Afore Capital

Excited to share that I’ve raised $3.2m from Afore Capital and Crossbeam Venture Partners for my new company, Rubie! I feel very lucky to have some amazing funds and angels supporting the round: Earl Grey Capital, Comma Capital, SSC Venture Partners, Will M., Charlie Stigler, Nishant Neel, Greg Arrese, and many more. More to share soon on our big vision + product, but here’s the headline: we help post-sale teams provision and configure software for their customers faster. And not just a little faster - in the case of one of our partners, 70% faster! I can’t wait to show off the product - using it feels like magic. We're hiring founding engineers in person in New York who want to work on agents and AI to solve some super thorny automation problems in a new way. The role has a competitive salary and very meaningful equity, and you’ll get to nerd out with us on weird website architectures, tricky edge cases, and reverse engineering. If that excites you, we built a fun challenge for you to try. Head to https://lnkd.in/gFJMhB_J to get started 🙂 A few special shoutouts:  - David and Adarsh from Comma Capital were the first investors to believe in me before I even had an idea and provided very real, tangible support - I’m so grateful. - Anamitra and Gaurav from Afore mean it when they say they’re early, high-conviction investors. Pumped to be on the same team for this journey.  - The team at South Park Commons has created a very special place for founders to take time and reset + explore. I’m proud to have spent time with them. It’s clearer to me than ever that this is just the starting line. We have **so much work** to do, and I hope that you or someone you know will consider joining us on the journey. Here we go!

👶 Company reveal 👶 ⬇ Keragon - here's how it all started (Spoiler: This is not your typical Silicon Valley story) I met my cofounders 18 years ago during our military service and then studied together at Imperial College London. After uni, we started a company in the mobile adtech space and 3.5years later it was acquired by Glispa and then Market Group. After the vesting period ended, my cofounders and I decided to take some time off to focus on things we haven't had the chance to do over the 7 year grind. Even though there was a big overlap with Covid and restricted traveling, we managed to reflect, heal (yep, post-exit trauma is real) and eventually regrouped after 12 months. For the first time in a while, we held long sessions again - this time about career and life goals, and whether even considering working together on another play. Surprise surprise - our masochist part prevailed and we decided to jump again into the battlefield. However, unlike our first company, we weren't driven by a specific problem nor were passionate about a unique insight. This time, we decided to explore, agreeing on 3 core principles for our new venture: 1. pick any industry, but adtech 2. pick a broken space we could build a sector-defining company 3. life's too short to work with a-holes Healthcare quickly became the winner - as newcomers we dedicated half a year to researching how our skillset could give the most value in this space. And that's how we found ourselves hustling again: we reached out to 100s of healthcare professionals over 6 months, out of which 338 agreed to jump on a call to help us map the problems of the industry through their eyes - most of you are now LinkedIn friends, thanks for being part of the journey 🙏 We compiled and ranked a long list of problems - even though infrastructure is never the most glamorous play, we ended up picking this critical problem that was coming again and again and was right in our wheelhouse - healthcare providers are struggling with manual, repetitive, processes, and spend their limited time saving files instead of saving lives. And that's how Keragon was born. Incredibly grateful for focal (Daniel Darling), who were the first to believe in Avocarrot back in 2014 and are now co-leading the round of Keragon along with the amazing people at Afore Capital (Gaurav Jain), and also very lucky to have the backing and deep healthcare expertise from 25m Health - Lifepoint Health® (Thank you Ryan Macy and Merrill Anovick). Also big thanks to all our 👼 (Elliot Cohen, Giorgos Zacharia, Marina Hatsopoulos, Alexis Pantazis, Emilios Markou, Andreas Stavropoulos) Keragon is a first of its kind. And we're excited for what's coming! ▶ If you're a healthcare professional, looking to automate your day-to-day work - reach out, we can help. ▶ If you're a rockstar software engineer or growth hacker who wants to make a difference in healthcare - come and join us. cc George Eracleous George Makkoulis Panos Papageorgiou

After almost a year of building, I’m beyond excited to announce what we’ve been working on over at Thoughtly– the first-ever CCaaS platform built from the ground up for the era of generative AI. By leveraging LLMs, Thoughtly creates human-like AI agents capable of handling every inbound and outbound phone call for high-volume contact centers. Everything you can train a human agent to say and do, you can train your Thoughtly to do the same. We’re building a world where human voice and artificial intelligence coalesce to create the ultimate user experience for business interactions. Just as companies like Apple enhance consumer devices with voice AI experiences like Siri, we believe businesses should leverage the same technology. At Thoughtly, our innovations ensure zero hold time, 24/7 service, full scalability, deep integration, and perfect, personalized customer service every single time. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫. When I first reached out to Casey Mackrell back in July, I couldn’t have imagined the incredible (and difficult!) journey we’ve been on ever since. From meeting our killer sales lead David Khaydatov, pitching Will Zell and the Ohio Angel Collective, being invited to work in San Francisco with awesome founders during Pioneer's summit, meeting Gaurav Jain at his offices in South Park, setting up our tiny office in New York, hanging out with Jen Hilibrand from Greycroft, to building an epic team– the journey so far has been nothing short of life-changing. I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for everyone who has joined me on this journey so far. And we’re only just getting started! We’ve raised our $3M seed round with participation from Afore Capital, Greycroft, Expansion Venture Capital, Shift Left Ventures, Pioneer, the Ohio Angel Collective, Andrew Ofstad from Airtable, and Rico Mallozzi from Sapphire Ventures. Thank you so much to our investors, team, and everyone who has played a role in bringing us to where we are today. Together, let's usher in a new era of communication where every voice is empowered, every connection is personalized, and best of all– no more hold times. #ThoughtlyLaunch #AI #VentureCapital

🌟 Join us as we embark on a transformative journey at the inaugural Blooming Day event, either in the heart of New York City or virtually! 🌍 Blooming Day is featuring a stellar lineup of visionaries such as Chelsea Clinton, AARP Foundation, United Health Group, Healthfirst, Detroit Area Agency on Aging, The SCAN Foundation and more. Dive into dynamic discussions and help shape a future where equitable access to social health is a reality for all. Secure your spot now and be part of the change: https://hubs.la/Q02wC0d90 #Bloomingday2024 #PoweringCommunities #SocialHealth #aging #agetech #aginginplace #agingservices #healthtech #healthequity #medicare #healthcareinnovation

My whole life has come to this point - today (!) Thank you to Axios and Lucinda Shen for covering Baselayer's story Teamed up with Timothy Hyde & raised $6.5M in seed funding from top VCs and banking experts to start Baselayer - the first AI-Native business identity, fraud and risk platform verifying 100% of good businesses. The journey was long, but fulfilling: Innovative Partners - Beyond grateful for the almost 30 financial services companies (that touch millions of businesses) that we’ve helped verify over 100k businesses and structurally prevent millions of dollars in repeat B2B fraud Intentional Vision - When Tim and I first met three years ago, we knew with his expertise in Machine Learning (and one ML co’ exit under his belt to a Fortune 500) - we had the tools in hand to make a massive impact in financial services. After 100s of interviews with Banking and Lending execs, the problem became clear: credit scores for small businesses are broken and we could solve that.  Immense Gratitude:  To Tim - for there would be no Baselayer without his effortless brilliance.  To our incredible employees who took an early risk on us. To our forward thinking customers who gave us the opportunity to help them.  To our unbelievable investors, who have believed in us from day 0. & of course to my parents. They’re Egyptian immigrants and humble me every day (my mom has asked 3 times if we have a 401k yet). My dad offered to sponsor 10 people’s Axios subscriptions who comment below so they can read our press release - so please let him know in the comments if you’d like that (!!) Investors: Torch Capital, Afore Capital, Picus Capital, Founder Collective, Gilgamesh Ventures, Four Acres Capital, Comma Capital, Picks and Shovels Experts: Eric Woodward, Jonathan Weiner, Jason Mikula, Stuart Cook, Rory O'Reilly, Kieran O'Reilly, Miguel Armaza, Maia Bittner, Jack Arenas, Thejo Kote, Alek Koenig, Daniel M., Eric Rosenthal, Alain C. Glanzman, & so many more Looking forward to accelerating the US economy - one good small business at a time. https://lnkd.in/edAi9jvv #fintech #ai #tech #lending #smallbusiness #genai #innovation