Partner at Banter Capital. Previous adventures include @SignalFire @BoxGroup, @DormRoomFund, @FirstRound
New York, NY
Joined December 2008
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Heston Berkman retweeted
.@sama was almost peer-pressured into being a banker. Students are funneled down career paths before they’ve explored their options. With everything going on in tech, that doesn't sit right. I've been in your shoes, so I'm opening up off-cycle recruiting. offcyclefellowship.com
To think we partnered with this team when they were still figuring out how to detect what was in a swimming pool...
We've come a long way.
The pool was small. The ocean is big. And the stakes are just a tad bit higher.
Thrilled that @mateocernosek, @alex__chu__ and the @_Andrenam_ team have graduated to bigger bodies and are ramping up production.
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Paging all EB/BB/PE Summer '27 offer candidates...ping @mp_lew
Show me an EB/BB/PE Summer ‘27 offer letter, and I will introduce you to meaningful and exciting startups (in your geo & industry of choice) who will still scratch the must-address prestige/logo itch.
Seriously… I’ve been in your shoes. DM’s open.
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Heston Berkman retweeted
We've been working with the top frontier labs to improve their design model capabilities. Today we're bringing that to your agents.
Introducing our first agent tool: the Brand API.
As the cost of creation goes to zero, and slop floods around us, the challenge is creating things worth existing. Agents need the right tools to craft great things.
This helps gen AI agents solve 3 problems:
- Extract: produce on-brand assets when users already have a brand
- Search: find and retrieve brands for inspiration, from our curated index
- Verify: check their own work against, see what's off brand and how to fix it
Anyone can try it for free today at tastelabs.com/api
Check out the full blog, and case study with @intelligenceco below.
From Earth to the asteroid belt…
Go team @AntaresNuclear @jordanbramble
Announcing: $161M Strategic Breakthrough with the U.S Space Force
In response to @WhiteHouse EO Ensuring Space Superiority, and the National Initiative for Space Nuclear Power, @AntaresNuclear has been awarded a first-of-a-kind Strategic Breakthrough award to advance space nuclear power to flight.
I first met @davidtisch in 2014, through an intro from @joshk. A year later, David and @AdamRothenberg took a bet on me, and I joined BoxGroup alongside @nkatragadda and @grosen.
I learned an absurd amount from that team. They shaped a lot of how I think about venture, people, and relationships today.
Few people know how to pick people the way @davidtisch and the @BoxGroup team do, and they’ve been doing it consistently for a long time now. No gimmicks, no galaxy-brain strategy…just always backing great founders and doing the work.
Seeing them get the recognition they deserve this week is awesome, and honestly long overdue.
I’m obviously biased, but if you ever get the chance to work with BoxGroup, take it.
Some of the earliest money in Cursor (the largest vc-backed acquisition ever) turned a $750,000 investment into a ~$1 billion return. @davidtisch and his midas touch at Box Group strike again! Great profile here of one of the best early stage investors who wins while going against the grain @agarfinks fortune.com/2026/08/26/david…
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There are big deals and then there are REALLY big deals.
Congratulations to @jordanbramble and the rest of the @AntaresNuclear team on winning Janus.
Incredible to see this team now serving the @USArmy , @usairforce, and @USSpaceForce.
It's time to deploy.
Heston Berkman retweeted
We say we want to do big things in space. Build in orbit. Move oceans of data. Command thousands of satellites at once.
So what's holding us back?
The satellites keep going up, sending back terabytes. The network to move that data never scaled. That's what we're here to solve.
We can’t tell you what TLM is doing just yet.
We can tell you every drink in the building has a coaster.
Mysteries are temporary. Water rings are forever.
Like Larry David, we respect wood.
Stay tuned.
AI can generate almost anything now. It still doesn't know what's good.
Taste Labs is building the infrastructure to give AI models and agents taste, starting with design. Today they're out of stealth with an $18.5M seed co-led by @AmplifyPartners and @CRV.
Couldn't be more excited to watch this team build. This is the unlock most people aren't building for yet. Go @thaiscbranco_ and the @tastelabs team!
We’re excited to introduce Taste Labs.
Our mission is to end AI slop. We’re building the data and infrastructure layer to give AI models and agents taste.
And today we’re coming out of stealth, announcing our $18.5M seed funding, co-led by @CRV and @AmplifyPartners
AI has nailed objective domains and made it easy to generate anything. But it still feels off. Now, the challenge is judgement. What fits, what feels like you, what’s GREAT. This requires turning a fuzzy, subjective domain into something we can measure and codify. We’re starting with design.
There are two sides to cracking this, the foundation model layer and the agent layer:
- We’ve already been working with the top frontier labs to evaluate and improve their models, crafting the right post-training data and RL environments.
- We’ve also been working with app-layer companies to build the context and verification tools for their agents to produce better, more on-brand, more creative outputs.
We want a future where AI feels right.
If you’re passionate about this mission, join us!
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Heston Berkman retweeted
I’m excited to share that Podium Automation has raised an $18M Series A led by Construct Capital, with participation from a16z, Transition, Sunflower, and Banter to help our customers build the automated world faster.
Today, Podium designs and ships UL 508A control panels in less than four weeks for the most ambitious hardware teams across industries. Our customers trust us to deliver panels on spec, on time, with full visibility from quote to delivery.
In less than two years, we have shipped over 200 panels to customers ranging from hardware scale-ups to Fortune 500 companies. We’ve been heads down building our team, software platform, and factory to meet rapidly growing demand for quick-turn capacity, and we’ve also doubled our throughput in the last quarter.
More importantly, we’re laser focused on delivering sustainable value to our customers with bottom line discipline. This quarter we delivered positive factory-level economics in our Brooklyn factory that launched in August 2025.
If you want to be part of a team that cares about tangible results and believes in a future where industrial products are built efficiently, transparently, and without compromise - we're hiring across the board.
To our team, customers, and investors - thank you. Today's announcement is grounded in the trust you’ve placed in Podium, and the responsibility we feel to keep earning it.
There are moments you know you’ll remember forever.
This was one of them. To witness this live was a career highlight.
Unbelievable work by @jordanbramble and the entire team @AntaresNuclear. Massive congratulations!
As an intern, finding Summer housing can be hard. We're trying to make it a bit easier.
If you're interning in the El Segundo area this Summer, consider applying below 👇
INTRODUCING GUNDO GRANTS
Every summer, hundreds of the sharpest students in the country land deep tech internships in Los Angeles. They show up ready to build things that matter. Then they discover LA rent on an intern salary is its own engineering challenge.
We think that's a problem worth fixing.
Gundo Grants are $5,000 housing stipends for 10 of the top deep tech interns spending this summer in LA. El Segundo has quietly become the center of gravity for hard tech in America, and the interns showing up this summer will be the most important people in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, robotics, energy, and beyond in 10 years.
If you're interning at a deep tech company this summer, building something real, and wondering how you'll make the numbers work in LA, then a Gundo Grant is for you!
10 grants. $5K each. Exclusive events. 1 incredible cohort.
Applications are due by May 8th → gundo.house/apply
@8vc | @bantervc | @DiscipulusVent | @LongJourneyVC | @lowercarbon | neverlift.vc | @rhobusiness
ALT Gundo Grants - Apply by May 8th @ gundo.house
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Leave it to @mp_lew to weave coups, aperitifs, digestifs, and investment strategy into one piece of commentary.
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From idea to farm to table, it's been amazing to watch this grow. So excited to support the @boweryfarming team! fastcoexist.com/3068407/insi…
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Cognitive Overhead is Your Product’s Overlord — Topple it With These Tips – firstround.com/review/cognit…
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The mobile alternative to Reddit is going international theverge.com/2016/12/15/1394… via @Verge
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