Our YC S24 Portfolio

Before I start bragging - some quick links for you from stuff I’ve been following:

Here’s an article that covers a bit about the recent tech/nuclear partnerships. We’ve seen the energy constraints and the fight to meed demand first-hand through our investment in CoreWeave about a year ago. I started following the nuclear push back then as a potential way for data centers to find the energy they need and last month there was a great podcast on the subject from two legendary investors that you can find here. Seems like there’s real momentum there and it’s great to see.

Also the Fed plans to keep cutting rates. So that’s good? Or bad? I’m currently reading a book called “The Price of Time: The real story of interest” to try to figure that out if you’d like to try figuring it out with me.

Now - finally - some bragging. Here are some blurbs about 4 of the 10 investments we made. I redacted parts of it and will be sharing the other 6 with our syndicate. Apply here if you’d like to get the full update.

Y Combinator S24 Fund Investments:

TaxGPT - AI co-pilot for accountants

Two-time founder before this and co-founded the business with his wife. Used to think that was a tough move, but have reversed course and now I think it is a sign of truly living/breathing the business. I have also seen plenty of non-married co-founders break up so I don't think it's an added risk. They grew ARR from [REDACTED] during the batch. People have different things to say about the "co-pilot" category, but I think in the right niche (not coding because it's too competitive) it's a pretty straight forward way to deliver value. Accountants used to have to spend hours researching answers for clients. Now they ask TaxGPT. Saves them hours. Gets their clients answers faster. They're happy to pay for it because it's a clear part of what they get paid to do for clients. There are also a lot of tax accountants and a lot of people who need tax help. The bigger vision is to become a system of record for these accountants and there are early signs of this working. We got into the round through a warm-intro from Ali Moiz (ex-Sandhill CEO) who has known Kashif (co-founder/CEO) for a decade of startup work in SF.

HenryAI - Automating Deal Decks for Commercial Real Estate Brokers

Very similar overall thesis to what you just read about TaxGPT except they're focused on commercial real estate brokers creating sales decks. Creating sales decks is close to the money in the brokerage world because it's a time bottle neck on finding new leads that you can ultimately get paid from. Two experienced founders. One got to Series B and $10M ARR with last startup (real estate lending space) and the other built and sold a vertical SaaS company as well as lead a large engineering team post-acquisition. Similar to TaxGPT, they have larger vision of building an operating system for commercial real estate brokers on top of this wedge. You’ll hear me talk about this theme again, but more than the idea and early traction being good - they’re a team worth working with. They have been in the game before and are looking to go the distance with full understanding of what it will take. We got into the round because Singularity has relevant real estate experience.

OrgOrg - Organizational productivity suite for companies

Leaving the co-pilot thesis for a consolidation oriented tool with OrgOrg. They bring together all of a company's disparate tools in one place and have built some of their own smaller productivity tools in a way that allows employees to be more efficient. This lives under a broader consolidation thesis within the natural technology flow of fragmentation, to consolidation, to fragmentation, to consolidation, etc. We personally believe that we're in a consolidation phase after a decade-ish of lots of specific team tools being built. Most businesses nowadays have a silly amount of both big and small tools that are a pain to navigate between. OrgOrg makes it easier to navigate through the tools you already use and if a tool is reasonably lightweight they will build it themselves. It's also worth mentioning that OrgOrg's founder, Wayne Crosby, is a 3x VC backed founder with 2 meaningful exits. One of those exits was with his first company, Zenter (YC '07), which was acquired by Google and went on to become Google Slides and ultimately G-Suite. Chances are that you're one of the 3 Billion people who have used software that he built. We got in because we have a strong network of startups and business leaders who could be early adopters of OrgOrg.

MineFlow - Predicts the shape and location of mineral deposits

Big fan of AI in the mining space. Massive scale. Massive amounts of ugly data that AI is good for. Massive upside if you dig a hole in the right place. Massive downside if you dig a hole in the wrong place. MineFlow's solo-founder, Ryan Goggins, is very good at AI and he's using his skills to help multi-billion dollar mining companies dig the right holes. How do I know Ryan is very good at AI? First, he was a teacher's assistant for graduate level AI courses at Carnegie Mellon as an undergraduate. Second, straight out of school he went to Google's to join the team that uses ML to predict how users will interact with Ads. He tied for the fastest promotion ever in the team's history, which - to repeat - was the Ads group, which is the group that doesn't mess around (because it's the one that makes all the money). MineFlow has some exciting early traction at [REDACTED] MRR that is more about the fact that Ryan has proven his ability to get in front of multi-billion-dollar mining companies and that they care about what he has to say than it is about the number. Having met Ryan in person, what I'll also say is that I believe in his ability to pull an exciting team around him to accomplish MineFlow's goals. If I was a "cracked" (SF cool kid for very effective) AI engineer that was staring down employment offers from OpenAI and MineFlow, I would seriously consider MineFlow because of the scale of the mission and simply because Ryan seems like an incredible person to work with.

That’s enough bragging for now! If you want to hear about the other 6 investments, join the syndicate here and be on the lookout for the full update.

Sandhill Exclusive Content 

This Week: Enterprise Onboarding in 2024

Join us tomorrow Wednesday, October 9, at 3 PM ET as we discuss Enterprise Onboarding in 2024.

​​Our panelists are:

• ​​Markus Rentsch, CEO @ Remark-able. Remark-able is focused on providing solutions for Customer Value-led Growth, particularly tailored for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. Markus is based in Austria and has over 45k+ Linkedin followers. X - @RentschMarkus

• ​​Conor McCarter, Co-Founder @ Prequel. Prequel is a platform that helps early-stage startups navigate the complexities of building and scaling their businesses. Before this Conor attended Harvard Business School and was a Growth Equity investor in Boston. X - @conormccarter

• ​Daniel Zarick CEO @ Arrows. Arrows is a customer onboarding platform that helps businesses create personalized onboarding experiences, streamline communication, and track progress to ensure customers get the most out of their products and services. Before this, he owned a design studio for 8+ years. X - @danielzarick

​​​This event is brought to by Sacra and Sandhill Markets.

ICYMI: Listen to the recording of last week’s show!

In case you missed it we had Cole Krumbholz & Tongbo Huang on Sandhill LIVE to discuss how entrepreneurs are growing their businesses with limited resources in today's competitive landscape.

​​Thank you to everyone who tuned to hear from our featured guests:

• ​Cole Krumbholz, Founder and Head of Product at @ Formspree, a front-end form builder tool. Before this, he spent 4 years in product roles at Square. X → colevscode

• ​Tongbo Huang, Founder @ Sidr Tax, a tool to help automate your sales tax returns. He also spent over 6+ years of experience at some top technology startups like Amplitude, Pinterest, and Google. X → tongboh

Know an amazing startup? We want to know!

Hey Sandhill subscribers - we are currently working on a new project highlighting some of the best startups and best founders out there. Any stage any industry.

In order to get us started, we would love to hear from you. Please fill out this 15 second form to nominate a startup and founder you think are absolutely crushing it.

Thank you!

​

Talk soon,
Adam

PS - Are you an accredited investor? Click here to apply to our syndicate.