Startup Riders

Spotting venture capital waves.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

1/ @Kalshi · $1B · prediction markets
2/ Plata 🇲🇽 · $405M · Mexican neobank
3/ @Vestwell 🇺🇸 · $385M · retirement infra
4/ Rain🇺🇸 · $250M · stablecoin cards
5/ Mal 🇦🇪 · $230M · AI Islamic bank
6/ @kreditbee 🇮🇳 · $220M · consumer lending
7/ WeLab 🇭🇰 · $220M · digital banking
8/ Pennylane 🇫🇷 · $204M · SMB accounting
9/ Ualá 🇦🇷 · $195M · LatAm neobank
10/ 9fin 🇬🇧 · $170M · credit market intel
11/ @RogoAI 🇺🇸 · $160M · IB analyst copilot
12/ Weaver 🇮🇳 · $156M · housing finance
13/ Allica 🇬🇧 · $155M · UK SMB bank
14/ GSR 🇬🇧 · $150M · crypto market making
15/ Alpaca 🇯🇵 · $150M · brokerage APIs
16/ Uzum 🇺🇿 · $130M · superapp + fintech
17/ @VaroBank 🇺🇸 · $124M · digital bank
18/ Harva 🇺🇸 · $113M · supply chain payments
19/ Slash 🇺🇸 · $100M · banking for SMBs
20/ Loop 🇺🇸 · $95M · logistics payments
21/ @upvest 🇩🇪 · $90M · investment APIs
22/ Stream 🇬🇧 · $90M · consumer finance app
23/ Modus 🇺🇸 · $85M · AI accounting
24/ Arya 🇮🇳 · $81M · agri-finance
25/ Jump 🇺🇸 · $80M · advisor copilot
26/ KAST 🇰🇲 · $80M · stablecoin wallets
27/ Mesh 🇺🇸 · $75M · crypto payments
28/ Bretton 🇺🇸 · $75M · trading intelligence
30/ Fieldguide 🇺🇸 · $75M · audit automation
31/ Fun 🇺🇸 · $72M · consumer crypto
32/ Datarails 🇺🇸 · $70M · FP&A automation
33/ Wealth 🇺🇸 · $65M · estate planning
34/ Comfi 🇦🇪 · $65M · AI underwriting
35/ @getkashable 🇺🇸 · $60M · employee lending
36/ Salmon 🇵🇭 · $60M · consumer credit
37/ Pomelo 🇦🇷 · $55M · card-issuing infra
38/ Lunar 🇩🇰 · $55M · Nordic neobank
39/ Neo 🇨🇦 · $50M · Canadian neobank
40/ Counterpart 🇺🇸 · $50M · AI insurtech
41/ Rowspace 🇺🇸 · $50M · finance data infra
42/ Juspay 🇮🇳 · $50M · payments orch
43/ @Duetti_Music 🇺🇸 · $50M · music royalty finance

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

6/ Lever 5: One agent across every customer touchpoint.

Most enterprises in 2024 had a separate vendor for each channel:

→ SMS: Twilio
→ Call center: Five9 or Genesys
→ Chat: Intercom or Zendesk
→ Cases: Salesforce Service Cloud
→ WhatsApp: a partner BSP
→ Email: Marketing Cloud

So 6 contracts, pricing models, data silos, teams etc.

They collapsed all of it into one agent.

They launched voice in October 2024 and within 12 months voice surpassed text as the largest interaction surface on the platform.

The GTM consequence is that one Sierra contract absorbs budget from 4-6 separate vendor line items.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

4/ Lever 3: They only got paid when the AI worked.

They published a pricing manifesto in Dec-24:

AI agent resolves the case → Sierra gets paid a pre-negotiated rate.

Case escalates to a human → Sierra gets nothing.

To match Sierra's pricing incumbents would have to cannibalize the revenue base their public market cap is priced on.

"Business model transitions are harder than technology transitions. The revenue dips for a period as they come back out. Any public company CEO will tell you that's easier said than done." — Bret

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

1/ The same week ChatGPT launched, @btaylor walked out of the Salesforce co-CEO office for the last time.

A few months later he called @claybavor. They'd known each other 15 years (a "monthly poker game that happens roughly twice a year").

Most AI startups in early 2023 were going horizontal while Bret and Clay went vertical and picked customer service.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

cap table:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Sierra went from $0 to $165M+ ARR in 26 months.

The growth playbook behind the AI agent half the Fortune 50 is using 🧵:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Elad Gil's investing principles for the AI era:

Great pod on @tferriss ft @eladgil.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

A list of 30 Spanish startups that raised €340M+ in April 2026. All likely hiring:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Easy product trade-offs, hard life.

Hard trade-offs, easy life.

https://t.co/TlZMuBkJhg

[Alex Alexakis @alexalexakis]

I put together a fresh list of open jobs across some of the most interesting teams hiring in Greece

Check it out and if you’re hiring but not on the list, let me know
https://t.co/wP59Cj2ygZ

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

10 levers they used:

1. Cut 50% of features before launch.

2. Wedged through VCs to win the founders behind them.

3. Walked away from the meeting bot to win the meetings that mattered.

4. Ran frontier models even when the math didn't work.

5. Priced the team plan below the personal plan so users brought their team.

6. Shipped the team workspace once individuals were already hooked.

7. Anchored to a habit that already existed on the calendar.

8. Built from London for Silicon Valley.

9. Shipped MCP to become the memory layer for AI agents.

10. Opened APIs and repriced around the context layer.

Other bits I enjoyed:

→ Beautiful design = mind share = cheapest CAC.
→ 50% of triers still active at week 10 is the real moat.
→ Built an angel cap table like a launch list
→ Easy product trade-offs, hard life. Hard trade-offs, easy life.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Picking the highest signal-density user:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

"A steering-wheel for LLMs"

🌊 Granola's Growth Playbook

https://t.co/TlZMuBkJhg

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

7. Act II: The Ladder (October 2024 → March 2026)

The market got brutal: @OtterAI at $100M ARR, @Fireflies_ai hit $1B in a tender, @ReadAI_ raised $50M, Plaud at $250M annualized on AI hardware pendants etc.

And so the question shifted from "how do we get users" to "how do we keep them when notes commoditize?"

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Granola went from $0 to $1.5B valuation in 3 years.

The growth playbook behind the AI notepad everyone in tech is using 🧵:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

AI notetaker funding race (sneak peek):

@meetgranola's growth playbook dropping tomorrow.

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

Dropping Thursday: @meetgranola's Growth Playbook

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

A list of 38 robotics startups raised $50M+ in 2026.

All likely hiring:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

24 European defense startups that raised €5M+ in the past year.

All likely hiring:

[Ivan Landabaso @IvanLandabaso]

“The only moat you have is speed.”

Perplexity's Growth Playbook: 0 → $450M ARR

https://t.co/JUApMjcu5s