Nick Candito 🤓🧃

Before the buzz. Before the traction. Before anyone believes. These VCs do. Ex-founders. Operators. Solo capitalists. Athletes. All of them are spotting breakout companies when there’s no product, no revenue — just a pitch deck and conviction. Despite a tighter funding market, they’re backing the future of AI, defense tech, fintech, biotech, and SaaS. Here are 21 names from the Seed 100 list and the startups they’re betting will change everything: 👇 - @darian314 – Gradient Ventures Investments: Gigs, Legora, Krea, Numeral, Range, Writer - Ann DeWitt – Engine Ventures Investments: Cellino, Bexorg, Matrisome Bio, Terragia, Anthology, Kano Therapeutics, Source Bio - @justinkan – Goat Capital Investments: Torch, Sendbird, Paystack, ForeVR Games, Cruise - @nickcandito – ACOF Investments: Carta, TrueMed, Metafy, Augment Markets, Atomic Insights, BRM - @Itamar_Novick – Recursive Ventures Investments: Deel, May Mobility, Akash Network, Tomato AI, Anjuna Security - @gokulr – Marathon Management Partners Investments: Deel, BetterUp, Figma, Printify, Boon, Atlas - @atShruti – Array Ventures Investments: Capsule, Eventual Computing, Mozart Data, Placer.ai, Rad AI, Runway.team - @rohitkbansal – Titan Capital Investments: Ola, Urban Company, Mamaearth, OfBusiness, Unicommerce, Credgenics, Giva, Shadowfax - @bling0 – Bling Capital Investments: GitHub, Rippling, Airtable, Spellbook, Noetica - @nbanta – B12 / Stellar Capital Investments: Codeium, Cognition Labs, Grammarly, ZeroEyes, Varda, Chai Discovery - @collinmathilde – Angel Investor / Front Investments: Retool, Mercury, Vanta, Copilot, Meter, Browser Use - @ramtinnaimi – Abstract Investments: Solana, Rippling, WorkOS, Hebbia, Passes, Replit - @rrhoover – Weekend Fund Investments: Atlys, Deel, Extropic, Justpoint, Luminai, Pipe, Truemed - @MarlonCNichols – MaC Venture Capital Investments: Thrive Market, Pipe, Finesse, Purestream, Seed Health, Truebill - @MartinGTobias – Incisive Ventures Investments: Jeeves, OpenSea, Enable, Yassir, Portside, LMNT - @adwane – Village Global Investments: Commontools, P-1 AI, AirGarage, Cherry, Pave, Grow Therapy - @rauchg – Angel Investor / Vercel Investments: Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Resend, Spline, Braintrust - @laurarippy – Alumni Ventures Investments: Daydream, Rent App, Barnwell Bio, Atomic Supply, TRM Labs, Believer.gg - @edsim – Boldstart Ventures Investments: BigID, Common Paper, Kustomer, Protect AI, Snyk, Tessl - @jefffluhr – Craft Ventures Investments: Warby Parker, Twilio, Houzz, CrewAI, Arch, Pickle - @alitamaseb – DCVC Investments: StarkWare, ElectronX, Odyssey, Earth AI, Chai Discovery Follow us for more funding trends, investor moves, and the early-stage bets shaping the next decade. #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #EarlyStageVC

The first victim of 9/11 was Danny Lewin. Born in Denver, raised in Jerusalem. Captain in Sayeret Matkal. Mathematician. Co-founder of Akamai - the company that still carries a huge share of the internet. On the morning of September 11, 2001 he boarded American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles and sat in seat 9B. Directly in front of him: Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari. Directly behind him: Satam al-Suqami. When the hijackers rose and moved toward the cockpit, Lewin - 31 years old, elite IDF officer - stood up to stop them. Al-Suqami slit his throat from behind. Flight attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney radioed that a passenger in 9B had been stabbed and appeared dead. The 9/11 Commission later concluded he was almost certainly the first person murdered that day. Twenty-five minutes later Flight 11 hit the North Tower. He left a wife and two young sons. Israel is the only country outside the United States with a 9/11 memorial that lists every victim by name, built from Ground Zero steel. Danny Lewin’s name is on it. May his memory be a blessing. 🇺🇸🇮🇱

We at @petra_labs raised $5.2M because one-size-fits-all software doesn’t work in zero-sum games like AI Search. The greatest AI companies of the future will sell results, not software. @rvmie_ @rishipenmetcha