Since 1999, Redpoint Ventures has partnered with visionary founders to create new markets and redefine existing ones. The firm invests in startups across the seed, early and growth phases. Redpoint has backed over 465 companies with 140 IPOs and M+As, including 2U, HomeAway, Heroku, Netflix, PureStorage, Twilio and Zendesk, and incubated market disruptors like Android. In total, the firm manages $4 billion across multiple funds. Redpoint is based in Menlo Park and has offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Shanghai. For more information visit: http://www.redpoint.com/
In a buzzing market where countless capable builders are running full speed ahead at many of the same challenges, true **FOUNDER MARKET FIT** is becoming a key differentiator 💡
These unicorn founders...
🙏🏾 enter the industry from a place of trust on D1
🔎 seek to answer the *right* questions for their customers (and not just the obvious ones)
🗺 know where the most valuable lives & how to access it
🏅 attract the best when it comes to industry talent (arguably the greatest advantage there is!)
Few founders epitomize this more than Sarah Buchner from Trunk Tools. Exceptional, tenacious, and inspiring are words that come up again and again from builders, buyers, and investors who meet her.
On this week's Unsupervised Learning podcast, Sarah & I sit down to discuss the Why behind so many of the early architecture, product, & hiring decisions she's made -- and where the construction industry, with the help of Trunk Tools' agents, is headed from here 📈
Check it out! 👷🏼♀️
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gP2K6DVj
Apple: https://lnkd.in/ghmt3Dz5
Many know CELSIUS Holdings, Inc. as a top energy drink brand today, but few know the tumultuous journey CEO John Fieldly took to rebuild the brand. In my latest episode, John shared how the company nearly went bankrupt multiple times, lost 50% of its revenue overnight and even got delisted from the Nasdaq.
Despite these challenges, John stepped up to revive the business into the nearly $10B company it is today. We discuss how he shifted focus from weight loss to energy, secured key distribution deals, landed a major partnership with Pepsi, and more.
→ Where it all started
Before John Fieldly joined Celsius, the company had secured distribution across major U.S. retailers but struggled to build a loyal consumer base, leading to poor sales rotation. Despite strong execution plans and marketing strategies, the company nearly ran out of cash and was plunged to penny stock status. When John came on board, Celsius was down to just 12 employees and facing significant challenges after being delisted from major retailers like Costco, Walgreens, and CVS.
→ How the Pepsi deal happened
After pivoting their product positioning, Celsius faced significant challenges in rebuilding relationships with distributors due to their reputation as a failed brand. Plus, distributors saw Celsius as a “fitness gym rat” brand that didn’t belong in the beverage category. So, Celsius focused on building awareness, demand, and brand loyalty among the fitness community. Later on, Pepsi had a void in their performance energy portfolio due to a severed partnership with Bang Energy. Pespi knocked on Celsius’s door, and the partnership doubled sales basically overnight.
→ How they created a powerful brand
The goal was to build an iconic brand that inspires people to live better, healthier lives, similar to how brands like Nike, Apple, and Starbucks evoke strong emotional ties with their customers. The team realized that relying solely on product features, like the number of vitamins, wouldn't set them apart in the market. Instead, they focused on making Celsius a symbol of a lifestyle, emphasizing the brand's ability to help people achieve their goals. This shift from a functional to an emotional brand identity became central to their strategy, helping to position Celsius alongside other iconic brands.
Many more details in the full episode:
https://lnkd.in/dG3SH_7s
In case Team Redpoint's enthusiasm about partnering with Andres Santos and Abiel Gutierrez isn't already *incredibly* obvious, excited to share a bit more about why we were so thrilled to welcome Comun into the portfolio here 👇🏽
https://lnkd.in/gCv5t5nk
While Comun’s community-first approach is its secret sauce, the meat of the platform is its end-to-end tech stack, powered by a kickass technical team from the likes of Brex, Nubank, and more 💪🏽 we've held a high bar for our fintech portfolio and are excited for Comun to join the ranks of Stripe, Nubank, and Ramp on this list!
#fintech#venturecapital#startups
At Comun, our mission is to empower immigrants and their families to turn their hard work into upward mobility. With our recent Series A funding round of $21.5M, we are one step closer to achieving our vision.
With this new investment, we’ll be able to accelerate our growth efforts to continue to meet our customers' unique needs today and in the future.
We couldn’t have done this without our incredible team, the backbone of this company, and our investors, who supported us when Comun was just an idea. A special thank you to Redpoint, who led this funding round, and ANIMO Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, FJ Labs, RTP Global, and South Park Commons, who also participated in this round.
Check out our latest article in TechCrunch by Mary Ann Azevedo.
https://lnkd.in/dnuHgN97
We're excited to announce that we've raised $33 million to accelerate our mission of building the definitive CRM for the next generation 🚀
Since launching last year, Attio has seen significant growth. We now count some of the most forward-thinking, high-growth startups as customers and have built one of the most powerful, flexible products in the market.
But to drive real change in this category, you have to be firing on all cylinders.
To capitalize on our momentum and seize the massive opportunity before us, we've strategically raised these additional funds.
This investment is led by our existing partners Redpoint, Balderton Capital, and Point Nine along with our new partner 01 Advisors. It will allow us to push even harder on our core vision: reinventing CRM for the next era.
Read more 👉 attio.xyz/funding
Snowflake sits in a unique position in the AI landscape. They enable thousands of customers to build AI tools on their data and maintain their own suite of AI products.
That’s why it was so fascinating to speak with Baris Gultekin, Snowflake’s Head of AI, on our latest Unsupervised Learning. Baris has helped Snowflake launch several key products, including Cortex, AI Data Cloud, and even Snowflake’s own LLM, called Arctic. Baris joined Snowflake via acquisition and previously led the Google Assistant and AI teams on Android. Patrick Chase and I really enjoyed hearing Baris's unique views on the future of AI. Some key takeaways:
👷 Why Snowflake built its own enterprise LLM
Snowflake found many of its customers wanted to build Business Intelligence style apps to go from natural language to SQL statements to visualizations. So they built a model focused on SQL - which a lot of general models have shortcomings in. Baris and Snowflake brought on the founders of two open source projects, DeepSpeed and vLLM, and stood the model up in just 3-4 months. (And despite being tailored for enterprise, Baris says Arctic is pretty good at poetry too!)
🔐 Access controls and governance come first
Even before the AI explosion Snowflake had fine grain access controls on the data they store for customers. With AI apps, that’s become even more important. “Let's say a company builds an HR Chatbot," says Baris. "You ask a question, 'who got promoted last week?' Depending on who asked that question, you need to give very different answers, and there is very little room for hallucination.”
❄️ Governance is also a moat for Snowflake
"A lot of our customers spent a couple of YEARS getting the governance of their data in place,” says Baris. “So now they can benefit from that and then build AI on top of it.” Not an easy thing for a startup to recreate.
🦸 Agentic systems are coming
It’s early days, says Baris, but the evolution of AI from chatbots to systems that can take actions on behalf of users, is on the way. BI systems are actually at the forefront of this, as users are essentially telling the AI to go construct a SQL query, decide when and how to run it, and then reason on the data it returns.
We touched on so many more topics — how businesses are using RAG and how Snowflake is optimizing for it, how the Neeva acquisition has impacted Snowflake’s products (besides giving them a new CEO!), and much more. Baris also shared advice on what a new startup in AI should be trying to do today. Give the episode a listen here:
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ggh6rP8j
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Z8eRxL
Apple: https://apple.co/3T2WFBJ
Snapshots from our Rendezvous at Redpoint with leading growth marketers! Grateful to have Morgane Palomares (VP Marketing, Vercel) and Yuriy Timen (Advisor; Ex-Growth Grammarly) share their impactful insights on growth marketing. Cheers to all the marketers who joined us at the event!
Co-founder and Managing Partner of Lux CapitalJosh Wolfe is a master at understanding complex, emerging technologies. In our conversation, Josh shared how he identifies the next big thing, his contrarian views on nuclear energy, biotech, and robotics, as well as his thoughts on the state of the venture capital market today. Here are some key takeaways:
→ Obsessions Fuel Breakthroughs
Josh often dives deep into a particular technology for many weeks, even years, juggling 10-12 of these obsessions at once. For example, his decade-long focus on using technology to replicate and understand smells seemed fruitless for years until the right technological breakthrough occurred. When you believe something is inevitable but aren’t sure of the timeline, continuing to pursue an idea can eventually lead to big rewards when timing and technology align.
→ How Josh Masters New Domains
Josh dives deep into scientific research (not just page one) to quickly become knowledgeable in new fields, and he connects with top scientists to learn about breakthroughs before they’re public. By the time he talks to experts, he’s already well-informed, allowing him to spot trends early and make investment decisions off the beaten path. For example, when the venture world was fixated on solar, wind, and biofuels, Josh turned his attention to his well-informed thesis on nuclear energy.
→ De-Risking Investments to Maximize Returns
Josh Wolfe emphasizes the importance of de-risking early investments by identifying key risks to the business and providing resources to mitigate them. Later investors will then be willing to pay a higher price because they face less uncertainty. His approach is not about being contrarian for its own sake, but about being ahead of the curve (much like moving to Brooklyn before it became mainstream). You want others to agree with you, just later.
→ Josh’s Harsh Take on the Future of VC
Josh predicts that 30-50% of venture firms may not survive the next few years, particularly those that are unable to adapt to changing market dynamics. Josh believes the firms that will thrive are those that can be nimble, make smart capital allocations, and avoid the pitfalls that come from following the herd in overhyped sectors.
More insights for anyone in tech or venture capital in the full episode:
https://lnkd.in/dgxR4fMr
