Patrick Hillstrom

Capital formation isn’t just about fundraising; it’s about building trust through transparency and clarity. I just wrapped moderating a panel at SVB’s Venture Connect conference, joined by Erlina Yeo Terwelp, Geoff Taylor, Brian Chen, and Stephen Bluestein. The goal: an interactive discussion on how GPs can build enduring partnerships with LPs in today’s fundraising environment. Key themes and takeaways from the conversation: • Relationships are paramount: Provide access to multiple investment team members across levels. Authentic, consistent engagement is foundational to long-term partnerships.  • Show your fund math: LPs want to see how ownership stakes and exit expectations map to net returns—at the actual fund size. Scaling isn’t a strategy unless supported by fundamentals. Help LPs draw clear conclusions. • Transparency builds trust: Be transparent on valuation methods, revenue multiple assumptions, even succession planning. Consistency and openness go a long way. • Investing in venture: LPs are active, but the bar is higher. Two deliverables I’ll be focusing on in our next cycle: 1. Elevating the operations DDQ. Now the second most-viewed item in any data room, right behind the investor deck. 2. Ensuring our deck clearly communicates fund math. From ownership to exit to net DPI—at the fund size we’re marketing. This experience reaffirmed that transparency and trust-building are critical, especially when the fundraising environment is as bifurcated as the markets we’re investing in. Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank, Bobby Donnelly, and Mark Lau for the opportunity, and to everyone who joined the discussion! 

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🔔Announcing the 2025 Vertical SaaS 50!🔔 Today, Avid Ventures, Headline, and Bain Capital Ventures recognize 50 new emerging vertical SaaS companies. 🏭 This year, over a third of the honorees are solving problems in the physical world including Caspian, DocUnlock, and Revenue Vessel in logistics, Complement, DiploAI, and Forgepoint in manufacturing, Ichi in construction, and GridStrong, Lumora, and Strobe Power in electricity/utilities. 📝 As in prior years, several honorees are building in the broader professional service landscape including &AI, Crosby, and PointOne in legal, Mako AI in financial services, and Foundation, Novella, and Strala in insurance. 🩺 Most notably, we've seen an increase in healthcare companies like Charta Health, Ferry Health and RoVR as well as Zoomlogi in pharma, Corner Health and Duet in nurse practioner practices, ExaCare AI in senior care, Onos Health in behavioral health, Grove AI in clinical trials, and Lassie and Rondah AI in dental. If you are building a vertical SaaS company or have recommendations for our 2026 list please reach out - we'd love to hear from you!

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This is a record breaking week with 1,000+ events and our biggest Tech Week yet. The momentum tracks with the data, NYC has clearly become the top tech ecosystem outside the Bay. Just read the latest Tech:NYC report and a few stats really stood out: - between 2014 and 2024, tech employment rose 64%, nearly 4× the overall private-sector pace. - In the last five years, the tech sector accounts for 41% of all net job growth city-wide. No other industry comes close. NYC is a leader across multiple industries, with the highest number of funded startups in sectors like digital health, e-commerce, fintech, and proptech: Digital health: 1,046 (#1) AI: 870 (#2, just behind SF) E-commerce: 797 (#1) Fintech: 644 (#1) Proptech: 310 (#1) The city is home to nearly 1,000 more funded startups than SF proper (still trailing the full Bay Area, but the gap keeps closing). NYC is now home to the most AI jobs outside the Bay Area, driven by a strong base of AI-first companies like Elevenlabs, Hugging Face, and Runway. Even companies not headquartered here, like Anthropic, Replit, OpenAI, ScaleAI, Perplexity, and Databricks, are rapidly growing their presence. Add to that major AI research hubs from Google, AWS, Meta, and Palantir, and it’s clear why NYC is becoming a major AI hub. I’ll be on the ground in NYC all week attending events. Sign up to attend here: tech-week.com ------ Source: “Sustaining NYC’s Tech Edge, Center for an Urban Future & Tech:NYC,” May 2025.

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