Aaron Harris

Founder Magid | Was Partner at YC (Deel, Scale, Groww++)
Harris is a Registered Rep...

[Aaron Harris @harris]

heard @SnoopDogg is raising a tier 1 growth round for his new foundation model co Tokin Labs.

it's a roll up play.

[Aaron Harris @harris]

@danprimack this might be financing of the year.

[Aaron Harris @harris]

at this point if your model didn't hack another company are you even doing AI?

[Aaron Harris @harris]

it's easy to clone a great startup’s homepage

it's impossible to clone what makes a startup great (hint: it's the founders)

[Aaron Harris @harris]

One of the best fundraising tools is the simplest: meet investors in waves 🌊

Plan all your pitches within 2 weeks to generate a competitive auction among investors.

We built the concept into our venture fundraising FRM (beta access below).

But honestly you can do this with Google Sheets. If you're organized enough.

FRM link - https://t.co/4bLIicmWzi

[Aaron Harris @harris]

@lizwessel but how else will we pull the chariot?

[Aaron Harris @harris]

interesting to me that, when you ask a normal human about their favorite startups, they usually name CPG brands, not AI products

[Aaron Harris @harris]

The biggest Series Bs in July were all foundation models. None of them for language.

🧪 CuspAI ($450M): Foundation models for matter. Designs materials that don't exist yet, for semiconductors, batteries, and stripping forever chemicals out of water. Led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA

🎨 Meshy ($400M): Foundation models for 3D. Generates usable and printable 3D models from text or image inputs. They are scaling ARR 12x with 12M+ users. Led by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Monolith.

🧠 Simile ($200M): Foundation models for people. Instantly simulates how humans respond to new messaging, products, or prices without running surveys and A/B tests. Led by Greenoaks.

Market data: https://t.co/7AKHhtu0Z8

[Aaron Harris @harris]

vc: we’ll be cheering from the sidelines

founder: sorry what I didn't know this was sports

vc: we just mean we’re rooting for you

founder: but...not with money?

vc: let us know how we can help

founder: are you an AI?

[Aaron Harris @harris]

@almostcmb :)

[Aaron Harris @harris]

given how terrible most fundraising advice is, no surprise founders are confused. so much of it boils down to:

fundraise early, and only talk to the tier 1 funds, but also make sure you have other funds ready

and don’t talk to anyone if you’re not fundraising

but make sure that you have people excited so that they pre-empt

[Aaron Harris @harris]

Listen to Alex.

[Alex Rampell @arampell]

Part of the challenge is aligning when you want to (or need to!) sell with when somebody wants to buy — rarely do they intersect! But founders, read the below:

[Aaron Harris @harris]

We managed to build anti-SaaS. A fundraising CRM that isn't awful

Find funds, get warm intros, access capital powered by 15 years of data

🤑 Totally free
💾 Export 100% of your data anytime
✨ MCP for everything
🗑️ After 90 days you’re prompted to delete your account. Stop fundraising and focus on building.

Get beta access: https://t.co/4bLIicmWzi

[Aaron Harris @harris]

When the frontier moves faster than your subway ad campaign...

[Aaron Harris @harris]

3 Israeli cyber Series A last week. Nothing stops these people.

🔐 Act Security ($40M): Roughly 97% of cloud access sits dormant, and AI agents are just inheriting the same bloated human permissions. Act removes the access paths with the idea that agentic security should be fundamentally different (better). Led by @notablecap.

🛡️ Mate Security ($35M): Builds an "agentic SOC" that constructs a security context graph unique to each organization, mapping its assets, users, data, and processes. AI agents are then run against it to write detections, triage alerts, and hunt threats. Led by @canaanpartners .

🔑 Hush Security ($30M): Gives AI agents scoped, just-in-time permissions instead of the standing credentials and shared API keys they run on today. Equipped with a central registry, full audit trail, and kill switch. Led by YL Ventures, @BatteryVentures, and Akamai.

Also a 4th cyber Series A this week, somehow not Israeli:

🎛️ Discern Security ($13M): AI agents that continuously tune the security controls a company already owns, fixing misconfigurations rather than adding another security layer. Led by ForgePoint.

You can find all weekly Series A analysis: https://t.co/U7OCobUTEH

[Aaron Harris @harris]

Anonymous.

NYC, 2026

#leica #streetphotography #nycphotography

[Aaron Harris @harris]

I'm not sure I've ever seen a platform as anti-user as LinkedIn when used for hiring.

[Aaron Harris @harris]

CTO life:

🎉 you have near magical AI agents building production grade systems as fast as you can talk at them

😭 CEO keeps asking you to recreate LITERALLY every piece of software he’s ever seen…

[Aaron Harris @harris]

Startup CEOs have 1 simple job:

—> Manage investors and fundraising

oh, and set a company vision

and recruit executive talent

and great engineers

and review the product updates

and monitor churn

and run all-hands

and run founder-led sales

and decide on new office location

and set company culture

and send good slack messages

anything else?

[Aaron Harris @harris]

Think of a VC as a high value customers that makes 1-3 major purchases a year

⏱️ Respect their time
📨 Don’t spam them with bad cold outbound
🤔 Plan how you’ll approach them
❌ If they reject you it’s ok, there are more

If you want help, I’m putting my mind into software. An end-to-end fundraising tool that's free. Leave it at any time with all your data.

We call it an FRM (definitely not a CRM)
https://t.co/4bLIicmWzi