Don Rainey

The NTIA/Verisign Cooperative Agreement for .Com impacts the fundamental workings of the Internet infrastructure and US digital sovereignty. This article in Circle ID from last week sums up the problems of the Internet Plumbing Monopolies. Is Verisign a Monopoly? Does It Matter? https://lnkd.in/eQ2UrGu4 Here is my response to the article: Your arguments regarding the price of .com are logical; however, the issue of Verisign’s monopoly extends beyond just .com pricing. It also concerns the monopoly power that Verisign holds within the DNS ecosystem, a power given it through the NTIA Cooperative Agreement and Amendment 35 without any US public or Congressional input or oversight. This monopoly power has significant implications for undermining ICANN’s “multi-stakeholder” process. We have seen this in several instances, such as Verisign’s failure to implement a “Thick WHOIS,” despite being an agreed-upon consensus “multi-stakeholder” policy of ICANN back in 2016 (and now required as part of NIS2). Furthermore, Verisign has collaborated with other “contracted parties” to narrow the definition of DNS Abuse by excluding CSAM and IP violations even though the US and EU DNS Abuse definitions include both. Even more troubling is that Verisign has been colluding with ICANN to secure its policy objectives that are counter to the protection of US cybersecurity and consumer/child protection. This has occurred through bilateral contract negotiations - such as those involving .com price increases, DNS Abuse definition, and blocking efforts to ensure an open, accurate, and accessible WHOIS - and ICANN policies involving NIS2 and the US cybersecurity reporting law (CISA). #versign #icann #whois #darkwhois #internetplumbingmonopolies #nationalsecurity #cybersecurity  

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✨ Breaking: Halogen Ventures Announces New Fund.- Halogen Ventures Halogen Ventures focuses on early-stage consumer technology startups with at least one woman on the founding team. The fund announced a $10 million investment to support female founders in Alabama. https://halogenvc.com/ Please share to let other #Founders know For the ❤️ of Startups #Fusion42 #Startups #Venturecapital

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If you're building a fintech startup, you likely know of this investor, but just in case... This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on Neil Kapur from TTV Capital. He: 🛫 Is based in SF & Atlanta 💲 Has spent time at Google in consumer-facing payments & at two fintech startups  🏔️ Loves alpine mountaineering and has climbed Kilimanjaro, Denali, Rainier, and more!! Amongst founders, Neil and the team at TTV Capital , including Gardiner Garrard, Mark Johnson, Sean Banks, Lizzie Guynn, and Laney Lewis are known for saying “lift, not lean.” They believe that their job as investors is not to create work for founders, but instead ask the right questions and help navigate to the best outcomes. Knowing Neil well personally, he's not only my go-to person for anything related to fintech but I can also highly recommend having him on your cap table - he's the kind of human you want to have in your corner during both good times and bad. Make sure to: ✉️ Pitch him at [email protected] ➡️ Follow TTV Capital on LinkedIn For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with TTV Capital's profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Q3 is out and Q4 is in!  This is a great read about Base10's strategic switch showcasing how Carta is simplifying fund administration for emerging managers, which is especially important now rolling into the year-end busy season. 

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Lexington Books managed to release my book Disagreeing despite the Data before the election. It argues the belief segregation underway in the US may be irreversible. Today's battles over climate change, disease mitigation, and election results run deep -- they're cognitive, not just strategic. Here's the gist of it. 20th-century revolutions in the philosophy of mind, meaning, and matter uncover three surprising requirements for widespread factual agreement. Critical thinking and community building have the potential to reverse two of them -- the growing refusal to test assumptions and individual isolation. Factual agreement between groups is impossible without the third one, though -- shared projects or other meaningful interaction. And a large part of American society has insulated itself from the rest. Without shared projects, communities gradually lose the ability to tell whether they agree or not regardless of the words they use. Belief segregation with similar roots has led several developing countries to the brink of failure. We'd better watch out. The attached flyer gives a discount code that makes the book -- priced in this initial run for academic libraries -- a little more affordable. Please feel free to forward it and, if you're connected to any libraries or book stores, pass it on!

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🌟 Join Our Panel Discussion on Licensing vs. Manufacturing: Are you navigating the decision between licensing and manufacturing for your software, hardware, or physical product? I'll be speaking from the US Government Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today at 11 AM virtually: 🔗 Event Link: https://lnkd.in/g3VTnCvq What you'll learn: - Pros and cons of licensing vs. manufacturing - What companies need to see to license your product - What can and cannot be licensed - What you need to know to manufacture Thank you Larry Udell for organizing this wonderful event! #Engineering #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #USPTO #IntellectualProperty

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"Hey Jeff, we're raising a $500,000 pre-seed round from our family and friends and the investors are all asking for disclosures, PPM's, contracts, stock purchase agreements and to talk to our attorneys about all of this stuff. We don't have an attorney and we're using the SAFE contract that we got online, modified of course. Are we required to give them those documents and if so, do we have to have an attorney for all of that?" You don't have to, but you should! First question, have you taken anyone's money yet? If so, return it! I don't care if it's your parents just throwing you a bone, give it back and let them know that you're going to be starting over as per guidance of your attorney, even if you don't have one. When you're doing a securities offering, no matter who they are, you have to go through the steps to make sure that your offering is legal and compliant with the SEC. This includes utilizing one of the REG D exemptions which in your case sounds like a 506b would be the way to go. The thing is, if anyone is non-accredited, you will need to give them a full disclosure package which is basically the same as if you were to register your offering, it's a lot of docs and disclosures. You have to file your offering on the EDGAR system within 15 days of making a sale. Better to do that part ASAP. Unless you know the process, how to write legal docs, disclosures, PPM's etc. then it's always best to go through a securities attorney for that stuff. They aren't cheap, but you can shop around and find the right fit. I can shoot you over some referrals. Don't get frustrated and get down on yourself, a lot of first timers do the same thing not knowing what they don't know which is why the next time they'll know to ask for help before they go try to raise. I hope this helps.

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Exciting News: Schematic is publicly available and we’ve raised $4.8M in seed funding! 🚀 I’m pumped to share that Schematic is now publicly available! We've also raised $4.8M in seed funding, led by MHS Capital with participation from NextView Ventures, Active Capital, Atlanta Ventures, and Ritual Capital—along with support from incredible founders of companies like CrowdStrike, LaunchDarkly, and Salesloft. A big thank you to our investors for believing in us, to our customers for guiding us, and to Benjamin Papillon, Jasdeep Garcha, Giovanni Hobbins, Vladyslav Len, Youssef Salah, Christopher Brady, Joseph Chrzan, Mohammed Almusaddar, and Markiian Simkiv for the opportunity to build this together. ➡️ Solving the last mile of pricing & packaging At every startup, one thing is certain: pricing and packaging will always change. Product and engineering teams shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time this happens. Most companies hard-code pricing and packaging into their applications, making it slow and painful to evolve as market demands shift. ➡️ What We’re Building We're building Schematic to transform pricing and packaging for B2B SaaS companies by getting product and engineering teams out of billing projects. With Schematic, B2B SaaS companies can change pricing & packaging without code changes or billing refactors. ➡️ How It Works With just a few lines of code, businesses can implement pricing and packaging into any application—end-to-end—from feature delivery through billing and customer experience. Quickly roll out new features and tie them to your pricing plans. Target specific plans to customers and adjust them without engineering support. Experiment, scale, and manage pricing & packaging operations: trials, plans, limits, entitlements, metering usage, handling exceptions, provisioning customers, & embedding front-end purchasing components —all without code changes. ➡️ Who we’re building for We’re building Schematic for B2B SaaS companies who want their pricing & packaging roadmaps to move in sync with their product roadmaps, without slowing down their engineering teams. Some key use cases our customers are already benefiting from: 🔹Outsourcing homegrown & hard-coded entitlement services. 🔹Programmatically managing feature access based on subscription plans. 🔹Metering usage and actually enforcing limits. 🔹Updating and managing plans, add-ons, bundling, and customer exceptions 🔹Delivering embeddable purchasing experiences (pricing tables, customer portals, upgrade/downgrade flows, etc). We’re still in the early innings, but the foundation is strong—we're already handling 500K entitlement flag evaluations every month. If you’re a founder or a product leader looking to avoid building what should be out-of-the-box (feature flags, entitlements, admin dashboards, customer portals), check out Schematic and let us know what you think.

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Below is a link to today’s MDB Vested Interests conversation, Traditional Venture vs Public Venture, in case you missed or want to revisit it. MDB Capital President & Chief Market Strategist Lou Basenese sat down with Dave Berkus, TCA Venture Group Chairman Emeritus and Managing Director of TCA ACE Funds, to exchange insights on these approaches to venture-stage investing. Watch video here: https://lnkd.in/gwM3Cwsd

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Why Buying Your First Business is the hardest & Financing The Fear is Being seen as too risky by lenders and investors. The Solution: Prepare a solid business plan with detailed financial projections. Work with a financial advisor to enhance your credibility. Consider alternative financing options like SBA loans or seller financing.

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DoD is pushing startups to take on venture capital pretty hard these days. VC funding can be a great option but it's not an out-of-the-box great fit for Defense Tech. Relying on private debt to effectively dictate what new tech into Defense agencies will have consequences and I don't want to experience that particular learning curve. #defensetech #emergingtechnology #venturecapital

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🚩 We're seeing a large increase in bankruptcies, especially with building materials retailers and distributors. Today, we share a story about one of our customers (names changed for privacy) and how they managed a recent bankruptcy. More about bankruptcy recovery best practices in the link.

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While many real estate investors chase overheated markets in Miami or Malibu …. I've spent the last 7 years deploying millions into one of America's best-kept secrets: North Carolina's rapidly rising 'Cape Fear' region. Since 2017, I've been asked: “Why Surf City and Wilmington”? Here’s why I'm betting on it becoming the East Coast's next big destination. → An Economic Powerhouse Outpacing the Nation Wilmington - ‘The Port City’ - saw its GDP grow by over $3 billion between 2017-2022. It ranked #7 out of 200 large cities for economic success in 2023. Its 8.8% job growth and 44% wage growth over the past 5 years were key drivers of progress (Milken Institute Report) → A Magnet for Affluent Retirees and Coastal Buyers A warm, sunny climate, affordable living costs, and pristine beaches. This makes the Cape Fear region a top draw for retirement-age folks and relocators from pricier cities. Plus, home prices remain relatively affordable - Wilmington's median price is around $413,000. Meanwhile, 81% of Wilmington moves were inbound in 2022, making it #1 in the nation (United Van Lines) Some 45% of people arriving in North Carolina overall made $150,000 or more annually, it added. This combination of demand and value is fueling a real estate boom. → The Next Big East Coast Vacation Destination North Carolina welcomed 43 million domestic visitors in 2023, ranking #5 nationally, behind only California, Florida, Texas and New York. The state enjoyed a record $35.6 billion in visitor spending that year, with NC’s thriving tourism industry now employing over 227,000 workers. Visitor spending generated $4.5 billion in tax revenues, creating more growth opportunities. → Building for Explosive Future Growth To support this population and tourism expansion, NC is investing heavily in infrastructure upgrades. • New $58 million Topsail Island bridge • A $420 million bypass to ease traffic congestion • $20 million for Surf City water treatment spending This infrastructure momentum positions it perfectly for long-term growth and increased quality of life. The Cape Fear region is perfectly positioned to dominate over the next 10 years. • Population and economic growth • Booming tourism and vacation home demand • Affordable coastal destination for vacation or living • Huge infrastructure investments to support expansion That's why I've gone all-in across multiple hospitality projects in the area, like the Saltwater Resort at Topsail Island in Surf City, and The Hive - Wilmington. Most investors are still sleeping on Cape Fear. But this underrated gem won't be a secret for long. It will be one of our nation's premier coastal hotspots for decades to come. ---------- I'm Richard Stroupe a 3x Entrepreneur, Investor, and Real Estate Operator Follow for stories on business, investing, and tech. Enjoy this? Consider reposting to share with your network ♻

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The recent Supreme Court decision (the Chevron deference) regarding how the executive branch carries out its duties may become one of the most influential of our time. There are many posts coming out on the topic but this one caught my eye - and not in a good way. The post contains a mixture of accurate information and rhetorical techniques designed to manipulate the reader's perspective. It employs emotional appeals, logical fallacies, and overgeneralizations to present a specific viewpoint on the Supreme Court's decision and the role of federal agencies. It forms a case study of how easy it is for logical sounding (but unfounded) arguments to be accepted, unquestioned and propagated. Now, with the help of AI we can more easily interpret and understand posts like these. Let’s dive in. First let’s review for accuracy. It is correct that the Supreme Court recently made a decision regarding Chevron deference. And the post accurately describes the Chevron deference, established in the 1984 Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. case. This doctrine instructed courts to defer to a federal agency's interpretation of an ambiguous law, provided the interpretation was reasonable. Now, let’s check for logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques. 1. Gish Gallop The post uses a form of Gish gallop by presenting a large number of assertions and arguments in rapid succession, which makes it challenging to address each point individually. 2. Appeal to Emotion Phrases like "most severe blow to the deep state" and "tyrannical at its core" are emotionally charged and designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction rather than relying on logical arguments. 3. Straw Man The characterization of federal agencies as acting with "unfettered clearance to govern our lives" without checks and balances is an oversimplification. It suggests an extreme scenario that does not fully represent the nuanced functioning of regulatory agencies. 4. False Cause The post claims that Chevron deference has "severely halted progress and innovation" in numerous fields without providing specific evidence linking the doctrine directly to these outcomes. 5. Loaded Language Words like "tyrannical," "grossly expanded," and "unconstitutional" are loaded terms meant to sway readers’ opinions without providing substantial evidence. 6. Overgeneralization The post makes broad claims, such as the Chevron doctrine impacting technology, nuclear energy, firearms, etc., without detailed evidence or examples. 7. Appeal to Fear By framing the regulatory agencies as a "fourth branch of government" that operates unconstitutionally, the post attempts to instill fear about the loss of democratic control. The takeaway is that lengthy, well structured posts that *appear* logical aren’t necessarily logical and we now have tools to help assess and understand. Please use them.

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BluWave has a deep bench of 800+ interim CFOs that allow us to quickly and expertly connect private equity firms and their portfolio companies to the exact-fit interim CFOs they need.    In one case study example, a PE firm came to us in need of a stopgap interim CFO for their automotive operations portfolio company. Here's the details of how we helped:   The Situation - Needing to make a leadership change in their portfolio company, a PE firm came to us in urgent need of an interim CFO who could focus on the portco's cash flow and working capital optimization while the search for a permanent CFO was underway. Given the protfolio company's industry, the PE firm not only needed an interim CFO with financial acumen, but one with the ability to handle a complex operational landscape and turnaround skills.   How BluWave Helped - Thanks to BluWave's deep network of exact-fit interim CFOs, we quickly connected them with a select few interim CFOs with the exact experience they were looking for.    The Outcome - The client selected their preferred interim CFO from our presented options. Their leadership marked a significant turning point for the automotive manufacturer, helping them tighten cash flow, meet reporting requirements and guide them through a crucial transition period.   When you need an exact-fit, PE-grade interim CFO, contact BluWave and we'll be ready to support.   #interimCFO #interimchieffinancialofficer

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Nothing wrong with buying growth, just remember what happens when growth suddenly decelerates (especially if you paid a high price for a bright future) "The definition of what “high growth” is continues to be redefined across Software. As can be seen in the chart below across the 105 Software companies we track, we’re now at the 𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝘀𝘁 % 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 +𝟯𝟬% 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 (based on consensus NTM revenue estimates). 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗡𝗧𝗠 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗹𝗹-𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗮𝘁 ~𝟭𝟭%, 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝟱𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗤𝟰 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭"

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Interesting piece from Marc Andreessen on how startups are not getting the regulatory support they need to sustain America's technological leadership. "Regulatory agencies have been green lit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries, such as Blockchain. Regulatory agencies are being green lit in real time to do the same to Artificial Intelligence." While many investors themselves (both in the US and Europe) are worried how AI will change our lives, our jobs and social interactions, the top VC opinion leader thinks regulation is already too restrictive. #techstartups #techleadership #strategicgrowth

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The “long-term hold” strategy is one that has received an increasing amount of attention within the #ETA ecosystem of late: Instead of selling a company within 5-7 years of acquiring it, why might you choose to hold it for a much longer period of time? Why not hold it indefinitely?   To unpack the long-term hold thesis, I could think of no guest more appropriate than Zac Carman: Zac acquired ConsumerAffairs.com in 2010, and has been its CEO for the past 14 years. In our discussion today, among many other things, we unpack Zac’s long-term-hold strategy and discuss the extent to which it was deliberate or emergent, how he has managed liquidity requirements for both himself and his investors, the commercial and personal reasons why a long-term hold strategy makes sense for him, and if he thinks it makes sense for an entrepreneur to target a long-term hold strategy before acquiring their first company.   Please enjoy! https://lnkd.in/gZujiyxD

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