Rujul Zaparde

At Atomic Capital, we partner with founders who are willing to take audacious bets and who value building alongside an Operating VC. For us, capital is just the starting point. The real work begins post-investment - sharpening distribution, tightening unit economics, strengthening supply chains and building long-term brand moats. We are a conviction-led fund and don’t rely on external validation to make decisions. If something makes structural and fundamental sense to us, we move with clarity and speed. In this case, we issued a term sheet within a week of our first call. Interestingly, we learned that several investor responses followed soon after. We are building for India’s consumer story for 2030 and we believe pet parents will be a meaningful driver of discretionary spends. Post-Covid, first-time pet adoption surged across urban households, accelerating the shift from pet ownership to pet parenting. We had been actively looking for exposure in this category and are elated to announce that we recently led Benny's Bowl’s $1.4M Pre-Series A round. Here are a few things that stood out for us: 1. India’s Pet Parenting Shift is structural: India’s pet nutrition market is compounding at 15-20% YoY, with premium and functional segments growing even faster. Urban pet parents are prioritising ingredient transparency, clinical validation and long-term health outcomes. The category remains underpenetrated and trust-led brands will define it. 2. Community-Led Distribution: Petfed’s 2L+ pet parent base gives the team direct access to a deeply engaged audience, strengthening both reach and product feedback loops. 3. Strong Customer love: Over 80% of revenue is repeat-driven, signalling strong product-market fit. Margins are strengthening as the business grows without sacrificing economic discipline. 4. Early Traction Across Channels: Pet food is a replenishment category - availability drives retention. Despite limited distribution, Benny’s Bowl has built strong traction across D2C, marketplaces and quick commerce, positioning the brand for success. 5. Founder alignment from Day One: Akshay Gupta immediately aligned with our partnership-led approach to company building. That shared philosophy made the decision straightforward. 6. Team Built for Scale: The core team led by Snehashish on Growth and Parimal on Operations is structured to scale Benny’s Bowl to a ₹100-200 Cr brand in less than 18 months. 7. Clear NPD Roadmap: Fresh meals built the initial wedge. Expansion into cat food, dry formats, supplements and functional SKUs will unlock a significantly larger share of the pet’s bowl. We’re excited to partner with Akshay and team to serve the evolving needs of India’s new-age pet parents and raise the bar on pet nutrition. Pet nutrition in India is just getting started and we believe Benny’s Bowl is building the right foundation for the next decade. Atomic Capital Akshay Gupta Shivangi Goyal Nikhil Patil Manish Jain Benny's Bowl

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Dear early stage founders --- getting customer introductions from your investors is bad for your company 👀 If you have initial PMF and are in the process of scaling up, you shouldn't lean on introductions from investors because most of these are a waste of time and they typically don't help you accelerate for the next phase. What you actually need: 1️⃣ figure out how to land a meeting with a stranger through the right marketing / cold outreach 2️⃣ leverage existing customers to get referrals from folks they believe can get value out of your product (note: different from investor intro) 3️⃣ build your sales process through the learnings PS: This ofcourse doesn't include super early companies looking for their first few design partners OR late stage companies (proven GTM at scale) looking to get into target accounts. ✌ Totally agree with leveraging your network for these 2 use cases ^^ But everyone else -- get to experimenting with telling your story and selling your product using cold outreach! ✅ Your future self will thank you! 🔑 #founders #investors #VCs #operatingpartner

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Founders often scramble to prep materials *after* a VC shows interest. That’s backward. You should be ready for diligence before your first meeting with a VC. Smart founders: 🗂 Have their data room ready 📊 Can share a clear KPI dashboard if asked 💸 Keep clean, up-to-date financials 📣 Track and communicate metrics Flailing around getting your files in order can erode investor trust. Put in the work ahead of time and it will build confidence in you and your company. #FundraisingAdvice #StartupTips #RSCMFounderFriday

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A big milestone today for Grow Therapy, which just announced a $150M Series D led by TCV and Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with BCI and Menlo Ventures joining Sequoia, Transformation Capital, and SignalFire. When we led Grow’s Series A in 2021, it was rooted in a belief that mental health access in the U.S. isn’t hindered by supply, it’s a systems problem. To win, Grow needed to be deeply integrated into the healthcare ecosystem, not operating as a point solution. In just 5 years, more than 2 million people have used Grow, with over 10 million therapy and medication management visits delivered on the platform. What stands out is the infrastructure the team has built: Grow now partners with 125+ health insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid across most states, reaching 220 million covered lives. At the same time, tools like its clinically-guided AI notetaker are reducing provider documentation time by nearly 70%, helping clinicians focus more on care. This is what durable healthtech looks like: deep payer integrations, measurable outcomes, and technology embedded directly into existing healthcare workflows. Excited to continue partnering with Jake Cooper, Manoj Kanagaraj, MD, Alan Ni, and the entire Grow team as they build trusted mental health infrastructure for insurers, employers, health systems, and most importantly, patients.

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What is a "buyer-builder"? It's the founder archetype we back at Daring Ventures. Buyer-builders have lived experience and domain expertise on the industries they are building in. They've felt the friction and know which problems to address and who to build for. They don't need to do customer discovery because they've experienced it first-hand. Outsiders spend years and millions figuring out what buyer-builders already know. We started The Builders Series to profile the ones doing it right. This edition: Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan of ServiceTitan. Ara and Vahe did not need to be told that contractors were underserved. They grew up watching it. Their fathers, competent skilled operators, losing hours every week to paper invoices, missed calls, and work that software should have absorbed years earlier. Full piece on Forward This 👇

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Today is the due date of California’s Fair Investment Practices' first annual demographic report, and my team at Fabric VC is proud to report on our 100% diverse-led portfolio. 🎉 We look forward to seeing other funds like ours changing the paradigm in VC, and will be calling out those whose numbers look far different than ours to start making intentional choices to create a more diverse VC system. #FIPVCC

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This post is absolutely true. But the problem is many VCs won’t tell you their exit time frame at the pitch meeting or even know it themselves.

Worth reading (with popcorn) - no really. Thanks to Teel Lidow for sharing :-) Every emerging VC should be reading the SEC’s enforcement releases. It sounds very boring… but it’s actually a surprisingly entertaining way to learn how not to torch your career! Some good starting points: https://lnkd.in/gwuSvFy4 (disturbing because there’s no egregious misbehavior - probably wouldn’t happen under the current SEC) https://lnkd.in/gFHfgTxB (especially the part about exaggerating fundraising progress starting on p.17) https://lnkd.in/gTzA5DTX (just a classic, wild ride)

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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. 🦁🚀

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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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.

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Good operators find deals. Great operators attract deal flow. When you build trust with founders, investors, and partners, opportunities start showing up before you even ask. That’s where real capital gets deployed.

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Thrilled to share the launch of Criticality, a $65M fund built to back founders solving hard, high-leverage problems at the intersection of technical complexity and real-world urgency. Criticality builds on the foundation we’ve laid at Antler - applying our conviction-driven approach to companies at Seed & Series A. The fund is sector-flexible but applies a deep tech lens to each opportunity, targeting non-obvious, high-leverage problems from the earliest stages of company formation. Grateful to the New Mexico State Investment Council for their support in anchoring Criticality. More to come soon from Cash Allred & I.

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Very happy to share that we are leading Pursuit's Series A. Mike Vichich and Brandon Max are exceptional leaders. I met Mike in December 2024 and was immediately struck by his focus on building in government, one of the most important and under-innovated sectors. Big vision, strong execution, and optimism. At the time, I was between roles and doing some angel investing. That conversation made it clear I wanted to work more closely with founders like him. A year later, I get to do exactly that. Leading this round is a full-circle moment. If you're building in GovTech please consider taking a look at their fantastic product. And reach out to us at Builders VC as we love the market!

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HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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