Yash

[Yash @y4sh]

Thrilled to team up with @immad to back the next wave of incredible founders!

[immad @immad]

1/ Excited to share I’ve raised a $26M venture fund to back early-stage founders.

@Mercury is still my 100% focus but I’m formalizing my angel investing in this fund.🧵

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to @keilvlad and the @Lio_Technology team!

They’re tackling a huge market by turning abandoned enterprise spend into found money, and already managing billions in spend for giants like Walmart, Schaeffler, and Munich Re.

[Vladimir Keil @askvladi]

Announcing Lio's $30M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz!

Procurement still operates like an administrative back-office function: rigid software, manual workflows and endless headcount. Enterprises spend over $180 billion annually on procurement talent and roughly $10 billion on procurement software, yet the problem persists. More software hasn't solved it. More hiring won't either.

Introducing @Lio_Technology (formerly askLio) the world's first multi-agent system for procurement. Our virtual workforce is already deployed at some of the world's largest enterprises, taking over the manual work that buries buyers, shared service centers, and BPOs today. But Lio doesn't just do the same job - it does work that was never humanly possible: renegotiating every contract, sourcing across every category, and preparing as well as analyzing every negotiation, all at once.

Lio's AI agents operate on top of existing procurement software and ERPs - no rip-and-replace - autonomously executing workflows end to end.
The results speak for themselves:

-   95% adoption rate
-   85% reduction in manual work
-   10% incremental savings
-   100% customer retention

Lio isn't a dashboard or a copilot. It's the execution layer for enterprise procurement. As one Head of Procurement put it:
"Lio is a cheaper, more scalable, and faster-to-onboard alternative to outsourcing."

Lio’s agents are already managing billions of dollars in enterprise spend across dozens of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies – from manufacturers to reinsurers to huge industrial conglomerates.

This raise accelerates our US expansion and the growth of our agent ecosystem as we build the infrastructure powering AI-driven procurement.

A huge thank you to our incredible team, customers, and advisors. Proud to have outstanding investors on board: the round was led by @a16z - special thanks to @seema_amble - with participation from SV Angel, @HarryStebbings, @ycombinator, and a group of leading procurement executives and successful founders.

Additional thanks to @BKRoberts, @arampell, @jamdac, @zephratic and @t_blom.

Whether as an enterprise partner or a new team member — join our mission now!

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to the David AI team! They’re powering the Voice AI wave behind the scenes and hiring a ton 🚀

[David AI @withdavidai]

David AI has raised a $50M Series B from Meritech and NVIDIA to establish the data layer for audio AI.

Audio is the front-end interface for real-world AI. At David AI, we’re creating the data that powers the models bringing these use cases to life.

https://t.co/mbRg1YwGng

[Yash @y4sh]

Illuminating podcast with #1 on the Midas List and a top 2% CoD player

[The Peel @ThePeelPod]

Episode #93: Michael Kim @ Cendana

@MKRocks is the Founder of @CendanaCapital, making anchor investments in very early stage VC funds.

We talk 204x DPI funds, characteristics of the top performing venture investors, how Cendana does diligence on fund managers, portfolio construction best practices + Michael’s 60x rule, and why a high ownership to fund size ratio drives outlier returns.

We also get into how VCs are using AI, the competition between Seed and multi-stage investors, why US endowments are under siege, and how secondaries are driving most early stage venture returns today.

Michael also opens up about the early days of starting Cendana, the 18 month grind raising Cendana Fund 1, the day he almost died, and ranking in the top 2% globally in Call of Duty.

Shoutout to @infoarbitrage, @kevinhartz, @semil, @jeff, @Beezer232, @jaltma, @jmj, @pitdesi, @nwischoff, @tedalling, and @Rick_Zullo for their help putting this together.

Thanks @boltdotnew for supporting this episode (check out their Hackathon with $1m in prizes!)

Full episode here on X, or grab a link in the replies.

Timestamps:
4:24 The day Michael almost died
5:10 Call of Duty & video games
9:34 Hiring @ Cendana
10:31 How Cendana uses structured and unstructured data
16:51 How VCs are using AI
19:55 Why secondaries are driving most early stage venture returns
22:01 Deciding when to sell secondaries
24:28 Best performing venture funds ever
27:26 The best VCs have amazing access to the best founders
33:42 Why Cendana backs Solo GPs
35:57 How to invest over time and hype cycles
41:35 Why multi-stage firms are investing earlier
44:45 Cendana’s current thesis: High ownership % to fund size
45:51 Why Cendana started backing non-lead VCs
48:41 How Cendana does diligence on fund managers
52:22 VC NPS Scores and Ron Conway’s Silver Bullet
53:49 Good vs bad new VC firm strategies
56:36 Determining defensibility of a strategy
57:57 “Messy middle” software buyout fund
1:03:25 Portfolio construction best practice
1:08:11 Michael’s 60x Rule
1:14:28 How Seed funds compete with multi-stage funds
1:20:05 Should you collect logos writing small checks?
1:21:07 Becoming an LP for the city of SF
1:24:42 Taking 18+ months to raise Cendana Fund 1 in the GFC
1:26:48 Warehousing the first Cendana Fund 1 investments
1:29:56 How to do a first close
1:34:29 Why it’s hard to kill a VC firm
1:37:00 What happens to ZIRP tourist fund managers
1:40:22 How to raise a Fund 2 or 3 today
1:42:07 “US endowments are under siege”
1:44:55 What the best GP LP relationships look like
1:46:41 What Fund of Funds get wrong
1:50:43 The three most interesting trends in venture today

[Yash @y4sh]

we need @rbehal1729's torn shirts as merch stat. grats @gumloop on the launch!

[Max Brodeur-Urbas @MaxBrodeurUrbas]

our CTO @rbehal1729 sat down and built an entirely new startup in a day

i recorded a pre and post game interview because no one believes me when I say he's as productive as 10 engineers

he also refuses to buy a new shirt

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to @Mercury on the Series C led by @Sequoia!

$500M in revenue, 10 straight profitable quarters, and loved by 200K+ customers.

And just getting started🚀

[Mercury @mercury]

Today, we’re announcing a $300 million Series C in a mix of primary and secondary funding at a $3.5 billion valuation.

We’re excited to bring on @Sequoia as our lead investor in the round, with participation from @sparkcapital, @MarathonMP, @coatuemgmt, @CRV, & @a16z.

[Yash @y4sh]

Excited for @onyx_dot_app’s seed raise!

Led by @yuhong_s and @chrisweves, they’re transforming enterprise search with a super engaged open-source community. In just a year, they’ve been adopted by Netflix, UCSD, and Ramp - powering customer support, custom GPTs, and more.

If it takes you 5+ seconds to find info at work, check out Onyx.

[Yuhong Sun @Yuhong_S]

Excited to announce that @onyx_dot_app has raised a $10M seed round led by @khoslaventures and @firstround!

Today, we’re helping thousands of teams answer millions of questions a month by making all their internal knowledge instantly accessible from a single location.

1/6

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to @withdavidai on their seed round! They're revolutionizing the audio AI space with high quality data. In just 7 months, they've partnered with top AI firms, hit 7-figures in revenue, and are powering SOTA models. They're hiring and now is a great time to join!

[David AI @withdavidai]

Excited to announce our $5M seed round led by First Round!

https://t.co/iPo6Bd7MrG

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to the @Braintrustdata team for their $36m Series A led by @a16z! 🎉

They’re powering AI products for leading companies like Stripe, Notion, Instacart, Airtable, Vercel, and more.

If you’re building in AI and aren’t using them yet, you’re missing out on a game-changer.

[Ankur Goyal @ankrgyl]

Excited to share that we've raised $36m from @martin_casado at @a16z along with @saammotamedi @GreylockVC @eladgil @basecasevc to further our mission of helping developers build AI products that work.

A bit more on what we're up to 🧵

[Yash @y4sh]

@jspujji @Superhuman @NotionHQ @tryramp @SlackHQ @GoDaddy @Rippling Banking: @mercury

[Yash @y4sh]

@alexisohanian @immad

[Yash @y4sh]

Fantastic tool for training faster, cost-effective models on production data. Congrats to the @OpenPipeAI team!

[Kyle Corbitt @corbtt]

Thrilled to announce our $6.7M seed round to help you replace GPT-4 with your own fine-tuned models!

Round was led by @costanoavc alongside @ycombinator, @OfficialLoganK, @alexgraveley, @Altimor, @mojombo, @immad, @Austen and many others. ❤️ https://t.co/hjcv9YymQx

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to the @ubicloudHQ team! It’s about time for an open-source alternative to the hyperscalers.

Honored to be a small part of this amazing journey!

[Ubicloud @UbicloudHQ]

Today, we're excited to announce our $16M seed round. We are thankful to all of our investors, supporters and customers who believe in our vision to build a better, open source cloud for everyone.

Join us on our journey! #cloud #opensource

https://t.co/OQ1HtpCQAW

[Yash @y4sh]

Excited for the launch of @mythosVentures, a new fund backing AI founders making the world a better place. Go @v_maini!

[Mythos Ventures @MythosVentures]

1/ Hello world 👋

Today, we’re thrilled to announce Mythos Ventures Fund I.

We’ve raised $14M to back founders building early-stage transformative AI companies.

https://t.co/dUbkOYCAEx

https://t.co/sRngCkBzPN

[Yash @y4sh]

Congrats to @Immad and team @BankMercury on the incredible product and growth! Just getting started here.. 🚀

[immad @immad]

1/ Today we're announcing @BankMercury's Series B

We raised $120m @ $1.62b led by Coatue

@a16z, @crv, @sapphirevc participated as did incredible entrepreneurs like @typesfast, @mathildecollin, @jaltma

+we are including a $5m crowdfund for our customers
https://t.co/V09DjydrsS

[Yash @y4sh]

@seema_amble @ImpossibleFoods Public House

[Yash @y4sh]

@deemurthy eat @handlebarchi + drink @AviaryCocktails @CindysRooftop