Mercury

Michigan Tech Week is just around the corner, October 1st-4th in Detroit! The largest and most impactful get-together for Michigan tech and high-growth entrepreneurship, Michigan Tech Week brings together founders, investors, innovators, leaders, students, and community members to further mobilize the local ecosystem for success. With 100+ speakers, including Mercury’s adrian fortino, attendees will gain access to important insights and networking opportunities. Founders can also apply to participate in four different pitch competitions. Learn more & get tickets here: https://lnkd.in/gZea6WGB #MITechWeek Michigan Founders Fund

I really enjoyed talking to Kevin Dowd from Carta about the changes in VC fund deployment cycles over the past few years. Some VCs have been mirroring their deployment cycles with liquidity - which makes the current liquidity challenges turn into deployment conservatism. The 2022 vintage is now the slowest deployed vintage since Carta started tracking data! https://lnkd.in/gsSMDZ3M

My latest in today's print edition of The Wall Street Journal: Companies Finally Find a Use for Virtual Reality at Work. More employees are strapping on virtual reality headsets as the immersive technology becomes an increasingly common method for workforce training on a range of topics, from hardware maintenance to leadership and empathy. Companies such as UPS and Walmart have taken a slow but measured approach to adopting a technology that has drawn extreme hype and extreme skepticism over the years as businesses have tested, piloted and pulled back on various uses. “It’s an interesting, but slower than expected journey. But for training—I think VR will always be a good way to use it,” said Johan Hellqvist, head of mobile and XR/3D at Volvo Group, about the process. The company today uses VR to train employees on actions like replacing the battery on an electric truck. What are your thoughts on getting trained in virtual reality? Read the full story here for more from Mark Gröb, Head of Immersive Technology at UPS, Christopher Botzum, Deputy Police Chief, Joliet Illinois Police Department, Nicki Finnigan, director of learning and development at St James's Place, Jennifer Buchanan vice president of the Walmart Academy training program, and Brad Scoggin, co-founder and chief executive of ArborXR: https://lnkd.in/ewYyumhn

We are so excited to see ArborXR and Co-Founder/CEO Brad Scoggin featured in The Wall Street Journal article “Companies Finally Find a Use for Virtual Reality at Work” So which companies are embracing VR for training? Volvo, UPS, Walmart, Delta Airlines, St. James Place, Bank of America, police forces and hospital systems to name a few. The ArborXR MDM platform makes all of it possible. Congratulations to the ArborXR (Brad Scoggin, Jordan Williams, Will Stackable & the rest of their amazing team). Read the full article by Isabelle Bousquette to learn more. https://lnkd.in/gbs5XzHx Heath Butler Alex Gras Samantha Lewis Blair Garrou Aileen Allen Devin R.

Really interesting article by Goldman Sachs' Matthew Lucas on AI’s impact on the software industry. Specifically, Lucas explores if emerging companies, with the benefit of AI, or incumbents, with greater data gravity and strong customer relationships, will win. As an early-stage tech investor, here are a few thoughts for founders starting software companies looking to disrupt industries, beat incumbents, and come out on top: • Your best opportunity for success may be in highly fragmented, antiquated industries where industry dynamics have yet to force customers to adopt GenAI strategies, but there is significant efficiency and/or financial upside to be gained by the customer when the industry innovates. • If you are launching a software startup and won't have access to unique data that can be used to train and/or inform an AI product or strategy, you're less likely to get funded. • If you are entering an industry that is consolidated, it's likely that the incumbent market leader has a significant lead on you. Your core differentiators, unique insight, and/or unique selling proposition must be significant enough to undermine the incumbent's stronghold, even if you’ve mastered incorporating GenAI into your workflows and product. How does this practically play out with a company? Mercury portco Otto is a great example: • The pet-tech industry has been highly fragmented and veterinarian clinics primarily used internal facing client-server based CRM systems. Vets and pet parents were looking for an experience that connected clinics and customers, similar to what users experience with Starbucks, Amazon, Chase, or their human medicine provider. The incumbent CRM platform providers failed to disintermediate themselves, opening the door for outside innovators. Enter Otto, which both provides this and sits on top of the incumbent tech stack so buyers don’t have to ditch their old software, virtually eliminating switching costs for the buyer. • Newcomer Otto uses an AI/ML strategy, leveraging clinics’ own unique data sets to inform an AI/ML product strategy introducing innovation to the fragmented, antiquated industry with minimal incumbent friction. • The unique insight was that vet clinics' ancillary revenue was being disintermediated by e-commerce giants and pet parents were craving to engage with their vet similarly to other areas of their consumer life. To all the first-time entrepreneurs out there, before you start spending money, I encourage you to do the market and customer discovery work to figure out how GenAI will impact your new idea and make sure you understand how GenAI will be leveraged within the competitive landscape. https://lnkd.in/gfptY5x4 Steven Carter Zeynep Young Blair Garrou

Join us on 9/17 for “From Zero to Hero: How to Bootstrap your Startup to Success!” This month’s Software Day at the Ion Houston panel will feature Heath Butler, James M. Benham, and Sid Upadhyay sharing professional experiences and advice for founders with tight budgets and big dreams. A networking happy hour will follow, brought to you by Gunderson Dettmer. Software founders can also still apply for Office Hours to receive 1-on-1 time with mentors from the Mercury network who are experts in high-growth software innovations. Register: https://lnkd.in/gGPrXWa7 Apply for Office Hours by 9/10: https://lnkd.in/g3sVQvay Blair Garrou Aziz Gilani adrian fortino Samantha Lewis Melissa Lutzke Turowsky Jackie Pfister Andreas R. Galliker, CFA Winston Gilpin Dan Watkins Eddie Lou Tolonye Williams Patrick Okorafor, CPA Alex Gras Lisa Roberts Devin R. Aileen Allen

Beautifully said, AJ.   Talk to your customers and find out what they need. Their insights will lead to your groundbreaking solutions.    Ayoola John, AKA AJ, was formerly a Product Manager at Facebook and Coinbase and is now CEO of Astronaut—an AI assistant for community managers.   See the full interview with AJ here: https://lnkd.in/g95GG8WH 

The careviso team has reached a new milestone, completing over 2 million prior authorizations!    Streamlining access to care is one of the Mercury portco’s core missions. Its seeQer platform improves response times, reduces administrative burdens for healthcare providers, and improves patient outcomes.   Congratulations to Andrew Mignatti and team!    https://lnkd.in/gX-CvuW9 

Congratulations to Blumira on winning big at the 2024 SaaS Awards! The Mercury portco was awarded Best Security Innovation in a SaaS Product due to the opportunities it offers small businesses with tight SIEM budgets and its ease of deployment and manageability as a cloud service. https://lnkd.in/g3dbNeY3    #SaaS #SaaSSolutions Jim Simpson Aziz Gilani

As a board member of National Venture Capital Association, we want to better understand and support the VC industry. We invite all VC firms to share their workforce, demographic, and talent management data through the #VCHumanCapital Survey by 9/27: https://lnkd.in/dCGFCzzc