Riley Rodgers

@ValiaVentures, Mentor @Masschallenge, @SCORE. Investing and supporting entrepreneurs.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@coleruudjohnson Satellite

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@SebastianCaliri Great work @SebastianCaliri!

[Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors @isaiah_p_taylor]

Today, Valar Atomics became the first startup in history to split the atom.

Announcing Project Nova, a series of zero power critical tests on Valar Atomics' Nova Core in collaboration with Los Alamos NCERC and NNSS.

Nova went critical for the first time this morning at 11:45am.

[Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors @isaiah_p_taylor]

Today we're announcing Valar Atomics' $130m Series A, led by Doug Philippone at Snowpoint Ventures and co-lead by Day One and Dream.

Also joining Team Valar are Balerion, Contrary, DTX, Alumni, Crosscut, Triplepoint, Palmer Luckey, Shyam Sankar, and more great funds and angels.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@isaiah_p_taylor @DenverRayburn

[Semil @semil]

The startup fundraising market is clearest I've seen in my 13yrs of tech investing - major funds only interested in 2 things: 1/ AI native co's w/ demonstrable momentum, rounds are big $; and 2/ seeds for outlier teams. That's it. Anything else encounters fundraising fiction.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

I just published Unlocking Unicorns: What Stanford Research Reveals About VC Portfolio Strategy https://t.co/kw7skgTfS8

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@nickwmyers @PhoenixTailings Great work @nickwmy and the full @PhoenixTailings team!

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@areksds @mercury @sydecario @ethankeshishian Thanks for hosting @areksds!

[Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors @isaiah_p_taylor]

I'm excited to announce a $19m seed round led by Riot Ventures, Initialized, and AlleyCorp, with participation from amazing new parters such as Steel Atlas, Day One Ventures, Stifel Bank, @naval, @balajis, and Charlie Songhurst.

We've also completed two important milestones:

[Nat Friedman @natfriedman]

We did it! We tested 300 Bay Area foods for plastic chemicals. We found some interesting surprises.

Top 5 findings in our test results:

1. Our tests found plastic chemicals in 86% of all foods, with phthalates in 73% of the tested products and bisphenols in 22%. It's everywhere.

2. We detected phthalates in most baby foods and prenatal vitamins.

3. Hot foods which spend 45 minutes in takeout containers have 34% higher levels of plastic chemicals than the same dishes tested directly from the restaurant.

4. The 1950s Army rations we tested contained surprisingly high levels of plastic chemicals.

5. Almost every single one of the foods we tested are within both US FDA and EU EFSA regulations.

Check out our full results below.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@houseofvc @WonderVentures @valentinaaro @TaylorBolhack @bonfire_vc @jimandelman @jenrichardx @Stifel @mexiCALiAL @AWSstartups @jdotwhoa Thanks for hosting, that was a good one!

[EVCA @joinEVCA]

💡 Excited to feature @Riley_S_Rodgers of @ValiaVentures in our EVCA Leadership Spotlight Series! Riley shares his journey as an early-stage investor, highlighting the importance of mentorship and continuous growth.

Full interview 👇

https://t.co/RVqzl17grt

[MIT Sloan Management Review @mitsmr]

Innovators working on urgent problems need funders who understand deep-tech opportunities and take a long-term view. https://t.co/sEG7GBHTF7

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

Big shoutout to the full team who pulled off the #Reindustrialize conference in Detroit over the past two days. The focus was on convening the brightest and most motivated minds at the intersection of technology and manufacturing - mission accomplished!

https://t.co/IYdQ70sAOQ

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

@ColinGardiner @TheRideshareGuy @halleka_ @joinEVCA @sydecario Fun one to do for sure, thanks @sydecario for helping to pull this together!

[Pirate Wires @PirateWires]

Much like the e-commerce space 20 years ago, or the recent crypto boom, artificial intelligence is at the center of a hype cycle in venture capital today. But the truth is, a hype cycle only exists after the winning company in that space has already succeeded.

Take @anduriltech — when founded in 2017, defense technology wasn’t a popular industry. But now the company is valued at more than $10 billion, and investors everywhere are trying to replicate that success as defense tech enjoys a hype cycle of its own.

Special today for Pirate Wires, Anduril co-founder @traestephens explains how successful VCs invest in companies that are category-creating — not hype-following.

Read it today on our site.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

Amazing conference hosted by @stripe that also showcased a big list of new product releases.

Highlight of the day had to be Patrick Collison and Jensen Huang with a wide ranging conference to wrap up the day. Great work by the team at Stripe putting this together.

[John Collison @collision]

Stripe Sessions is next week in San Francisco! We’ll share 30+ product updates, talk about the future of payments, chat with Jensen Huang, @fidjissimo, and @lhsummers, and host an expo showing the latest in AI with @Monumental_Labs, @AnthropicAI, @GitHub, and @elevenlabs. https://t.co/3zFjIkgIdR

[Better Ventures @BetterVentures]

We kicked off @SFClimateWeek and celebrated Earth Day with an amazing founder-investor speed networking event.

Thanks to investors from @UrbanInnoFund @superorganismvc @ValiaVentures for co-hosting & @CooleyLLP for the beautiful venue.

[Riley Rodgers @Riley_S_Rodgers]

Congratulations to the full team on shipping, big milestone after five years of work. It's an ambitious vision for a Gen 1 product and this team will keep making it better!

[Bethany Bongiorno @bella_bongiorno]

today is a really big day for @Humane, and i'm so proud of the team.

we've been building something for the past 5 years that is very big and ambitious, and also something that people told us was impossible or called vapor. but it's real, and it's really hard.

there is A LOT of hard work left to do, and like with all gen 1 products, all of the feedback (good, bad and ugly) will play a critical role in the path forward. we are listening, learning and building fast - so thank you to everyone that is cheering us on.

lastly, here is a photo from august of 2017, when it was just an idea imran had. it all has to start somewhere.

if you're a builder - don't stop, don't give up - keep going.