Justin Vogel

Considering a career in startups or VC? Starting today, I'm available for 1:1 calls on @Intro to help startup founders and aspiring VCs think through the path ahead. As the founder + managing director of Red Sea Ventures, we invested early in companies like Allbirds (IPO), Sweetgreen (IPO), Nest (acq. Google), Casetext (acq. Thompson Reuters), and Prose to name a few. What topics can we cover? ✔️ Finding product-market fit ✔️ The different paths to funding ✔️ Determining how much you need to raise ✔️ Building a VC firm ✔️ Careers in VC ✔️ Celebrity partnerships Honored to be alongside world-class Experts like Chris DeWolfe (co-founder of MySpace (sold for $675M), Scott Saunders (founder of Happy Money, valued $1B+) & Geraldine Martin-Coppola (former President of Goop). I’ll be donating 100% of the proceeds to Seeds of Peace

226

22 Comments

I really enjoyed breaking in our new studio to sit down with Temporal Technologies Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev for the latest episode of Founded & Funded. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of the same thing at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber. In this episode, Samar, Maxim, and I dive into the challenges of building an open-source ecosystem while also working on a commercial offering and scaling a successful company, how to navigate and adjust a product roadmap in an ever-changing world of AI and large language models, and how to successfully build an early startup team, navigate through a CEO transition, and bring on a startups first independent board member. It's a very compelling conversation and a must-listen for every builder out there. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gymf9sES Find other platforms and the transcript on our website: https://lnkd.in/ggRtnKtM Be sure to subscribe to our channel for more deep dives into cutting-edge technologies and the minds behind them. Don't forget to like, comment, and share this conversation if you found it valuable!

73

3 Comments

Navigating the Path to Product-Market Fit with JIITAK Achieving Product-Market Fit (PMF) is a critical milestone for any venture, and at JIITAK, we're dedicated to helping our clients navigate this challenging yet rewarding journey. Our process is designed to be iterative and responsive, adapting to real-world feedback and evolving market demands. By prioritizing user needs and continuously refining our solutions, we ensure that each product not only meets but exceeds market expectations. How do we ensure success? By focusing on three core areas: Business Design - Transforming raw ideas into strategic plans that effectively address market needs. MVP Development - Rapidly creating minimally viable products to test hypotheses and validate solutions in real customer environments. Sustain/Grow - Defining and implementing feature requirements based on user feedback, optimizing the product to achieve and sustain PMF. At JIITAK, we believe that navigating the path to PMF isn't just about technical execution; it’s about aligning every aspect of the business model to deliver continuous value to users. This approach not only helps in achieving PMF but also lays a strong foundation for scalable and sustainable growth. Are you ready to explore how JIITAK can help your product succeed in the market? Let’s connect and make your product vision a reality. #ProductMarketFit #BusinessStrategy #MVP #Innovation #Sustainability #JIITAK

95

So great to speak to Mohammed Islam on The Mo Show podcast last week! Watch the full episode here!

301

12 Comments

✴️ Did you see who raised funds last week? Several U.S.-based startups have secured capital at the start of 2025 to drive innovation, and they’re hiring! 🇺🇸 Rembrand (Los Altos, California) #Advertising Founders Ahmed Saad, David Wiener, Omar Tawakol, and Abdel-rahman Mohamed raised $23M in Series A funding to enhance their In-Scene Advertising platform, helping brands become part of the story rather than interrupting it. 🔗 Led by: super{set}, with participation from The Trade Desk, NAVER D2SF, #L’Oréal’s BOLD, Greycroft, and others. ✅ Hiring: 2 roles available - https://bit.ly/404w2in 🇺🇸 LTV.ai (Houston, Texas) #AI Founders Asad Rehman and Kevin Kai closed a Series A funding round (undisclosed amount) to help brands maximize Customer Lifetime Value using AI and membership models. ✅ Hiring: 2 roles available - https://bit.ly/4064BVh 🇺🇸 Veritone (Irvine, California) #AI Founders Chad and Ryan Steelberg raised $20.3M in Post-IPO Equity to develop and market their AI platform that transforms data into actionable intelligence. 🔗 The company plans to use funds for: capital expenditures, debt service, and further product development. ✅ Hiring: 14 roles available - https://bit.ly/4fLXFmh 🚀 If you're exploring new opportunities or just want to stay updated on who's raising capital, make sure to follow me! #StartupFunding #HiringNow #FundingAndHiring #Innovation

1

HUGE opportunity

14

1 Comment

A new era of deep tech has emerged. First time funds will raise “unheard of” amounts of capital to fuel next gen deep tech startups - producing outsized, superior returns for LP’s compared to the rest. Prudent investors will act on this data and shift investment strategy as LP’s or risk being left behind savvy wealth managers and CIO’s / FO’s who saw this trend begin 4 years ago.

100

8 Comments

📈 Curious about the startup scene in Massachusetts? Explore our detailed funding list featuring startup names, HQ locations, and investor info. Perfect for investors and entrepreneurs alike! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dAp3xj-Q #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

5

We gathered dozens of operators from the MGMT Boston Operators Club and local founders alongside the 186 Ventures team this October to discuss the evolution of our dear software markets, the status of some predictions for 2024 (all looking good!), and what’s on deck for next year. General Partner Giuseppe Stuto led us through the following predictions for 2025 to share with you all.. ↕ We will see more vertical AI applications manifest themselves within the Enterprise in a similar ways that SaaS moved from horizontal to vertical use cases 🔔 We will see services business models more common and software budget purchasing models less common - SaaS may even be given away for cheap/free as a “way in” ⚖ Capital efficiency, on a relative basis, will almost be required to create enduring & compounding defensible enterprise value. Details like procurement cycle lengths and creativity with non-dilutive financing, like leveraging revenue based financing tools for example, will all matter 💡 Specific to AI, premiums will be placed on applications that can actually get “reasoning” right. All purpose LLMs still have a ways to go and there are multiple approaches with the “jury still out” on how to get context and reasoning right. Infrastructure solutions that use general purpose or customizable knowledge graphs to help application developers get to 100% (enterprise acceptable accuracy) will emerge OR savvy application developers will fill the gaps themselves. We will likely see both, depending upon the specific case! Thank you Giuseppe, Julian, and Sophie for a great discussion and evening!

59

4 Comments

Why we're leaving 70% of potential revenue on the table. And why it might be the smartest business decision we've made. After our $130M exit with Olapic, we had a choice to make with Remotely. The traditional playbook was clear: - Optimize for maximum margins - Scale rapidly - Raise significant capital - Keep pricing opaque Instead, we chose a radically different path with Remotely. We did something "irrational": showed our customers exactly how much developers make. In an industry where companies typically pocket 70% of what customers pay, we decided to charge a transparent flat fee (that effectively makes our take rate at 18%). Everyone said we were crazy. "You're giving away margin!" But here's what happened: → Customers started referring us to other customers → The best developers chose us over higher-paying competitors → We grew entirely through word-of-mouth while others spent heavily on sales 4 years in: - 300+ developers placed - $37M paid directly to developers - $25M in annual GMV - Small, profitable team - Still charging a flat fee And we’re just getting started :) We’re publicly documenting our journey and sharing our metrics on our newsletter, you can subscribe here - https://hubs.ly/Q02-mH5S0

13

Today, I had the privilege of attending a meeting with Omer K and HASSAN AYUB and the incredible team at Maida.Co. The conversation was packed with actionable insights on app growth strategies that I’m excited to implement. Here are two key takeaways: 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. Retention is just as important as acquisition—delivering value consistently keeps users coming back. 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚-𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. Understanding user behavior and iterating quickly is the key to staying ahead in the competitive app market. At NextSalution, these strategies align perfectly with our mission to innovate and scale our apps, which are already serving millions of users. As we prepare to launch our upcoming solutions, these insights will be invaluable. Grateful for the knowledge shared by Omer K and HASSAN AYUB—conversations like these fuel progress. What’s one app growth strategy you’ve found effective? Let’s share ideas in the comments! #AppGrowth #Innovation #Leadership #NextSalution #Networking

8

1 Comment

2025 is here, and the Middle East’s startup ecosystem continues to hit major milestones. 🌍 Last year, I had the privilege of interviewing the founders behind some of the region’s most innovative companies—eyewa, Lean Technologies, Zid | زد, and Salla E-Commerce Platform. Their insights offer a glimpse into how they’re shaping the future: 👉 eyewa: Gulf-based eyewear disruptor with a vision for growth. ➛ Founders - Mehdi Oudghiri & Anass B. ↳ Surpassed 150 stores. ↳ Secured $100M funding from General Atlantic. ↳ Introduced AI-powered eye exams and virtual try-ons. ↳ 2025 plans: 250 stores and a Riyadh hub delivering custom products in 24 hours. 👉 Lean Technologies: A fintech leader bridging innovation and compliance. ➛ Founders - Hisham Al-Falih & Ashu Gupta & Aditya Sarkar & Mehdi Tazi ↳ $67.5M Series B funding from General Catalyst. ↳ $2B+ transaction volumes in the UAE. ↳ Pioneering Open Banking in Saudi Arabia. ↳ 2025 plans: Expanding Open Banking and Open Finance in Saudi Arabia and the UAE while enhancing financial infrastructure for SMEs and individuals. 👉 Zid | زد: Revolutionizing e-commerce with its Total Commerce ecosystem. ➛ Founders - Sultan H. AlAsmi & Mazen AlDarrab ↳ Merchant base grew by 30%, exceeding 12,000 active users. ↳ Integrated AI-powered tools + partnerships with Amazon, TikTok, and Meta. ↳ Merchants saw 25% GMV growth and 10x revenue increases through Zid’s programs. ↳ 2025 vision: Cross-border commerce and advanced AI solutions for merchants. 👉 Salla E-Commerce Platform: Empowering Saudi merchants with cutting-edge e-commerce tools. ➛ Founders -  Nawaf Hariri & Salman Butt ↳ $130M pre-IPO funding led by Investcorp and Sanabil Investments. ↳ 80,000+ active merchants supported $7B in sales since 2020. ↳ New tech integrations with Adjust and STC Bank. ↳ 2025 focus: Expanding payment solutions and driving Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation. Each founder’s vision is a testament to the power of combining regional insight with global ambition. 💡 Who’s a Middle Eastern startup you’re watching in 2025? Share your thoughts below. ⬇️ P.S. If this inspired you, don’t forget to share! ♻️ Articles: ↳ https://lnkd.in/dXha4rg4 ↳ https://lnkd.in/ddbasi24

13

One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

37

18 Comments

The above is all true, and I'd like to add a really important point. In the Bay Area, I observed that startups collaborate, partner, meet, etc - all in the spirit of the best possible user experience as an end in itself. The startups work together more. It's easy to get a meeting, you can basically show up to someone's office, just walk in, and you're welcomed. Founders work on "cool" experiences or tech first, and worry about financials second. In NYC I found the reverse to be true. It's harder to get a meeting with a founder. When you get one, it's like going to the dentist; the EA schedules a meeting with you 6 weeks in advance, upon arriving you sit in lobby and you wait until you are called. The meeting is transactional, a "novel" user experience or excitement around a technical breakthrough is rarely a main topic. It's much more transactional. This isn't a criticism in any way, it's just an observation that I believe explains why there are less household tech names coming out of NYC. Because if you look at the household tech names in the world - they always put the user first.

31

9 Comments

Halfway through our Y Combinator batch, over 60% of the startups in our cohort (including us) were stuck pivoting. That’s when Paul Graham flew in from England to talk about finding a great startup idea. Here’s what he told us: 1️⃣ Turn off the three ‘bad idea filters’: By turning off the ‘bad idea filters’ in your head, it instantly becomes easier for good ones to emerge. 1/ The sanity filter: Often, the greatest startups come out of ideas that originally seemed insane. So don’t shut down ideas because they seem impractical. For eg, when Airbnb started, no one ever thought people would let strangers sleep in their homes. 2/ The money filter: Money is important for a startup, but if you’re able to drive strong growth without generating revenue, don’t discard the idea. For eg: JustinTV (now Twitch), began with a guy live-streaming his life with a camera strapped to his head. There was no revenue stream initially. 3/ The schlepp filter: Don’t dismiss an idea just because it seems like too much work. For eg: Stripe had to handle unholy amounts of legal and regulatory work to get banks onboard their payments platform. Still, they did the hard work, and Stripe solved a problem that hundreds of their contemporaries were afraid to work on. Often, the impractical hard work becomes the moat that protects your startup from competition. 2️⃣ Don’t build for boomers   If you’re only building for boomers, your company will die with them. Whatever you’re building needs to become popular amongst the younger generation. If you’re a college student and you find a lot of your peers using what you’re building (and not just because they’re your friends), it could well be the start of something big. 3️⃣ Stop thinking all the best ideas are taken As founders, we often come up with an idea only to realize another company has already built it. We then find ourselves wishing that such other company didn't exist. You need to throw that mentality out the door. One quote I’ll always take away from PG’s talk is that there are billions of years of existence left. It would be practically impossible (and quite frankly depressing) for all the good ideas to run out by 2024. These tips really helped us zero in on what we’re building today. At our last startup, Desklamp, we’d spend weeks on end producing each feature launch video. During our pivot phase, PG’s talk inspired us to ask ourselves if we could automate that process using AI. That bold question led us to Clueso (YC W23): end-to-end AI automation for producing software videos for companies. #startups

618

29 Comments

Excited to share that today we're launching Hello Patient out of stealth with our $6.3M seed round led by 8VC, Bling Capital, and Max Ventures! From Alex Cohen, co-founder: For the last 7 months, we've been heads down building complex infrastructure and tooling to support real time AI agents that we deploy on behalf of healthcare practices. Our agents can call and text patients just like practice staff do, taking on full workflows like scheduling, reminders, and rescheduling. Having run consumer and growth product teams at Carbon Health for 3.5 years, we're building what I wished we had back then. No matter how many self-service tools we built, patients still called and texted in. I looked at almost every contact platform on the market, and none actually resolved calls or required tons of work from us to do so. We're live today with customers and already seeing the impact of automating all this patient-facing communication work. Our agents have incredibly low latency and sound remarkably human. They handle complex edge cases and actually get stuff done vs just routing calls around. Full article here: https://lnkd.in/eHRX2zKA

158

17 Comments

Last night Brex hosted a great event bringing together early-stage founders and VCs. There were several instances where founders I was speaking to would pull in other founders that were fundraising to meet me. Even after I left, I got a call from @Albert Katz (co-founder Flagler Health) introducing me to another founder. This was a real eye-opener as it portrayed the stark contrast with how non-competitive founders are with each other vs. VCs competing against each other for dollars and rarely introducing LPs to each other. Founders supporting founders vs. VCs competing with VCs. It's a tale as old as time, but why does this dynamic persist? 1. Shared struggle: Founders intimately understand the challenges of building a company. They've been in the trenches and know the true value of a helping hand. 2. Abundance mindset: Successful founders often believe there's enough opportunity for everyone. They realize that another founder's success just brings more attention and dollars into the startup ecosystem. 3. Network effect: Founders recognize that a rising tide lifts all boats. More successful startups mean more resources, talent, and opportunities for everyone. 4. VC zero-sum game: Limited LP capital creates a competitive environment where one VC's win can feel like another's loss. 5. Reputation building: VCs are constantly vying for the next big deal and recognize that LP capital can be scarce. Supporting competitors doesn't align with this goal. So, what can we learn from this? As investors, we need to adopt more of the founder mentality. Collaboration over competition can lead to better outcomes for everyone involved. Another VC fund's success instills more confidence into the asset class which benefits all GPs. Founders, keep supporting each other. It's one of your greatest strengths and a key differentiator in what makes the startup ecosystem so magical. Question for VCs: How can we shift our mindset to foster more collaboration without compromising our fiduciary duty to LPs?

34

2 Comments

The only podcast you might not have to listen to at 1.5X speed 😂 . Thanks for having me, EXPLORE84! I appreciate you sharing the latest and greatest of what we have been up to!

39

6 Comments

Check out our curated list of #New York funded startups, featuring key insights like HQ locations, founded years, and investor info. https://lnkd.in/dbw7pUqq #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #investmentbanking

2