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Brian Devaney shared thisDorm Room Fund has minted 100+ VCs, 150+ founders, and operators at some of the best companies in the world. If you're a student interested in venture, I highly encourage applying here to join the DRF team: www.dormroomfund.com/join Founders can apply at any time here: www.dormroomfund.com/apply Bonus, you get to hang with Molly Fowler!Brian Devaney shared thisA partner at Sequoia Capital. A founder of a $60B AI company Cursor. A researcher at OpenAI. The founding GP of a $1B+ AUM venture fund. The head of applied AI at Mercor. The founder of their own multi-million dollar design firm. What do these humans have in common? They all started as student investment partners at Dorm Room Fund. ✨And applications are open for YOU to apply to join these hallowed ranks until THIS THURSDAY.✨ Usually, when a community reaches this level of connection, influence, and know-how, it's too late to get in at the ground floor. The doors close behind the bold-named players. Not here at DRF-- the magic of the DRF career flywheel, our 500 alumni, and the incredible support you get from the DRF community is still available for students just starting on their career journey TODAY. And every new DRFer adds to the lore of the community as a whole. Are you a college, MBA, PhD, Masters, or med student? Come throw your hat in the ring. Apply to join the DRF student partnership! See if you have what it takes to join the squad, and put yourself on the path to be the next VC partner at Andreessen Horowitz or founder of an industry re-defining company hitting 9-digit annual revenue. At the very least, good friends, good learning, and good times await. Applications for East Coast schools close THIS Thursday, 9/17, so don't sleep on this! Applicatins for West Coast schools close on Thursday 10/1 cc: DRF alums Lauren Reeder, Michael T., Oliver Ye, Toni Oloko, Anjney Midha, Alex Immerman Chirag Mahapatra and Tanthai P.-- thanks for letting me get away with some not-so-subtle name drops. Love you guys! #DRF4Life PS: I'm practicing shouting loudly about the amazing humans I get the chance to work with via this incredible community; thanks for forgiving a not-so-humble brag!
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Brian Devaney shared thisLooking forward to speaking next week at the 2026 Technology Finance Symposium alongside investors from Baker Tilly, Spectrum Equity and F-PrimeBrian Devaney shared this#Tech industry capital markets are shifting. Where are the opportunities—and what should finance leaders be watching for next? At the Baker Tilly 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘂𝗺 – 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁, join leading investors Brian Devaney, Matt Neidlinger, and Rocio Wu Dianoux for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹: 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁. This timely conversation, moderated by Baker Tilly Capital's own John Melbourne, will cover the forces reshaping tech industry funding, liquidity, and the investor's perspective. If you’re a tech finance leader navigating capital formation, valuations or the path to liquidity, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. 👉 Visit our event page for more details: https://lnkd.in/g-iwta4A #TechFinance #TechCapital #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #GrowthEquity #M&A #IPO
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Brian Devaney shared thisBrian Devaney shared thisToday's a big one. Kard has officially signed an agreement to be acquired by Citi! A day like this brings a lot of emotion, but first and foremost I’m proud of all that the Kard Krew, past and present, has accomplished. We built something special in a difficult and competitive market. We fought through the fintech winter. We fought through a global pandemic. And we came out stronger every time. We built a platform that gives millions of consumers more personalized rewards, drives real outcomes for merchants, and deepens engagement for our issuers. With Citi, our commerce media network can expand rapidly. This enables us to reach our vision of making rewards simple for millions of customers across the country. I'm fired up about what's next – working with the Citi U.S. Consumer Cards team, getting our platform into their products, and building towards what we've always wanted: rewards that feel tailored to each and every consumer, merchants that see real ROI, and issuers that build real loyalty. Lastly, none of this happens without the rest of the Kard family. The support from our friends, family members, customers, partners, and investors. Shout out to Underscore VC, Fin Capital, Tiger Global, and everyone else who backed us early. Thank you for everything you all did for us. https://lnkd.in/gajKtJNyCiti Expands Customer Engagement and Commerce Media Capabilities with Addition of KardCiti Expands Customer Engagement and Commerce Media Capabilities with Addition of Kard
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Brian Devaney shared thisExciting milestone for Salsify as they anounce their acquisition by Cinven! Salsify was the very first investment in Underscore VC Fund I in 2016 and they've since grown to over 2,000 customers, including many of the world’s leading consumer brands, publishing approximately 750 million products across 2,600 commerce destinations for more than 70,000 active users.Brian Devaney shared thisToday, we announced that Cinven, a leading international private equity firm, has agreed to acquire Salsify. For 14 years, our mission has been the same: Help brands manage and share accurate, up-to-date product content with the retailers who sell it. Today that means supporting more than 2,000 brands, syndicating more than 750 million products across over 2,600 commerce destinations for more than 70,000 users worldwide. We're excited because of the depth of specific experience Cinven brings to the table. They have deep experience backing software and consumer brands through their next stage of growth, a strong North American track record, and a European team that knows the CPG and retail landscape our customers operate in exceptionally well. That's exactly the kind of partner that helps us invest faster in the platform our customers depend on. This investment is about accelerating what's already working, including how we help brands stay accurate and visible as commerce becomes more automated and agentic. We’re excited about this next chapter — one where we accelerate into new geographies and customer segments, invest further in product innovation, and unlock even more value for the customers we serve. We'd like to thank Danny Garin, John Cuyulis, Maxim Crewe, and Carol Yu at Cinven - we are looking forward to this next phase with you! The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the coming weeks. Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gx3rjmDTPress Release: Cinven, International private equity firm, to acquire Salsify, Inc.Press Release: Cinven, International private equity firm, to acquire Salsify, Inc.
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Brian Devaney shared thisExcited to officially welcome Jeremiah Brazeau to Underscore as a Venture Advisor! Jeremiah brings deep experience as an engineering leader at Shopify, Twilio, Salesforce, Amazon Robotics. His expertise spans AI, commerce, robotics, supply chain, furniture building, skydiving and more. He's already a trusted advisor and thought partner to many of our portfolio companies and we're thrilled to have him more formally involved in this next chapter.Brian Devaney shared thisAt Underscore VC, our edge has always been the people we put in our founders' corner. Today, we're adding one of the very best. We're beyond excited to officially welcome Jeremiah Brazeau to Underscore as a Venture Advisor. Jeremiah has been advising our portfolio companies since 2021 as a Core Partner, and the partnership has only deepened: from portfolio support, into diligence, and into the rooms where founders most want him. Today, we're making it official. He brings a rare and additive edge: deep technical range from inside the build. Jeremiah is a Distinguished Engineer at Shopify. He was CTO at Twilio. He helped pioneer robotics in the cloud at Amazon. And he has an incredibly sharp point of view on where value will accrue next and what founder attributes are essential in this new age of building with AI. Also worth knowing: before he was pioneering robotics in the cloud, he sang with the Pittsburgh Opera Company and toured Russia with the Pittsburgh Boys Choir. Talk about range. Vocal and otherwise. Welcome aboard, Jeremiah! Check out his full bio (show tunes playlist included - yes, really): https://lnkd.in/e2GrwsCc
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Brian Devaney shared thisLooking forward joining Silicon Valley Bank and Massachusetts AI Coalition for Time to Fundraise on Wednesday, 4/29 from 5-8pm! Link to apply here: https://luma.com/86vi99zyBrian Devaney shared this💛 Excited to have Brian Devaney, Partner at Underscore VC, joining us later this month for Time to Fundraise!! Underscore VC is a Boston-based venture capital firm backing bold B2B software entrepreneurs at pre-Seed and Seed stages! They've built a strong community in Boston and are a pillar of this ecosystem. Founders - want to meet with Brian to talk about your startup? Link to apply in the comments! Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank | Massachusetts AI Coalition | HYBRD | Cooley LLP
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Brian Devaney shared thisCongrats to Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran and Luminai on announcing their $38M Series B and $60M in total funding from Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia India, General Catalyst, healthcare-focused Define Ventures, Y Combinator and more. Kesava was the first founder I backed at Underscore VC back in 2020. Sharing a snippet from our seed memo that still holds true today: "Kesava is a multi-time world record holder in Rubik’s cube. He is programmed to think about optimization and speed. This is an opportunity to back an exceptionally brilliant founder who's background makes them purpose built for this business in non-obvious ways. This is an incredibly strong young team that’s proven they can execute, build a product that’s significantly better than alternatives in a massive market." Congrats, Kesava and team!Brian Devaney shared thisI grew up breaking Rubik’s Cube world records. What I loved most was getting completely obsessed with a problem that looked impossible at first, then slowly became solvable. I never felt that feeling again, until I started to work in healthcare. Healthcare has over $1T in administrative waste. Most organizations runs on people, process, and paper, but deploying reliable agents to automate this work is extremely nuanced and very complex. We’ve partnered with one of the largest healthcare systems in the world, the Cleveland Clinic, to deploy agents into that disconnected admin layer. It is starting to change how hospitals run. We’re rapidly deploying to more health systems, and excited to announce Series B, bringing total funding to $60M. Our Series B was led by Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia India, with participation from healthcare-focused Define Ventures and as well doubling down from previous investors General Catalyst, Y Combinator, and many more. We're grateful to our partners and investors for believing in this mission. If you’re interested in partnering with Luminai, check us out here: luminai.com/demo Read the full story on Forbes about Luminai partnering with The Cleveland Clinic and our $60M total fundraise → https://lnkd.in/eteswi6m
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Brian Devaney shared thisGreat opportunity for early stage founders in Boston / Cambridge who are just getting started! Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eS_3XQGRBrian Devaney shared thisPitch competition alert! 🙌 If you're an early-stage founder in the Greater Boston area, we've created a new opportunity for you to showcase what you're building and compete for a minimum $25K SAFE investment and the option to participate in our Pearce Summer Fellows program. Consider this your fast track to get in front of investors, connect with the Boston startup community, and build a relationship with the Underscore team early in your journey. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eS_3XQGR Key Dates: Application Deadline - Monday, April 13th at 11:59 PM ET Finalist Notification - Friday, April 17th Live Pitch Event - Thursday, April 23rd from 6:00-8:00 PM ET
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Brian Devaney shared thisThree years of hiking in to the annual Movemint offsite on Mount Tam. In addition to a company that's on a tear, Zack Isaacs and the team at Movemint have built one of the healthiest team cultures I've seen: low ego, high trust, real autonomy and exceptional taste in both product and in the kitchen (chef Rodrigo Gutierrez / cheesemonger Rebecca Moll). The team you build is the company you build, and this one is already something special. Grateful to be included alongside Michael Horvath as this group keeps growing.Brian Devaney shared thisThe team you build is the company you build, and we have the best team! Thanks to Gavin Murray for capturing Movemint's third annual offsite at the West Point Inn 📸
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2mo
Massive! Stop the slop. Congrats Rebecca Kossnick and Taylor Hughes!!
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on thisI know I'm a broken record, but Dorm Room Fund is magic because of our people. The The New York Times journalist Erin Griffith got it bang-on today: we stand on the shoulders of giants. And it's true again-- thanks to the DRF community, we've raised a ✨ very-over-subscribed new $50M fund✨, and 💜launched a new brand 💜, so we can keep backing the best student and recent grad/drop-out founders. As our people thrive, so does DRF-- 14 years in, we're lucky to count incredible founders, investors, and LPs in our DRF alumni ranks. 30% of our investors in Fund 2 are DRF alumni and their funds. And it's very on-brand that our most successful investment has been into one of our own-- Michael Truell at Cursor. Today we get an excuse to celebrate all of the amazing people that have made our success to-date possible, folks like Claire Smilow and Aryan Shah who joined as student investors and became investors in our funds. Folks like Josh Kopelman and Phin Barnes who dreamed up DRF in the first place and let us fly when it was time to go independent. Folks like Rei Wang, CeCe Cheng, and Chauncey Kerr Hamilton who shepherded us through our first iterations. Folks like Toni Oloko and Will M. and Kashish Gupta who let us invest in their companies. And people like Bill Trenchard, Ann Miura-Ko, Iris Choi, Hayley Bay Barna, Shane McAndrew, CFA, Lewis Hower, Ekwutozia Nwabuzor, Doug Bernstein, and Ben Cmejla who have helped hold the rudder at moments when things were not going quite so smoothly. Most of all, DRF works because the humans on our team care so very deeply-- so the biggest thank you to Madison Jacox, Conor Harbeck, the DRF student managing partners, and our student investors for making this magic machine so much fun to work on, every darn day. To the DRF Community: let's take a very brief, and very well earned victory lap today! And if you haven't applied to join the student investing team before Thursday's deadline, take this as your sign! #DRF4Life 💜 Article here: https://lnkd.in/gXiPKi5uCollege Students Flex Their Power in A.I. Investment FrenzyCollege Students Flex Their Power in A.I. Investment Frenzy
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisGrowth!!!Brian Devaney reacted on thisWe're very fortunate to have experienced such growth (we 10x'd the number of events we hosted on our platform last year and are projecting a record year ahead) thanks in large part to our incredible organizers. They put their trust in us, share their feedback, and often refer other organizers to us. Starting today, we're launching a referral program to give back a small token of our appreciation. Paid out either in cash or advertising credit through our ads product on Movemint (where we see a 3.05x return on average!). Comment REFER below and I'll send you more details! great work team Natalie Weiner Summer Wofford
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on thisA partner at Sequoia Capital. A founder of a $60B AI company Cursor. A researcher at OpenAI. The founding GP of a $1B+ AUM venture fund. The head of applied AI at Mercor. The founder of their own multi-million dollar design firm. What do these humans have in common? They all started as student investment partners at Dorm Room Fund. ✨And applications are open for YOU to apply to join these hallowed ranks until THIS THURSDAY.✨ Usually, when a community reaches this level of connection, influence, and know-how, it's too late to get in at the ground floor. The doors close behind the bold-named players. Not here at DRF-- the magic of the DRF career flywheel, our 500 alumni, and the incredible support you get from the DRF community is still available for students just starting on their career journey TODAY. And every new DRFer adds to the lore of the community as a whole. Are you a college, MBA, PhD, Masters, or med student? Come throw your hat in the ring. Apply to join the DRF student partnership! See if you have what it takes to join the squad, and put yourself on the path to be the next VC partner at Andreessen Horowitz or founder of an industry re-defining company hitting 9-digit annual revenue. At the very least, good friends, good learning, and good times await. Applications for East Coast schools close THIS Thursday, 9/17, so don't sleep on this! Applicatins for West Coast schools close on Thursday 10/1 cc: DRF alums Lauren Reeder, Michael T., Oliver Ye, Toni Oloko, Anjney Midha, Alex Immerman Chirag Mahapatra and Tanthai P.-- thanks for letting me get away with some not-so-subtle name drops. Love you guys! #DRF4Life PS: I'm practicing shouting loudly about the amazing humans I get the chance to work with via this incredible community; thanks for forgiving a not-so-humble brag!
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on thisSuperhuman users have been asking us for a notetaker for a long time. Meeting notes are one of the clearest, most valuable places where AI can help, and it’s a category I’ve spent a lot of time with. That’s part of what led us to Fathom. And today, I’m excited to share that Fathom.ai is now part of Superhuman. Richard White and the Fathom team have built an excellent product and a team with deep expertise in this category. What’s especially interesting to me is where meeting notes can go next. The value isn’t only in capturing and summarizing a conversation. It’s in making what was discussed, decided, and committed to useful in the work that follows. That fits naturally with what we’re building at Superhuman. Fathom adds meeting context to the context already available across email, calendar, docs, and other places people work. We’re already working together on what comes next, and I believe we have an opportunity to set a new bar for the category. I’m very excited to welcome the Fathom team to Superhuman.
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on thisBrady Richards and I had a blast this morning pitching Doro Mind at Columbia’s Business School’s “Investing in Digital Health Startups” class taught by Halle Tecco, MPH, MBA. Thanks for the fun opportunity, Halle! It’s so nice to pitch in person instead of a screen full of Zoom tiles. Looking forward to the wealth of feedback from the pile of investment memos from everyone in the class! 🧠🫣
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on this🚨 Applications are due soon for Character Labs, our startup accelerator in San Francisco! More info and application link at character.vc/labs We are very pumped about Character Labs!! The only accelerator that's 100% focused on product-market fit, it's based on sprints that we've run with 300+ teams over the past 20+ years (including those at Google, YouTube, Flatiron Health, Slack, Uber, One Medical, Gusto, Phaidra, Inductive Bio, Fathom, Orbital, House Rx, and Extend). Since our first group in 2022, Labs has become the ultimate "start here" for technical founders. It's intimate, tactical, super effective, and a lot of fun! If you're pre-PMF and interested in working with us, please consider Character Labs — and let me know if you have any questions. • What is it? Our startup accelerator that's 100% focused on product-market fit • Who is it for? Customer-obsessed technical founders. Up to 15 teams per cohort • What's special about it? In Character Labs, you'll work directly with our team in a sequence of back-to-back sprints that we created based on our work with some of the world's most successful startups • When is it? Applications for G7 are due Sep 23 and the program starts Oct 26 • How long is it? Five weeks • Where is it? San Francisco • What are the terms? $200k for 5%, no fees, hoops, milestones, or weird terms Please reach out via comment/DM if you have questions. Thx!!
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Brian Devaney reacted on thisBrian Devaney reacted on this#Tech industry capital markets are shifting. Where are the opportunities—and what should finance leaders be watching for next? At the Baker Tilly 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘂𝗺 – 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁, join leading investors Brian Devaney, Matt Neidlinger, and Rocio Wu Dianoux for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹: 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁. This timely conversation, moderated by Baker Tilly Capital's own John Melbourne, will cover the forces reshaping tech industry funding, liquidity, and the investor's perspective. If you’re a tech finance leader navigating capital formation, valuations or the path to liquidity, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. 👉 Visit our event page for more details: https://lnkd.in/g-iwta4A #TechFinance #TechCapital #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #GrowthEquity #M&A #IPO
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SaaS Grader
SaaS Grader is a tool to calculate key growth metrics that founders, VCs and board members look for when assessing a SaaS company's potential against industry benchmarks. http://SaaSgrader.com/
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Rob Garrett
Most family office principals don’t set out to become the operators of a complex institutional structure. Yet that's often what the role demands. Staffing, governance, vendor oversight, cost management—it compounds quickly. Understanding how to balance what stays in-house with what gets outsourced is foundational work, not a detail to revisit later. This article offers a look at how experienced principals are approaching that question: https://lnkd.in/eXjqWrRe
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