Ganas Ventures

Ganas Ventures invests in early-stage community-driven startups. Led by GP @lolitataub.

[Ganas Ventures @ganasvc]

👋🏽 Hi! Ganas invests in early-stage Web 2 & Web 3 community-driven startups headquartered in the US or Latin America.

👊🏽 Become an LP https://t.co/RATjWoMpJt
💰 Get funding https://t.co/dDYu7rSHVT
💼 Get a job https://t.co/vOLWyWAAMZ
📚 Learn more https://t.co/KJyYxvfeQt

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🎉 What Actually Matters hit #1 New Release in Venture Capital on Amazon!

💫 The TL;DR: Nobody handed us the rules. Not founders. Not angels. Not GPs, LPs, or ecosystem builders. I got tired of watching our community figure it out alone. So, I wrote them down.

👇🏽 Learn more and pre-order your copy: https://t.co/xBsfBQXFrw

📘 What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us, a book for first-time founders, angels, LPs, and GPs navigating venture without inherited access - from someone who has sat in every chair. Coming Sept 2026.

🙌🏽 Follow along at https://t.co/cob2RPEXEt.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🤩 The first Goodreads review for my first book, What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us, is in!

🙌🏽 Jenny Kay Pollock, Co-founder of @Women_X_AI, who's spent 10+ years in the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, read the ARC and wrote something that genuinely moved me.

👏🏽 She said this book would have saved her from years of hard lessons.

Two lines she pulled that hit different:
📌 "Community as R&D"
📌 "Checks deplete. Community compounds."

😱 She compared it to Venture Deals, but said What Actually Matters covers what that book doesn't. The access. The relationships. The power dynamics. The unwritten rules.

💐 Her words: "practical, generous, and real."

💫 I wrote this book with all my heart for the rest of us. For the founders, funders, and ecosystem builders navigating venture without a playbook handed to them. Knowing that comes through means a great deal.

🗓️ What Actually Matters ships September 15, the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month.

👉🏽 Learn more and pre-order at https://t.co/CbB9jZ32IR.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🎉 Founders, funders, and friends fam: What Actually Matters just hit Top New Release in Venture Capital on Amazon!

😳And we’re not even out yet.

🙌🏽 This book is for everyone who’s navigating startups and VC without a playbook handed to them. First-time founders, angels, LPs, GPs, ecosystem builders. From someone who has sat in every seat. September 15.

👉🏽 Learn more and pre-order at https://t.co/CbB9jZ3Ayp.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🎉 Founders, funders, and friends: I'm excited to share that my book, What Actually Matters, is now available for pre-order!

📘 About: What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us, is a book for first-time founders, angels, LPs, and GPs navigating venture without inherited access - from someone who has sat in every chair.

🎁 Bonus: Send your pre-order receipt to [email protected] and get 500+ founders, funders, and ecosystem builders tools, databases, playbooks, and more for free. It's all the stuff I wish someone had handed me on day one.

👇🏽 Pre-order on Amazon:
https://t.co/xBsfBQXFrw

🙌🏽 Note: Every pre-order tells Amazon that the demand is real. That's how this book reaches the people who need it most.

👀 Book ships Sept 2026. Learn more at https://t.co/CbB9jZ3Ayp.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🗓️ Founders, fundraising looks different than it used to and it makes sense that many of you are unsure how to navigate it.

Founder Office Hours on: Raising feels weird right now. How much should I actually raise?

Jul 1, 1PM PT. Open conversation. No decks. No pressure.

👇🏽 RSVP
https://t.co/zQbYbPaVzS

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

👋🏽 Journalists, editors, founders, funders, and friends: ICYMI I'm publishing a book Sept 15 (the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month!).

It's titled, "What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us." And it's a playbook for first-time founders, angels, GPs, LPs, and ecosystem builders navigating venture without inherited access - from someone who has sat in every chair.

🧠After this book, here's what to expect:
↳ Founders know what investors are actually looking at ↳ Angels know what they're evaluating
↳LPs know what to look for beyond the pedigree
↳GPs understand the system from every side

📏The rules nobody taught us, written down, for the people who were never supposed to know them.

🙋🏽‍♀️All five chairs: founder, angel, LP, GP, ecosystem builder. Written by someone who has sat in each one.

🙌🏽 ARCs go out this month. So, if you cover startups, venture, or underestimated ecosystems, or know a journalist or editor who does, I'd love an intro or a tag in the comments.

📧 I’ll follow up directly.

Learn more about the book at "What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us.".

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

Want to pitch your idea to over 1,000 investors at once? Try this tool from the @ganasvc community.

The Startup-Investor Matching Tool connects early-stage founders and investors directly, with no need for warm introductions, gatekeeping or pay-to-play.

It’s free and uses double-opt-in intros, so founders and investors can confirm they’re a good match before connecting.

Here’s what our community has achieved so far:
• 10K investor intros
• $30M+ founder-reported capital raised
• 1K+ investors across 6 continents

👉🏽 Learn more and submit your startup at https://t.co/eWw8mLNxEl

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

📖 Founders, funders, and friends: vote for the cover for What Actually Matters! Reply with A, B, C or D.

This book was written for first-time founders, angels, LPs, and GPs navigating venture without inherited access. That's you. The cover should look right to you.

Drop your vote by June 11th. I'll share the result before the end of June, and I'm going with what the community picks.

Learn more about the book at https://t.co/cob2RPEXEt.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🗓️ Investors, let’s be honest. Sometimes, we say we back first-time founders but then bias shows up quietly.

Hosting an Investor Office Hours to talk about judgment, pattern bias, and missed upside.

Jun 17, 1PM PT. Peer discussion. Off the record.

👇🏽 RSVP
https://t.co/PTVOq1nEnY

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

👀 "AI is now table stakes, not a differentiator." That line from our @Women_X_AI panel stuck with me at @TechconSocal Conference, where I had the opportunity to rep @ganasvc, talk shop on stage, and judge a pitch competition with incredible founders!

A few things I'm still chewing on:

🥱 AI is a commodity. Everyone has the same tools. The bar to get funded hasn't moved. We still back the best founders solving the biggest problems in well-timed markets. Yup. "We're an AI startup" is not a thesis.

🔎 Search broke. Google AI overviews and ChatGPT are replacing manual research. Some small publishers watched daily traffic crater, 200 views down to 20. The fix: clear, specific content AI can actually quote.

😬 Entry-level is getting squeezed. Employers want 2 to 3 years of experience for "entry level" roles. The people who win lead with what AI can't fake: real outreach, real relationships.

🏆 Then the pitch competition. Seven founders pitched. Two made our day:

🪐 TRL11 won the TechCon trophy and a spot at the Startup World Cup in SF, with a shot at $1M. Telepresence to space. Wild and brilliant.

👩🏽‍⚕️ MVI Medical (Rosa Spec) took the Community Award and a $25K check from Emmeline Ventures their patented take on the pelvic exam. We need more femtech funded!

Grateful for my panel, Summer Poletti (rhymes with spaghetti), Alicia Shapiro, and Ajantha Suriyanarayanan, Women x AI co-founders Jenny Kay Pollock and Reut Lazo, my fellow judges Yana Yasevich, La Keisha Landrum Pierre, and MC Eric Weiss and the TechCon SoCal team (👏🏽 Faisal Mushtaq) and every founder who pitched.

Photos with the panel, judges, winners, and founders below.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🎤 Founders, funders, and friends: come hang out with me IRL next week!

I'm repping @ganasvc at @TechconSocal May 21-23 at San Diego State University and will be on the @Women_X_AI Panel with Alicia Shapiro, and Ajantha Suriyanarayanan, and Summer Poletti (rhymes with spaghetti)🍝. We're talking growth without overhiring, how AI is reshaping talent, and keeping human judgment in the room.

If you're in SD, definitely come say hi.

🎟️ https://t.co/k1b4BE03U8

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🏕️ This week, I went to Camp Hustle for the first time. And here's the chisme...

😂 Day 1 kicked off with Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate, who is building a wireless carrier that pays you to use your phone less and writing books with funny titles like "Hey Yang, Where's My Thousand Bucks?"

🥰 That night we sat down for dinner and nobody was performing. Someone talked about a teacher who changed their life. Another person talked about chosen family. About showing up the way an aunt does. About what we are actually building this for. Vulnerable and real.

😭 Day 2, Zoya Garg took the stage with Eric Bahn. She chose her family over a traditional tech path and helped convince her mom Zarna Garg, a stay-at-home woman who had never done standup, to try comedy. Now we are all fans, they won a Webby Award, and have CBS sitcoms with the likes of Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart! Oh and Zarna wrote a book: This American Woman. Fav quote: "It's never too late to bet on yourself and chase your own destiny, no matter how brutal the odds." Can't wait to see them in San Diego!

💰 Day 3, I witnessed three LP soft commits. Two for @ganasvc. One for another fund in the room. All organic. Because these LPs are smart and awesome (obv). Goes to prove that community truly is capital.

🌎 Then the Hustle Fund GPs closed camp, reminding us that great hustlers look like anyone and come from anywhere. Uruguay. Venezuela. Kenya. 50x returns from founders the market wrote off. That is the global bet I believe in too.

🙌🏽 Thank you Elizabeth Yin, Eric Bahn, Shiyan Koh, Haley Bryant, and the rest of the Hustle Fund fam for bringing together a community of people who know you can be a good human and make a lot of money. More of all of this, please.

🧢 PS The Pitch Show, by Lisa Muccio and Josh Muccior, ran our Shark Tank session. They're genuine people backing genuine founders. Check them out.

[Ganas Ventures @ganasvc]

@rpenacastro 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[Roby Peñacastro @rpenacastro]

We're almost hitting $5M ARR with our release of our Lead Agent 🚀

Innovating takes time, waiting for the right moment where technology met our vision was key for launching our Agentic System that handles complex sales processes via WhatsApp ✅

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🗓️ Investors, you’re not imagining it. Even as capital returns, early-stage decisions feel more deliberate.

Investor Office Hours: Early-stage investing is more selective. What actually gets a yes now?

May 20, 1PM PT. Grounded conversation about how decisions are really being made.

👇🏽 RSVP
https://t.co/AxcVeelaT3

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🎤Ready for the takeaways from my Startup Grind Global “Consumer, Creator Economy & Marketing Tech” panel?

💫 Highlights:
- Community is capital. Always has been. AI just made it more true.
- AI will create the same CAC wars that ads did. The only channel that gets cheaper as it grows is the one you own
- The founders who stood out today knew their numbers cold. They knew why everything before them failed. They built community before they built product
- Two port cos got shouted: Neopausia (women’s health, LATAM) and ENGINEEARS (founded by Grammy-winner MixedByAli).

🙌🏽 Big thank you to my moderator Josh Constine (Signalfire) and co-panelists Bryan Liu (Alumni Ventures) and Pax Anthos (XRC) for a really fun conversation that was way too short.

🐐 And to Naman Jain, Guillermo Vizcaino and the whole Startup Grind fam for hosting @ganasvc. You always build a room worth being in.

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🍵 Giving you the tea (AKA “chisme”) of the last two days in the Bay Area.

☕️ The day before Startup Grind Global, we hosted a @ganasvc Coffee. We had founders from Colombia, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Taiwan, Ohio, Canada. Investors from Hustle Fund, open source-focused funds, and angels backing underestimated founders. And the convos and connections were so good (thank you for making it so)!

🙌🏽 The thing that kept coming up: always be raising ≠ always be pitching. Relationships compound before deals do.

🇲🇽 Then later that evening, I attended the Startup Grind LATAM VC dinner hosted by Ganas Deal Partner José Alvarez. We had some real talk on cross-border investing. LP resistance to cross-border funds is structural. Not personal. And: “If you can make it in Brazil, you can build a unicorn.”

🇵🇰 And the Startup Grind Lahore Pakistan delegation showed up on Day 1 with gifts from my Lahore visit. A necklace, pens, and a crinkle silk scarf. That trip is still with me. The tech talent, the warmth, the nature. Thank you to Iftikhar Hussain, the Co Build LTD team, and everyone else.

☺️ Then there was the book. Over and over, founders and new investors asked the same thing: “I don’t know how to navigate this. What do I do?” Some of the people who read early pages said it’s exactly what they needed when they were starting out. No inherited access, no blueprint.

📖 What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught You. For first-time founders, angels, LPs, and GPs navigating venture without inherited access. Coming September 15, 2026. Be part of it before it drops at https://t.co/CbB9jZ3Ayp

Everyone who showed up this week. At Ganas Coffee, at dinner, in the hallways. This is community-driven IRL.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

PS My panel is today at 1130AM at the VC Pitch Stage. Come by if you’re around and want to learn about what’s happening at the cross section of AI, startups, community, creators and more!

PSS I love Wispr flow and was so excited to see him speak!

—
💰 Pitch Ganas at https://t.co/4p6iuMHpag
🗓️ RSVP for our next Ganas event at https://t.co/P2JVAIAmHl
📚 Access resources for founders, investors, and friends at https://t.co/fJz7xLzPI2

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

☕ Still vibing from the @ganasvc at Startup Grind Global Coffee!

🌎 Founders from Colombia, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Taiwan, Ohio, Canada, Mexico. Investors from Hustle Fund and beyond. All in one room before noon.

🤩 This is what community-driven looks like.

🗓️ See you at the next event. RSVP:
https://t.co/rJ9qlixanI

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

💰 Founders: are you raising pre-seed or seed? We're looking for community-driven startups.

Ganas Ventures backs founders building around community in the US and LATAM. If that's you and you meet this profile, let's talk:
- Pre-seed or seed stage
- ≤ $10M post-money valuation
- Tech-enabled (not physical products)
- US or LATAM-based

👉🏽 Pitch us: https://t.co/o2JFZnJDKG

Not the right fit? The Startup-Investor Matching Tool connects you with 1,000+ investors—no warm intros, no gatekeeping, no pay-to-play.

👉🏽 Get matched: https://t.co/eWw8mLMZON

[Lolita Taub @lolitataub]

🗞My Lolita's Newsletter April issue is live! In it...

🤔 Otroverts
🤖 AI took 41% of all VC dollars but 10% of cos got half the funding
⏳ First priced round to exit = 10 years
💰 $1M+ in funding open now

Read: https://t.co/qfScnpse3V