Darren Litt

AdAttributionKit: Unpacking Apple’s new ad attribution framework AAK unifies Apple’s various advertising attribution frameworks under a single umbrella product name and extends SKAdNetwork in meaningful ways, including with support for re-engagement and alternative app marketplaces. These are substantive improvements. But impediments to adoption remain: IP-based attribution is still widely viewed as a suitable alternative to Apple’s native iOS attribution framework, meaning that platform tools like Conversion APIs will take adoption priority.

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Just over a year ago, Imran Mahmud, MD introduced to me what was then called, Co:Helm. I was taken by the backgrounds and stories of Abdel Mahmoud, MD, Zahid Mahmood & Tahseen Omar and moreso their grit and determination to forge ahead with their mission of reducing the cost of healthcare. They soon got into the Sequoia Arc program with the backing of another friend, George Robson. And have been staying low and building ever since. Inbetween rebrandng to Anterior (formerly Co:Helm). And even more recently announced a new round to add more fuel. https://lnkd.in/e3V4qrRz Happy to be a supporter alongside Annelie Ajami, Dorothy Chou, Adil Mohammed, Andy Young, Caroline Mogford, Christian Arno, Felix Leuschner, Freddy Kelly, Leonard Picardo, Mandeep Singh, Michael Steel, Omid Ashtari, Noor Shaker, Sultan Murad Saidov, Yuelin Li and others in the ecosystem... [Anterior is giving clinicians a second set of hands—and fixing one of the biggest pain points for patients. It is a LLM-powered co-pilot for administration, handling all the work that comes before the clinical decision-making. Where it might take a nurse several hours to track down, organize and summarize hundreds of pages of records they need, Anterior can do it in seconds, allowing clinicians to increase their output tenfold and focus on what matters most: helping patients.] #healthcare

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VC funding in healthcare has been more resilient than in other industries. Here are some key takeaways from recent Carta data: 👉 At the priced seed, Series A, and Series B stages, dilution for health startups has noticeably decreased, while dilution for SaaS startups has stayed flat or increased slightly. 👉 In priced seed rounds, median dilution for healthcare companies dipped to 14.2%, compared to 20% for SaaS.  👉 The frequency of bridge rounds surged in the health sector in Q1, jumping to 44.3% from 36.9% in Q4 2023. This is the first significant increase in bridge rounds in healthcare over SaaS since early 2022. 👉 More founder-friendly terms for health startups may result from enduring VC interest since COVID. Healthcare has remained strong through economic turmoil, enabling higher valuations with smaller round sizes. What are the implications? The healthcare sector might see a rise in new ventures due to favorable investment conditions and lower dilution rates. The surge in bridge rounds suggests that certain sectors within healthcare face unique challenges that require interim financing solutions. Founders and investors in the healthcare space- what are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you. If you know a founder innovating in healthcare, tag them in the comments! The Artemis Fund is especially interested in groundbreaking care tech companies. You can check out Carta’s full blog linked in the comments. If you haven’t read our latest blog on care tech, you’ll find that there too. #healthcare #caretech #fundraising

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💡Benchmarks in the investment industry serve as a standard for measuring the performance of securities, mutual funds, or investment managers. They provide a reference point for analyzing allocation, risk, and return of a portfolio, enabling investors to make informed decisions. Thanks Peter Walker for keeping us all informed!! Can’t wait for this!! Follow and get on the waitlist for this one! #benchmarks #fundraising #Capitalraise #founders #womenshealth #femhealth #medtech #wellness

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💸 SAFE NOTES EXPLAINED CLEARLY W/ ADDITIONAL COMMENTS BELOW💸 SOURCE: Kevin Jurovich 💸Key terms in a #SAFE note include: Valuation Cap: Maximum company valuation for converting the SAFE. Discount Rate: Percentage reduction on share price during conversion. MFN Clause: Ensures equal or better terms if new SAFEs are issued. Conversion Trigger: Event that converts the SAFE into equity. SAFE notes benefit #investors by offering a simplified, standardized investment process with potential for high returns. They convert to equity at a discount or valuation cap, providing early investors with favorable terms. Additionally, the MFN clause ensures they receive the best terms available in subsequent rounds. 💸A valuation cap benefits founders by potentially reducing equity dilution. If the company's valuation exceeds the cap during conversion, the SAFE converts at the capped valuation, resulting in fewer shares issued to investors. This preserves more equity for founders, especially if they are confident in achieving higher valuations in future rounds. 💸A discount rate in a SAFE note provides a percentage reduction on the share price during conversion. This means that when the SAFE converts to equity, the investor gets shares at a discounted price compared to the current valuation, offering an incentive for early investment. 💸An MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause in a SAFE note ensures that if a new SAFE is issued with better terms, the investor with the MFN clause can opt to receive those same favorable terms. This protects early investors from being disadvantaged by subsequent funding rounds. 💸A conversion trigger in a SAFE note is an event that converts the SAFE into equity. Common triggers include a priced equity round or a liquidity event. 💸Examples of SAFE notes include: Fixed Conversion at a future date, Valuation Cap with no discount, Discount with no valuation cap, Valuation Cap & Discount, and MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause. These variations offer different terms for investors and founders. #SAFENOTES #CAPITALRAISE #INVESTOR #INVESTING #EARLYSTAGE #FOUNDERS

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Players in the VC world have access to tons of tools like what we're building at They Got Acquired Data. How badly does the lower-to-middle market M&A community want insight on private transactions, bootstrapped company sales, and who's buying? We're about to find out.

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One of the biggest myths in VC is the one about picking your investors carefully because of the ‘long relationship you will have’ Yes, this can be true for the small percentage of breakout companies, BUT these will be in the position to replace early investor with later ones – if you don’t like them, kick them out from the board room in the next round However, for the vast majority of companies, you WILL NOT be the fund returner for your VC – and that ‘long relationship’ quickly turns into either a) pure silence, or b) the Partner being ‘swamped right now’ and replacing themselves with a Junior Intern Analyst Associate who just graduated from McKinsey (it’s a school, right?) on your board So much for that long relationship :)

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Ironically, in today's market, growth stage consumer VCs only want to fund you if you don't need funding. The days of funding unprofitable marketing with insane amounts of VC dollars are over, and I think that's for the better. The core premise of growth capital is investing in user acquisition to grow rapidly - but the core requirement of being an attractive investment of growth capital is having unit economics that enable short or instant payback periods. Meaning, if you invest $100 in marketing, you get $100 back in gross profit extremely quickly. If you have instant paybacks, your marketing by definition funds itself, and can be scaled up aggressively with an extremely low amount of capital. This environment creates a funny situation where growth investors want to give money to companies to spend on growth that don't need to spend money to grow. "Wow you've built quite the efficient marketing engine here, how are you thinking about your next raise?" - "I'm not." I am very curious to see how this dynamic evolves over the coming years.

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Timing in investing is like catching a wave: if you jump in too early or too late, you might miss the opportunity. Making decisions at the right moment can mean the difference between significant gains and losses. It's about being patient, seizing opportunities, and understanding when to act based on market conditions and trends. Successful investors know that timing is not just about luck; it's a skill honed through experience and careful observation of the financial landscape.

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If an advertiser is spending profitably on a small portfolio of the largest advertising channels already --- which almost all are with some significant percentage of total budget -- and wants to consider a new channel, they have to determine whether that same amount of incremental spend would deteriorate the performance of their existing campaigns, and whether that degradation would be worth the added cost of managing a new channel. As uncomfortable as it might seem, most user acquisition teams would be better off operating only on the largest channels — concentrating their spend, developing channel specialization, and minimizing their analytical overhead — versus having their team’s attention and time spread across a wider array of channels with a longer-tailed distribution of ad spend and revenue.

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🚀 𝐔𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐫𝐢 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬! 🚀 Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and Moovit, shares invaluable lessons in his book “𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮, 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.” Key takeaways include the importance of passionately embracing the problem you’re solving, the necessity of customer retention as a marker of product-market fit, and the strategic use of pitch deck slides. He also emphasises the significance of hiring and firing correctly and observing user behaviour to refine your product. These principles can transform your startup journey, ensuring resilience and growth. 🌟 #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #ProductMarketFit #Innovation

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Venture Capital is a decade long game - get creative with fees Sharing this segment from our recent “5 Syndicate Learnings after Completing 500 SPVs (Part 2)” via Last Money In Media The timeline to liquidity for a startup has gone from 5-8 years to 10-14 years for many of the best companies with some companies now staying private for over 20 years (e.g. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is still private 22 years later). If you’re running a fund, you’ll collect management fees and draw a salary. If you don't and are operating exclusively as a Syndicate GP then either you need to 1) charge fees on some of your SPVs or 2) get creative with how you’ll pay yourself. My advice is to start by charging some management, even if it's small. That income will go a long way to float you, while you wait for venture outcomes. Alternatively, you can consult for startups (e.g. offer advisory services to help them with their pitch decks, financial models, sales process - whatever your strength is), generate side hustles (e.g. Last Money In / Deal Sheet have been highly profitable for Zach/I), do SPVs part time, while you maintain a full time job until you start making meaningful income, or other. Of note, I've been syndicating deals while at a previous startup and after that acquisition I helped launch Hampton, Sam Parr’s private founder community and did a consulting gig, so I’ve really managed to make money in other areas to support playing the long game as a syndicate lead. For additional reading, we previously put together a whole article discussing whether SPV leads should take management fees; and what GPs do on the side to generate additional income if they do not. But in short - it takes a long time to get rich in venture (if ever), so have a plan to generate income while you await hopefully large carry checks down the line. -- Powered by Sydecar and Forge, Last Money In Media is the most actionable venture capital newsletter. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ SPVs invested.

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Between April 2023 and March 2024, the top category in seed rounds in both capital raised and valuation was (gasp!) HR. Despite the typical skepticism around HR tech, data from 1,271 priced seed rounds show that HR startups outpaced other industries with the highest median pre-money valuation and the highest median cash raised. This trend contradicts some investors' perceptions and highlights the growing importance of human resources technology and its potential to drive significant value and attract substantial investment. h/t Peter Walker and the always insightful Carta data.

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2nd of 5x investment (or acquisition) themes that should rip in Micro SaaS... Personalized Healthcare and Wellness // DEFINITION: Innovations in healthcare and wellness that offer personalized and preventative care. // GROWTH DRIVERS Rising healthcare costs, increasing focus on preventative care, and advancements in health technology. // FOCUS - mHealth and Wearables: Mobile health applications and wearable devices for health monitoring. - Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods: Supplements and foods with health benefits tailored to individual needs. - Telehealth: Remote healthcare services and telemedicine platforms. Anyone going hard at a similar theme?

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A very good model for impact and compensation in data jobs.

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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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As an early stage founder, you want two things from any solution (tool/person): 1. Peace of Mind that the problem is getting handled -- often in an ambiguous & broad problem space where the requirements are ill defined & subject to evolve 2. Cost-effectiveness given tight runway #1 is *far* more important than #2 -- most of the time you optimize for cost-effectiveness over peace of mind, you end up paying more and getting worse results.

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Hi, my name is Lane, Founder & Managing Partner of Founder VC. Over the past two years, I've been on a mission to prove that it is possible to add measurable value to startups. -I've meticulously logged over 600 meetings with early-stage startup founders, resulting in New Zealand's largest database of what works (and what doesn't). -I've worked with six scale-stage startup founders on investment readiness, capital strategy, and sales and marketing automation, all of which strongly correlate to a higher likelihood of securing growth funding. -I've provided long-term consulting and executive recruitment services for Round B+ VC-funded global edtechs, driving sustained growth with a list of the best global edtech talent. All to answer a single, burning question: Is it possible to add measurable value to startups of all stages? They told me it was impossible to add value beyond capital, that the only value you can add is money. What they failed to understand is that the best way to get something done is to tell a startup founder that it can't be. The harsh reality is that securing the necessary capital for startup growth is a daunting challenge. Did you know that only 1% of global startup founders raise venture capital, and 90% of those fail to raise a second round? That it takes the average startup founder 5-7 years longer to find product-market fit than anticipated? This is where Founder VC steps in. At Founder VC, we help startup founders make and raise money. 🚀 🌟 Startup. Scale Up. Stay Up. 🌟 Founder VC offers personalized, satisfaction-guaranteed programs from the world’s top talent, designed to mitigate the deadliest risks at each stage of a startup's lifecycle. 📈 Founder-Defined Success We tailor success metrics to each founder's vision, ensuring your journey aligns with your unique goals. 🔍 Transparent Pathways Our structured, visualized capital pathways reduce risk by embedding support structures at key milestones. ✅ Guaranteed Results We deliver tangible results with our satisfaction-guaranteed programs, offering guidance on capital pathways, product marketing, product-market fit, sales, and fundraising. 🏆 Masterclass Talent Gain on-demand access to proven startup founders and operators for top-tier advice and support. 💡 Solutions for Every Stage 💡 Startup Solutions: Micro-courses providing practical, guaranteed guidance on capital pathways, product marketing, and more. Scale Up Solutions: Year-long accelerator programs to automate sales, supercharge revenue, uplift valuation, and secure growth funding. Stay Up Solutions: Executive coaching from the world’s leading startup advisors to drive sustained growth. Founder VC's mission is to offer funding solutions that significantly increase the survival and success rates of startup founders. It is my personal honour to dedicate the next decade of my life to this mission. 10 years is a long time, and I'm just getting started. 🔥 🪩 foundervc.org 📧 hello@foundervc.org

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How do you do messaging for multiple ICPs? What do you do when one of these scenarios applies? · Expanding from one ICP to two (or more) · Needing to talk to several ICPs at once · Messaging when you're a multi-product company · Writing home page copy for multiple audiences Anthony Pierri 🎸and I are gonna talk about it for 60mis, and discuss what makes sense when. We'll share our overall thinking about the matter, but will mostly focus on audience Q&A. Come join us next Wed (June 12) to discuss this topic. Bring your questions. Free event. Registration link in the comments.

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