Ajay Vashee

Thrilled to announce our investment in CtrlB! Privilege partnering with founders like Adarsh, who are deeply obsessed with the problem they’re solving - a true force of nature. CtrlB is redefining enterprise observability, building a next-gen telemetry engine that makes search up to 10x faster and 90% cheaper. In an era where enterprises generate terabytes of data every day, CtrlB is closing the gap with a fundamentally new approach to ingesting, indexing, and querying petabyte-scale data - enabling teams to gain real-time visibility without trade-offs between cost and speed. #funding #startups

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🚀 Today, we’re very happy to be announcing our $13M seed round, led by Headline with support from C4 Ventures, Futury Capital, and incredible angels from across the procurement ecosystem. You can read more about it in the Axios article: 👉 https://lnkd.in/duj4kCHc Or in our Procure Ai company news: 👉 https://lnkd.in/dpWZuQw3 For me, this moment is deeply tied to why we built Procure Ai — not just as a company, but as a product and a technical vision. Again and again, procurement leaders told us the same thing: “We’re being asked to do 3× more with the same (or fewer) people.” Rising complexity, fragmented data, unpredictable timelines, and now global tariffs… procurement teams have been forced to operate in systems that were never designed for this level of pressure. Coming from a product and engineering background, we believed the only real solution was an AI-native architecture — one that sits on top of existing landscapes, enriches messy data, and deploys autonomous agents that can truly take work off people’s plates. The most rewarding part has been seeing that belief materialise: 35–45% faster cycles, 3.5–5% savings, 60% autonomous intake, and platforms that integrate seamlessly without forcing teams to rebuild everything. And most importantly: seeing users feel empowered instead of overwhelmed. This round not only gives us the means to accelerate our growth and expand beyond the DACH region — it will also accelerate our product roadmap, grow our engineering team, and bring AI-native procurement automation to more organisations across Europe. A huge thank you to our investors, early believers, and especially our team: a group of people obsessed with building technology that actually works for procurement. Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re just getting started. — Yves

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If you were building a VC firm today, who would you actually bring in? Eldad Tamir of FINQ points to a specific type of person, people who are willing to break systems and rebuild them from the ground up. Because industries aren’t standing still. From finance to customer service, entire markets are shifting and opening up new opportunities. But spotting those opportunities takes more than technical skill. It requires understanding people, behavior, and how systems evolve. It’s a perspective that reflects how parts of the Israeli tech ecosystem think about building from first principles. Hosted by Yoel Israel Listen to the full episode - link in the comments 👇

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Poor portfolio data hygiene can have tremendous ramifications for VC firms. Here was one insightful moment from our recent Standard Metrics webinar on that subject with Maveron's Nathan Apsel and Bill Ward from Ark.

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Growth and profitability are not opposing forces. If anything, they're sequential. Once your unit economics work - every additional customer can spread fixed costs thinner, every transaction can make ops more efficient, and every bit of volume can give you better terms with suppliers. Solving for fundamentals will ensure growth makes you profitable, and doesn't become the thing that keeps you from it. Shreyans wrote a great piece on it, link in comments.

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What Makes Fintech So Interesting? We recently sat down with Sheel Mohnot, Co-founder and GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures. Sheel and BTV has invested in over 100 fintech startups, including well-known companies like Ramp, Mercury, and Unit. So we asked him: What makes fintech so attractive? And here’s what he had to say 👇

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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From the beginning, we believed Lumana was building much more than a smarter surveillance tool. Lumana's platform reflects the next evolution in video intelligence — physical AI. This approach enables systems to go beyond basic detection capabilities to understanding context, infer intent, and deliver real-time insights that improve safety and operations at scale. Further, we decided to take the longer and more difficult direction of building a whole new generation and fully featured Video Management System (VMS). With the company’s $40M Series A, led by our friend Peter Wagner from Wing Venture Capital and our seed partners from SCAPITALVC, we’re doubling down on a platform that’s already proving its value in the real world. We are serving now close to ten thousands enterprise cameras in production! Founders like Sagi Ben Moshe bring a rare mix of vision and execution to the table. From our earliest conversations as an EIR at Norwest, it was clear that Lumana had the potential to reshape how organizations use video. Congratulations to the team on this well-deserved milestone. https://lnkd.in/gwHdaGPZ

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🚀 Big milestone for Attio: today announcing a $52M Series B led by GV (Google Ventures), with Michael McBride joining the Board. This follows incredible momentum in customers, revenue, and team growth. But what excites us most remains the same as the very first day I met Nicolas Sharp four years ago, and the reason we have continued to back Attio from Seed through to Series A to now: game-changing product philosophy, world-class technological leadership and delivery, and resulting customer delight. From day one, Nicolas Sharp and Alexander Christie set out to build a new kind of CRM: ✨ Lightning fast and a delight to use ✨ Built on a flexible, modern data model ✨ All designed to give users full control to build a CRM that works for their GTM motion and seamlessly plug into the rest of their stack That foundation has proven to be exactly the right one. A new generation of GTM builders is emerging with Attio as their central pillar - including companies like Lovable, Granola, Modal and more. And the data model is perfect for building native AI functionality and allowing agents to work with the CRM - some of this is live, some is coming soon 👀  Nick and Alex have assembled a stellar team and have impressively scaled the organisation. Congratulations to them all on this funding milestone. Thank you for having us along for the ride over the past few years, and here’s to an epic next chapter ahead.  More from Nick here: https://lnkd.in/easA6jYV

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Just wrapped a great week at VC Platform Global Summit. One observation I can’t stop thinking about: Platform teams at VC firms have become incredibly sophisticated around talent, events, and GTM support for founders. And AI is supercharging what these teams can do. One speaker shared how she went from managing a team of six to running a solo operation by building her own tools. People across every function are picking up Claude Code and Cursor and stretching into areas that were once outside their expertise. But the quantitative side of founder support is largely absent from platform work. Benchmarking, fundraise readiness, valuation ranges, understanding where a company sits relative to the market. This is one of the biggest black boxes for founders, and it’s typically left to deal teams for one-off support. That’s a gap. Founders are getting world-class help on hiring and go-to-market, but when it comes to “is my growth rate good enough to raise at the valuation I want?” they’re often on their own. Is it because founders aren’t asking for it? Is it because platform teams are less involved in the financial side? Or has it just not been a priority? If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Thank you to my amazing panel Anna Jacobson, Dana Chamorro, and Moustafa ElBialy for a great discussion on AI enablement, and to Joshua Goodfield and 💫 Dan Holahan for a beautifully executed event. See you all in Boston in 2027!

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A whammy of a simile from the inimitable VC Sammy Abdullah, on the abominable phenomenon of "let's vibe-code an in-house version instead of buying the SaaS solution": "Trying to build your own enterprise class software solution is kind of like BBQ: ask any pit-master how they make their BBQ and they will tell you exactly what to do. They'll tell you the type of wood, where the get their meat, how to make and maintain the fire, etc Why? Because you either won't do it (you're talking 18+ hours of monitoring a smoker), will screw it up, or simply won't have the fortitude required to do it again and again. So, while enterprise software companies in this environment are going to receive the "we're building this in-house" refrain, it's going to be your job to explain exactly what you do, and re-pitch the value of your solution." [Blossom Street Ventures update email, 2026-03-18]

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HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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Today Stripe is announcing the acquisition of our portfolio company Privy. We originally partnered with 🏕️ Henri Stern and Asta L. in the Seed Round (co-lead with Sequoia Capital in 2021, and have invested in every round since then (joining Paradigm and Ribbit Capital as they led later rounds). Henri’s reputation as a crisp intellectual and rigorous executor from his days at Protocol Labs made us pay attention when we heard he was going to build a new company, and meeting his co-founder Asta gave us the conviction that this was going to be an n of 1 team for the mission. Supporting 75 million accounts, over 1,000 developer teams and billions of transactions - Privy is a key enabling fabric for a plethora of crypto rails-based applications. We are ecstatic for the team, and have been in awe of their execution quality, drive and tenacity that powered them through the inevitable dark hours that arise on any entrepreneurial journey. While discussing the merits of partnering with Stripe together, Henri said something to us that stuck: “it’s not a finishing line–it’s a starting line” - because Privy has also built a core pillar for the future adoption of stablecoins and the enablement of new financial applications. Teaming up with Stripe and working with the Bridge team, will allow Privy to tap into one of the internet's largest ecosystems to further execute on their vision. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gsKppP-y It has been an honour to be on this journey together with Max Segall, Shaun Maguire, Meyer "Micky" Malka, Matt Huang, Caitlin Pintavorn, Electric Capital Avichal Garg, Archetype Ash Egan, Protocol Labs, Box Group, Coinbase Ventures, Joe Lallouz, Juan Benet, Molly Mackinlay, Brad Burnham, Jutta Steiner, Diogo Mónica, Sina Habibian, P Gelenbe, Alexander Lange, Garry Tan, Nicholas Chirls, Charlie Songhurst and many others!

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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Preparing to launch your company from stealth? Our teammates at Argot Partners have outlined a practical roadmap for launching with impact, including what to prioritize six months, three months, and one month before launch — and how to sustain momentum beyond day one. Whether you’re refining your narrative, aligning leadership, or preparing for heightened visibility, this guide is designed to help you launch with clarity and confidence. Read here: https://lnkd.in/dtBtHMHq Planning a launch in 2026? Connect with our experts to build your roadmap today: https://lnkd.in/eGufCi4f #Biotech #LifeSciences #StartupLaunch #EmergingFromStealth #BrandStrategy #BiotechLeadership

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AI is changing what “scale” actually means. In CTech by Calcalist’s 2026 VC Survey, Haim Bachar and Lee Ben-Gal share how we’re seeing the scaling metric shift - from headcount growth to output per person. This isn’t about doing more with less. It’s about building companies differently from day one - and rethinking how success is measured. See the full article below 👇

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