Jason Fan

Wendy Xiao, Molly Alter, Aaron Liu, and I recently hosted a dinner with CMIO / CIOs from top NY health systems and execs from startups who are building solutions across the care delivery and back-office billing stack. A few takeaways: - Delivering value-based care at scale changes the incentives for health systems in such a way that they require unique point solutions that can help them triage and manage at-risk patients. - While scribing platforms are certainly powerful in the administrative burden they can take off of doctors, their full value may not be unleashed until they can convert notes into the appropriate fields / codes for billing. - More attention needs to be paid to social determinants of health. For example, certain types of new addiction treatment, like gambling, may soon be covered by insurance if data continues to show that there are serious negative health implications for people affected. Treatments like Ozempic are also showing promise in the field of addiction. In the coming years there will an increasing acknowledgment of how interconnected social factors and medical health are across all patient populations. If you’re a healthcare exec looking to learn more about what the next generation of healthcare IT startups are building, or a healthcare startup looking to get involved, please reach out. cc Northzone

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It’s NY Tech week and my new favorite thing is teaching underrepresented founders how to talk back to investors. So many of them ask me for help fundraising, and I get it. I may not always think of myself as an expert, since I’m lucky enough to surround myself with people who are much more experienced at it than I am. But we did do it successfully once, raising more than $3M along the way with little more than a deck, a dream, and an incredible founding team. Of course, we’re all aware that this success puts us in the teeny tiny cohort of startups who raise without a traditional-looking founding team. So what’s the common theme in my advice to non-traditional founders at the early stage? Push back. It’s easy to get intimidated by investors. They’re smart, aggressive, and ask really hard questions. It can be hard to remember that YOU are the expert on your market. They are generalists. Even if they have strong opinions on your market, it’s OK to tell them when you think they’re wrong. In fact, if you have the conviction and confidence (plus evidence to back it up), disagreeing with your prospective investors can even be seen as an advantage. When a VC asks you a question at the pre-seed stage about your path to $100M in ARR, it’s OK to say “dude, we’re a pre-seed company. I know what our path is to get to a million, and we will have a lot to figure out after that.” Now, this only works if you have a track record that can support your confidence. Or if you don’t know the answer, but you DO know HOW you’re going to figure it out, talk about the path from experimentation to scalability. It’s better than making up a bunch of stuff that you’ll probably throw out eventually, and VCs will respect your focus and defense of your precious little time. Plus, they can usually tell if your confidence is lacking in your answer, anyway. This investor market is a tricky one, but never forget that they (investors) need you (founders) just as much as you need them. And hey, if you’re an up and coming female or underrepresented founder, and you need some help (or just a pep talk) I’d love to help. Happy Tech Week everyone!!

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In October, we announced our $1.8 billion Series C financing and take-private of SP+ (SP Plus). Today, I couldn’t be prouder to share that we have officially closed our transformational acquisition of SP+. This acquisition and Growth Buyout (GBO) is creating a paradigm shift in how technology companies scale and represents the largest venture-backed M&A deal and the third largest AI fundraise (just behind OpenAI) in the past year. We’ve created a once-in-a-generation opportunity -- allowing us to deploy our proprietary, artificial intelligence technology to more than 50 million consumers, across 4,000+ locations, and processing over $4 billion in payments a year -- enabling checkout-free experiences with a speed, ease, and convenience that is unparalleled, even online. While re-envisioning parking is our focus and priority today, the opportunities for growth beyond parking are limitless. In the future, we’ll use our artificial intelligence platform to power checkout-free transactions in new verticals – making the everyday experience of living, working and playing remarkable – giving us back our most valuable asset, time. From the outside, an entrepreneur’s journey can seem linear and academic – identify a problem, develop solutions, raise capital, deploy, scale – and repeat. In reality, it’s entropic and riddled with roadblocks. We’ve been repeatedly told our ambitions are impossible. But – our team comes back each day with strength, tenacity, determination and conviction. We’ve learned from every failure, every denial, every slammed door, and we’ve gotten stronger, smarter and faster. Today we closed our $1.8B financing and take-private of SP+ – creating a company that’s stronger together. The last six years have been a remarkable journey. I couldn’t be more thankful for our investors, advisors and most importantly, the entire Metropolis Technologies team that helped get us here. Special thanks to my co-founders and executive team Peter Fisher, Travis Kell, Courtney Fukuda, Ryan Hunt, Eddie Thomas and John-Paul Sukkar. I’d also like to thank the newest members of our executive team Chris Sherman, Ritu Vig, Kris Roy and Wenyu Blanchard. Our Series C was comprised of a best-in-class syndicate, led by Eldridge Industries with significant investment from BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds, Vista Equity Partners, and Temasek as well as strong support from Metropolis’ existing shareholder group led by 3L. Thank you to all our exceptional partners, investors and advisors who thought outside the box and believed in our vision, every step of the way -- including Tony Minella, Todd Boehly and Lisa Ohlmeyer at Eldridge, Anton Zietsman and Dave Leyrer at 3L, Goldman Sachs and BDT & MSD Partners. We’ll celebrate today but know, we’re just getting started.

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Building and supporting companies within the #VentureStudio model puts our team in direct communication with a lot of #founders. This is among my favorite things about working at the 9point8 Collective. After a handful of calls with early-stage founders today, I began to think about the things I appreciate about them. The list includes more than the three qualities I’ve listed below, but these ones really stand out to me: ↗ Optimism. It's a hard world, y'all. Founders see challenges as opportunity. What an awesome quality in a human being. It makes me want to be around them. 💪 Grit. Nothing worth accomplishing comes easily. Founders get this. They accept that failure is on the critical path to success and they push through it. 🏃‍♀️ Hustle. With scarce resources, founders create lasting value, fast. They put superhuman effort forward to make that happen, building a vision into reality. It’s inspiring. Venture Studios celebrate all of the above and provide critical support to #startups and their leaders - when they need it the absolute most. This is a big part of why I love the model - and my job - so much. What qualities do you admire in founders and #entrepreneurs? Neal Ghosh Blair Merlino Evan Allen

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NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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About to step into the #HaxDemoDay today in Newark! Any ventures I should look out for, any from the TechCrunch list you're watching? Excited to meet the hard tech startups, backed by SOSV, working to sustainably tackle our biggest challenges across climate, industrial automation & human health. In a landscape where capital-intensive ventures often struggle to find the necessary support, HAX stands out by providing not just funding, but also essential resources and spaces for hard tech startups. (The new space has an impressive lab). Seeing accelerators like HAX adapt and innovate to meet the unique needs of startups will catalyze the next decade of innovation and hopefully a more sustainable, resilient world.🌱 #DemoDayExcitement #ClimateInnovation #HardwareStartups #Sustainability #HaxAccelerator https://lnkd.in/ebymt9YZ

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Dinner. Drinks. EV Charging. Last night Robert Diamond and I hosted a dinner in NYC for several EV charging executives. These executives build hardware, create site selection tools, match organizations to talent, advise on M&A, and accelerate EV adoption in cities. We talked about; - Funding early-stage hardware companies - The impact ridesharing is having on EV adoption - NYC’s "Green Rides Initiative" requiring Uber and Lyft to electrify by 2030 - Transitioning from the “MySpaces” to the “Facebooks” of EV charging companies - Changes to expect in charging infrastructure policy if the White House changes hands in November The next generation of charging infrastructure executives have a unique blend of business acumen and policy insights allowing them to understand how government decisions directly impact their company's operations. Over the next few months, we will host dinners for executives, founders, policy advisors, and investors in Boston, DC, and Dallas. DM me if you’re interested in joining.

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Our final session at FoundersBoost NYC was focused on building a winning investor deck. Here are a few things I don't hear often that I think will give you a great edge: 💹 For your market size slide, don't just put TAM SAM SOM - put clear thought of how you will incrementally open up your SOM further into your SAM through smaller more attainable segmentation. 🤼 For competition, don't just put your self up and to the right. Add in some creative ways to undercut the competition further (one deck showed how they also win on price on top of the logos in their graph). 🏅 Find as many ways as you can to show credibility of the team. Don't just place the founders there with a couple bullets. Got a strong FTE roster as well? - list why they are strong. Used to work at big name tech or corps? Add their logos. Team is one of the essential ways investors decide at the early stage so this slide is key. 💚 Why now - have a slide that speaks about trends showing that now is the time for this business. One slide had a bunch of articles with headlines that spoke directly to the problem they were solving. 📅 Putting something like "Investor Deck Series B 2024" on the cover is a nice way to put a bow on the deck. Just don't put the month... Thanks again to Ryan Pfeiffer from Lyonshare for the talk and the pitch deck tear down! Also shout out to Crystelle Desnoyer, long time friend, who came by to support and gave me some helpful feedback also. FoundersBoost #foundersboost #nyc #pitching #investordeck #investor #fundraising (Photo mastery: Gene Murphy)

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Yesterday we launched the next chapter of Pocus to help companies run ALL go-to-market playbooks, powered by AI. After 3 years building with the best leaders in GTM, this launch is a realization of our founding vision to unlock data for GTM teams. Isaac Pohl-Zaretsky and I built Pocus because we saw that go-to-market teams were desperate for accurate & actionable data. We started with PLG companies, who felt this pain acutely with product usage data. As we dug in deeper we realized there was an entirely new GTM motion — Product-Led Sales — that companies needed help building. With our customers and community, we built PLS from a niche strategy to a standard GTM motion. It has been incredible. This next chapter is a natural extension of what we’ve built in Product-Led Sales. In this next chapter of Pocus, we unlock ALL data (not just product usage), to power ALL go-to-market playbooks (not just PLS). We help customers turn all data into revenue, powered by AI. We’ll do this with 3 key product investments 1/ Enrich: unify customer identity across various data sources 2/ Engage: helps sellers reach out to the right users with the right message at the right time 2/ Optimize: help leaders copy & paste their best reps’ workflows Check out the blog Isaac wrote highlighting new features launching today and what’s coming soon (hint - it’s a LOT). We’re also co-hosting a webinar in a few weeks to talk through the state of the market, the trends we’re seeing, and how Pocus will help our customers continue to thrive.  RSVP at the link below.

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💼 Founders, check out SVB's new Streamlined Closing Form! This could save your startup thousands in legal fees and speed up your loan process. 🎥 Watch the video and get all the details. Link to the article in the original Kruze Consulting post. #Startups #VentureDebt #SVB #Finance

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I am looking to help early startups that need Product help but are not ready for a full-time Head of Product or Director of Product. Companies that are in my sweet spot: 1) Have some funding & initial customers/revenue 2) Looking to implement a cohesive Product strategy and internal infrastructure to support it. 3) Good founding team with a shared purpose/goal, even if you're still unsure what that means. Why me: 1) Experienced Product and Operations founder 2) Strong understanding of difference between initial product development, systematic product development and how to balance the two. 3) My stupid pet trick is simplifying complex systems and tasks into easy-to-understand bites. If your team loses the context of what they are building, your customers have no shot. If you are interested or know of a team that could use help, please reach out either in comments or DM. If you cold DM, please start by telling me your favorite animal and why.

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨 This past Monday, I had the incredible opportunity to demo and pitch Jammy to over 100 investors at NY #TechWeek AI Demo Day. Two weeks ago, thanks to Cindy Berman, I found out about the event and hesitated to sign up, doubting our product’s readiness. However, I saw it as a chance to push our limits. After a screening with Shriya Nevatia we were one of eight companies chosen, and I had to figure out how to demo our work-in-progress app and deliver an eight-minute pitch. I prepared thoroughly and felt confident. On the day, Dorothy Chang informed me I’d be the first presenter, which made me both nervous and excited. The pitch went well until the live demo. When showcasing Jammy’s ability to recommend post-session music, the integration failed despite my preparation. I still finished the presentation, landing the vision for Jammy and with congratulations and consolation from my peers: “live demos always break,” they said. It helped. Though I didn’t win the $50K prize, I secured a check from an angel investor, generated interest from several others, and met amazing founders in AI. The winning pitch went to the highly deserving CAPSULE, who is set to revolutionize contextual visual shopping search (like Shazam for shopping). Very cool. This experience highlighted the value of taking risks and the importance of failing forward. It also reminded me of the supportive NY Tech and entrepreneurial community. The journey can be lonely, and many dismiss community events and networking as distractions from the "real work." While that might sometimes be true, Monday night was a reminder that we’re not alone in this journey. We all want to see each other succeed in building the - extremely AI-infused - future we envision. On to the next challenge! And definitely check out these amazing companies & founders: Glist, Gülin Yilmaz (Posokhow), Path, Soar.com, Abood Hannoon, DeepLeads.ai, pre.dev, and In The Loop

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There was considerable buzz last week about the alarming statistic that a staggering 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to PayrollOrg. Instead of trying to diagnose the problem, I decided to dive into the secondary effects it has on emergency savings. Unsurprisingly, I discovered that over 30% of Americans report they would have difficulty covering an unexpected $400 expense. This highlights a critical vulnerability in our financial safety nets. 🚨 Introduce Emergency Savings Accounts (ESA) ... ! As part of Secure Act 2.0, the government introduced employer-offered ESAs to help address the difficulty many Americans face with unexpected expenses by separating emergency savings from retirement funds. And there are already some amazing companies like Sunny Day Fund ☀️, SecureSave, and Ezra Financial, helping make this more seamless for employers and employees, alike. But if you read my posts, you know there has to be a community bank play in here as well! So read the full article and find out more: https://lnkd.in/emiJgRvD And always, leave your thoughts, questions, or concerns in the comments! #communitybanking #emergencysavings #innovation

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Access to scaling/ working capital for small to midsize businesses is difficult to come by. Pipe is changing that by embedding their financial solution into the current workflow of small/ midsize businesses. This is literally a game changer. See Luke Voiles' post and the Fintech Nexus article to learn more.

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Learn how to fine-tune your product to meet market demands with strategic customer conversations and data-driven feedback mechanisms 👇 ➡ 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗲: Brian Long, CEO & Co-Founder at Attentive 🔌 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿: Nick Moran, General Partner at New Stack Ventures and Nate Pierotti, Principal at New Stack Ventures ✏ “The Playbook to Finding Product-Market Fit, When Founders Should Begin to Scale, and Lessons from Building Attentive” ⭐ 𝗦𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀: 💬 "I think that what we got right were two things. One, I think that we talked to a tremendous amount of customers, before we started building things. So we learned to hear their problems, hear their issues, and then start building and assaulting those, you know, rather than kind of just jumping right into build-build-build, so that saved us a lot of time." ⭐ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸, 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗯𝗶𝗮𝘀: 💬 "I think you're also looking at things like NPS, you know… because if that number starts dropping, it's often because you're no longer solving the problem." ⭐ 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆: 💬 "I think that we've taken an even longer term focus. We know what can be big. And we know it's dangerous to start getting an ego to think you can do things because it's always very hard. You've always got to think towards taking a longer term view, having a thesis around that view, and then understand how the pieces can come together for success." ───── 👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors

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Despite economic challenges, some companies are finding innovative ways to thrive. However, recent data reveals an unsurprising reality: layoffs and hiring freezes remain common tactics to extend financial runways. Among 382 growth-stage companies yet to raise capital, only 12% managed to grow headcount by 30% or more without resorting to layoffs. The Friends & Family Capital Growth Round Update features metrics that we track internally on companies raising capital at valuations ranging from $1 Billion to $10 Billion. Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/gjdz7-Zm

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Yelp has launched a new AI-powered assistant on their iOS app, revolutionizing the way users connect with local businesses. Located under the "Projects" tab, the Yelp Assistant allows users to easily find professional services by simply chatting with the AI, which smartly matches them to relevant professionals based on their needs. Yelp is empowering developers with the new Yelp Fusion AI API, enabling the integration of this conversational AI into third-party platforms for tailored business recommendations. On the restaurant front, Yelp has also revamped its Guest Manager tool, enhancing the dining experience for customers and streamlining operations for restaurant staff. Yelp continues to innovate, providing efficient solutions for discovering and connecting with local businesses. Read more from Techcrunch here => https://neoswap.cc/28e2a5 #YelpUpdate #AI #TechNews #LocalBusiness #Innovation

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This week was a big one for Stripe as we announced some incredibly exciting product updates at our annual conference, Stripe Sessions! Here are the 3 updates that I'm most excited about, 1. Decoupling payments from the rest of our stack: This is a huge shift in how we operate and something I believe will provide a lot of businesses around the world the ability to leverage our world-class technology, without having to use Stripe as a payment provider. ⚡ 2. Connect goes Modular: Connect is truly one of our flagship products and the recent updates provides our platform users so much more flexibility allowing them to scale quicker. 📈 3. More updates to our RFA Products: Our Revenue & Finance Automation products just got a power boost with some updates including usage based billing, tax overrides and reporting on transactions from Google Play & Apple App Store! 💰 Read more in our blog!

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🎙️ Amy Saper is a force of nature, having held senior product roles at Uber, Twitter, and Stripe, as well as being a partner at Accel and a Sequoia Scout, before joining forces with Jeff Clavier Tripp Jones Susan Liu Andy McLoughlin and team at Uncork Capital. Amy and I had a great conversation recently (Podcast in the comments below), but here are the main areas we covered: 1)Transitioning from product roles to VC: The adjustments that needed to be made and the similarities and differences of VC and working at startups. 2) Capital Constraints and Creativity: Drawing from her Twitter days, where the original 140-character limit spurred creative communication, she believes that today's capital constraints can be a large net positive for companies in unlocking creativity. 3) Being Client centric as VC: A strong parallel exists between operating companies and venture firms in their customer focus. What does being client centric mean in the context of VC firm and what is VC's version of Product-Market Fit? 4) Talent Attraction and Development: Her non-negotiable is a founder's ability to attract and develop top talent as it's a huge correlation to startup success. listen to the full conversation in the link in the comments: #VentureCapital #Startups #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #fundraising‍‍‍‍‍

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