Nicholas Stone

SAVE THE DATE - 30th November '24 How is AI impacting your everyday life? Perhaps you do not realise the enormous impact that Algorithms are having on your use of time and understanding of the world around. Steve Pearce will help us to realise more and challenge our thinking. He has worked as a designer for several global companies who have developed the “new tech” which is now all around us. This talk is being hosted at Providence Baptist Chapel, Bedford, but for more information please go to JudeConference.org #jude #judeconference #AI #artificialinteligence #algorithms #truth #faith #Christian #bible

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2H24 VC: Slow and Furious Race… We are racing to the election and then will likely crawl to a decision. The nasty rhetoric likely contributed to the slight down tick in consumer sentiment last month, the first time since the beginning of the summer. Headline inflation came in a touch hotter than expected at 2.4% in September. The paradox is that the Conference Board just increased its 3Q24 real GDP growth to 1.8%, up from 0.8% in its prior forecast. Conditions are quite good, but the world feels very chaotic. Obviously, the macro-economic conditions directly affect the venture capital industry as liquidity informs returns and the pace of new investments. The velocity of capital is critical and now the system feels stuck. According to a recent report from Pitchbook, both the number of investments and amount of capital invested significantly declined in 3Q24.  For the quarter, $37.5 billion was invested in 2,794 deals as compared to $55.5 billion in 3,661 deals and $35.0 billion in 3,365 deals in 2Q24 and 3Q23, respectively. Notwithstanding the obvious demand for innovative solutions, the healthcare technology sector also saw continued softness in investment activity. According to Rock Health, 3Q24 investment was $2.4 billion across 110 deals suggesting an annual pace between $10 - $11 billion, consistent with 2023. The data do not lie. Thoughts for the rest of year below…https://lnkd.in/ewBQceMk Flare Capital Partners #digitalhealth #venturecapital

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Capital Group, the stock-picking juggernaut whose American Funds have been a staple in brokerage accounts for nearly a century, is tapping private-equity pioneer KKR KKR -0.68%decrease; red down pointing triangle to step into the lucrative world of private investments. Capital and KKR are planning a series of hybrid funds that will invest in both publicly and privately traded assets. The first two strategies, expected to launch next year, will hold about 60% in public bonds picked by Capital managers, and 40% in direct and asset-based loans sourced by KKR.

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“When you have any signs of early demand pull, you have to follow it and work as hard as it takes to just make it happen.” This early company building advice from Filip Kaliszan is spot on, and it’s the Verkada founding team’s ethos in a nutshell. I’ve been able to see this up close by partnering with Filip over the years, but I’m so glad he generously shared his hard-earned lessons more publicly with other builders in this series for First Round Capital's PMF Method. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways: 🚧  𝗦𝗺𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗠𝗩𝗣: “The very first version looked very funny. It was a Raspberry Pi based camera. We just hacked it together from different parts — the supply chain was Amazon.com. We built maybe 100 of these little cameras and we gave them to friends and businesses we knew. That was never going to fit in a commercial environment, but man, it was so valuable to build it, because we could evaluate different streaming technologies and learn about the challenges of local storage. All these problems that we later encountered, we had already started solving. By the time the real product started selling, we had fewer bugs and ideas on how to navigate them. It just smoothed the road." 👷‍♂️ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗹𝗲 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗹𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿): “I remember flying to L.A. to install cameras at the Beverly Hills Equinox, one of our early customers. The gym closed at midnight, and we had until 5:00 AM to get the cameras installed. So next thing I know I'm buying some drills, getting up on a ladder and pulling cables myself. That client kept growing with us over the years because of the attention to detail we showed from day one. I've worked in the consumer space before. My perception of enterprise is that if you're willing to do the work, have the customer conversations, get on the plane and get out of your bubble to see how customers are using different solutions and build a picture of what will work for them, it's more of a well-defined process than it is a guessing game." ⚙️ 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗮𝘁: “One of the mistakes that I see is sometimes folks listen to the customer for what they want as the solution, as opposed to listening to find out what the problem is. If you talked to our customers, on the surface I think what you might get back is that they want a sum of their favorite features from all of the competitors. But if you took the best features from all of our competitors and put it into one product, you'd build a bloated product with a bunch of not so great features. But if you dive a little deeper in that conversation, and you try to understand why they want these features, if you go to the customer and have them show you their workflow, and take notes about the things that are broken, that's when you start identifying the problems.”

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Misalignment on exit expectations can lead to value-destroying friction between CEOs, boards, and investors. Regular exit talks - at least once a year -help to: •  clarify strategic objectives and align exit timing •  assess the business’s real value and define a compromise timeline •  review investment agreements and explore alternative exit strategies Regular and proactive exit talks foster trust, prevent wrong decisions, and maximize value for all stakeholders. Practical considerations for such exit talks are included in this article.  #ExitStrategy #ExitReadiness #BoardLeadership #CorporateGovernance https://lnkd.in/e-jsaJA7

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