Grits Before Glory: Knicks, Game 3, and the Price of Pulse
Your Sunday VC Breakfast Rundown
There’s no such thing as a quiet Sunday when you’re down 0-2 and flying into Indiana like it’s Omaha Beach.
Every championship run has a moment when it teeters. This is that moment for the Knicks. They’ve been slugged in the gut twice, once in OT, once by Siakam’s 39. Now they walk into Game 3 carrying more than a scoreboard, they carry weight. Legacy. Expectation. The silence of a Garden crowd that knows too well what heartbreak sounds like.
But this team’s built from New York gravel. No soft landings. No easy buckets. Just Brunson jawing through pain. Hart crashing every rebound like he’s chasing a rent check. A squad that knows how to hurt and how to heal.
And when it’s this tense, this make-or-break, you don’t start the morning light. You go heavy. Creamy grits, butter pooling at the edges. A fried pork chop with that perfect crunch. Coffee that bites back. That’s how you eat when you know the road ahead wants to chew you up.
Because this isn't just Game 3. It’s the hinge point between failure and fight.
Yoodli landed $13.7M Series A (Neotribe Ventures, Madrona, Cercano) to launch AI Roleplays and rewire corporate communication. Varun Puri and Esha Joshi built a platform simulating high-stakes convos with real-time feedback, embedded at Google, Snowflake, and Korn Ferry. 150+ countries, $10.3M ARR, and partnerships with Toastmasters and Intellum. Soft skills, sharpened.
Wirespeed raised an undisclosed seed round (Mairs and Power, Gary Fish, Deke George) to reinvent MDR with automation at its core. Tim MalcomVetter and Jake Reynolds built a platform that delivers threat verdicts in milliseconds, auto-mitigates EDR alerts, and cuts through alert fatigue like a scalpel. Built in Minneapolis, scaling like a missile.
AgileBlue secured an undisclosed Series A (H.I.G. Growth Partners) to arm the mid-market against modern threats. Tony Pietrocola and Joe Marquette launched Cerulean XDR, an AI-native SOC platform that’s tripled its install base, earned ISO27001 certification, and now powers threat detection from Cleveland to Qatar. Real-time insights, global coverage, and Cleveland hustle.
David AI landed $25M in Series A funding (Alt Capital, Amplify Partners, First Round Capital) to build the audio layer of generative AI. Tomer Cohen and Ben Wiley are training models on 100K+ hours of studio-grade, metadata-rich audio across 15 languages. $100M+ valuation, eight-figure revenue, and stealth partnerships with tech’s elite. The mic isn’t just on, it’s orchestrated.
Figure closed a strategic investment from Victory Park Capital to institutionalize crypto-backed consumer lending. Mike Cagney, June Ou, and new CEO Michael Tannenbaum are moving $14B in HELOCs, automating 93% of loan review with GPT-4, and scaling mortgage liquidity on Provenance Blockchain. This isn’t disruption, it’s infrastructure, built to last.
Borderless raised ₹2B (~$24M) from Credence Family Office and July Ventures to power cross-border finance for the 45M+ globally mobile. Sitashwa Srivastava and Vinay Bharathwaj are scaling a multi-currency, multi-market fintech platform with $2B+ in transactions and 160K+ users across 18 countries. This isn’t just wealth tech, it’s borderless banking at scale.
Throne raised $4M in seed funding (Accomplice, Moxxie Ventures, Long Journey Ventures) to launch AI-powered toilet diagnostics. Scott Hickle and Tim Blumberg built a retrofit device that delivers GI health insights from your daily routine. $399 retail, clinical pilots live, and WHOOP’s co-founder now Chief Product Officer. The future of gut health just flushed in.
PatternFast locked in $500K in seed (GSD Venture Studios, Y Combinator) to collapse fashion dev time by 90% with generative pattern design. Yuliya Raquel’s AI platform is already processing $1.2M in revenue, powering Panasonic and Nestlé with 100B+ style variations. Fashion meets SaaS, built for speed and scale.
Tango Tango raised $5.87M in fresh capital to modernize public safety comms. Trey Sharp’s encrypted push-to-talk system overlays LTE, WiFi, and radios, serving 600+ agencies across 47 states. 80% cheaper than P25 systems, always on, and built to be heard when it matters most.
Impart Security raised $10.99M (CRV, Haystack, 8-Bit Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures) to bring AI-powered, WASM-optimized API security to the edge. Jonathan DiVincenzo, Marc Harrison, and Brian Joe are building firewall intelligence that executes like a workflow engine, not a gatekeeper. With $4.8M projected ARR, $45K–$75K ACVs, and patents in play, Impart isn’t defending APIs, it’s orchestrating them.
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.
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