Feeding the Right Wolf
Your Sunday VC Breakfast Rundown
The battles that make or break founders aren’t always in the market, they’re in the mind. In How To Tame Your Inner Demons from 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, Brianna Wiest reminds us that fear, self-doubt, and old wounds don’t vanish when you win. They adapt. They find new ways to creep in, whispering reasons to stall, to overthink, to quit.
The leaders we’re featuring today haven’t “conquered” their demons. They’ve learned to coexist without letting them lead. They recognize that the voice of panic is different from the voice of urgency, that criticism isn’t always sabotage, and that pressure doesn’t have to turn to poison.
This is mental discipline at scale, the ability to keep moving without feeding the thoughts that keep you small. Because the founder who wins isn’t the one with the quietest mind. It’s the one who knows which voice to amplify.
Hemanext secures $21.7M Series B-3 (undisclosed investors) at a $172M post-money valuation, adding to $179M+ raised to date. CEO Andrew Dunham, CFO Eric Newman, and CMO Dr. Laurel Omert are taking hypoxic red blood cell storage global, with FDA De Novo and CE Mark in hand. Already rolling out trials and early adoption across Europe and the GCC in a $12B market.
Capitolis raises $56M (Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan). Founder/CEO Gil Mandelzis and Co-Founder/Chairman Tom Glocer are optimizing capital markets infrastructure that’s already moved $17T in notional, turning compliance and risk into competitive weapons. When the biggest banks become your customers and investors, you’re building the rails they’ll all run on.
Tavily lands $25M Series A (Insight Partners). Founder Rotem Weiss is powering real-time, policy-aware web data for AI agents, winning clients like Groq, MongoDB, and IBM without outbound sales, just enterprise-grade infrastructure. Open-source roots meet enterprise-grade polish, giving autonomous agents a spine instead of spaghetti code.
Endex.ai emerges from stealth with $14M seed (OpenAI Startup Fund). Founders Tarun Amasa, Kevin Yang, and Pratham Soni are embedding autonomous AI directly into Excel for finance pros, delivering real-time, sourced analysis without leaving the sheet. It’s the first AI that speaks spreadsheet fluently and can back up every answer.
Strand Therapeutics pulls $153M Series B (Kinnevik, Regeneron Ventures, ICONIQ Capital) to scale programmable mRNA therapies. Founders Jake Becraft and Tasuku Kitada are running IND-cleared oncology trials and building logic-gated treatments that act only when cellular conditions are met. They’re coding biology like software and dosing patients now.
Apreo Health raises $130M Series B (Bain Capital Life Sciences, Norwest Venture Partners). CEO Karun Naga and CMO Dr. Martin Mayse are delivering minimally invasive emphysema relief with Breakthrough Device Designation. Trial data shows life-changing lung function gains without cutting or destroying tissue.
Decart bags $100M Series B (Aleph VC) at a $3.1B valuation. Founders Dr. Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev are redefining real-time generative video, cutting inference costs from $100 to $0.25/hour and hitting millions of users in days. They’ve turned GPU optimization into a billion-dollar advantage.
Maxwell Biosciences secures $20M (DecentraNet, Star Lake Bioventures, Longevitytech.fund) to advance Claromers, immune-inspired small molecules with broad-spectrum pathogen destruction. Founder/CEO Joshua “Scotch” McClure and Co-Founder Dr. Annelise Barron are prepping FDA trials and expanding into multiple markets. Their tech kills pathogens without wrecking your microbiome.
VOW closes seed (KB Partners) for its AI-powered OS for the live experience economy. Founder/CEO Jennifer Brisman is unifying planning, ticketing, and guest comms for high-stakes events serving NBC, The Tony Awards, and PFL-MMA. When seconds count and stakes are high, VOW runs the room.
FORT Robotics adds $18.9M Series B (Tiger Global Management) to deliver SIL 3-certified safety and control systems to 60+ Fortune 1000s deploying autonomous machines at scale. Founder/CEO Samuel Reeves and CTO Nathan Bivans are building the infrastructure for safe autonomy. They’re the kill switch and command center rolled into one.
Kustomer raises $30M Series B (Norwest Venture Partners). Founders Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel are replacing ticket-based CRMs with AI-native customer experience platforms used by Priceline, Reformation, and HexClad. The platform thinks in conversations, not tickets, exactly how customers do.
Capacity locks $92M (Chicago Atlantic) to expand its AI-powered contact center automation. Founder/CEO David Karandish is running a profitable $60M ARR business powering 36B automated interactions across 20,000+ businesses. It’s the nerve center that turns fragmented support into one seamless loop.
Let’s connect and keep the momentum going across the tech ecosystem. Whether you’re a founder shaping the future, a leader driving change, a VC backing bold ideas, or an investor spotting the next big thing—together, we’re pushing boundaries. Proud to be building the future with you.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn and Twitter (X), and keep the conversation going.
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