Nowi Kallen

From 0 → $7M ARR in 18 months. $35M+ raised. That’s Artisan — the SF startup building human-like AI employees to replace your bloated GTM stack… and maybe kick off the next Industrial Revolution. In this episode of TALKS WITH DASHA, I sat down with Jaspar Carmichael-Jack to unpack: - why AI employees are already outperforming humans (yes, you read that right) - how a 2-person team created viral growth and raised $35M+ in record time - Jaspar's hiring philosophy, daily habits, and how he thinks about going big Bonus conversations: - Tina Sang, Chief of Staff & Growth Lead, on landing a leadership role in her early 20s - Sam Stallings, Founder & CPO, on leading engineering teams as a female co-founder in AI 🌉 And yes — a look at the wildest view in San Francisco, inside the Artisan house. 🔗 Full episode here — link in comments. #TalksWithDasha

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10 years ago, if you had $100M in ARR, $1B public enterprise valuation and strong top-line growth, you were likely going to IPO. Companies went public with less maturity, and the market was hungry for growth stories. Today, the bar is closer to $500M+ ARR, $7.5B+ public enterprise valuation, and you need to be growing 30%+ YoY. In addition, public investors expect significant float when only ~10% of shares are sold at the IPO, which means raising $750M–$1B at the offering. And they want to see the potential for that company to grow toward $100B in enterprise value. With so much private capital available, companies like Stripe and Databricks have delayed going public (while in many ways, running like a publicly traded company). But these are outliers IMO. Going public is still the north star for any company. You gain stronger enterprise credibility, immediate market feedback, and a bigger brand presence by being a public company. And importantly, public companies must be more efficient and transparent, having to report performance numbers to the government, shareholders, and board members. If you have the right ingredients, including predictable revenues, operational discipline, and durable growth at scale, you should no doubt go public. That’s what separates companies that are simply big from those that are truly Companies of Consequence.

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Turns Out… My Fund LP Portfolio Beat My Direct Portfolio 😅 Maybe I’m not a bad investor — maybe FoFs aren’t the fallacy we think they are. I’ve been reading several great pieces lately and reflecting on a touchy subject: venture funds of funds (FoFs). Hamilton Lane has hammered this home for years: venture isn’t really an “asset class” — it’s an access class 🚪. • 📊 VC has the widest dispersion in private markets. • ⏳ That dispersion hasn’t narrowed, even as VC scaled — the power law still rules. • 📉 Drawdowns cut deeper here than anywhere else. Translation: pick the right managers and you look like a genius; miss them and you look… well, like me on some of my direct deals 🙃. That’s why the Pattern Ventures benchmarking caught my eye: across 2005–2019 vintages, FoFs (yes, even with “double fees”) actually: ✨ Beat direct VC in the median quartile in 14/15 vintages (+0.68x TVPI). ✨ Outperformed the bottom quartile every single time (+0.89x) — and never fell below 1x. ✨ Smoothed returns, with dispersion nearly halved (0.58x vs. 1.21x). Confession time: even in my own portfolio, my LP fund investments have outperformed my direct ones. Not sure if that makes me a bad direct investor 😅 … or just a better FoF LP. Either way, it taught me something about where my real portfolio chops lie. In hedge funds, double fees kill. In venture, access math beats fee math. So the real question for LPs isn’t: “Do we avoid FoFs?” It’s: Do we build selection capability — or buy it? Because in venture, average is the most dangerous place to hide.🚫 🔖 David Dug Skylar Anurag John Samir #VentureCapital #PrivateMarkets #FundofFunds #LPInsights #VCInvesting #PowerLaw #Dispersion #InstitutionalInvesting Asilica | Redshift Capital | Allocate

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Product-market fit genuinely feels different...and it'll show up in the data Demo to close rates are the easiest thing to look at for product-market fit right now. Vertical AI startups in our portfolio are seeing 50%+ demo to close rates, even with brand new account executives selling the product. It's happening in every market from AI takeoffs to AI CSR/Voice software to AI procurement solutions. When you see a demo to close rate over 50% chances are you have a jaw dropping customer experience and you should put your foot on the gas. If you're seeing something dramatically lower in mid-market or SMB ACV categories, it's worth revisiting your product and/or your pitch.

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YC’s new batch (S25) is live and investors are already swarming 🔥 Harmonic’s data highlights the 20 startups attracting the most attention. The signal is clear: this batch is dominated by AI-native and infrastructure-first companies. ▫️ Pally (YC S25) – Personal relationship management with AI insights ▫️ Avelis Health (YC S25) – AI auditing for medical claims ▫️ Motives (YC S25) – Video-based market and user intelligence ▫️ IronGrid – Insurance-backed warranties for battery storage ▫️ Imprezia – Native ad engine for LLMs and chatbots ▫️ Finto – Automated invoice processing with AI agents ▫️ Kernel – Cloud platform for web automation agents ▫️ Nottelabs (YC S25) – Framework for browser-based AI agents ▫️ BootLoop (YC S25) – AI-driven firmware development and debugging ▫️ Convexia (YC S25) – Automated sourcing of early-stage drug candidates ▫️ Closera (YC S25) – AI marketing workflows for real estate ▫️ AgentMail (YC S25) – Email API purpose-built for AI agents ▫️ Alter (YC S25) – Secure gateway connecting AI tools to enterprise data ▫️ Channel3 (YC S25) – API for AI-powered online shopping ▫️ Albacore Inc. (YC S25) – Autonomous underwater vehicles ▫️ Wedge (YC S25) – Compliance and monitoring for AI in healthcare ▫️ Halluminate (YC S25) – Testing and deployment automation for AI apps ▫️ Cactus (YC S25) – Run AI models directly on devices and wearables YC continues to be the strongest early-stage pipeline in the world. 👉 If you were writing checks today, which of these would you back? Image source: Lenny's Newsletter

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We're excited to participate in the $26.5mn Seed round of Inversion led by Dragonfly alongside Faction VC, VanEck, Mirana Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Metalayer Ventures, Volt Capital, HashKey Capital, Race Capital, Portal Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Breed, Topology Ventures, Bodhi Ventures, Lvna Capital, Escape Velocity (EV3), Folius Ventures and leading angels Inversion is pioneering a unique private equity-style model to make blockchain technology "invisible" to the end user. The company's strategy focuses on acquiring traditional, low-margin businesses and integrating blockchain solutions to enhance their efficiency, speed, and cost-effectiveness. This innovative approach aims to de-risk institutional investment in the crypto space by offering a familiar private equity product with a clear "margin of safety." The newly secured capital will be used to establish Inversion Capital, a separate fund of at least $500 million, which will finance future acquisitions. Inversion has initially targeted South American telecommunications companies and has submitted several acquisition bids, as blockchain could allow these companies to lower their data purchasing costs, among other improvements. The company's plans to target both private and public companies with large user bases, particularly in sectors such as payroll services, supply chain management, and consumer financial services. The company's first acquisition is expected to take place within the next year, paving the way for a new era of mainstream crypto integration. More here: WSJ: https://lnkd.in/dDWvKm-s Ventureburn: https://lnkd.in/dQ9efYfh

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