Peter Wang

I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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Innovation in the "Femtech" Space: How Women-Led Startups are Solving Neglected Health Issues. View My Portfolio. For decades, significant aspects of women's health were sidelined as "niche" concerns. No longer. The rise of Femtech—technology-driven health solutions focused on women's needs—is a powerful market correction, and it's being led by women. At V For Vibes, we are inspired by the founders who are turning personal frustration into global innovation. They are building companies that address long-ignored areas, from reproductive health and menstrual care to menopause and sexual wellness. Why does this matter for business? Market Opportunity: Women make 80% of healthcare decisions. This isn't a niche; it's a powerhouse economic engine. Diverse Leadership: Women-led startups bring essential lived experience to the table, creating products that truly resonate. Investment in Impact: Supporting Femtech isn't just good ethics; it's smart economics, funding solutions for half the world's population. The success of Femtech proves that when we diversify leadership, we unlock innovation that changes lives and dominates new markets. #Femtech #WomenInTech #WomenFounders #HealthTech #Innovation #SexualWellness #InvestInWomen #BusinessStrategy #Startups #VForVibes #DigitalHealth

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💥 Metropolis Technologies Raises $𝟭.𝟲𝗕 💥 Funding comes in 2 rounds: $500M equity round led by LionTree and $1.1B from J.P. Morgan. Metropolis is now 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 $𝟱𝗕. With the fresh funding, the plan is to take their "recognition and payment-automation" tech beyond parking assets. This would include retail stores, drive-throughs, gas stations, hotels and partnerships with real estate/asset owner. Congrats to Alex Israel, Peter Fisher, Courtney Fukuda, Travis Kell, Ryan Hunt,Chris Sherman, Robert Bland, Paul Rooney, Lookman Olusanya and the rest of the Metropolis family. #fundraise #parkinginvestment #parking #parkingindustry #metropolois Parking Today Media Parking Network B.V. National Parking Association International Parking & Mobility Institute (IPMI) Tim Maloney Advisory Tim Maloney Reservations Lab

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Three years ago, we launched Wisdom Ventures with a clear intention to support founders building at the intersection of well-being, human connection, and transformative tech. Since then, we’ve made 37 investments from our oversubscribed "minimum viable" $10M Fund I, backing early-stage companies in physical and mental wellbeing, women’s health, ethical AI, and human connection-centered innovation. We’ve always known we are on to something—what we didn’t expect was how quickly the data would back it up. Recent industry benchmarks show that most 2022-vintage emerging funds are experiencing the usual J-curve dip. In contrast, Wisdom Ventures is showing strong early performance: 📈 Net IRR (internal rate of return): >10% 📊 MOIC (multiple on invested capital): ~2x* ⏰ Median investment age: 18 months 💥 ....and # of our companies have a diverse founder by gender, race, or sexual orientation: 75% As we get ready to make our 38th and final investment out of Fund I and start deploying out of our significantly larger Fund II (first close May 1st), we’re filled with gratitude—for our founders, our LPs, our early supporters, our early believers, and this growing movement toward a more conscious, connected future, fueled by innovation from the ❤️ *Based on most current reports **Not in photo: Our fantastic operating partner, Zoe Rogers #WisdomVentures #ImpactInvesting #ConsciousTech #Wellbeing #AIForGood #FutureOfWork #VentureCapital

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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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🏴‍☠️ Introducing Black Flag: The Accelerator for Founders Building America's Critical Technologies Today, we're excited to launch Black Flag — a new accelerator from Harpoon Ventures, in collaboration with Shield Capital and IQT (In-Q-Tel).​ Black Flag is for the most ambitious founders, those engineering the technologies that will define America’s future in an increasingly contested world. Space. Defense. Energy. Manufacturing. Biotech. Autonomy. If your work has national significance, you belong here. ​ Here’s what Black Flag offers: 💰 $250K–$1M in funding 🤝 Mentorship from operators and technical leaders at Astranis Space Technologies, Solugen, Kodiak, and more 🎯 Guidance on securing strategic, non-dilutive government funding 🛠️ Support with design, branding, website, and pitching 📡 Access to a network that spans top-tier deep tech VC funds, defense customers, and national security decision-makers Black Flag operates on a rolling basis, with batches selected monthly. We're ready when you are. If you're building  technologies that shape the balance of power — where the technical challenge is hard, the mission is urgent, and the stakes are national — we want to hear from you. 👉 Learn more and apply: https://www.blackflag.vc

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With all the crazy acquisitions last week, we didn’t want to be left out of the party. Excited that Prefab has joined Reforge! AI has created the opportunity to “collapse the stack,” as Scott Belsky has said and enable “full-stack builders” as Tomer Cohen has written about. The result will be not only increased speed from Insight to Launch but, more importantly, better products. Since early this year, Reforge has been on a mission to build this platform: First, with the launch of Reforge Insights, which aggregates, analyzes, and acts on your customer data. Next, with the creation of Reforge Research, which helps you capture new insights with AI-powered user interviews and surveys. Most recently, with the closed beta of Reforge Build , which helps you explore and prototype ideas for your existing product. Prefab will help us fill in the final step: Launch. Launches are the last mile between your team’s best ideas and your customer’s experience. The entire Prefab team has joined us. I’m extra excited to reunite with Jeff Dwyer from our HubSpot days. In the coming months, Prefab’s feature flag and config system will be rebranded and integrated into the Reforge product suite, but you can start using it today.  More info 👇 https://lnkd.in/eqkryPdi

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𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀? Some of the world’s most successful tech companies have been built through venture studios like Rocket Internet, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Idealab. What they share is a structured, repeatable approach to company building - moving systematically from ideation and research, to product validation, go-to-market (GtM) validation, and scaling. In company building, structure beats luck. It’s not just about having a great idea - it’s about how you methodically bring it to life. Companies like Snowflake (Sutter Hill Ventures) and Zalando (Rocket Internet) are proof of what’s possible when you combine rigorous validation with relentless execution. Venture studios de-risk the startup journey by providing experienced teams, operational support, funding, and proven playbooks from day one - allowing founders to focus on building, validating, and scaling faster. At Bifrost Studios we follow the same proven processes - with one twist: We not only build companies. We also invest in and launch new venture studios, partnering with exceptional founders and focusing deeply on specific verticals where we see outsized potential.

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I recently sat down with Josh R., Co-Founder & CEO of Gusto, for a fireside chat at Afore Capital's Pre-Seed Summit.   Gusto is a testament to solid fundamentals. We partnered at the Series B over a decade ago (Jason Green). Since then, they've steadily built a business that's amassed more ARR than Cursor, Lovable, and Harvey combined, is executing profitably, making accretive acquisitions and integrating the latest in GenAI to improve their stack.   Here are 5 tips Josh shared for early-stage founders with similar goals:   1. Start with co-founder selection, not the problem   Unlike most founders who begin by identifying a problem to solve, Josh prioritized finding co-founders based on relationship quality and complement. The investment in those relationships has paid dividends—their families are so close that the founders' moms have a group text thread.   2. Problem authenticity accelerates product-market fit   Josh and his co-founders had experienced payroll pain firsthand at previous startups. I've observed this same pattern repeatedly with portfolio founders who reach PMF fastest. Austin Hughes at Unify knew the GTM space from his work at Ramp. Eric S. Yuan was VP of Engineering at Webex before founding Zoom. Authentic problem experience creates both passion and expertise that compound over time.   3. Sequence your biggest risks first   When Josh started Gusto, he took a methodical approach to de-risking. Before burning cash on frontend or go-to-market, they built the backend systems—tax calculations, payments, and all the complex infrastructure. Then they manually tested these systems at friends' companies to validate that they worked before building front end. This sequential risk management helped proved technical feasibility before they committed resources elsewhere.   4. Don't trust surface-level competitive analysis   Payroll looked terrifying from the outside. ADP, Paychecks, and Intuit all dominated SMB, while Zenefits was an aggressive upstart. But when Josh dug deeper, a different picture emerged: the incumbents combined only had 50% market share, and 40% of SMBs were still doing payroll manually. Markets often have more white space than initial analysis suggests.   5. Find why you can win the untapped market   Identifying opportunity is one thing. Capturing it requires a superior go-to-market motion or a better product than incumbents. Josh developed both over time. The question every founder should answer: "Why can we tap the market segment the established players have left behind?"

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