EVCA Newsletter | June Edition - The Latest VC Jobs, Events, and Content
Facing emerging threats like Generative AI and a souring macro economy, big tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google are recalibrating corporate priorities and entering into a new phase of austerity. Workers unfortunately have borne the brunt of this industry reset. Since 2022, tech companies have laid off over 300,000 employees. Some journalists decry the statistic as signaling a “tech-wide reckoning,” the end of growth and the end of innovation as we know it. Yet, like most things, the nuance is in the details.
In the wake of the tech layoffs, two nonobvious trends have emerged. The first is the surge of new founders. With big tech losing its reputation as the bastion of workplace stability, tech workers have seized the opportunity to try out the founder experience for themselves. The 20% increase in applications to Y Combinator’s accelerator in 2022 is indicative of this upsurge in entrepreneurship. The second nonobvious trend is the movement of several high-profile corporate execs into VC roles. Some notable examples include IVP’s hiring of former Slack’s former Chief Product Officer, Tamar Yehoshua, and Spark Capital’s recruitment of OpenAI’s Head of Product, Fraser Kelton. As these trends suggest, the tech industry is far from the brink of a major reckoning. It appears to be merely in a state of flux, with the full impact of these recent shock waves across the tech and the VC ecosystems still yet to be seen.
And with that bit of introductory fanfare, welcome back to the June edition of the EVCA newsletter!
Spotlight Feature: Lauren Stephanian, Partner at Pantera Capital
We had the chance to interview Lauren Stephanian, who is a Partner at Pantera Capital. Lauren shares her origins story—from starting her career as a software developer, working in trading at Deutsche Bank, and most recently, investing in crypto companies at Pantera. In this interview, she also shares her thoughts about life and career.
Featured Investor
This month we highlight Natan Reddy of Ironspring Ventures as our featured investor of the EVCA community.
Natan Reddy is an Investor at Ironspring Ventures, where he sources, conducts diligence, and invests in digital industrial startups across supply chain, logistics, construction, and manufacturing. He also currently serves as EVCA’s Supply Chain Vertical Co-Lead. Prior to Ironspring, he led data-driven analysis and research on supply chain innovation at CB Insights in New York City. His work has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, NBC, TechCrunch, CNN, Forbes, Quartz, and The Los Angeles Times. A native of the Bay Area, Natan is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA in Economics).
EVCA Leadership Spotlight: Cybersecurity Vertical Leads, Zain Rizavi of Ridge Ventures and Mustafa Neemuchwala of NEA
This EVCA Leadership Spotlight Series is intended to help the broader community get to know what's going on behind the scenes at the EVCA, as well as highlight the valuable contributions of the roughly 50 individuals across the venture capital industry who make the EVCA possible.
Zain Rizavi is currently a Principal with Ridge Ventures. Zain focuses on security, infrastructure, developer tools, and enterprise application software. While at Ridge, he's backed Channel99, a B2B Martech Company. Prior to Ridge, he was an investor with Pelion Ventures, which focuses on early-stage enterprise investments, where he sourced the following investments: Macrometa, Presidio Identity, Otto, Open Raven, and Harmonic. Previously he was on the Special Projects team at Cloudflare. Zain received a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Utah. Outside of work, he's an avid reader and cyclist.
Mustafa Neemuchwala is a lifelong developer turned investor at NEA, partnering with daring founders building generational companies from seed to IPO. He is especially passionate about AI, cybersecurity, developer, data, and technically differentiated application software & fintech. Before NEA, Mustafa advised on $58B+ of tech M&A at Qatalyst Partners working closely with management teams across developer, cybersecurity, data, infra, fintech, deep tech, and consumer internet. A proud Texan who grew up in the Dallas suburbs, Mustafa graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, studying fundamental & quantitative finance, liberal arts (Plan II), computer science, and mathematics.
What We’re Reading
Here we share our favorite content produced from EVCA members across the world:
The Liquidation Survival Guide and Model: Vol 1 - Noah Gross of Scale Venture Partners, created a guide to help entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and any others who are entangled in the nitty gritty details of modeling complex situations
Unicorns vs. Llamas: A Study in Startup Extremes - Andrew Plato of Zenaciti, shares how the differences between the vision, conflict, and failure are what separates a unicorn startup from a struggling one
Generative AI for modern business intelligence - Kenn So of Smartsheet and Ethan Ding of TextQL, delve into the modern data stack, understanding where the generative AI opportunities are as well as how some startups are approaching these opportunities
The Rise and Fall of Newchip Accelerator - DC Palter of Tech Coast Angels, answers the many questions that arose after the bankruptcy court ordered Newchip shut down amidst allegations against the founder
Market Map: The Emerging Technology Opportunity in Single-Family Rentals - Nima Wedlake of Thomvest Ventures, shares a Single-Family Rentals (SFR) Technology Market Map that highlights many of the companies building across every segment of the SFR ownership lifecycle
Events
EVCA Term Sheet Training 101 & Happy Hour | June 1 | Hosted by EVCA and Sidley
Understanding and Using Generative AI | June 6 | Hosted by Austin Forum
Exit Optionality Bootcamp | June 14 | Hosted by Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center
Discussion of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, and Strategies | June 14 | Hosted by Austin Forum
How Private Companies are Navigating Today’s Turbulent Capital Markets | June 15 | Hosted by NVCA
The Next Web Conference | June 15-16 | Hosted by The Next Web
UC Berkeley’s Financial Innovation Conference | June 16 | Hosted by Berkeley MFE Program & Rebellion Research
LGBT+ VC Summit - Day One | From Stonewall to Silicon Valley | June 20 | Hosted by LGBT+ VC, Tiana Tukes & Jackson Block
Jobs
Consumer-focused and Enterprise Infrastructure-focused Associate Role in San Francisco, CA at NEA. If interested, reach out to Sarah Armstrong at Armstrong@glocap.com
Investment Role at PROOF VC in Washington D.C. | Refer to #vcjobs channel on EVCA Slack
Founding Marketer (Product Marketing) Role in New York, NY at Enterpret
Connect with us: EVCA, Sam, Adam, and Isaac
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