Stephen Reisert

Check out my recent post on why President Trump is the forcing function for us to solve the “Missing Middle” and catch the industrial Tsunami of onshoring coming to the US!

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NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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🍷 Big shoutout to Archer Roose Wines, one of our SoGal Ventures portfolio companies, for their groundbreaking collab with Cornell University! They released a research with the Food Science Department on sulfite formation in canned wines and is getting serious attention in the media! 🥂 🔬 This is more than just a win for Archer Roose—it’s a huge moment for the whole canned wine industry. As Co-Founder & CEO Marian Leitner-Waldman puts it, “This study isn’t just about showing how Archer Roose ensures premium quality, it’s about pushing the entire industry forward. We’re breaking old perceptions and driving innovation.” This is how change happens—raising standards, sharing knowledge, and inspiring a whole category to evolve. 🍇🎉 Check out the research here: https://shorturl.re/7frkq #innovation #cannedwine  #foodscience #womeninbusiness #industrydisruption

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I've participated in 100+ conversations with venture fund LPs this year. The most frequently discussed topics include: Team dynamics Sourcing differentiation Decision-making and selection process Portfolio support Sector thesis Track record Model and deployment strategy Network Long-term vision Timing (why now) References Fund infrastructure and reporting

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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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Fin Capital’s Fintech CEO Pulse Report is out! We surveyed over 50 CEOs and C-suite leaders of private companies from our portfolio and the broader fintech industry during June and July 2024 to get a quick pulse on what’s top of mind for fintech’s leaders. Here are some key takeaways: Optimism in the Air: More than 60% of CEOs reported being bullish or highly bullish on the fintech industry for the second half of 2024. Regulatory Changes on the Horizon: CEOs identified Cryptocurrency, Open Banking, and Buy Now Pay Later as the top three sectors likely to see increased regulation by the end of 2024. CEOs Want Business Development Support: Beyond capital and fundraising, business development support emerged as the top area where CEOs seek investor assistance.For more insights, including comments from my colleagues Ren Riley, Logan Allin, Matthew D. Mann, CFA, and Stephanie Perez, check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/euHK8-9B

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WE DID IT! After 2 years of pushing through the biggest downturn in VC in decades, Matthew Stotts 🌐 and I made it to the finish line with Fund I! We couldn't have done this without One Small Planet (Will Peterffy and Jack Wielebinski 🙏), Regen Network and Regen Foundation (Austin Wade Smith Gregory Landua and Will Szal), and a dozen other family offices and angels who believed that we can build a nature-positive economy utilizing our eye for software and our history as founders from day 1 A shout out goes to all of our founders (only four announced today, but watch this space - there are multitudes!) who trusted us enough to give us a spot on their cap table for this 10-15 year journey. This is the best job in the world, and it's because we get to work with people like you who have weird ideas in the best possible way. Using Bitcoin as anchor base load to decarbonize residential housing in America's most expensive energy market? Make every complex supply chain legible to machines so we can find and eliminate deforestation in commodity supply chains? Build deeply liquid environmental asset markets to price ecosystem services, on a blockchain, that no one needs to know is a blockchain? I'm so excited to get to work on this stuff for the next 10-15 years minimum, and to see what we can accelerate with our tiny fund in the next 5-6 years as we approach 2030 Onward! https://lnkd.in/gy3B-DFe

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Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

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I'm excited to share my thoughts about closing our latest fund at Companyon Ventures. Raising a VC fund as an emerging manager is tough enough without the added challenge of rising interest rates and inflation, punctuated by the 2023 banking crisis unfolding during our fundraising cycle. After countless meetings and hearing "no" more times than we'd like to remember, we're grateful for the support and introductions from our LPs and fellow VCs like Bob Mason. We surpassed our minimum target, raising $41M with an additional ~$20M from our LPs available for SPVs in our companies, bringing our AUM close to $100M. While small in today's VC world, we're very proud of how we've deployed that capital. My partners Firas Raouf, David McFarlane, and Ronny Chatterjee did much of the heavy lifting with the fundraising, but our entire team significantly contributed to the effort. Here are a few highlights and thank-yous we’re excited to share: 🙏 First, a huge thanks to the founders who accepted our investment during our fundraising process. Your powerful visions and amazing execution proved to our existing and prospective LPs that we can identify and attract some of the best founders in the industry. Thanks Stephen Gendron, Doug Neumann, Hersh Tapadia, Avante Price, Eli Taylor-Lemire, Zaid Rahman, Daniel Pelaez, and Ali Ansari! 🌟 With a larger fund than our 2020 fund, our focus and thesis have not changed. We believe we are the top firm to lead late seed, post-seed, and early Series A rounds when companies are navigating the tricky transition from a founder-led startup to the first stages of a scalable enterprise. 💰 We launched a new Capital Markets function in this fund built by my colleague Ronny Chatterjee. This has been massively impactful for our portfolio CEOs. Ronny has showcased our portfolio to more than 200 Series A, B, Growth, and PE funds, and dozens of debt providers with great success. His job is to find the right follow-on capital for our portfolio companies while saving our CEOs countless hours of blindly prospecting for dollars. 🛠 We still average ~4 new investments each year from the thousands of companies we encounter. It’s tough to pass on many of them, but our approach of offering deeply embedded GTM talent and playbooks requires a concentrated portfolio approach so we can provide the attention and bandwidth that our founders expect. 📈 We’re proud that about half of our existing portfolio from this fund and our prior fund (2020) have either already crossed the critical $10M ARR threshold or will likely do so within the next year. We're confident that many more will follow shortly after. Most were at or below $2M ARR when we invested. 99% of that operational success can be attributed to those founders, but we like to think that our 1% was well-timed and impactful. Thank you to everyone in our community who has supported us in so many different ways! https://lnkd.in/eFauhT4Q #venturecapital

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Specter is on 🔥 Shipping again this week with Landscapes and Historicals! 🚢 🗺️ Landscapes: Identify market trends, assess competition, and refine your strategy with our powerful new market mapping tool. Use Recommended Landscapes, built by Specter or replicating market maps from top investors and insiders—or create your own custom market maps. 📈 Historical Growth Charts: You asked, we delivered—2 years of historical data across key metrics! Spot long-term trends, track seasonal patterns, and benchmark companies like never before. 💡 Want to learn more about these new features? Check them out here 👉 https://lnkd.in/e_9nKvXa

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I really enjoyed recording this episode of The Digital Industrial Podcast with Ty Findley. We talked about common misconceptions for deep tech, the "Why Now" for the category, and differences between investor diligence for deep tech and traditional tech. https://lnkd.in/eKtwjauu

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Exciting news! We just sent out the inaugural newsletter for Future Frontier Capital, our pre-seed venture fund backing frontier tech startups. As I hit "send," I realized how launching FFC parallels the path of the founders we support. Starting FFC has required the same passion, perseverance, and self-belief that drive entrepreneurs. Just like a startup, getting a VC fund off the ground demands relentless hustle—building the brand, perfecting the pitch, and networking tirelessly. There are constant challenges that test your resolve and endless hours of unglamorous work behind the scenes. And perhaps most daunting - the self-doubt, wondering if you're crazy for attempting something so bold. Pushing through that negative self-talk requires unshakable faith in your mission. Raising this VC fund reminds me of starting our IP strategy and patent analytics firm two decades ago. It’s a powerful reminder of the perseverance, creativity, and resilience needed to turn an ambitious idea into reality. This experience makes us more empathetic partners, ready to support the founders we back. Our work is just beginning, and this inaugural newsletter underscores our commitment to supporting frontier tech startups every step of the way. #startups #VentureCapital #EmergingManagers #Entrepreneurship #InnovationMindSet

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I'm excited to announce that Canapi Ventures has led OpenYield's seed round. OpenYield is redefining how bonds are traded and who gets to trade them. Despite being one of the largest global asset classes, fixed income has long lagged behind equities in terms of innovation. Outdated systems, fragmented liquidity, and barriers to access have made bond trading inefficient, opaque, and inaccessible to many, particularly retail investors.   OpenYield is changing that. By delivering an equity-like trading experience for bonds, the platform transforms the fixed income market into a space defined by transparency, efficiency, and access. With real-time pricing, seamless execution, and intuitive workflows, OpenYield is making bond trading easier and more effective for institutional players, market makers, and retail investors alike. This progress wouldn’t be possible without the exceptional leadership of Jonathan Birnbaum and Hilton Lipschitz, whose decades of experience in capital markets and fintech have earned them the right to build a category leader in this market. Also hard to believe that meeting Jonathan over 20 years ago led to this partnership today!   For Canapi’s network of financial institution LPs, OpenYield represents an exciting opportunity to enhance wealth platforms, attract new client assets, and deepen advisor relationships. As the competition for wealth clients intensifies, access to efficient fixed income trading will be a critical differentiator, delivering real value for customers and strengthening client loyalty. Thrilled to be partnering with Ben Savage and Ned Daoro at Clocktower Ventures. Shoutout to Harrison Kioko. More thoughts on our investment thesis here:

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What a day at the inaugural Alpaca VC Capital Cup! 🏌️‍♂️☀️ Yesterday, we brought together 20 of South Florida's most incredible VCs, founders, and allocators at The Park in West Palm Beach for an afternoon that was about more than just golf. It was about starting the New Year by getting outside, connecting in-person and continuing to build the South Florida tech ecosystem. And for our team’s David Goldberg, it was about getting out of the sand in a pretty spectacular way – at least ESPN thought so (see ~45 seconds into the clip below, and you’ll get it!).   Since making South Florida my home, I've become increasingly convinced that the future of our tech ecosystem is made stronger when we step away from our screens and spend time together in person. The golf course isn't just about the green or the game – it's about the conversations, collaborations and unexpected outcomes that happen along the way. Huge thanks to our partners Escalon Services, LLC (thank you Zack Mellin) and First Circle Law (thank you Drew Morris) for supporting this vision of ecosystem building. And an even bigger thanks to everyone who showed up, swung a club and helped be a part of what’s happening here in the region: Jonathan Beda of Connexa Capital, Eric Helitzer, LEED AP of SubBase, Patrick Miller and Rob Cousin of J.P. Morgan, Steven Himmel of HighPost Capital, Harry Hurst of Protagonist, Jacob Slevin of FuseProp, Chris Wallace of Dunbar Capital, Paget S. of Gemini, Henri Pierre-Jacques of Harlem Capital, Blake Hatten of CEAS Investments, Howie Diamond of Pure Ventures, Luba Lesiva of Palumni VC, Nicki Berlyn Katz of Related Ross, Rob Hayden of Renew. These are the moments that make our South Florida tech landscape one I’m glad to be a part of. Who's ready for the next gathering? 🤝 #SouthFloridaTech #VentureCapital https://lnkd.in/eZWkqChP

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Summary: Trucks Venture Capital has announced a new $70 million fund to support early-stage startups in the transportation industry. Led by co-founder Reilly Brennan, the firm plans to invest in a diverse range of companies, including those working on autonomous vehicle tech, electric air taxis, and mobility data platforms. This is the firm's largest fund to date and its investment strategy has evolved to focus on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas. Key takeaways: Trucks VC has a new $70 million fund to invest in early-stage transportation startups. The firm's investment strategy has shifted to focus on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas. Previous investments from the new fund include charger installation-as-a-service startup Treehouse and zero-emissions jet aircraft company JetZero. Counter arguments: Some may argue that focusing on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas may limit the firm's potential for success. The transportation industry is constantly changing and evolving, making it a risky investment for any venture capital firm. #startups #venturecapital #transportation

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Can't wait to reconnect with the brilliant Amanda Herson and join the discussion with Maciek Gnutek and Iain Martin at Slush about our fund models and what they mean for Founders ❄ 🚀

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Ready to play big? Unlock the billionaire playbook: Start with an Aged Shelf Corporation and master the art of influence WITHOUT ownership. 🏦✨ If you want to learn more. Click here to sign up for my next free webinar ⬇️

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💰 Founders, are you wasting time and resources pitching to the wrong investors? 💰 In this podcast excerpt, David Forsberg, CFA from Ascent Energy Ventures shares a crucial piece of advice: Make sure your startup is truly venture-backable before you start seeking funding. 🎯 I've advised hundreds of startups that have raised billions in VC and venture debt funding, and I've seen firsthand the pressures founders face when growing their companies. 🌱 Listen to the full podcast for more game-changing insights. Link in the original Kruze Consulting post. 🎧 #startups #venturecapital #funding #entrepreneurship

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