Footwork

Our relationship with Sam Bernstein and Table22 is a very special one for Mike Smith and me, since it was Footwork's first investment. They've been quietly grinding away the last few years to find more and more customer love and product-market fit, enabling merchants such as restaurants, bakeries, butcher shops, and cheesemongers to build their own membership businesses, and more. Very excited to have longtime friends Alex Taussig, Mercedes Bent, and the Lightspeed team on board for the next chapter.

I’m excited to officially launch Portex out of stealth and share that we’ve closed a $6.25 million seed fundraising round. We’re incredibly lucky to work with amazing investors: Footwork led the round, which was joined by Cowboy Ventures, Susa Ventures, Base10 Partners, strategic investors, and angels. We built Portex to make it possible for small- to mid-sized shippers to experience the same time and cost savings enjoyed by the enterprise sector. We did this by staying completely focused on their specific needs. The result: ✅ Portex is an intelligent freight procurement & management platform that simplifies logistics with automated pricing, real-time benchmarking, and easy communication—all in one place. ✅ Works seamlessly with shippers’ existing carrier networks. ✅ Takes less than 10 minutes to set up. The impact on our customers has been energizing. For the typical shipper, Portex slashes time spent on freight tasks up to 80% and cuts annual freight spend by up to 30%. The team has worked incredibly hard, shaping the product hand-in-hand with early customers, such as Franklin Foods, Community Coffee, Armorock Polymer Concrete, Chancey Metals, LLC, as well as with many brokers from companies like Ryan Transportation and Axle Logistics just to name a few. Special shoutout to our earliest investors Plexo Capital, Chris Bennett, Amber Illig/The Council, Anabel Lippincott Paksoy, Courtney Buie Lipkin, and Adeyemi Ajao for believing in us from the start. We wouldn’t be here without the deep support of our advisors, investors, and customers. Many of you are always available, day or night, ready to jump in and help however you can – thank you! Check out what’s next in Dominic-Madori Davis story in TechCrunch. We’re just getting started!

Table22 has always been about our purpose — helping small F&B businesses succeed, thrive, and grow — and it is in that spirit that we are honored to be part of this year’s SMBTech 50 alongside game-changing companies like Stripe, Ramp, Canva, Anthropic, Figma, Rippling, and more. I’m proud of our team’s work to merit our inclusion, and thankful to Chelcie Taylor, Jeff Richards, and Notable Capital for inviting Pat Hackett and me to ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ yesterday with this terrific group. Very excited to see the impact that these companies will continue to have on America’s 34 million small businesses and the 59 million people who are employed by them! We are hiring across sales, operations, and engineering, so please reach out if you are interested in learning more about what we're building!

New Brick by Brick episode alert, this one featuring of my favorite people, Mike Smith. I’ve known Mike for over a decade. The Co-founder and General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage venture fund, Mike also happens to be one of the most highly regarded and skilled operators in and around commerce. Prior to getting into venture he was the President and COO at Stitch Fix, where he joined as employee number four, and for over 10 years there held most of the senior roles at the company from COO to CFO to interim CEO and eventually took the company public in 2017. Prior to joining Stitch Fix, Mike spent almost 10 years building out the e-commerce and multi-channel offerings of Walmart(dot)com, eventually growing to be the COO of the $5 billion division. Mike also sits on the board of Ulta Beauty and Herman Miller. He’s seen his fair share of ups and downs, and in addition to being a fantastic operator and investor, is one of the most genuine and kind people you will meet. In our conversation we dig into: - Why Mike left Walmart to go to a very early stage company - What skills and playbooks Mike developed at Walmart that he was able to apply at Stitch Fix - What he saw in Katrina Lake, Stitch Fix's CEO, that convinced him he should join - Balancing being a husband, father, and early stage operator - The role of humans and AI in delivering customer service - How to build and scale culture - The difference between building a company and building a venture firm ..and a whole lot more! If your actively looking to make the switch to a startup from a BigCo, generally curious about the difference in operating rhythms between a senior role at a large org and rolling up your sleeves at a startup, or wondering how to balance family and startup life, this episode is for you. Special thanks to Eric Colson, Minesh Shah, Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Brad Klingenberg and others for some great insights and stories. Check out the comments for episode links!

The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Niiler covers how WindBorne Systems, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA are leading the way in using AI to revolutionize weather prediction, making forecasts thousands of times faster and significantly more accurate. 🌥️ Niiler notes that the United States Air Force, US Navy, and others are already backing WindBorne’s efforts to continue honing AI-based modeling. Check out more in this (paywall-free) link 👇: https://lnkd.in/g52HyZTx #AIforecasts #deeplearning #weatherintelligence

At my former company, Stitch Fix, we had 3 values that we hired for: Bright, Kind, and Goal Oriented (later changed to Motivated by Challenge). Kindness always generated the most conversation: - Why is kindness important? - What is the difference between being nice and kind? - How do you drive accountability and excellence with kindness? - Aren’t there times when you have to be unkind? - Can an ethos of kindness deliver outsized returns at a company? My thoughts on kindness: 1) Directness and accountability are the ultimate forms of kindness.  I believe it is unkind to NOT tell someone when they are struggling in a job or not meeting expectations. It is an act of kindness to have the courage to tell someone the truth with the goal of growing together. 2) The ultimate output of being kind is being respected, not being liked. If you seek to be liked, you are not going to be intellectually honest and give the feedback that needs to be shared. On the flip side, seeking to be unliked leads to being feared, which I believe has way more downside than upside. 3) Being kind isn’t always easy and it isn’t always going to feel good. Following my earlier example, telling someone the truth must be followed by listening, having a conversation about it, seeking alignment on the truth, and, in the right circumstances, taking action on a mutually agreed upon path forward. Love any great companies that exhibit an ethos of kindness? Please share in the comments.

Axios's Katie Fehrenbacher shares the latest on how our smart, atmospheric sensing balloons fly for weeks at a time, while traditional balloons fly for just a few hours. She also unpacks how this critical real-time data powers better weather forecasts – including our own AI-based models. Check out Axios' full video and story 🎥 👇 https://lnkd.in/gcnuWsiH #AIforecasts #climatetech #weatherprediction

GPTZero: Building an independent layer to measure and preserve authentic content on the internet, for both the human and the AI. "At Footwork, we look for companies with early signs of product-market fit, in markets that are rapidly growing, and with founders at the helm who have an incredible slope of learning and work ethic. GPTZero has all of these dimensions, and that’s why we decided to lead their Series A, a $10 million round that we’re thrilled to announce today (see more here from Julie Bort in TechCrunch)." ~ Nikhil Basu Trivedi

Proud of the WindBorne Systems team, which just announced its Series A led by the amazing Khosla Ventures and joined by Footwork, Pear VC, and Convective Capital to accelerate our push to use better weather data + better AI forecasts in the fight against climate change. 🌎 CNBC's Diana Olick spoke with our cofounder & CEO John Dean and KV's Sven Strohband in today's Power Lunch about why better forecasts are increasingly critical, as well as how our balloon constellation and AI advancements are already driving step-change improvements. Also, if you're excited about having a positive climate impact (and are intrigued about what it's like to work in a smart balloon factory 🎈) check out our new roles 👇

𝘓𝘦𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 🌤️ It turns out it’s a drastically underutilized tool in tackling climate change. But weather prediction hasn’t experienced a step-change transformation in decades. Yet we talk about it all the time – hurricanes 🌀, wildfires 🔥, extreme heat 🥵, polar vortex ❄️, atmospheric rivers 🌊, the list goes on. So why haven’t we cracked the code on exactly when and where a hurricane will hit land, let alone how to pack for a vacation in 2 weeks? Solving weather uncertainty means solving two problems: (1) incomplete data, (2) insufficient models. Enter: WindBorne Systems. There are many companies attempting to use AI to fix these issues, but WindBorne has actually delivered real progress, using both data and verifiable AI-based modeling. In fact, earlier this year, our AI-based model 𝐖𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐡 set a new benchmark for the most accurate global medium-range forecast model in the world, surpassing Google DeepMind. How’d we do it? First, we have 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥, 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐬 🎈(That’s right, balloons. Did you know almost 1Kweather balloons are launched globally every day?). Our balloons can travel farther, longer, and collect 50-150x data than any conventional weather balloon. Our system can access the 85% of the atmosphere that isn’t adequately (or ever) observed, especially over oceans and remote areas.  So, we gather very valuable, otherwise unaccessed data. Second, with that data, we built 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 for weather. Better, more complete data ==> exponentially better model for forecasting 📈 We’ve been hard at work and just raised a $15M Series A led by Khosla Ventures,  which also led our pre-seed round in 2019. The round is also joined by other existing investor Footwork, Pear VC, and Convective Capital. The capital will help us hone each part of our tech stack, faster: our balloon system, flight autonomy software, and AI modeling. It will also help us scale our international presence as we build toward our goal of offering complete atmospheric coverage at a small fraction of the cost and impact of conventional sensing methods today. Weather doesn’t need to be a mystery – and we’re committed to solving it to help make life on our planet safer, more sustainable, and more predictable for everyone. If you’re interested in weather, balloons, climate change, AI models, or solving really hard problems, check out what we’ve been up to (and we’re hiring!) 🎥👇 #weatherintelligence #climatetech #AIforecasting