Nimish Shukla, CFA

Vimeo just got acquired for $1.38B. A quiet end to a loud ambition... 2004: Vimeo spun out of CollegeHumor 2006: IAC bought it for $26M 2021: Vimeo went public 2025: it’s going private again (sold to Bending Spoons at $7.85/share) Vimeo wanted to compete with YouTube. Then Netflix. Then it pivoted into B2B video tools. It never truly owned any of those lanes. Now it’s being folded into a European tech conglomerate best known for acquiring underperforming software with brand recognition (Evernote, StreamYard, WeTransfer, Meetup) Being a “video company” isn’t enough.  YouTube owns scale. TikTok owns culture. Zoom owns meetings. Vimeo owns: student short films? B2B SaaS isn’t a guaranteed escape hatch. Vimeo made the pivot, cut costs, focused on enterprise and still struggled to grow fast enough... Public markets reward dominance, not survival. Even with a 91% premium over its recent stock price, Vimeo sold for a fraction of what it once hoped to become.

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Last week AZ-VC Managing Partner, Jack Selby, posted about a significant corporate loss for the State of Arizona. While the post isn’t specifically about the state of the VC market in Arizona it highlights some of the shortcomings of a market we love – but when it comes to our relationship with AZ (like other active V.C.s in the state), well… it’s complicated. Here is a redacted rundown (due to length) of my full take on the AZ Venture Ecosystem. (Full article linked in the comments.) Those of us in the Arizona market have heard the rumblings of the sleeping giant in “The Silicon Desert“ for decades, only for those promises to continually fall short. It feels like there is momentum to some, but the reality is there are some serious shortcomings in this market marked by three key factors. Corporate Involvement From where I sit, this is the biggest issue with the State of Arizona, and it’s a real blocker to success. We have very few fortune 500 companies headquartered here, currently 10, if you walked into any restaurant or bar in the state and surveyed the guests, I’d set the over under at ‘1’ for the number of people who can name the biggest company in our state. Therein lies the problem. The biggest company in our state, Freeport McMoran (a global mining company) is not involved. They have no community presence and certainly aren’t supporting the venture community... Access to Talent Arizona State is the largest research and innovation university in the country, yet I rarely see talent bursting out of their doors to start a homegrown company. Even when great talent does emerge from ASU, they’re often bursting through those doors and right on out of the state to chase more established ecosystems in other regions. The University of Arizona boasts a massive and highly accredited medical college, despite that I am hard pressed to think of a SaaS founder to come out of the program looking to solve one of the umpteenth problems in the medical profession... Founders with Exits Which leads me to the third and final ingredient, founders with exits. Highly visible and successful founders who have a massive exit is a win, it must be celebrated and also re-invested, in order to grow the ecosystem. Gregg Scoresby, Managing Partner at PHX Ventures is a great example of this. He successfully exited CampusLogic and now gives back to the ecosystem through his Seed fund at PHX Ventures... How do we awaken the sleeping giant that is the “Silicon Desert?” A unified and intentional effort, driven and curated by our capital allocators, with backing from our corporates, schools, and successful founders would be one hell of a start.

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A lesser talked about aspect of fundraising that I’m lately thinking about is *founder-fund fit*. Most times, we as investors tend to make a decision about the founder and their idea or company within 5 minutes of conversation (with list of checkboxes to tick off) - same applies on the other side too wherein founders tend to focus more on the round size, valuation and who-offers-first. While team, market size, and execution agency are all considered, sometimes VCs and founders lack clarity on what true founder-fund fit looks like for them. Here’s the catch: a myopic way of evaluation hurts both sides. Founders end up feeling they weren’t understood holistically, and VCs make hasty judgments based on surface-level patterns. Knowing what founder-fund fit looks like for you as a business and as an investor enables more honest, comfortable conversations. It requires deeper introspection from both parties. VCs need to ask: "Does this founder fit the persona we're looking for?" And founders must consider: "Does this fund fit the persona I want to take a decade-long journey with?" High levels of value alignment with their investors, empower companies to take more bets, experiment and ultimately generate outsized returns, since they have co-creators through the ups and downs of the journey. VC is a business of judgment, but it has to come from a place of self-awareness, not hidden biases or assumptions that overlook the nuances of true alignment.

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Healthcare startups have been on a rollercoaster ride over the past three years. 🎢 Hinge Health is poised to go public… while primary-care startup Forward abruptly shut down at the end of last year. The highs of 2021 gave way to a tough market correction, where many high-valuation companies struggled to prove their worth to public investors. Hinge Health’s IPO could mark the first healthcare delivery startup to go public in nearly three years — a rare milestone in a sector that saw valuations soar and then recalibrate. Meanwhile, Forward’s recent closure is a stark reminder that billion-dollar ambitions don’t always translate to sustainable business models. At Symphonic Capital, we’re focused on companies that build lasting, valuable businesses—not just those chasing the biggest valuation. The goal is to create meaningful impact for patients and strong returns for our LPs, without getting caught up in the hype. #PrimaryCare #Startups #VentureCapital

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🔥 I raised $40M in venture capital for my last startup. But getting a ~$2.5M SBA loan? Way harder. 💸 (Read that again.) 👀 With venture, you can go from term sheet to close in 30 days. Good luck getting an SBA loan funded on a business acquisition in under 3 months from start to finish. The SBA and the bank will do more diligence and paperwork on you and the business than all your VCs combined. 🔍📑 The closing process is night and day. Raising VC is like having TSA Precheck and skipping the 3-hour line ✈️. With a government-backed loan, you’re in that long line, piles of paperwork, rounds of diligence, and countless steps before you get the green light. 🛂 And yet… I’d still choose an SBA loan to buy a boring, profitable business over raising venture capital again. Why? Because with VC you’re dependent on investors and chasing runway, where 99% of startups never turn a profit 📉. With ETA, you step into a business that already throws off cash 💵 and you actually own your destiny 🔑. Owning a business that generates real profits beats relying on the next round of funding to survive. 🚀💪

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