Forerunner

Novig is doing things their own way — peer-to-peer, better odds, greater transparency, and novel user parameters. Excellent feature on what makes this platform so unique and powerful in WIRED: https://lnkd.in/gmyfHee7

Advocacy and trust are the hallmarks of any great brand story, and there's no better ambassador for that than a brand's super fan customers. Isha Patel, Luis Molina, and the Kale team are accelerating this dynamic by essentially digitizing word-of-mouth, tapping into tailwinds with nano-creators and bottom-up, product-led growth. Inc. Magazine wrote an incredible feature on what makes Kale so special: https://lnkd.in/eikC3yNK

Our co-founder and CEO, Jean-Denis Greze, met with Luba Y. to talk about why he left Plaid to start over from zero, and what that taught him about building Town. During their convo they get into: - Killing a working startup because it wasn't the rocket ship he wanted - Why Town isn't 'just another AI assistant - Staying ahead of OpenAI, Gemini, and Google - Building cult culture out of "uncool" work We may be bias, but it's worth a listen 😎

We just crossed $500M made for Creators on Stan!!!! It’s crazy that I started this in my dorm room and now we’ve made over 500 MILLION $$$ for our customers!!!! Stan has also personally helped 51+ people become millionaires and created so many cool stories. Some of my favorites: - Sarah Perl became a millionaire by 23 selling her first digital product - Amanda Schonberg went from homeless to $500K coaching bakers - Milk Maid Farm turned her homestead life into a cookbook and sold 10,000 copies in a year And what’s cool is we’ll get to a billion dollars in no time because the growth curve keeps compounding ;) In a time where most folks are struggling. Where jobs are disappearing and AI is swallowing industries whole. We're building a tiny pocket of the world with Stan where things are actually working out. We are building the NEW AMERICAN DREAM. I’ve never been more driven towards our mission of giving everyone the tools to earn a living working for themselves. We're just getting started. See you at $1 billion very soon 🫡

"The New York Mets are making the startup Novig their official prediction-market partner, marking a first for Major League Baseball as the prediction-markets industry looks for a foothold in professional sports." Huge for Novig, huge for the Mets 🔥 https://lnkd.in/gFNK2zBv

Congrats to depthfirst on making Forbes' list of the Next Billion-Dollar Startups. Started by alumni of Google DeepMind, Block and Databricks, the team has big aims to secure the next era of software where intelligence creates more code than was ever imaginable. https://lnkd.in/g_sEeh38

Thanks Business Insider for the feature alongside so many other great Consumer investors! And yes - we're open for business for all things Consumer. Aside from vibe-coding and dating apps we've partnered with: - Infrastructure that supports consumer experiences (supply chain / agentic payments / model layer) - robotics & the enablement layer - New AI surfaces and platforms across health, fintech, and prosumer

If you’ve heard “summer is slow” and “all the VCs are gone,” I’m here to tell you: not around these parts. We’re hosting our first-ever Summer Sessions: office hours for seed and pre-seed founders twice a week throughout August at Forerunner, where we’ll share ideas on branding and growth, and 1-1 feedback on the pitch, GTM, and positioning. I love being able to have an unfiltered conversation about an idea before business plans and numbers take over the story. Bring something you're still figuring out. A pre-seed concept, a first prototype you haven't shown many people. No decks needed, no metrics to defend. Just a chance to get honest feedback on an idea from people who've seen a lot. We'll close out the summer with a gathering, so everyone who came through can meet each other and keep the conversations going. If that sounds useful, sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gUdbfAHG Bonus: our Presidio office is a great place to spend time!