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The next wave of supply-chain innovation will be driven by startups that help incumbents win

TechCrunch

Steve Sloane is a partner at Menlo Ventures where he invests in inflection-stage companies. For years, the prevailing narrative for innovation in supply chain has focused on the disruptors: Upstarts that enter the industry with new technologies and business models to displace incumbents. Steve Sloane. Contributor. Share on Twitter.

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Israeli fintech Personetics raises $85M for tools to help incumbents personalize banking services to compete with neobanks

TechCrunch

Today a startup that is building tools to help incumbent address this challenge is announcing a round of funding on the back of a lot of demand for its services. “T hey are seeing the impact of the alternatives,” he said, with the migration away from the incumbents happening gradually. That’s a common thing.”

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My First 16: Competing in a Crowd of Incumbents with Mercury’s Immad Akhund

Andreessen Horowitz

In this episode, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with co-founder and CEO of Mercury Immad Akhund about the idea of a minimum delightful product in fintech, doing the spreadsheet math on unit economics early on, and how to compete in a category already filled with incumbents. And does anyone care?

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How I Invest

Both Sides of the Table

During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. I know that sounds trite but it’s the best way I can describe my early-stage investments. If I don’t do both then it’s highly unlikely I will invest. I answered in the same way I always do so I thought I’d just write it publicly. “I

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CoreWeave, a GPU-focused cloud compute provider, lands $221M investment

TechCrunch

Magnetar contributed $111 million, with the remainder of the investment being split between Nvidia, Friedman and Gross. An Nvidia spokesperson said that the investment represents a “deepening” of its partnership with CoreWeave. Initially, CoreWeave was focused exclusively on cryptocurrency applications. billion and $26.28

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Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation

TechCrunch

The investment is the largest-ever Series A round for the region, and it values Wave at $1.7 Four big-name backers jointly led the round — Sequoia Heritage, a private investment fund and a subsidiary of Sequoia; Founders Fund; payments upstart Stripe; and Ribbit Capital. . ” Going up against incumbents.

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Pinecone drops $100M investment on $750M valuation, as vector database demand grows

TechCrunch

Today, the company announced a $100 million Series B investment on a $750 million post valuation. These kinds of numbers have been hard to come by in a conservative investment environment, but the company is growing fast and investors saw an opportunity to grab a market leader, says Pinecone CEO and founder Edo Liberty.