Foothill Ventures

Our Seattle-based startup Supio just closed their $25M series A funding round led by Sapphire Ventures! Proud to continue supporting this extraordinary team alongside Sapphire Ventures and Bonfire 🚀. It's been a pleasure backing founder Jerry Zhou, Kyle Lam, and the Supio team since last summer's seed round. Witnessing Jerry's visionary leadership firsthand has been inspiring. From sealing major deals non-stop to resolving bugs overnight, they've set a high standard of efficiency and innovation. Huge congratulations to Jerry, Liam, and the entire team on this milestone! Their hard work and dedication have truly paid off. Excited to see the incredible journey that lies ahead! 🎉 cc Jennifer Gish-Raphael Rajeev Dham Brett Queener Tyler Churchill Xuhui Shao Pengyang (Sophia) Yu

Congrats to Jerry Zhou, Kyle Lam and the entire Supio team! We couldn't be prouder to continue the support of this amazing team since day one.

Our summer interns visited Jacobi Robotics earlier in July and put together a video of the site walkthrough - the video is now available to watch on our Youtube channel, or here at this link: https://lnkd.in/gGdm_V5f Additionally, we sat down and interviewed co-founder and CEO Max C. - his interview is available to read here: https://shorturl.at/0RvBy A huge thanks to everyone at Jacobi Robotics for hosting us! (tagging Yahav Avigal, Ken Goldberg)

As always, the data dumps by Peter Walker/ Carta is gold. Hoo boy, though: Seed rounds are getting EXPENSIVE.

The Robotics Founder & Funder summit event hosted around two weeks ago brought a special night where we received unique and educative insights across a slew of topics surrounding robotics and AI. Our startup panel particularly emphasized the importance of data collection and its challenges, and discussions on hardware versus software integration.  The full discussion from our startup panel is now available to read here: https://shorturl.at/NaMat  Feel free to leave a comment sharing your thoughts! Below are some key points from the panel:  - Having robots in the field to improve core products through real-world data collection is extremely important. Integrating a data flywheel into the engineering process is essential for feedback and performance enhancement. - The key to success in hardware integration lies in overcoming the initial challenges of building and refining hardware to complement advanced software solutions.  - General advice from these successful founders for fundraising and business growth included maintaining focus, minimizing distractions, and following one's passion. Again, we’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our spectacular panelists: Max C. of Jacobi Robotics, Marin Tchakarov of Fox Robotics and Benjamin Bolte of K-Scale Labs, and our moderator Pengyang (Sophia) Yu of Foothill Ventures. 

Happy National Intern Day to all of the amazing interns! 🎉 Our team had a fantastic time last Thursday with our intern crew to celebrate the National Intern Day. We shared a delicious hotpot lunch and later headed to Creative Crew Studio for a hand pinch pottery class. This experience embodies us as an early-stage VC, focusing on "building" from scratch. It's incredibly rewarding to create something from the ground up and witness its progress! We also want to take this opportunity to make a big shout out to all of our 2024 interns Nina Vendhan Jamie (Jungmin) P. Neal Patel Yuna Liang Madison Ho Grace Xiao - your dedication and hard work are truly a big blast for us, thanks for being with us this summer. #NationalInternDay #TeamOffsite #Interns

In the run-up to WeRide's IPO, new attention is getting paid to autonomous vehicles. There are several things that are unique about WeRide: -- Global play: They are the only entity that has gotten licensed to operate autonomous vehicles in China, the US, UAE and Singapore. They are rolling out aggressively outside of China, but also have a large footprint now within China -- Platform play: when we started investing in autonomous vehicles in 2017, there were a host of specialized vehicle start-ups (eg., Nuro, Starship, Braincorp) that created sidewalk delivery vehicles, street sweepers, etc. We didn't invest in any of these, because we felt that the leader in autonomous driving would easily expand to these other use cases. That hasn't really happened in the US, but it has happened in China. WeRide has rolled out autonomous street sweepers, delivery vehicles, minibuses, etc. They have built a platform technology -- Velocity: The US is still the leader for AI innovation. However, China is extremely good at rapid scaling. Self-driving is no different. WeRide has deployed at an order of magnitude greater scale vs. Waymo despite starting much later. https://lnkd.in/gWG3sShg

With the healthcare space opening itself up to adopt new innovation and partnerships, numerous sub-sector markets have emerged, including medical coding. As an important part of the healthcare workflow and the initial touchpoint of the complete physician note in the RCM chain, medical coding driven by AI can read and code charts more accurately and consistently than most human coders. Synaptec Health started making this a reality by delivering 98%+ accurate results with its fully automated, AI-powered technology. Check out this short clip of co-founder and CEO Michael McLaughlin, MD where he dives into Synaptec Health’s product and differentiator. For the full video covering Michael’s inspiration, industry trends, and experiences and advice, watch the video now live on the Foothill Ventures Youtube channel or at this link: https://lnkd.in/g6t7bAwr (tagging Chris McLaughlin, Lu Zhang, Ivneet Bhullar, Jim Mao, Xuhui Shao, Theresa (Wei) Dai, John Matheny)

Mid-July we hosted a Robotics Founder & Funder summit that welcomed an insightful night with discussions surrounding topics including data collection, vertical versus horizontal integration, hardware, software and more. The full discussion from our VC panel is now live to read here: https://shorturl.at/YvtAS  Feel free to leave a comment on your thoughts and stay tuned for the startup panel blog coming soon! Below are some notable points from this panel:  - Robotics Investment Trends: Robotics investments have fluctuated with primary influence from labor shortages and technological advancements, but with the growing Western and Asian markets, a rebound is expected. - Vertical Integration in Robotics: Successful robotics companies often integrate both hardware and software. The debate continues on the effectiveness of software-only solutions versus integrated systems. - The Importance of Data + Challenges: There are limitations of simulations in robotics, which means real-world data is crucial for addressing edge cases and achieving high accuracy for the development of robust robotic systems. With significant data challenges, owning a strong data strategy is essential for success in the field. Once again, we’d like to share our appreciation for our wonderful panelists: Han H. of GV (Google Ventures), Sasha Ostojic of Playground Global and Xuhui Shao of Foothill Ventures, and our moderator Sahil Segal of Toyota Ventures. 

WeRide's IPO has arrived. This should be a closely watched offering, across so many dimensions: -- Self-driving car start-ups were red hot in 2017, when WeRide was founded. We have passed through the "trough of disillusionment", with high profile stumbles (eg., Cruise, Uber and Lyft's self-driving units, Argo) and a slew of "what ever happened to self-driving" negative thought pieces. Now, Waymo has launched full commercial services in SF (and is expanding to other cities), WeRide, Pony and Baidu are in large scale service rollout across more than a dozen cities. Tesla also seems to be barreling towards a robotaxi launch (overly optimistic pronouncements notwithstanding). We may be headed up the "slope of enlightenment", led by the surviving competitors that emerged from the primordial soup of 2017 -- High profile listings of Chinese companies on US stock markets have been non-existent since DiDi (June 30, 2021). There were a few SPACs of self-driving technology companies, none of which have been notably successful. WeRide has revenue numbers that indicate that this is a real, high-scale business. The Chinese market is massive, but they are also operating in cities across South East Asia and the Middle East. This will be among the most highly anticipated S-1s for a long time. (should be a good windfall for backers like NVIDIA's Jeff Herbst (now at GFT), Sinovation Ventures (创新工场) Kai-Fu Lee, Qiming Venture Partners' Duane Kuang, Nautilus Venture Partners' Connie Sheng, Alliance Ventures' Matthieu de Chanville and others) https://lnkd.in/exUzD9Qb