Mantis Venture Capital

☀️ ‘Tis the sea-son! 🌊 We’re excited to announce our Series Sea (C) round led by Redpoint, Lightspeed, and IVP. Are you squidding me?! 🤯🐙 We’ve achieved so much in our 2.5+ year journey so far: 🤝 Customers: Partnered with the world’s leading enterprise, security, and technology companies like Anduril Industries, Appian Corporation, Checkmarx, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Snowflake, Wiz, & more to lock down supply chains everywhere with Chainguard Images! 💜 Doubled the size of our Chainguardian team - check our our careers page to join in on the fun. 🖼️ Images: Built an expansive inventory of secure container images that continues growing with our new Chainguard AI Images, a suite of CPU and GPU-enabled images, including PyTorch, Conda, and Kafka! We know we would not be here without our investors, customers, employees, and community supporters for helping us get to this milestone. Cheers to a bright future ahead as we continue to work together to be the safe source for open source. 💜 Hear from our Sea-E-O, Dan Lorenc: https://lnkd.in/epCpAFkT

Today we announced our $372MM Series D financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz with major participation from Sanofi. Existing investors also joined this round, including Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Lachy Groom, and Emerson Collective, along with new investors SV Angel Growth and FPV Ventures and others. At Formation Bio, we are building the pharma company of the future, where human expertise and AI collaborate seamlessly to make drug development and clinical trials dramatically more efficient. As AI accelerates drug discovery, generating more promising candidate drugs than ever before, we believe the most consequential bottleneck to bringing more medicines to patients is the staggering cost and time needed for drug development and clinical trials. By designing and developing AI specifically tailored for drug development, we can increase the total number of candidate drugs that can progress through development, and ultimately deliver more new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently. We are proud to partner with best-in-class investors and advisors from both pharma and tech backgrounds along the way. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/et6uKzGV #pharma #biotech #funding #fundraise #tech #ai #drugdevelopment

in August 2023, Beacons published the first ever Top Creator Agencies List showcasing the leaders in creator management globally. today, we’re excited to publish our updated and revamped list: Top Creator Agencies of 2024. plus, we surveyed these top 240+ agencies to learn more about them and put together a snapshot of the creator talent industry today 📸 (which has already grown so much since last year, when we featured 125 agencies). check out the link in the comments for the list and the full report! here's a sneak peek in the image below - we broke down the players in the influencer marketing ecosystem to show how they interact and where creator-manager dynamics fit in 👀 it’s important context for why the agencies on the list stand out for their outstanding work. this year’s top agencies list has more categories ✅, more info on each agency✏️, and more insight into how the industry is growing💡. most importantly, we wanted to put the spotlight on what makes each of these talent agencies unique and valuable: the creators they manage and the testimonials of those who work with them. the agencies featured in the Top Creator Agencies List of 2024 are a group that includes young and hungry agencies alongside powerhouse, established agencies like UTA, WME, and Select Management group. they range in size from teams of 1 to 100+, and work with household names like #nike, #amazon, and #netflix. looking ahead, we believe that opportunities for creators are only going to continue to grow and that managers will play an important role in that—tag your favorite manager or agency and let us know what you think!

Had the opportunity to sit down with Ryan Roslansky at LinkedIn, and share a few thoughts about how I shaped my career, learned to be an “investor,” and reluctantly accepted that my NBA aspirations would never materialize. If you could only see my floater… 🏀 Super cool experience overall! Hopefully some of these insights are useful. Ultimately, it’s the same takeaway as always - make time for what you’re passionate about, and more importantly, stay committed. Success doesn’t look the same for everyone, the risks and rewards play out differently, as does the timing. But regardless, you own your story. When I’m not sleeping, I’m working, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thanks again to Ryan for including me in this series!

Selling software has been a slog. A market downturn put the spotlight on how inefficient everyone’s GTM engines really are. Revenue leaders across sales, marketing, and CS are struggling to hit their targets and worry that reps are focusing on the wrong things instead of being strategic. How did we get here? Over-investment in more instead of better. More data, more point solutions, more playbooks - never better. More doesn’t equal growth. More equals:  1/ Bad data 2/ Disjointed prospecting workflows 3/ Lack of consistency across reps. The solution? Leaders need better data and smarter playbooks, all powered by AI. Leaders want: 1/ Accurate data & intent signals to drive smarter playbooks 2/ Consolidated workflows in a single platform 3/ Visibility to drive rep repeatability So, we’re excited to launch the next chapter of Pocus’ platform. A first-of-its-kind unified experience to power the future of GTM. Instead of just powering Product-Led Sales Playbooks, we’re powering ALL go-to-market Playbooks. We’re still turning data into revenue, but now ALL data (not just product usage)... now made even better with the power of AI. I’m linking a blog in the comments to share more about this journey to the next chapter of Pocus. And as always, thank you to our incredible customers like Asana, Canva, monday.com, Miro, LaunchDarkly, Webflow, and more who shaped these insights and provided feedback on roadmaps, early designs, and beta features! 

📣 Calling all #VentureCapital investors and startup enthusiasts: Join us next week for an exclusive live Q&A with Grammy-winning artist and visionary Founder, Alex Pall, of The Chainsmokers and Mantis Venture Capital. Founded in 2019, Mantis manages nearly $250 million in assets with stakes in over 100 tech-driven startups, blazing a unique trail among “celebrity” VC funds. We’ll delve into what Alex looks for in founders and explore how his experience “growth hacking” The Chainsmokers to the top of the charts shapes his passion and approach to nurturing early-stage companies. Bring your questions for a lively audience Q&A! 👉 Register now for the virtual event on Tuesday 6/4 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET: https://lnkd.in/gmAqesNx

You may know Alex Pall as a Grammy-winning artist from The Chainsmokers. But it's his creativity and vision as a Founder and Partner at Mantis Venture Capital making headlines today. Join us for an Arta-exclusive virtual event as we sit down with Alex to dig into how his journey to musical stardom led him to drive innovation in the venture capital world. We’ll uncover: 🔹 How Alex’s life experiences as a serial entrepreneur and “growth hacker” translate to VC investing 🔹 The surprising qualities he looks for in tech-driven startups 🔹 How Mantis stands out in a crowded VC ecosystem as a connector and growth advisor Mantis has funded and nurtured more than 100 early-stage, tech-enabled companies since 2020, and Arta Finance is proud to be one of them. 👉 Register for the virtual event on Tuesday 6/4 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET: https://lnkd.in/gR682SER

Time to share something... Since more detail will be coming out, I want to announce that the last year I’ve been working on a company called MagicX alongside a really talented team from Meta, Uber, Microsoft, Amazon, Instacart, Coupang, and Lyft. What’s coming – your daily superpower... In the coming months, we will be announcing a new category of app on iOS, that will make running your daily life faster and simpler. It won’t be perfect at the beginning (please bear with us!) — but it will get better and better over time, until it ultimately feels like a superpower in your pocket. So if you’re someone who gets excited to try new things, sign up at the MagicX site (see comment below). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If interested in why we’re doing this – There’s been so much incredible innovation with AI in the last year. But the most interesting thing to us is… most of our daily lives are still largely the same! We still juggle multiple different priorities, with not enough time for the things we want to do. So we prioritize, let things drop, reshuffle, then keep juggling. In the next 1-3 years, we think that will change. Running your day will become increasingly instant. You won’t have to think about what you need to get done or who to coordinate with along the way. You will simply say what you want, and it will be done. So that’s what we’re working toward — An entirely new type of app that marries design and technology in a way that is both intuitive and powerful, so that you can run your daily life with ease. AI is only part of the solution... we've realized this is just as much of a design + good ole fashioned engineering challenge! We’re also super fortunate to be backed by some of the world’s top investors: Neo, Abstract Ventures, Mantis Venture Capital (Alex Pall, Francesca LaBianca), Max Mullen, Arash Ferdowsi, Scott Belsky, Springcamp, Benji Stern and many other great supporters. Again, the beginning app will be just a small step. But we will get there. If you’ll want to try it, put your name down on the MagicX site (see comment below)!

We’re in need of new neighbors at our Mantis Venture Capital Santa Monica office. The open space has room for two teams, and our current cohorts are moving out in May. What’s it like to work there? Other than being in a great location, you’d be working alongside some super talented, unique personalities. We’re hardworking, also fun, and of course, there’s always a source of entertainment. On any given day…. Walk in and you’ll be greeted by Milan Koch in a friendly German accent-ed "Yoooo!" No need to stop for coffee, Malisa Gandevani’s got you covered, cosplaying as barista in the communal kitchen. She’s known for making “LA's best collagen matcha.” (so I’ve been told). Talk to Jeffrey Evans about literally anything, and he’s going to show you a must-see video that has something to do with it. Then there’s Stephen O'Brien…if you can find him. Steve works front and center hiding behind a barricade of trinkets and vintage toys. Don't interrupt Jason R. Johnson, CPA, MBA on his weekly call with Standard Metrics. You’ve never seen someone in a quarter zip so focused. You may know Emlyn Thompson from TikTok? She’s not only Head of Community, but Mantis’ best dressed. You’ll probably bump into her on the way to the bathroom, where she films daily fit-checks. And come soon! Really soon. You need enough time to get to know Saveena Mandadi before she gets engaged, so you can get an invite to her 800+ person wedding. Sometimes I come to the office just to ensure I make the cut. But seriously, it’s a great space. The design is incredible. I wouldn’t want to go into work anywhere else. And it’s opening up soon and we would love to have an amazing group in there alongside us… sharing ideas and the space! If you’re interested, I’m sharing a link below with a form below where you can get more info. The available space fits 12 people comfortably.