Ivelina Dineva’s Post

A venture firm called ADIN is testing a provocative idea: AI agents can replace human analysts in early stage deal-making. Instead of relying on associates to screen decks, build notes, and prioritize the funnel, the firm is using agents to evaluate pitch materials significantly faster, then making real investments. The reported commitment is $100K per deal, which makes this more than a demo. It is an attempt to turn startup selection into a repeatable, model-driven process, similar to a moneyball approach. If this works, the competitive advantage in venture may shift away from who can hire the best analysts, toward who can build the best decision systems, plus the founder relationships and follow-on capital to win allocations. https://lnkd.in/eZrQNNNh #AI #VentureCapital #Startups #Investing #Agents #FutureOfWork #Innovation #TechTrends

“Data moats over hype: Sustainable defensibility defines the next generation of fundable startups”, says Alexander Birk, coparion. As part of OOTB.NRW 2026, experienced venture capital investors will review all incoming applications and help curate the TOP26 startups moving forward in the competition. We’re kicking off our VC series with Alexander Birk from coparion and his perspective on what makes a startup truly relevant in 2026. What is the most important criterion a startup needs to meet in 2026 to become truly relevant for you as an investor? The most important criterion for me is the ability to build a sustainable moat, especially through data, because pure product and software development is increasingly becoming a commodity due to AI. Though, the basics still matter, particularly in early-stage investing: a strong team, a clear vision, and the right timing. Many VCs currently highlight Defense Tech, Cybersecurity, and Industrial Tech as key opportunity areas. Which of these (or other) domains are most compelling to you and why? These industries are also of interest to us because they are essential to Europe's resilience and competitiveness. The same applies to energy and space. Europe still lags significantly behind the U.S. in these areas, which makes it even more important to focus more closely on them and provide sufficient funding. An article published in business insider emphasizes less hype and more operational excellence in 2026. What kind of “real problem” or “real use case” does a startup need to address today to truly stand out? Startups stand out by solving a real, high-frequency pain point with clear value creation and measurable customer ROI, that hasn’t changed. What has become even more important is building and protecting proprietary data (or a defensible way to access it) as a durable advantage. Since AI is still a trend but not a new one, how do you identify whether a startup demonstrates real product and market understanding rather than simply riding a trend? A genuine understanding of the product and market is demonstrated by founders who can first describe the customer's problem precisely before talking about the technology. AI is then an enabler, not an end in itself. In-depth industry knowledge and clear differentiation through proprietary data or network effects are also crucial. Paying customers and organic growth through referrals are usually a good indicator. If you’re building in NRW and believe your startup has the clarity, the moat, and the relevance, this is your moment. **The OOTB.NRW award was initiated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Industrie, Klimaschutz und Energie des Landes NRW MWIKE), sponsored by NRW.BANK and is proudly hosted by @Founders Foundation gGmbH.** #OOTBNRW #OOTBNRW2026 #VCPerspective #coparion #FounderInsights #FromNRWToTheStage #OutOfTheBox #StartupCall #VentureCapital

Stop treating your intellectual loneliness as a mandatory prerequisite for a high-fidelity industrial breakthrough. For decades, we have romanticized the image of the solo founder in a garage, grinding for five years just to get a seat at the table with the giants. We have treated the 90 percent failure rate of startups as a badge of honor rather than a systemic failure of how we innovate. Building a unicorn startup under the current model is about as likely as living to 100 years old. It is an outdated game, and this generation should not waste their lives on a broken system. At Reverse Ventures (www.reverse.ventures), we believe the paradigm must shift. Instead of asking you to build a startup, we want you to BE the startup. Your brain is the product. Your disruptive idea is the value. The rest, the infrastructure, the funding, and the market access, should be solved by a system that works for you, not against you. When you have a truly disruptive insight, you should not be spending years begging for a meeting. Major corporations should be competing to work for you. As your co-founder, Reverse Ventures (www.reverse.ventures) transforms this dynamic. We use AI to validate your idea and assess its disruptive potential. We deploy the funds to protect it. We then use AI to match your innovation with multi-billion dollar corporations that need your solution to stay competitive. We do the heavy lifting so you do not have to. We invest up to $250,000 via our VC community partners to develop the venture. We build the MVP. We conduct the POC with the matched corporate partner. When the JV is formed, the equity reflects your value. You keep up to 75 percent of the equity when you bring sufficient traction. In a standard JV, the corporate partner owns 50 percent, you keep 25 percent, and Reverse Ventures (www.reverse.ventures) plus our partners keep 25 percent. If the outcome is an acquisition or licensing deal, you keep up to 50 percent of the economic outcome. If the first corporation passes, we do not stop. Your innovation is a competitive weapon. Because we fund the protection of your idea, we simply take it to their competitors. A truly disruptive idea will always find a home because someone in the market will need it to survive. Stop wasting your life on the old way of building. Modern innovation is not about how much you can suffer, it is about how fast your brain can change an industry. Why are we still convinced that the hardest path to market is the only honorable one? #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #ReverseVentures #TechLeadership #Startups

$20.8B. 1,040 companies. 23 unicorns. Welcome to the agentic AI gold rush. The numbers are staggering. $20.8B in venture capital has flowed into agentic AI. 1,040+ companies building in this space. 23 unicorns. 530 funded startups. And we're just getting started. Parloa hit a $3B valuation. Replit crossed $100M ARR and raised at $9B. JetStream Security pulled in $34M at seed. Guild.ai raised $44M to build multi-agent infrastructure. This isn't a trend. It's the largest market opportunity venture capital has ever seen. And here's what most people miss: you don't need to be a $500M fund to invest in this wave. Some of the best agentic AI companies are still at pre-seed and seed. Exactly where emerging managers operate. The question isn't whether to launch a fund in 2026. It's whether you'll be positioned to capture this moment. VC Lab Cohort 21 is accepting applications now. We've helped launch 1,200+ venture firms. Over 60% of all new venture firms worldwide. AI is integrated into every step of our program. Comment C21 for the application link. 💚

The 16 things you need to know about what happened in Australians Startups last week ending 15th March 2026 - full newsletter linked with all 37 manually curated articles and funding rounds 👇🏽 💸 7 startups raised a combined $43.35 → Macropod (~$10m), TMRW ($7m Seed), Scopey Onsite ($850k Seed), Mary Technology ($7m Seed), MGA Thermal ($17m), NEXA Group (Undisclosed) and Nbryo ($1.5m) 🤝🏽 M&A, IPOs & Exits → Koala® launches its ASX float seeking to raise $68 million at a $300m - priced at 10.5x forecast FY26 EBITDA with an April 1 listing date → pay.com.au has launched its ASX float seeking to raise $85m in new growth capital at an $850m valuation - with shares priced at $193 and an April 22 listing date  → UK AR giant Blippar acquires Australian 3D commerce platform PLATTAR - 3D & AR Product Configuration 💼 Partnership & Deals → R1 RCM and Heidi announce strategic partnership to improve revenue capture for physician groups and healthcare organisations 🚀 Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion → AI lab Anthropic launches Sydney office → Cortical Labs launches first human brain cell data centre 💰 Venture Capital & Other Funding → Co Ventures has raised a $15m second fund → Partners for Growth will target later stage private Australian technology companies with a new private credit fund that has raised $250m 📈 Reports & Data → Andreessen Horowitz analysis ranks Canva third in the world for generative AI web usage - behind only ChatGPT and Gemini, and ahead of Claude, Grok and Deepseek —————————————— 🔔 I read everything on Australian startups so you don't have to. Follow me and subscribe to my newsletter to get the most important news, funding rounds and stories and every week https://lnkd.in/gkGXnt9S

The 90% failure rate of startups isn't a badge of honor, it is a systemic failure of how we bring ideas to market. Nowhere is this more evident than in the industrial sector. Multi-billion dollar corporations are currently spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on manual blueprints and outdated protocols that should be automated by AI. These 'standard' costs are actually blueprints for disruption. Reverse Ventures is an AI-Native Innovation Platform designed to bridge the gap between individual brilliance and corporate scale. We believe that if you have a disruptive idea, the world's largest companies should work for you, not the other way around. Our model removes the friction of the traditional startup journey: 1. Validation: We use AI to confirm your idea’s disruptive potential. 2. Protection: We fund the necessary patent protection to secure the IP. 3. Building: We build the MVP and conduct the POC. No more searching for engineers. 4. Funding: We deploy up to $250k via our VC community partners. 5. Scaling: We match you with a corporate partner to form a JV, giving you instant access to their distribution and expertise. In this model, the innovator retains up to 75% of the equity when traction is demonstrated. Even without it, the standard JV structure ensures you own 25% of a corporate-backed venture, while the corporation takes 50% and Reverse Ventures takes 25%. One monthly subscription turns your brain into the product. It is time to stop building systems and start owning the outcomes. Learn how we are redefining venture creation through one monthly subscription. https://reverse.ventures

AI is changing VC for the better. If founders need less capital to build, that’s a win. AI has become a force multiplier for productivity and lowered technical barriers to entry. Startups are achieving product-market fit with less capital while reaching profitability sooner. So what's the role of the early-stage VC in this new landscape? What still matters – and what I’ve always loved most as a former founder turned VC – is helping with the harder parts of running a startup: GTM Company-building Judgment Positioning Strategy In that world, the best early-stage VC may be the only capital a startup needs before a much larger growth round. #Startups #VC #Founders https://lnkd.in/gSEATQDS

What’s the role of venture capital when a small team can build and bootstrap a unicorn? That was the spicy question Elli Hanson of Side Stage Ventures asked Thomas Jeng from OpenAI at SOUTHSTART 2026.   AI has flipped the SaaS financial model. Upfront software development costs have fallen sharply, but token costs have introduced a new variable, and the old low-marginal-cost curve has flattened. Smaller, niche businesses that are capital efficient, especially in Australia, are now more likely to thrive because it is easier to build (Lotis is one of those).   The harder part is no longer product creation; it is distribution. That is why the three Ds matter:  🔹distribution 🔹differentiation, and 🔹defensibility.   Pricing behavior has not changed, and that still gives founders some certainty. There are already many AI-wrapper unicorns in the prosumer space, including Cursor, Lovable, and Manus AI (all started outside Silicon Valley), but the enterprise side is still early. We have not yet seen a truly native enterprise AI-generation player. Enterprise will increasingly deploy agents that work across internal data and systems, even if those agents are not fully “internal” in the traditional sense.   Building on the “quicksand” of frontier models is still one of the most likely paths to success, despite the common advice against it. Most successful classic SaaS companies, and many new AI SaaS companies, are wrappers around databases or LLMs. What makes them durable is not just the model layer, but the harness around it. The data matters because it becomes the context layer, and in an agentic world, rich and accurate context is the moat.   Given how fast frontier AI is improving, successful founders need to build on these models and ride the progress that foundation labs are making with massive investment. When the next model ships in a couple of months, their product should improve too.   We are still learning at neck-breaking speed, so what Thomas is telling founders may change every week. We do not yet know how this will affect company multiples or how AI agents will be valued. But venture capital will still have a role, because it brings more than just capital. #SouthStart #SouthStart2026 #AdelaideStartups #AussieStartups #VentureCapital #AIVentures #SaaS #AISaaS #AIStartups #Founders #StartupLife #Distribution #Differentiation #Defensibility #AgenticAI #EnterpriseAI #LLM #AIWrappers #ContextIsKing #OpenAI #SideStageVentures

Top 10 Pre-seed to Series A funding rounds of the week: ⚫ AI ⚫ 🔶 1. Edra, a startup that helps companies automate workflows by mining existing data rather than asking employees to document processes from scratch, emerged from stealth with $30 million in Series A funding. → Investors: Sequoia, 8VC, A* → Founded by: Eugen Alpeza and Yannis Karamanlakis 🔶 2. Sequen, a startup providing real-time personalization and ranking infrastructure for consumer apps, raised a $16 million Series A round. → Investors: White Star Capital, Threshold Ventures, Greycroft → Founded by: Zoë Weil 🔶 3. Nyne.ai, a startup that provides data helping AI agents connect and interpret people's public digital footprints across the internet, raised a $5.3 million seed round. → Investors: Wischoff Ventures, South Park Commons → Founded by: Michael Fanous and Emad Fanous 🔶 4. Certiv, a startup building a platform to govern and secure autonomous AI agents used inside enterprise systems, raised a $4.2 million pre-seed round. → Investors: Aviso Ventures, Founders' Co-op, Fortson → Founded by: Jason Needham 🔶 5. Laminar, a startup building an observability platform to capture and analyze AI agent activity across long-running workflows, raised a $3 million seed round. → Investors: Atlantic.vc, Y Combinator → Founded by: @Robert Kim lam 🔶 6. WhiteBridge.ai AI, a startup whose AI search engine compiles reports on people using data from public and online sources, raised a $3 million seed round. → Investors: FirstPick VC, First Degree, and others → Founded by: Tomas Martunas, Irmantas Motiejūnas, Justinas Barauskas, and Paulius Taraškevičius ⚫ Security ⚫ 🔶 7. Knox Systems, Inc., a startup operating a managed cloud platform that helps software companies meet U.S. government security standards and run compliant applications, raised a $25 million Series A round. → Investors: B Capital, M12, and others → Founded by: Irina Denisenko 🔶 8. Tracebit, a startup that plants decoy data and systems to detect intruders in cloud environments, raised a $20 million Series A round. → Investors: FirstMark, Accel, and others → Founded by: Andy Smith and Sam Cox ⚫ Fintech ⚫ 🔶 9. Ezra, a startup whose platform organizes deal data and automates credit analysis and due diligence for asset-backed financing, raised an $8 million seed round. → Investors: Congruent Ventures, Planeteer, and others → Founded by: Dan Rosen and Dori Rutkevitz ⚫ Restaurant Tech ⚫ 🔶 10. Choice, a startup that lets restaurants manage orders, reservations, menus, and payments in one system, raised a $7.1 million Series A round. → Investors: Alea Capital, Reflex Capital, and others → Founded by: Alex Ilyash Join the weekly EverythingStartups newsletter for more on where early-stage capital is flowing + tech signals across USA, Europe, and Israel: https://linktr.ee/ivelinad #startups #fundraising #funding #founders #venturecapital #VC

These 17 VCs ACTUALLY write first checks: 1. Josh Wolfe – Lux Capital | $2M–$20M | Pre-seed through Growth · Deep Tech: AI/ML, Biotech, Defense, Aerospace, Robotics, Energy, Climate | New York, NY 2. Ross Fubini – XYZ Venture Capital | $500K–$3M | Pre-seed / Seed · Fintech, Enterprise, Public Sector, Climate, Government, Insurance | San Francisco, CA 3. Christoph Janz – Nine Point Eight Capital | $1M–$3M | Pre-seed / Seed · SaaS, AI, B2B Marketplaces, Enterprise Software | Berlin, Germany 4. John Borthwick – Betaworks Ventures 1.0 LP | $250K–$750K | Pre-seed / Seed · AI/ML, NLP, Computer Vision, Media Synthesis, Voice/Audio, Gaming | New York City, NY 5. David Frankel – Founder Collective | Undisclosed | Pre-seed / Seed · Sector-agnostic, technology-driven | Cambridge, MA 6. Jesse Beyroutey – IA Ventures | $250K–$750K | Seed · Fintech, AI/ML, Cybersecurity, Healthcare IT, Cloud Infrastructure | New York, NY 7. David Beisel – NextView Ventures | $250K–$1M | Seed / Pre-seed · Home, Food, Health, Work via AI/Software | New York, NY 8. Craig Shapiro – Collaborative Fund | $100K–$3M | Pre-seed / Seed / Series A-B · Consumer, AI, Health, Climate, Food, Energy | New York, NY 9. Nihal Mehta – Eniac Ventures | $1.25M–$1.5M | Seed · AI, SaaS, Fintech, Consumer, Deep Tech, Healthcare, Robotics | New York, NY 10. Ravi Mhatre – Lightspeed Venture Partners | $1M–$5M | Seed through Growth · Enterprise, Consumer, Health, Fintech, AI/ML, SaaS, Cybersecurity | Menlo Park, CA 11. Yuri Sagalov – General Catalyst | $500K–$1M | Seed · Applied AI, Fintech, Defense, Healthcare, Consumer, Energy | San Francisco, CA 12. Mustafa Neemuchwala – NEA | $1M–$5M | Seed through IPO · Enterprise, Consumer, AI, Fintech, Healthcare, Life Sciences | Menlo Park, CA 13. Richard Dulude – Underscore VC | $500K–$3M | Pre-Seed / Seed · B2B Software, Vertical SaaS, Fintech, Emerging Tech, AI, Healthcare | Boston, MA 14. David Cohen – Techstars | $220K | Pre-seed · Climate, AI, Mobility, Quantum, Biotech, Fintech, SaaS (global) | New York City, NY 15. Jess Lee – Sequoia Capital (Arc / Seed) | $500K–$1M | Pre-seed / Seed · AI, Fintech, Cybersecurity, Enterprise, Consumer, Healthcare, Robotics | Menlo Park, CA 16. Ed Sim – boldstart ventures | $500K–$15M | Inception / Pre-seed / Seed · AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Developer Tools, Autonomous Enterprise | Miami, FL 17. Eloho Omame & Odunayo Eweniyi – FirstCheck Africa | $50K–$250K | Pre-seed / Seed · Female-led tech in Africa: Fintech, Commerce, Healthcare, Consumer | Lagos, Nigeria --- Quick intro: I'm Jeremy, and I've helped 25+ founders & investors become thought leaders by sharing their ideas on LinkedIn, putting their thoughts into words, and letting the world know what they're building. If this is something you're also interested in (trust me, you are ), let's connect https://lnkd.in/d5VeNGkm