Forbes 30 Under 30: Geri Kirilova

We are thrilled to share that our Managing Partner Geri Kirilova has been included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital!

She joins a stellar group of 30 Under 30 honorees including our portfolio founders Sam Bobley (Ocrolus), Dan Pantelo (Marpipe), and Kelsey Hunter (Paloma).

Geri has built her VC career not just with a dedication to excellence but also with a tremendous amount of heart. Whether she’s generously advising founders, digging into data, or building programs like the Venture Cooperative to make the industry more accessible, she continues to raise the bar.

Join us in congratulating her!

Navigating the VC Jumble

2023 has been one of the more unusual years of our team’s collective investing experience. Despite its challenges, the current market plays positively to Laconia’s strengths of patient due diligence, sober valuations, and active operationally oriented portfolio management.

The word “jumbled” comes to mind when describing the current venture landscape, particularly at the seed stage. Later stage rounds have succumbed to downward pricing pressure from the macro environment of higher interest rates, limited liquidity potential, and political uncertainty, both foreign and domestic. Cash preservation, breakeven operating objectives, and team efficiency are taking precedence over the “grow at all costs” mentality that had dominated the venture world during the past few years. 

Yet, seed stage financings remain on the high side, especially in the first half of the year. Some of this can be explained by the effect of the larger funds that had robustly entered the early stage. Pitchbook has a recent good summation of this:

Deal metrics have fallen for most VC stages since the market peaked in 2021, but one part of the US VC ecosystem bucked the trend: seed. The youngest companies’ valuations and deal sizes were propped up in large part by large investors whose participation at the stage exploded during the pandemic boom. Large investors accounted for more than a third of seed deal value in 2022, but their involvement at the stage is starting to recede. 

A larger driver of large rounds and high valuations may also be the declining deal counts at the pre-seed and seed stages: 

Regardless of causes, we know good deals are still out there, and we're willing to wait for the right ones. With new investments, we are as attentive as ever to the key milestones that they have to achieve, especially given the funding slowdown at Series A and beyond.

Despite best efforts, we know that the nature of the venture business is such that not all companies survive. We have a sober view of the challenges ahead and continue to work closely with all founders in our orbit on navigating the market turbulence.

We would like to add a word about AI, which we are seeing presented more and more in company pitches as well as within our own portfolio companies. Our portfolio founders have typically paid close attention to AI’s development for years. And our view is with the consensus: AI will be world changing-over the next 10+ years. New AI-enabled platforms will replace many of what will then be legacy software; the dynamic cycle of digital tech never stops, which much of our investment thesis is predicated upon.

Given the above, we are not avoiding investing in AI; rather, we are focused on AI’s value to customers vs. funding AI for AI's sake. The tech world seems to be at an inflection point similar to 2001-2004. The first phase of Web 1.0 during the 1990s built the infrastructure that Web 2.0 companies built upon after that period’s investment bubble burst.

History has shown that in tough times, iconic companies emerge and flourish: 

• Founded 1998-2004: Paypal, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Tesla, Tableau, Facebook 

• Founded 2007-2010: Airbnb, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Slack, Square, Uber, Stripe, Warby Parker, and many more. 

Despite the jumble, we are bullish. 

Announcing Our Newest Team Member: Mirit Lugassi

Laconia’s team has always been small but mighty. Whether we’re in the biggest bull market in history or a painful correction, we’ve always been laser-focused on finding b2b software companies transforming how business is done.

As we head into what is sure to be a very busy Q4, we are excited to announce that Mirit Lugassi has joined our investment team. Mirit is a startup operator with more than a decade of global experience (US, UK, Israel & Europe) building early-stage companies in the b2b software space. Mirit has transformed companies and teams taking on positions such as Head of Growth & Customer Success at DueDil (Acquired by Artesian) and VP of Customer Operations at a high-growth early-stage Edtech startup. She’s driven results like increasing ARRs by 10x, accelerating customer acquisition by 5x per month, and closing Series A investment rounds.

Before joining Laconia’s investment team Mirit helped build two cutting-edge operations: 51 Unicorns, an investment club aimed at female retail investors, and SeedImpact, an alternative investment firm orchestrating investment opportunities between mission-driven angel investors and underrepresented founders. Mirit is also an alumna of Included VC, a venture fellowship for leaders on a mission to diversify and change the face of the VC industry.

Mirit’s operational background bolsters Laconia’s support for founders. As we’ve gotten to know Mirit, we’ve been impressed not only by her deep expertise but also by her ability to learn quickly, intuition for exciting business opportunities, and instinct for potential in founders. At the same time, Mirit brings a critical eye to the structural challenges facing the VC industry and a genuine interest in driving change.

If you bump into her at any NY Tech events or at our office for TechScape during a quick break, please give her a warm welcome! You can reach her directly at mirit at laconiacapitalgroup dot com.

Launching No Filter for Founders

Since 2017, we have hosted weekly open office hours sessions with 1,000+ founders to answer questions about fundraising, business operations, VC market conditions, and more. These 1x1 meetings have allowed us to provide candid, situation-specific feedback, without requiring a personal connection or introduction.

While every founder’s situation is different, we’ve found many similarities in their questions and concerns. To make these sessions richer and more accessible, we are adapting the format to a group office hours series: No Filter.

Twice a month, we will host virtual sessions with small groups of founders, focused on specific topics. After we set the stage with some context, founders can ask questions about their challenges, swap insights with each other, and consult guest experts. We plan to cover navigating VC market conditions, building teams on shoestring budgets, price testing, creating a capital strategy, finding product-market fit, and more.

We hope that this format will allow us to maintain the curation of our 1x1 sessions while simultaneously expanding the resource pool for founders. 

You can apply to join the first session on September 14th (12pm ET) on VC market conditions here. We look forward to meeting you!