FirstMark

We are thrilled to announce that Ezra has been acquired by Function Health, the leader in comprehensive wellness testing! Ezra sits at the intersection of three of FirstMark’s deepest areas of expertise: consumer, healthcare, and AI. We first backed founder Emi Gal back in 2020, and it has been a truly incredible journey together, navigating the ups and downs of company-building, while staying laser-focused throughout on the mission of detecting cancer early, when it is most treatable. This acquisition is only the beginning of the journey. We are taking no cash off the table. Instead, we are maintaining our holding in the combined company, and doubling down with an additional investment in Function Health. We are proud to be investors in Function Health, one of the premier companies in next-generation healthcare, and excited about the future! https://lnkd.in/e7_5wxb6

Just launched episode 2 of my new podcast/show - The Longest View! I had an awesome conversation with Eric Shapiro & David Fine the Co-Founders of Understory. We had a fantastic discussion around the future of AI for investment professionals and went through a range of topics related to their founding story. A few things we touched on: 1/ Eric and David's respective experiences at Elliott Investment Management L.P. and Dynamic Yield by Mastercard and how that influenced their desires to start a company 2/ The challenges investment firms face with respect to making use of the unstructured data that exists within their four walls 3/ Their philosophy on building a product in "single player" mode to help accelerate sales cycles and GTM in a category that can be notoriously difficult to sell into 4/ Lessons learned on solving institutional needs for investment firms, especially in the context of using AI as a lever for internal productivity 5/ The idea of encoding the "DNA" of an investment firm into software, and how platforms like Understory help facilitate that process and bring more objectivity to a subjective discipline 6/ The advice they would give to themselves if they were just starting up again This is a fantastic, tactical conversation on what it means to be building today at the intersection of AI & Capital Markets. Huge thanks to Eric & David for joining, I'm excited to see what's next for the business. Link to the full video is in the comments

ClickHouse is redefining what’s possible in data infrastructure—delivering ultra-fast, scalable analytics for both humans and AI agents. With over 2,000 customers and 300%+ growth in the past year, they’re becoming the default engine for intelligent, real-time data products. Congratulations to Aaron Katz and the entire ClickHouse team — we're proud to have partnered with you back in 2021, and look forward to an incredibly exciting chapter ahead 🚀 https://lnkd.in/et97Xeke

Thank you to the ClickHouse community for making our Series C financing possible! Thrilled to partner with our new investors Khosla Ventures (Ethan Choi who led the round), IVP (Cack Wilhelm), BOND (Jay Simons), Battery Ventures (Dharmesh Thakker), and Bessemer Venture Partners (Byron Deeter). Grateful to further our work in this round with Index Ventures (Mike Volpi), Benchmark (Peter Fenton), Lightspeed (Gaurav Gupta), GIC (Lihan Chen), Nebius (Arkady Volozh), FirstMark (Matt Turck), and Coatue (Caryn Marooney). And excited to strengthen our banking relationships with Stifel Bank (Ted Wilson) and Goldman Sachs (Branden Hurley). With gratitude! - Aaron, Alexey Milovidov, and Yury Izrailevsky

🔹 The End of Busy-Work? Meet Your First “Agent Employees.” 🔹 🎙️ Just dropped a great new episode with George Sivulka, CEO & founder of Hebbia ($160M+ raised) George went from Stanford meta-learning research to building a 100-person (soon 300 +) team whose agents already read 4–5 billion pages a year for the world’s largest asset managers, banks and law firms. Some of the stuff we discussed: • Why “smart people doing stupid tasks” is the biggest ROI lever for Gen-AI ✂️ • How agent employees slot into the org chart — complete with email, Slack & KPIs 🗂️➡️🤖 • Moving beyond RAG: Hebbia’s ISD architecture, giant context windows and Maximizer router that pumps 450 M tokens/minute ⚙️ • What it really means for junior bankers, lawyers & consultants — and why the best prompt-writers become tomorrow’s managers 💼 👉 Dive in here: YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ebqR7Dpq Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e4_dW8SX Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eWzp4twK #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #GenAI #Productivity #KnowledgeWork

On May 29th, Posh is excited to be hosting Early Stage Hiring & Being Hired in conjunction with Companyon Ventures and FirstMark. Come join us for an evening of insights, candid discussions and connections. We’ll explore: What early-stage startups look for in their first hires What candidates should ask and expect when joining a startup Lessons we’ve learned from both sides of the hiring conversation There will also be time to network and connect with other founders, builders, and hiring leaders. RSVP via the link in the comments – space is limited and we'd love to see you there. Alison Eastaway Eli Taylor-Lemire Arlen Oharonian Frédéric R. #startups #hiring #product #engineering #founders #techcareers #earlystage #networking #PoshEvents

Introducing the second generation of Ada’s Voice AI. Fully reengineered. Informed by real-world use. Built on customer feedback. It’s our most advanced voice offering yet — more natural, more intelligent, and easier to manage. It reasons in real time, adapts with feedback, and improves continuously. Your AI agent can now: – Speak with empathy and handle interruptions – Learn through plain-language coaching – Think critically to resolve complex issues – Collaborate seamlessly with your team Voice AI is no longer a channel. It’s a teammate.

On May 29th, Posh is excited to be hosting Early Stage Hiring & Being Hired in conjunction with Companyon Ventures and FirstMark. Come join us for an evening of insights, candid discussions and connections. We’ll explore: What early-stage startups look for in their first hires What candidates should ask and expect when joining a startup Lessons we’ve learned from both sides of the hiring conversation There will also be time to network and connect with other founders, builders, and hiring leaders. RSVP via the link in the comments – space is limited and we'd love to see you there. Alison Eastaway Eli Taylor-Lemire Arlen Oharonian Frédéric R. #startups #hiring #product #engineering #founders #techcareers #earlystage #networking #PoshEvents

I recently had the pleasure of joining the FirstMark and Battery Ventures CloudNY gathering of over a hundred CEOs from some of the world’s fastest-growing, most cutting-edge cloud startups. It was a dynamic day of invigorating conversation in an incredible setting (the awe-inspiring 30 Hudson Yards - the sixth tallest building in NYC!). During my fireside chat with Amish Jani, we discussed how at Upwork we have gone deep to think about how to get the most out of AI, human and AI+human solutions both in our product and as we enable our customers to do the same. It’s the mandate of every modern CEO to constantly reconfigure our operating models and organizations to stay ahead of the fast-moving environments in which we compete. What have been your biggest successes in harnessing AI+humans in new ways to reconfigure your organization? I’d love to hear in the comments. ⬇️

Interesting take from Malte Ubl (CTO of Vercel) from our chat last week: AI has had the biggest impact on senior engineers—not juniors. Why? Because the critical skill in the AI era is code review, and seasoned engineers excel at evaluating AI-generated code. His prediction: The next generation of developers will "speedrun themselves into being world-class code reviewers." cc Guilds by FirstMark