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!

Ocrolus Partners with Lendflow to to Enable Seamless Financial Experiences Across Lending

By partnering with Ocrolus from day one, Lendflow has developed a full-scale solution that enables its customers to offer easier and faster credit access to a variety of small business owners leveraging cash flow data. Its unique solution allows for more automation, a drastically reduced loan processing time and more accurate financial assessments.

Lendflow’s solution caters to the needs of both lenders and their borrowers. While its lending marketplace happens behind the scenes, borrowers still feel the effects of more responsive credit and an ability to connect with and get approved by lenders much faster than at traditional firms. For many borrowers, this automated approval process can lead to better and faster access to credit. As Gordon Bowman, Head of Partnerships relates, “Automation when done right, can decrease bias and ensure that applicants are evaluated fairly and consistently based on clear, objective criteria, which can increase access to capital, especially among underserved borrowers.”

Learn more here

Yuvo Health expands value-based care to Federally Qualified Health Centers in Ohio, scaling beyond New York with My Community Health Center

Yuvo Health, a leading technology, operational, and administrative solution uniquely designed to give Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) an advantage in value-based care, has entered the Ohio market, starting with its partnership with My Community Health Center, a not-for-profit, primary care health center which serves all patients regardless of their ability to pay. Significantly, as Ohio Medicaid implements its new “Next Gen” managed care program, this agreement becomes one of the state’s first examples of a value-based contract for an FQHC that intentionally moves towards downside risk.

Learn more here

Rachel Renock, CEO and Co-Founder of Wethos, Joins FireNation Podcast to Discuss Changing the Game for Freelancers

The podcast episode "Redefining Independence: Changing the Game for Freelancers with Rachel Renock" from November 9, 2023, focuses on the advancements and challenges in the freelance industry. Rachel Renock, the Co-Founder and CEO of Wethos, a platform designed to assist freelancers in better managing and pricing their projects, shares her insights. Wethos supports over 80,000 freelance businesses, and Renock has successfully raised over $14M in VC funding. Her work has been recognized in Forbes, TechCrunch, Business Insider, and the New York Times.

Check out the podcast here

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.