Laurel

Former Journo, founded @mediabistro, now Partner @SupernodeVC. Investing across tech sectors, especially B2B/SaaS.

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@alexrkonrad @N_Sportelli Congrats you guys!! Happy for you.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on NYC Mayor Mamdani's handling of the October 7 memorial day, calling it an attempt to hijack the day and turn it into propaganda against Israel:

"It's like turning the 9/11 Memorial Day into a day of mourning for al-Qaeda terrorists.

We won't let this happen. We will remember the murdered, remember what happened, and not forget who stood behind the massacre."

[Laurel @laureltouby]

What an idiot. Way to go, Mamdani. Way to go.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

[Laurel @laureltouby]

This study of the @nytimes’ bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is quite revealing; worth a response from the Times.

[BP @bsptx1]

@martinlieberman @DastDn @nytimes The bias has been so obvious that it’s almost a joke that a study was needed.

[Jamie Metzl @JamieMetzl]

The Gaza war has been a terrible tragedy, sparked by the unconscionable horror of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist massacre but rooted in a much longer conflict in which terrible mistakes have been made on all sides—including multiple credible pathways toward Palestinian statehood that Palestinian and Arab leaders tragically rejected.

After October 7, Israel had both the right and the responsibility to dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure and avoid the urban-warfare trap Hamas had spent years constructing. Israel also made serious mistakes, including restrictions on humanitarian aid that worsened civilian suffering. Those decisions deserve scrutiny and criticism.

But Hamas bears enormous responsibility for the catastrophe it deliberately engineered. For years, it built hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath Gaza—an extraordinary underground infrastructure capable of providing extensive protection from bombardment. Hamas explicitly said those tunnels were for Gaza’s civilians, even though the tunnels were everywhere and could have been used to save thousands of lives.

That was not merely callous indifference. Hamas deliberately provoked a devastating war and then sought to turn the deaths of the people it governed into a strategic weapon. Yahya Sinwar’s own reported messages described Palestinian civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” and calculated that mounting casualties would increase international pressure on Israel. Hamas kept its fighters underground while civilians remained exposed above, embedded military operations within densely populated areas, and exploited the resulting deaths to advance its political and military objectives.

The evidence points to the appalling conclusion that Hamas wanted enormous numbers of Gazan civilians to die because their deaths served its strategy. It embedded its terrorist infrastructure in civilian institutions and treated the people of Gaza as human sacrifices. This was horrific and unconscionable. Palestinians in Gaza are among Hamas’s greatest victims.

War is terrible and must be avoided to the fullest extent possible. But Hamas’s strategy was to force Israel into a painful and costly urban war in one of the most densely populated environments on earth, where Hamas had deliberately embedded much of its military infrastructure among civilians. Israel took extraordinary—and by many measures historically extensive and deeply costly in terms of Israeli casualties—precautions to reduce unnecessary civilian casualties, but even extraordinary precautions cannot prevent innocent people from being killed in a brutal urban war, particularly when the battlefield has been deliberately constructed to place civilians in harm’s way.

None of this diminishes the immense suffering in Gaza. Every innocent Palestinian and Israeli life lost is a tragedy. Israelis and Palestinians both deserve security, dignity, and a peaceful future.

But “genocide” is not a synonym for a horrific war with terrible civilian casualties. It is a specific legal charge requiring proof of an intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or substantial part, as such. the evidence clearly does not establish that Israel possessed such an intent, and the demographic record certainly does not establish genocide on its own.

What happened in Gaza was horrific enough without mischaracterizing it: a devastating war triggered by a monstrous terrorist attack, fought against an enemy that deliberately entrenched itself among civilians and viewed their deaths as strategically useful, with terrible mistakes and immense human suffering along the way.

Cynically calling this tragedy “genocide” does not bring us closer to truth, accountability, reconciliation, or peace. On the contrary, it serves the interests of the adversaries of peace, justice, and meaningful accountability for the many mistakes and terrible decisions that have been made on all sides of this conflict for the better part of a century.

[Laurel @laureltouby]

It is becoming increasingly apparent, #AI is a weapon. Govt is going to be controlling it as soon as there is a major catastrophe. I just hope that the catastrophe doesn’t kill us all. https://t.co/w32Tq2pAbs

[Laurel @laureltouby]

So proud to be part of the journey, Zaid!

[Zaid Rahman @zaidrmn]

Flex is amongst the fastest growing FinTechs in the world.

We saw an acceleration of growth in July on the heels of our Flex Global launch at 9-figure revenue run rate scale, especially with our global banking product. Our fundamental metrics have never been better with 98%+ logo retention and 140%+ NDR. And we have four major new products slated for launch this fall with even more planned for 2027.

We are hiring across engineering, applied AI, product, security, risk, fraud, compliance, and more to build the "full financial home" for ambitious people in a 170 countries. DM us if you'd like to chat.

[Laurel @laureltouby]

One of our powerhouse portfolio companies is making moves!! Huge!!!

[Rory O'Reilly @RoryOReilly]

Big news! We're partnering with @Venmo, the payment brand trusted by over 100 million users across the US.

Over the past several months, we've worked with teams across Venmo to make Venmo easy to use wherever their users shop.

@KnotAPIs enables users to save Venmo as their payment method with participating merchants, right from the Venmo app and without manually re-entering their details. Depending on the merchants, users can either link their Venmo account to Pay with Venmo at checkout or save their Venmo Debit Card - enabling a fast and easy way to pay with Venmo, all powered by Knot.

It also marks a first for us. This is the first time Knot has provisioned a proprietary checkout solution as the default payment option, extending what we do beyond just the card.

It's a win across the board: users get a more seamless shopping experience and a simple way to spend with Venmo, and merchants can capture more spend with customers.

At Knot, our mission has always been to remove friction from payments and merchant connectivity. This collaboration with Venmo is exactly that in action.

More to come soon. Thank you to the wonderful Venmo team for their collaboration!

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@RoryOReilly @Venmo @KnotAPIs Huge news!!! congrats, team Knot!!

[Rory O'Reilly @RoryOReilly]

Big news! We're partnering with @Venmo, the payment brand trusted by over 100 million users across the US.

Over the past several months, we've worked with teams across Venmo to make Venmo easy to use wherever their users shop.

@KnotAPIs enables users to save Venmo as their payment method with participating merchants, right from the Venmo app and without manually re-entering their details. Depending on the merchants, users can either link their Venmo account to Pay with Venmo at checkout or save their Venmo Debit Card - enabling a fast and easy way to pay with Venmo, all powered by Knot.

It also marks a first for us. This is the first time Knot has provisioned a proprietary checkout solution as the default payment option, extending what we do beyond just the card.

It's a win across the board: users get a more seamless shopping experience and a simple way to spend with Venmo, and merchants can capture more spend with customers.

At Knot, our mission has always been to remove friction from payments and merchant connectivity. This collaboration with Venmo is exactly that in action.

More to come soon. Thank you to the wonderful Venmo team for their collaboration!

[StopAntisemitism @StopAntisemites]

Targeted by chants of "Death to Israel," Jewish New England Revolution soccer forward Dor Turgeman responded with a goal.

The hate incident happened last night in Montreal, a hub of antisemitism post 10/7.

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

💥FRACE'S TOP WRITER RESIGNS DUE TO SKYHIGH ANTISEMITISM

Jean @quatremer, one of Europe's most outstanding journalists has RESIGNED his 40 year position at France's Libération newspaper, citing the mainstreaming of Antisemitism, writing:

"Since the pogrom of October 7th, it has transformed the hostility to the Netanyahu government, which I fully share, and the legitimate support for the Palestinian cause into a virulent anti-Zionism, a mask for unbridled anti-Semitism, as Vladimir Jankélévitch so aptly understood, which is the negation of the values not only of the left, but of the Republic.

People demonstrate in front of synagogues, attack Jews, shout “Heil Hitler” at demonstrations, and silence intellectuals, artists, scientists, and journalists because they are Jewish and therefore Zionist and therefore “genocidal.” Anyone, Jewish or not, who doesn’t subscribe to this ideology is labeled a fascist, based on a new kind of antifascism that is a carbon copy of the very thing it claims to fight, thanks to its violence—sometimes deadly.

As in the heyday of the USSR and the Comintern, the thought police reign with ideological terror through anathemas, slanderous denunciations, and a culture of cancellation. Jews are labeled as Nazis, Israel and Jews worldwide are accused of genocide, just as they were accused of deicide in the past, Israel's right to exist is denied—something no other country can do—and antisemitism is considered, at its core, to be just another opinion, no longer a non-negotiable value… Yes, all of this is permitted. But denouncing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, defending Israel's right to exist, challenging the claim that this country is committing genocide or organizing a famine, pointing out the use of civilian populations as human shields by Hamas terrorists, questioning the instrumentalization of UNRWA or the UN by Islamists, ah, no!"

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@kevinrunsnyc @efutoran Would love to know what the ROI was!!

[Saul Sadka @Saul_Sadka]

Don’t be surprised that Mamdani—a man for whom a Judenrein Middle East is his political lodestar—also wants a Judenrein NYC. About 45% of NYC lawyers are Jewish. The odds of selecting 18 NYC lawyers at random and ending up with a panel containing no Jews are 0.55 to the 18th power—or roughly one chance in 47,149.

And it’s not about “Zionism.” There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jewish lawyers he could have picked, including thousands who, to their shame, voted for him. It’s about Jews. He hates Jews. It's not complex.

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@FlexSuperApp Great news!!

[Laurel @laureltouby]

Great piece on trends in #VentureCapital by @GZuckerman. @LukeNosek - you got a nice mention in it.

[Gregory Zuckerman @GZuckerman]

NEW: How 3 investors adopted a new approach to VC investing to make billions.
“The business has changed entirely...it's beyond anyone's comprehension from a decade ago," says Michael Moritz.
W/ @KateClarkTweets
https://t.co/LUJ5aafoHr

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@FlexSuperApp Love this company!!

[Flex @FlexSuperApp]

The secret's out.

Yesterday we announced our $70M raise at a $1.2B valuation.

We’ve spent the last few years operating under the radar, building the best financial platform for businesses.

Now it's time to tell our story.

Read about Flex on Bloomberg:
https://t.co/UjG1eZWcT5

[Laurel @laureltouby]

@alexrkonrad What the hell were they waiting for?!?

[Laurel @laureltouby]

My tweet is seen, therefore, I am.