Cristina Cordova

🚨NEW EPISODE: Recorded live at FUTURE TITANS 2026 - Jeff Perry of Carta sat down with the iconic Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry. Seth has been in venture for 25 years, built Foundry from scratch as an emerging manager himself, and has backed about 50 emerging manager funds through his fund of funds. He has genuinely seen every side of this table. They went deep on building Foundry, why VCs are in the influence business, not the decision business, and why the concentration problem in venture is not only bad for LPs, but also for the innovation ecosystem overall. And why Seth's new book, Capital Evolution, is so important for the future of America. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/ehQUQ2EM Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eU4FExpg

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Today I'm presenting to The Council Angels' latest cohort, focused on product leaders. They're on week 6 of our angel investing 101 curriculum. By now, it's becoming more clear to most of them whether angel investing is likely to be a hobby or an accelerator into to a future career in VC. My biggest advice to those who want a career in VC someday is to build their own proprietary flywheel for deal flow. It may start with angel communities and syndicates, but eventually putting in the work to build their own sourcing mechanism will make them very attractive candidates! I love to highlight these 4 who have masterfully executed this pole vault into VC: ⭐ Ruffin Mitchener: (TikTok → MALIAM) ⭐ Sri Varre (Lazy Girl Capital → Pivotal VC) ⭐ Zehra Naqvi (The Z List → Headline VC → founder of Lore) ⭐ Michelle F. (SF IRL on X → Headline VC) #angelinvesting #venturecapital #risingstars

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Three lessons from a second-time founder Husayn Kassai built and led Onfido for 10 years. These are the three lessons he's applying to ollo. 1. Product-market fit is about solving burning problems, not building perfect products. If you're working on something customers desperately need, they'll be patient while you figure out execution. Your first product doesn't need polish, it needs to solve a problem urgent enough that customers tolerate rough edges while you improve. Be scientific about validating this. 2. Hiring determines everything Your ability to bring in people who complement each other and fit your mission is the biggest determinant of success. 3. Trust your gut, especially when you think you've outgrown it. You have three signals as a founder: your head (rational), your heart (emotional), and your gut (instinct). Tech founders have a habit of preferring rationality and ignoring the other two. How your team feels matters. How customers feel about your product matters. And your gut matters most five or ten years in when you’re hiring experienced execs from big companies and think you can finally stop paying attention. Trust the pattern recognition you've built.

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Great conversations at our WillowTree Ventures dinner with leaders across fintech and AI. A few themes stood out strongly: enterprises are leaning into AI for real efficiency gains, product and engineering orgs still set the agenda, and the whitespace in “boring” industries is wider than most people assume. It’s clear that the next breakout companies in AI for financial services won’t come from the obvious places. Thanks to everyone who joined - excited to keep working alongside founders building in these non-obvious, high-impact wedges.

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AI is changing the structure of most companies we see. Lots more coming from us on how startups can build faster, leaner teams -- and where we see all of this going. Great piece from Pete Flint to kick it off: https://lnkd.in/dcUebcJj

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Every hire, product feature, and GTM experiment is a capital allocation decision, most teams just don’t call it that. I’m kicking off a 3-part series on capital allocation for founders, operators, and finance leaders with a simple question: ➡️ Will the next $1 you deploy become worth more than $1? Series overview Part 1: defines the core concept + the math Part 2: where capital goes + how to measure whether it’s working Part 3: AIMS framework for communicating allocation decisions to management teams and your board Part 1 (attached here) lays the practical foundation: 🔹 The $1 invested test and ROIIC vs. hurdle rates (scoreboard vs. decision lens) 🔹 A lightweight “investment brief” to evaluate bets (GROW / BUILD / BUY) 🔹 The small metric toolkit that translates finance into operating decisions (NPV / payback / ROIIC / incremental margin) 🔹 Early-stage proxies when DCF inputs are unknowable (burn multiple + revenue quality) 🔹 Operator “vital signs” to spot drift early (profit engine, leverage, cash conversion, optics) Series Roadmap ✔️ This series (Parts 1–3): breadth-first. shared, lightweight framework to define value creation, choose decision-grade metrics, and communicate tradeoffs clearly ✔️ Next series: depth-first. momentum drivers + operational decisions that need near real-time measurement to spot drift early and course-correct fast Read Part 1 here and Part 2 and 3 on substack. Next Series will be out next week. 💰 What’s one bet you’re funding right now, and how will you prove it’s working?

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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Enterprise integrations have long been a tar pit for great software, where months of costly manual work eats margin and kills momentum. Refold (formerly Cobalt)’s agents flip that script, automating the heavy lifting so that tool implementations plug in and deliver value in a fraction of the time. Incredibly excited to see Jugal Anchalia and Abhishek Kumar demolish the most stubborn bottleneck in enterprise software!

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The SMS interactions between brand & consumer contain incredibly rich context for 1:1 personalized commerce experiences. Postscript is the platform enabling such experiences. On this week's episode, Rishabh and I sat down with Adam Turner to explore how SMS evolved from an abandoned-cart afterthought to a 1:1 sales & marketing channel. We covered: - Category creation and the rise of the “SMS marketer” - Compliance and quality as product design principles - Moving from broadcast to conversational journeys - Building distribution in the Shopify ecosystem, then scaling a sales-led motion - Where AI has augmented vs reinvented both marketing products and teams Link in comments

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Three years ago, we launched Wisdom Ventures with a clear intention to support founders building at the intersection of well-being, human connection, and transformative tech. Since then, we’ve made 37 investments from our oversubscribed "minimum viable" $10M Fund I, backing early-stage companies in physical and mental wellbeing, women’s health, ethical AI, and human connection-centered innovation. We’ve always known we are on to something—what we didn’t expect was how quickly the data would back it up. Recent industry benchmarks show that most 2022-vintage emerging funds are experiencing the usual J-curve dip. In contrast, Wisdom Ventures is showing strong early performance: 📈 Net IRR (internal rate of return): >10% 📊 MOIC (multiple on invested capital): ~2x* ⏰ Median investment age: 18 months 💥 ....and # of our companies have a diverse founder by gender, race, or sexual orientation: 75% As we get ready to make our 38th and final investment out of Fund I and start deploying out of our significantly larger Fund II (first close May 1st), we’re filled with gratitude—for our founders, our LPs, our early supporters, our early believers, and this growing movement toward a more conscious, connected future, fueled by innovation from the ❤️ *Based on most current reports **Not in photo: Our fantastic operating partner, Zoe Rogers #WisdomVentures #ImpactInvesting #ConsciousTech #Wellbeing #AIForGood #FutureOfWork #VentureCapital

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What’s really stopping early-stage startups from building the next big app? It’s rarely tech. It’s rarely funding. It’s building before validating. As Vizio Ventures, we see this pattern often: Strong teams move fast into development, without confirming urgency, clarity, and real market pull. Before writing a single line of code, we validate three things: • Is the pain urgent? • Is the target persona clearly defined? • Is there real external proof of demand? Because building isn’t the objective. Validation and scalable growth are. If you have a new product idea and want to pressure-test it before investing time and budget let us help you through! 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/dzpcyFiT 

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Before Plaid powered the fintech ecosystem, it started as a budgeting tool—with playbacks of your spending and push alerts about overpriced coffee. On Grit, Zachary Perret shares the missteps and half-built features that came first, and how a string of user drop-offs led them to uncover the real opportunity.

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founders that have only ever worked within a large company tend to be empty vessels. the most valuable skill at a big company is identifying who has (or could soon have) power and then aligning with and advocating for their ideas as if they were your own. take a spin through the recent YC class and you see a pattern of big company mids all founding the same AI for xyz... its not really their idea, it just sounds good. the board meetings will be especially painful. founders acting like they work for the investors, seeking approval, lost in the woods. there are exceptions. but they tend to be founded before zirp. when founding a company was hard and low prestige and there wasn't capital at every turn. an empty vessel doesn't jump into the abyss without first raising a $5m round from the 9 figure 'seed firms'. 

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We continue to see fintechs launch their own chains. First Circle with Arc. Now Tempo from Stripe. In today's webinar, folks asked, "Do we really need another payments chain?" The answer depends on where you are in your journey. At Dynamic, we’ve seen this play out across every type of builder (fintechs to consumer apps to onchain infra teams). The truth is: there is no single “right” chain. There are only tradeoffs. - L1s (like Stripe building its own): Maximum control, but higher setup fees. You own the infrastructure and the overhead. - L2s & rollups (like Robinhood's choice): More agile, but built on shared foundations. Optimized public chains (Solana, Stellar, Spark, etc.): Fast, cost-efficient, and ready to go. They're great for teams that want to launch quickly without reinventing the wheel. My recommendation: Start with what’s performant and proven. Chains like Solana Foundation, Stellar Development Foundation, and Lightspark get you to market fast. Once you’ve found product-market fit and scale, then revisit whether spinning up your own chain makes sense. – 🔁 Share this post if you found it helpful. ➕ Follow me (Itai Turbahn) for more posts on stablecoins and crypto.

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Building a startup is hard. It is especially hard in a country like Nigeria, where the ecosystem is yet to mature, and there are still many challenges to navigate. It is confusing, lonely, and full of uncertain decisions. Founders, especially early-stage founders, need as much support as they can get. Not “inspire to perspire” posts, but practical support on hiring, operations, funding, customer research, and navigating the regulatory landscape. Too many founders are surrounded by noise, surface-level advice, and generic content that does not reflect their current realities. What they need is a community that understands exactly what they are going through and can offer context that is immediately useful. Sierra Collective exists to be that community. A space where founders learn from one another’s live experiences and shorten the painful trial and error that usually defines the early stages of building. At Sierra, we believe that the most valuable support comes from those who are active in the trenches, navigating the same obstacles. If you are an early-stage founder, you should join the Sierra Collective. You do not have to figure everything out alone. As the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Join Sierra: https://lnkd.in/d-Nzmtkq

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Big milestone for Firmable. We’ve raised $14m Series A led by Airtree. Sales has moved through a few big waves: intuition-led, CRM-led, data-led. We’re now entering the next one – intelligence-led sales. The opportunity isn’t just better data. It’s turning that data into clear direction and action, without adding more work for sales teams. That’s what we’re building at Firmable: a foundation of trusted external data, layered with intelligence that helps sellers know who to focus on and when. Led by Airtree, this round supports our expansion across Asia and into the US – and accelerates the build-out of AI agents that take the admin work off sales teams so they can focus on what they do best. Proud of the team, grateful to our customers and investors. We’re just getting started. Read the exclusive in the AFR. https://lnkd.in/gr66uknb Leigh Jasper | Tara Salmon | Karthik Venkatasubramanian| Chester Thompson| Chath Widanapathirana

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