M13

Thanks for stopping by Octavia Goredema! We agree Rob Smith is a fantastic mentor and founder coach. "Office Hours for Underestimated Founders" is a recurring event for us—learn more about it here! https://lnkd.in/e3nqU8kf

As a venture investor, M13 partner Karl Alomar knows to pay attention to hype—without getting caught up in it. "Hype generally comes from something," he says. "It's the result of a new technology or category that people deeply believe will be very dominant in the future. As an investor, you can't ignore that." What you have to be careful of is excitement without due diligence. It takes good strategic thinking and a calm, stable team to navigate through false flags and identify the “needles in the hype haystack” that actually have meaningful potential. "I'm really talking about avoiding bidding wars on companies that you don't actually know that much about," he explains. "Sometimes when a sector is really hot, people do less diligence, because everyone’s just leaning on each other’s excitement and fighting for a seat at the table. At M13, we try to be more measured. It’s not about avoiding exciting spaces—it’s about executing in a very measured way, so you're not getting carried away into deals with high price points but little proven success." More on how he sees hype cycles play out for VC investors at the link in the comments. #HypeCycles #VentureCapital 📸 : Karl with Rho founder Everett Cook 

“AI has been around for a decade or two prior to LLMs. There’s this whole ‘traditional AI thing’ I think might actually be the sexiest part of [AI investing].” How would storied investor Bill Gurley approach today’s AI market? He shared his thoughts in conversation with M13 partner Latif Peracha at the University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business Venture Summit. According to Bill, there are two categories worth paying attention to with LLMs: (1) Because LLMs are language-based, you want to pay attention to problems that are language based. (2) With traditional AI, you can get amazing outcomes by focusing on problems that are discrete, where it’s easy to define two different outcomes (à la AlphaGo). Do you agree?

"How do we use this device to serve you digital nutrition, versus digital junk?" Fable founder and CEO Padmasree Warrior asked at Future Perfect last year. Congrats to Padma and the whole Fable team on one million users! Read her reflections on the reading community Fable is building below, and check out her thoughts on wellness and productivity, digital nutrition, and how reading can extend your life over on M13's site: https://lnkd.in/ergH58iE #Founders

If you’ve ever wanted a look under the hood of how a VC firm runs its investor relations function, M13 Partner & Head of IR Sarah Tomolonius is a great place to start. Few can truly take a long-term view like Sarah, whose approach to venture is shaped by her interest in finance, sustainability, and family legacy. Her unique career includes an MPA in International Finance, a stint at National Resource Defense Council, and working for centuries-old financial firms—where she began to hone the art of the 100-year relationship. According to Sarah, “We’ve been lulled into thinking that the VC Cinderella stories that seem to bloom before our eyes are instantaneous, and that’s never the case. There are so many points of crisis, and near-failures, and feelings of catastrophe and agony and anxiety on behalf of founders along the way. There is a ton of work and effort going on behind-the-scenes for founders, investors, and LPs.” Learn more about this work, how Sarah cultivates long-term relationships and builds trust with M13's LPs, how IR is evolving, and more: https://lnkd.in/eu-RwUsU  📸 : Sarah on stage at M13's 2024 annual meeting in LA #WomenInVenture #VentureCapital #Investors

What types of founders do some of M13's partners love to work with? What makes a founder stand out? Hear from Anna Barber, Brent Murri, W. Christine Choi, and Karl Alomar below.

Consumer experiences in healthcare are hard to navigate and lack the personalization consumers have in other industries—making it challenging to acquire, engage, and retain members. RadiantGraph, led by former founder of Ginger (which merged with Headspace) Anmol Madan, is leveraging the superior power of AI/ML platforms to implement healthcare personalization at scale, generating personalized marketing and engagement tools to fight these issues. The result? More personalized engagement, more tailored program enrollment, better clinical outcomes, and ultimately happier members. While there are many players building healthcare-specific AI capabilities, we’re especially excited about RadiantGraph: -We believe the team has found exceptional founder-market fit -The platform is already processing personalization models for more than 3.5 million people, despite launching just last year -This team really gets that the limitations are not with AI technology itself, but rather barriers around its implementation—and their platform is designed to overcome those challenges Read more of why we led their Series A, from M13’s Morgan Blumberg and Latif Peracha: https://lnkd.in/ebjtYWuU #AI #MachineLearning #HealthTech

Congratulations to RadiantGraph (and CEO Anmol Madan) on raising their $11M Series A! We're excited to lead the round and support their mission to help healthcare orgs engage with customers in a more personalized way. "The company has a low burn and they've priced their contracts in a way where the gross margins are significant — and with software gross margins, they will only increase, as a level of automation continues to go up," M13 partner Latif Peracha says. Healthcare organizations that provide consumers with accessible, affordable, and high-quality care surpass those that don't, per a recent McKinsey report. RadiantGraph is helping healthcare organizations meet that need by tracking patterns in patient populations and tailoring care. Read about RadiantGraph's technology in Axios from Aaron Weitzman: https://lnkd.in/giUaByw9 #HealthTech

Kudos to M13 partner Anna Barber, who's in the news again—this time for landing on AIM Research's impressive list of 10 women VCs transforming AI through investment in the US. As she shares in the article, Anna is particularly interested in AI solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, tackling complex data problems like inventory planning and customer success, and AI infrastructure related to compliance and data integrity. She also sees AI agents (like those being built by M13 portfolio companies Norm Ai and Maven AGI) as the next frontier and believes AI is a transformative force. Read more on Anna and 9 other women VCs from Anshika Mathews: https://lnkd.in/guFKQSxF #WomenVCs #WomenInvestors #WomenInTech And learn more about Anna’s approach to investing in her partner profile: https://lnkd.in/gfbjQYnr

Technical interviews are much harder today than they used to be. So is getting in the door at companies. In Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, co-authors Aline Lerner (founder of M13 portfolio company interviewing.io), Gayle McDowell, Mike Mroczka, and Nil Mamano cover pretty much everything you need to know to succeed in today’s #hiring climate. This book is a fountain of knowledge, and Aline's chapters in particular draw on interviewing.io's data to cover advice for getting into companies, balancing interview prep with applications, getting your offers to come in at the same time, and leveraging them to negotiate the best offer. Learn more and pre-order a copy: https://lnkd.in/eNxFtsNT #TechnicalInterviewing