Mike Ghaffary

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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More great insights from Montauk Capital and Evan Caron on the extraordinary risks, and opportunities, at the intersection of energy and the real estate industry.

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Vori announced its Series B yesterday. This is a special one for me, and a founder I love, so wanted to share a few words. I met Brandon Hill when Vori was just getting started. I was focused on b2b/vertical marketplaces and food supply chain, which was Brandon's starting point. What struck me immediately was his combination of grit, product chops, and (extreme) customer/industry empathy. He quite literally grew up in it. He's the third generation in his family to work in grocery. His parents spent 40 years in the industry. His grandparents too. But he was also steeped in technology in a way few grocery operators ever had been. He'd gone to Stanford, built a code school backed by VMware, and was now going back to grocery to modernize the massive independent segment. That combination was rare, so Greylock led the Seed. A few years later, Vori is live in 130+ stores. Net new ARR has gone from $1M a year, to $1M a quarter, to $1M+ a month (and accelerating). 99% of customers stay. Cherryrock Capital led the $22M Series B with Greylock Partners and Factory participating. Vori is a bold application of AI to a large, essential, physical-world industry. They've done years of heavy lifting to own POS, inventory, pricing, and payments. AI now sits inside that stack, making every layer sharper. It's a rare example of a true AI operating system for a physical business. There's also a real data advantage underneath. Every transaction, vendor cost, and shrink pattern across 130+ stores trains a system that uniquely understands independent grocery. That data only exists inside Vori. As frontier models get more capable, Vori's customers get more profitable and Vori's data gets more valuable. It's also worth saying: nobody else was willing to do the work to get here. Brandon, Tre, and Rob spent years going store to store learning the business and earning customers' trust before they wrote a line of production code. The company has lived through several near-death moments and kept showing up. Grocery is a $1.5T market still running on fax machines and paper invoices. The frontier labs aren't going to build software for independent grocers. Vori already has. If you want your work to show up in the real world, Vori is hiring. So psyched for you Brandon, Tremaine, Robert, and the whole Vori team.

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We're launching the LvlUp Ventures First Check Fund and we couldn't be more excited about what this means for founders. 1,000 investments in 2026. Idea-stage. Pre-formation. Pre-seed. I've seen too many great founders get told to "come back later." We built this fund to show up before that moment with real capital, real support, and zero unnecessary barriers. No data room. No entity required. Decision in under a week. If you're early and building something real, this was made for you. Drop a comment below and I'll DM you how to apply. 🚀 #FirstCheck #LvlUpVentures #FounderFirst #EarlyStage #VentureCapital

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Every hire, product feature, and GTM experiment is a capital allocation decision, most teams just don’t call it that. I’m kicking off a 3-part series on capital allocation for founders, operators, and finance leaders with a simple question: ➡️ Will the next $1 you deploy become worth more than $1? Series overview Part 1: defines the core concept + the math Part 2: where capital goes + how to measure whether it’s working Part 3: AIMS framework for communicating allocation decisions to management teams and your board Part 1 (attached here) lays the practical foundation: 🔹 The $1 invested test and ROIIC vs. hurdle rates (scoreboard vs. decision lens) 🔹 A lightweight “investment brief” to evaluate bets (GROW / BUILD / BUY) 🔹 The small metric toolkit that translates finance into operating decisions (NPV / payback / ROIIC / incremental margin) 🔹 Early-stage proxies when DCF inputs are unknowable (burn multiple + revenue quality) 🔹 Operator “vital signs” to spot drift early (profit engine, leverage, cash conversion, optics) Series Roadmap ✔️ This series (Parts 1–3): breadth-first. shared, lightweight framework to define value creation, choose decision-grade metrics, and communicate tradeoffs clearly ✔️ Next series: depth-first. momentum drivers + operational decisions that need near real-time measurement to spot drift early and course-correct fast Read Part 1 here and Part 2 and 3 on substack. Next Series will be out next week. 💰 What’s one bet you’re funding right now, and how will you prove it’s working?

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We're so excited to share that Uncork Capital led Knit Health’s $11.6 million seed round alongside our friends at Frist Cressey Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, and Coalition Operators. Knit has developed a Large Clinical Behavior Model (LCBM), a novel foundational model designed to learn not just from medical text, but from how care is actually delivered in practice. In partnership with Truveta (a consortium of EHR data from over 30 US health systems and more than 130 million patients), the company is training models on real clinical decision-making patterns: how patients are routed, how clinicians coordinate care, and how complex healthcare systems operate under real-world constraints. What stands out most with Knit is the team. I've never had a team reference so extremely and consistently positive in my decade plus in venture. Led by Founders, Jonathan Kolstad, Maya Petersen, Jonas Knecht, and Ted Robertson, Knit's team combines expertise across behavioral economics, causal inference, generative AI, and clinical operations, giving them a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective on one of healthcare’s hardest challenges. Finally, a special shoutout to my bestie, Katie Jacobs Stanton, from Moxxie for introducing us. https://lnkd.in/get2nwQy

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Seed VC isn’t just in a downturn—it’s facing extinction unless it evolves fast. Great read from Rob Go & David Beisel at NextView Ventures... - YC and mega-funds now dominate the early-stage landscape, squeezing out traditional seed investors - Power law thinking has gone mainstream—everyone’s chasing trillion-dollar outliers - AI isn’t helping seed VCs—it’s raising the stakes, crowding the field, and disrupting VC itself - The middle of the market has collapsed, and excess profits are gone - Hope isn’t a strategy—seed needs a new model, now Link here... https://lnkd.in/ek2MZGhm And if you like this topic, I wrote a piece on venture bifurcating into inception funds and mega funds here: https://lnkd.in/eJz5DmX6 #ai #venturecapital #vc

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One of the things I appreciate most about our Entrepreneur In Residence model is the ability to develop a true partnership with a founder and really understand how they think before they start building. Viral Shah joined Deciens Capital as an EIR after co-founding Better.com. Before he even started building June Point Lending, we got to see firsthand how he approached hard problems — the rigor, the ambition, and the operating instincts that you only develop through having already built to scale. June Point Lending went from initial funding to a live lender in eight months. It's focused on Non-QM mortgages — a $232B market where institutional capital demand far outpaces the supply of originators who can meet it at scale. They're automating with AI what the rest of the industry still does manually, and secured tier-1 capital markets partners out of the gate, creating a powerful technology + capital combination and condensing what would ordinarily be years of work into the company’s formation. We're proud to have backed Viral and co-founder William DeVar from the start, and in a world increasingly focused on short-term profit taking, we're excited to be on this journey with them for the long term. https://lnkd.in/ecGQtMx7

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You can have customers saying nice things and still not have product market fit. Andy Greenfield, partner at TIA Ventures, spent decades doing qualitative research for major CPG brands. He pioneered a methodology to separate polite responses from visceral pain. Getting different audiences together in panels to understand if products were solving real problems. When they'd do these panels, they'd try to get to one specific question: "If this product were taken away tomorrow, would your life be okay or couldn't you live without it?" That's a very different question than "do you like this product?" Jesse Caesar from First Round Capital explains the difference: "If you want to know what your target is doing or how much, go for quantitative research. But if you want to know why they're doing it, or why they believe what they believe, qualitative research gets you that depth of perspective." Most founders confuse customers being polite with customers who actually care. It’s much easier to do that vs facing hard truths sometimes. You ask someone about your product and they'll say "Yeah, this is super useful." But when you dig deeper with the right questions, you realize they don't actually care that much. I can’t overstate the value of qualitative user research whether investing or building a product myself. Talking to 10 customers with very specific questions to gauge how important the problem really is.  It’s also very helpful to cross reference this with quantitative metrics with tools like PostHog or Mixpanel. “Trust but verify”. The real magic is when you do both of these things in concert. For example, a client you interview may say “I really love using your feature that lets me do XYZ” and they may be very specific about the value it delivers…so it may seem like a totally credible piece of feedback, but then when you look in PostHog or any user analytics platform, you see that they’ve only used the feature once. So this begs the question “if you find feature XYZ so valuable, why have you only used it once in the past month?”  This gap is often the difference between a company that scales and one that plateaus.

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What if the most valuable rails are being built away from saturated markets? Growth becomes harder when logistics, identity, warehousing, lending and address intelligence all sit apart. Kwik Now is taking a platform group approach, not a point-solution approach. The Growth Story Not just logistics. Not just identity. Not just lending. A connected stack across the commerce chain. The Stack The stack brings together logistics, PUDO networks, P2P lending, warehousing, address intelligence and identity. That matters because these are not isolated pain points. They are recurring infrastructure gaps that appear across emerging markets. For Investors The company is not starting from a blank page. It has already built six key technologies and 160 API endpoints. Its address intelligence covers 250 countries. The story is bigger than one region. Kwik Now is using Africa as proof for a broader emerging-market infrastructure play. Africa is the starting proof. The wider story is a stack built for markets where the same commerce gaps keep appearing. Kwik Now is raising capital and looking for investors. See company website https://www.kwik.now/ and then DM me for more info. What if the next global platform starts by proving it can work in Africa? Company LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eGrBGC44 CEO LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/e-79PKc4

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Restaurants like Lazy Dog and Starbird are using Loop AI's agents to grow ~10%, and we’re proud to announce today Anand T. and team have raised a $14M Series A to continue serving these brands and hundreds more. Loop is equipping restaurants with the essential back office tools they need to stay on top of growing demand for delivery and any future industry conditions. Thank you Anand for trusting Base10 Partners early and making us part of this journey with you—so much ahead! https://lnkd.in/gmPqwyfa

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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The Platform CPG is launching 3 frozen brands for founders in NYC Q4 of this year. NYC is the most competitive, fragmented, and expensive market. But an amazing city for brand building. Here’s the playbook we use: Lock in distribution —————————— DSD routes or strong distributors (Rainforest, Nassau Candy, Dora’s etc) Have a street team hit bodegas, delis, independents Secure retail buyers early ——————————— Key accounts: Whole Foods NYC, Key Food, Foodtown, Fairway, Morton Williams Independents: gourmet shops, bodegas, natural retailers Price right for the city —————————- Expect higher wholesale + retail pricing Don’t launch with thin margins Sampling is key ————————- Street teams, in-store demos, influencer tastings NYC consumers want to try before they buy Build hype outside the shelf —————————- PR drops, influencer seeding, launch events in Brooklyn/SoHo Social content that is authentic Plan for trade spend ———————— Free fills, TPRs, scan-downs, and distributor fees add up FAST Budget 20–30% of revenue back into the market Move fast on ops ————————— Cold chain, warehousing in NJ, delivery into 5 boroughs Route efficiency matters (traffic will eat your P&L alive) Know your consumer —————— The NYC shopper is diverse, trend-driven and makes fast decisions. Hit cultural pockets: fitness crowd, ethnic groceries etc Be prepared! Question: If you were launching a new food/bev brand today, what’s the first move you’d make in NYC?

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Very happy to share that we are leading Pursuit's Series A. Mike Vichich and Brandon Max are exceptional leaders. I met Mike in December 2024 and was immediately struck by his focus on building in government, one of the most important and under-innovated sectors. Big vision, strong execution, and optimism. At the time, I was between roles and doing some angel investing. That conversation made it clear I wanted to work more closely with founders like him. A year later, I get to do exactly that. Leading this round is a full-circle moment. If you're building in GovTech please consider taking a look at their fantastic product. And reach out to us at Builders VC as we love the market!

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One of my agentic commerce predictions for 2026 in this recent Forbes piece: Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures, notes that the mechanics are already in motion. Looking ahead, he predicts that this year, "Agentic commerce transaction volume reaches meaningful levels as consumers advance from research to buying on AI platforms. 2026 will be the year that transactions are completed in these platforms." To this prediction, Nichols adds another: retailers will be forced to build "super-feeds" specifically for AI platforms. “These data feeds may involve monetary transactions that could include payments to AI platforms or payments to the retailer/brand (depending on balance of power).” https://lnkd.in/g65RAerA

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What is a "buyer-builder"? It's the founder archetype we back at Daring Ventures. Buyer-builders have lived experience and domain expertise on the industries they are building in. They've felt the friction and know which problems to address and who to build for. They don't need to do customer discovery because they've experienced it first-hand. Outsiders spend years and millions figuring out what buyer-builders already know. We started The Builders Series to profile the ones doing it right. This edition: Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan of ServiceTitan. Ara and Vahe did not need to be told that contractors were underserved. They grew up watching it. Their fathers, competent skilled operators, losing hours every week to paper invoices, missed calls, and work that software should have absorbed years earlier. Full piece on Forward This 👇

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The gap between SBIR and venture funding is the narrowest it's been in 44 years. Reauthorization created a new award tier up to $30M. 0% equity. Requires a prior Phase II award + a 1:1 match (private capital or non-SBIR government funding) + a federal customer signaling intent. Closer to a co-investment round than a grant. Founders winning these in 2028-2029 are entering the Phase I pipeline right now. I sat through the AFWERX webinar last week (my first one) and was honestly surprised by how much airtime the new authority got. AFWERX is DoD-side, but the rule applies cross-agency: HHS, DOE, NSF, NASA, & DoD all qualify. Most folks analyzing it are focused on Phase II winners. The more useful question for early-stage founders: what does this mean if you're at Phase I, or thinking about SBIR for the first time? Here's a representative stack at NSF: Phase I ($305K) → Phase II (~$1.25M) → Strategic Breakthrough Award (up to $30M with matched capital). SBIR does evaluate both technical merit and commercial potential, but the new authority pushes harder on outside-capital validation and customer intent than any prior SBIR vehicle. The math compounds for early-stage founders. At seed, $305K saves ~2-6 points of cap table depending on round size. Stack Phase II at Series A and a Strategic Breakthrough at Series B, and the cumulative savings can run into double-digit points by exit. My take: set up Phase I now, alongside (or before) your next venture round, so you have the $30M option later.

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🚨NEW EPISODE: Recorded live at FUTURE TITANS 2026 - Jeff Perry of Carta sat down with the iconic Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry. Seth has been in venture for 25 years, built Foundry from scratch as an emerging manager himself, and has backed about 50 emerging manager funds through his fund of funds. He has genuinely seen every side of this table. They went deep on building Foundry, why VCs are in the influence business, not the decision business, and why the concentration problem in venture is not only bad for LPs, but also for the innovation ecosystem overall. And why Seth's new book, Capital Evolution, is so important for the future of America. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/ehQUQ2EM Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eU4FExpg

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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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