Michael Grinich

Y Combinator just dropped their Request for Startups for Fall 2025 💥 It’s a blueprint of what YC wants to fund right now. The ideas they believe could become billion dollar companies. Some are no-brainers. Others are wild 👇

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Thrilled to announce that Together Fund is investing in Sentra, alongside a16z speedrun! You track results in Jira. Decisions in Notion. Conversations in Slack. But the reasoning, the debates, trade-offs, and context behind why you chose A over B, disappears into what we call "Dark Matter." A decision made in March looks insane by July because no one remembers the constraints that made it smart. I lived this firsthand at Twitter scaling from 800 to 8,000 employees, and at Google while launching AI Overviews to billions at planet scale. The problem isn't process. Process is compensation for something deeper: organizational amnesia. An organization’s "Systems of Record" doesn’t solve this, they encode it. They store what happened, never why. That's why we are investing in Sentra. Sentra is the always-on collective memory that eliminates organizational amnesia by maintaining accurate context for all members and agents, functioning as an operational nervous system. It connects to every channel where work happens, meetings, Slack, email, code commits, docs, calendars, and treats them not as artifacts to search, but as living signals to synthesize. The fleeting and the permanent, unified into a memory that understands. The founding team is built for this: - Jae Gwan Park (CEO): Product-first founder, memory systems research at UofT and MIT - Ashwin Gopinath (CSO): Former MIT professor, created "Reflexion" (NeurIPS 2023), agents that learn from mistakes, 2x founder - Andrey Starenky (CTO): Early Vapi engineer, ex-IBM, built to process enterprise-scale data firehose Together is an operator-led fund. We invest in problems we've lived. This is one of them. Many congrats Jae, Ashwin and Andrey, we are so excited to partner with you! Read the full thesis: https://lnkd.in/gixj9cE4 Book a demo: https://www.sentra.app/ #OrganizationalMemory #AI #Sentra #TogetherFund #a16z #ContextGraphs

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At Vibe Capital, we believe the venture landscape is bifurcating. The reason is simple: reality is full of drunk cats. "Drunk Cats" are the emergent, second-order effects that arise from simple rules. They can tank a product, entire system, or an entire country. The ability to see -and master - these drunk cats reveals the true split in startups today. It is no longer between software and hardware, but between "impressionistic" founders who map the world as it is, and "mechanistic" founders who can reverse-engineer reality from first principles. My latest Dave's Quick Hits newsletter provides the playbook for identifying and funding these mechanistic architects. It is about a fundamental shift from describing effects to mastering cause. I break down the three core stages of the Mechanistic Playbook: 1. See the System: Identifying the hidden rules and emergent flaws in any complex system, from software to biology. 2. Debug the System: Using technology to patch the legacy "bugs" of a previous industrial paradigm. 3. Architect a New System: Building with true primitives, like DNA, to program matter itself. The next trillion-dollar companies won't be built by operators chasing surface-level trends. They'll be built by system-thinkers who can see, debug, and architect reality’s source code. You can read the full analysis and the investment theses here: https://lnkd.in/dkhkBUwh #VentureCapital #DeepTech #FrontierTech #Investing #Strategy #Biotechnology #Nanotechnology #vibecap #vibecapital #drunkcats

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Founders – if you missed Carta’s latest market report, check out our new post with the TL;DR and what it means for startups in the Southeast. A few interesting data points: • SAFEs still dominate Seed rounds – but excessive stacking can complicate future raises and dilute founders more than expected. • Founder ownership drops quickly – nationally, median ownership slips from 56% post-seed to 23% by Series B, but Southeastern founders often retain closer to 65% post-seed thanks to lower operating costs. • AI premium is real – startups with AI capabilities are commanding higher valuations but also facing steeper dilution. • Team composition matters – solo founders make up 35% of new companies but only 17% secure venture funding. Equal equity splits between co-founders are increasingly the norm. • Option pools & vesting – 10–15% option pools at Seed/Series A are standard, but Southeastern startups may need slightly larger pools to attract talent; some later-stage firms are moving to 5–6 year vesting schedules to retain key people. Link to full post → https://lnkd.in/eE4qGzSf #startups #venturecapital #carta

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Everyone knows what YC is about. Build fast. Talk to users. Focus. Ship. And that’s exactly what it is. Had AxionOrbital Space (YC W26)'s CEO and CTO on Vesting talking about their YC experience - and what stood out wasn’t some secret formula. It was the discipline. Sometimes the most powerful thing isn’t new advice. It’s an environment that forces you to execute on what you already know you should be doing. Clip below 👇

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A better YC application won’t save a bad startup. A confusing one can hurt a good one. Flowglad is hosting a small workshop tomorrow for founders applying to YC on how applications are actually read, where people overthink, and how to clearly explain your idea, traction, and team.

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PearX S26 by Pear VC is an accelerator program for pre-seed startups. • For pre-seed companies, including solo founders. • Offers a $250K to $2M investment, mentorship, recruiting support, and over $1M in cloud credits. • The 12-week program requires relocation to the SF Bay Area. • Application deadline is April 12, 2026. Why it matters: The program provides hands-on support for pre-seed companies, focusing on fundraising, sales, and recruiting. More at: https://pear.vc/pearx/ #startups #accelerator #funding #preseed #venturecapital #sfbayarea

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🚀 YC Founders: Where the Next Breakouts Are Coming From Y Combinator isn’t just an accelerator—it’s the factory floor for scrappy ideas that turn into real companies. We ran the latest Specter export across all cohorts (with a zoom on W25/SP25/S25) and mapped #origins, #universities, #past_employers, and what teams are building now. Here’s the gist: 🌍 Geo shift (by origin proxy: education + language) • #US ~50% → 45% in 2025, • #Asia ~30% → 35% in 2025, • #Europe ~12% → ~15% in 2025, • #LATAM / #Africa ~8% → ~5% in 2025. → TL;DR: Globalization is up (especially Asia), while the US still pulls talent with ecosystem gravity 🇺🇸 🎓 Top universities (recent cohorts) • 2025 lead cluster: Stanford University (top), then Georgia Institute of Technology, Rice University, The University of Texas at Dallas, University of Cambridge, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Oxford, University of California, Princeton University. • 2023 lead cluster: University of California system (top), then Harvard University, University of Waterloo, Georgia Tech, Duke University, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, #Virginia, #McGill. → TL;DR: Heavy CS/Eng + selective MBA pipelines; more international spread than a few years ago. 🏢 Top past employers (all cohorts, past roles only) Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, #Palantir lead the pipeline, followed by #Stripe, #Uber, Apple, Tesla. Research/consulting routes show up via Stanford/MIT/Harvard (RA/research roles) and BCG. → TL;DR: The modal YC founder is an engineer/product builder with FAANG/infra experience or research pedigree. 🏗️ What they’re building (2025 vs 2023) • #B2B dominates (2025 65% vs 2023 68%), but the content shifts. • #Industrials jumps (~2% → 9%)—robotics, hard-tech, ops. • #Fintech cools (9.5% → ~5.6%), #Healthcare eases (10.3% → 7.7%). • #Consumer steady (~6–7%), #Education doubles but small (1.2% → 2.6%). → TL;DR: #AI isn’t a category anymore—it’s the default layer inside B2B/Industrials. 🧭 Patterns we keep seeing (“YC material”) • Ship early, ship often: real products live before YC (open-source, side projects, indie SaaS). • Deep technical core: CS/Math/EE tracks + hands-on systems work. • Big-tech apprenticeships: Google/Meta/Microsoft/Amazon/Palantir-sized training grounds. • International mobility: study/work hops (Asia ⇄ US/Europe) are common. • Complementary founder stacks: Eng + GTM or Eng + Ops pairings win admission and traction. 🏆 Icons HitPay / JumpWire (YC W22) / Supabase / Perplexity / Replicate / Agentnoon / Marr Labs / Moonset Health (YC F24) / Misprint, Inc. TL;DR: YC is looking for technical builders who’ve already shipped, with a growing share from Asia and Europe, a talent pipeline through big-tech + research, and a product mix where AI is baked into B2B and hard-tech. 👇 Full breakdown + downloadable dataset in the comments #YCombinator #Startups #AI #B2B #Robotics #VentureCapital #SpecterData

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New!! "The Bay Area Has 54% of All SaaS Funding. Everyone Else Isn’t Even Close" Based on Carta’s latest startup funding data (Q2 2024-Q1 2025), here are the Top 5 SaaS Learnings that every founder needs to know: #1: The Bay Area Still Owns B2B and SaaS (And It’s Not Even Close) The Bay Area dominates SaaS funding with 54.2% of all capital — that’s more than 5x the next... Continue Reading

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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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While there has never been a more exciting time to be a founder building dev tooling or next-gen infra, it has also never been less investable at seed/pre-seed. I'm either really missing something or a lot of my peers are lost. As someone who has not just written, but also SHIPPED, about 75k lines of code in the past 6 months I can tell you that the evolution of how to build products has changed as much in the past year as it did in the entirety of 2007-2017. The complete rise and fail of frameworks, platforms, methodologies, etc... paved over and forgotten... that is of course except for the 1 company that gets a 1000x return from a wildly overvalued hyper-scaler or drunken growth stage investor obsessed with compounding at scale. Imagine a world where any seed investor in trends like Openstack, Hadoop, PaaS, etc all took a full loss on their investment. That's what we're looking at right now. I personally know of over a dozen well-funded seed-stage companies building in these spaces, with years of runway, scrambling to get acquired for a return of capital + several million personally while they're still relevant. If you're not seeing this unfold in front of you, you either aren't paying attention or you're satisfied playing the lottery instead of investing.

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Check out the latest funding news from across the Techstars portfolio. → Zipline (Techstars 2011), a drone delivery and logistics startup, raises more than $600M in new funding, boosting its valuation to $7.6B, as it expands commercial deployments. → Language learning startup Preply (Techstars 2015) raises $150M and becomes the 23rd known unicorn from Techstars accelerators. → Hydrosat (Techstars 2019) raises $60M in Series B funding → Tive (Techstars 2017) receives a $20M investment, valuing the shipment-tracking systems developer at slightly more than $500M. → Parambil (Techstars 2023) raises an additional $6M in seed funding ($8M to date). → Seasats (Techstars 2021) receives $24M in Department of War APFIT funding to accelerate the fielding of its autonomous surface vessels. → Hawaiian Airlines’ newly announced $600M Kahuʻewai Hawai‘i Investment Plan features a strategic investment in Ampaire (Techstars 2018) to support hybrid-electric aviation in the islands. → Fintalo (Techstars 2025) secures $500K+ in oversubscribed Pre-Seed funding. → PraxisPro (Techstars 2024) closes an oversubscribed $6M seed round. → Samara Aerospace (Techstars 2024) closes $10M seed round to help bring more stability to sats in orbit. → MyARC (Techstars 2022), a platform that enables fitness creators to train their communities at scale, secures £1.5M investment. Massive congratulations to these incredible portfolio companies!   🔗  Read more at https://lnkd.in/dxtCTvrg 

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30+ VCs Backing Marketplace Startups Below is a cross-stage, cross-sector mix of firms that back marketplace and platform companies early and support them as they grow. Consumer and platform investors Upfront Ventures 1752vc (Formerly Pegasus) BAM Ventures Forerunner Brand Foundry Ventures Maveron BoxGroup Greycroft Alumni Ventures Marketplace natives and network effects specialists FJ Labs NFX Great Oaks Venture Capital RiverPark Ventures Left Lane Capital First Round Capital Lerer Hippeau Precursor Ventures Seed partners building two-sided platforms early Founder Collective NextView Ventures Uncork Capital Slow Ventures Bling Capital Gaingels Initialized Capital Felicis Multi-stage firms backing marketplace winners at scale Accel Bessemer Venture Partners Lightspeed General Catalyst New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Kleiner Perkins Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) Founders Fund

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Every #VentureStudio GP knows some portfolio bets won’t hit. That's expected - and it's one of the reasons studios are such a powerful vehicle for innovation. And while a venture's failure might be what's visible to the outsider, what keeps them up at night isn’t failure at the venture level — it’s failure at the systemic level within the studio. One bad entity design. One IP misstep. One governance gap. That’s how studio operations fall apart. We break down how to spot (and fix) these cracks before they turn into fault lines in our latest paper, "The GP Dilemma" - DM me and I'll send you a copy!

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