Modern Technical Fund, and angel investors.

4

1 Comment

We are thrilled to be part of the Syntracts journey with Douglas Bemis, Christopher Martin! Syntracts is solving the crucial industry paradox of how enterprises can harness the "magic of AI" without compromising data security. We are deeply impressed by their fundamentally different and innovative approach: building secure on-prem legal AI infrastructure at scale. Syntracts utilizes thousands of experts—small language models fine-tuned with synthetic data—to provide reliable, accurate, structured data for complex legal documents. This is the purpose-built, privacy-first data layer the legal industry desperately needs. We are excited to support Syntracts as they scale trust and performance in enterprise AI. Top Harvest Capital is pleased to join Hyperplane, Myriad Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Fortitude Ventures, and Point72 Ventures and other respected firms in backing Syntracts. Adam Ghobarah M Waleed Kadous Top Harvest Capital

11

1 Comment

This week in venture deals that matter for America (#AmTech): Chariot Defense raised $34 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from DCVC, LMNT Ventures, Marlinspike, Overmatch Ventures, Shield Capital, Ensemble VC, Trenches Capital, General Catalyst, and XYZ Venture Capital. Chariot builds portable power hardware and software that let frontline units plug generators, batteries, and loads into a single box and get quiet, reliable power for radios, drones, sensors, and other gear. As the military's electronics demands grow, Chariot could replace the loud, heavy legacy generators that troops are still stuck hauling around. Founder: Adam Warmoth. Ubicquia, Inc raised $106 million in Series D funding led by 67 Capital and Marunouchi Innovation Partners, with participation from Hamilton Lane, ClearSky, GMS, and strategic partner Sercomm. Ubicquia makes hardware and software that plug into existing streetlights and grid equipment to monitor power, control lighting, and provide camera-based public safety services. By working with infrastructure that's already in the ground, Ubicquia can help cities build smarter grids and safer streets without ripping anything out. Founders and CEO: Ian Aaron, Lowell Kraff, Tre Zimmerman. Coral Care raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Haymaker Ventures, with participation from FCA Ventures, Peterson Ventures, AlleyCorp, Reach Capital, Jefferson River Capital, greymatter capital, Mother Ventures, and Charge Ventures. Coral Care connects families to in-home pediatric speech, occupational, and physical therapists while helping clinicians manage scheduling, documentation, and billing. For the millions of American kids who need therapy services, Coral Care could make finding a qualified provider and getting covered a lot less painful. Founder: Jennifer Wirt. #VC #Startups #VentureCapital #Defense #Energy #SmartCities #Healthcare #GovTech #AI

17

1 Comment

Excited to be part of a team that's backing founders like Rick Gordon! With cyber attacks spiking (attacks attributed to Iran more than doubling year-over-year, for example) and ransomware attacks hitting everything from critical infrastructure to hospitals to crypto firms, we've been in active conflict in the cyber domain for years. We need more and different cyber defenses, and Tidal Cyber delivers that in spades.

15

3 Comments

Had a 30-minute masterclass on real estate investing with Riaz Taplin, founder and CEO of ArtHaus Partners (formerly Riaz Capital), a workforce housing developer in the Bay Area. 🤓 Their platform is valued at around $1B with $325M - $350M in investor capital raised. Under his leadership, the company expanded from 88 units to 4,000 units, residences, and beds in operation and development. He started young— at 16, and professionally by 21. With 20+ years in the game, he’s mastered how to read the market and create opportunities that help investors maximize and protect their capital. Interesting how their platform delivers twofold value. 1/ Bridge the Bay Area’s middle-class housing gap. 2/ Deliver steady, tax-advantaged returns for investors. Other things I learned from our convo: ↳ Going solo in real estate = betting everything on one property. You miss out on diversified, steady gains from scale and expertise. ↳ Calling real estate a disaster = missing the nuance. Some classes, like multifamily housing, stay strong even when others crash. ↳ Investing without a tax strategy = giving away returns. Take advantage of tax provisions such as a 1031 exchange. Huge thank you to Riaz for sharing his wisdom! 💚 We talked about how to read markets, scale without overexposure, create impact while building wealth, and more! If you’d like to catch the full conversation, I'll drop the link in the comments. 👇 And please send some love to Riaz. He’s doing incredible work bridging the Bay Area’s middle-class housing gap while helping investors grow sustainably. 🦁🚀

26

2 Comments

I've been making this point to anyone who'll listen to me, but this is what reindustrialization looks like. Advanced, complex systems provide incredible capabilities, but without understanding the frictions and painpoints of the manufacturing processes to create those systems, you're either left with something that's incredibly expensive or impossible to sustain. Few understand those challenges better than Edward Mehr and the Machina Labs team, who modernized some of the core elements of manufacturing - forming, machining, welding, and assembly - through a singular, AI-enabled platform. In doing so, Machina can produce legacy parts without tooling and novel geometries alike but in days, not years. Very proud to welcome Machina Labs into the Woven Capital family alongside Prashant Kumar Bothra and Michael Dorazio We're joined by a phenomenal group of investors, including Lockheed Martin Ventures, NVIDIA (NVentures), Strategic Development Fund (SDF), Balerion Space Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Embark Ventures, and Radius Capital Ventures. #physicalAI #defensetech #deeptech #AI #robotics #industrials #manufacturing #venture #venturecapital #vc

36

🦄 $150M to improve tutoring and education globally. Preply just announced a new round, putting the company on a clear trajectory to become an iconic global marketplace. In a world obsessed with fast wins and volatile growth, some companies quietly beat their goals year after year — for more than 6 years in this case (as long as we’ve at Acurio Ventures been partners). A few learnings from this journey, relevant for founders and investors: Pick a growing market with an unsolved problem. 2 out of 8 billion people globally are learning a second language. Despite many options, outcomes are still poor. Our original thesis was simple: if you build the reference platform, everyone who wants to learn will eventually come to you. Category leadership matters. When we backed Kirill Bigai and Dmytro Voloshyn back in 2019 (together with Rob Kniaz), there were dozens of similar startups. Small details showed Preply had already built a superior tutor base and a scalable growth engine. Build a product customers love. Speaking a language and teaching it are very different things. Preply transformed the learning experience by combining a motivated base of +100,000 tutors with tools that actually drive outcomes. Never stop experimenting. Few companies maintain a strong experimentation culture as they scale. Preply’s DNA reminded me of Booking.com — enabling them to execute 10x better than most marketplaces. Great companies turn every change into an opportunity. From riding the post-COVID shift to online learning, to betting early and heavily on AI as Dmytro Voloshyn has excelled at. What once sounded like sci-fi is now reality. Great companies become talent magnets A company maturity can't be addressed only by looking at the revenue, profit or product. I like to see how much better they become at attracting talent and retaining it. Proud that Acurio Ventures made this possible and the WestCap team saw things as bullish as we do and are now supporting the next phase of Preply’s journey. Huge congratulations to the entire Preply team!!

33

4 Comments