Founder of Uncork Capital, one of the OG seed VC firms. Invested in 260 cos at scary early stage.
@bernadette
hubby, dad of 2, wino, skier. Expect no bullshit.
Super excited to share that we have raised $200M for Uncork VI & Uncork Plus II. Also welcoming
@stephpalmeri
and
@Bandrew
to a new management company of
@uncorkcap
. Thanks to all our LPs for their support, and our entrepreneurs for choosing us
#uncorkcap
Today Uncork Capital turns 15. It's a pretty crazy milestone, even though it feels like we just started. I decided to share a few thoughts about our humble beginnings:
The past 18+ months have been filled with introspection and radical reimaginations. Along those lines, today I’m announcing a number of changes to
@uncorkcap
to scale our investing efforts
#uncorkcap
🧵
Thrilled to share our first investment in the crypto space:
@MessariCrypto
. The industry needs a reliable, trusted source of data and that's the piece of infrastructure
@twobitidiot
and his team are building
#uncorkcapital
Today, we’re proud to announce our latest round led by
@uncorkcap
and joined by new investors,
@Coinbase
and
@balajis
. We’d also like to welcome
@Jeff
to our board of directors!
We're super excited to share that we have raised $400M for our new funds (Uncork VIII and Plus III). It was a humbling experience to double the size of our raise in this (crappy) environment, so we couldn't be more grateful to our LPs - new and existing
Please think about what makes your company/pitch truly different! If i was having a shot every time I read "... uses unique artificial intelligence and machine learning to ...", I would be shitfaced by 10am on most days
#tablestakes
After spending hours clearing my inbox yesterday, I found dozens of new unread emails this morning. It dawned on me: each of us is a modern Sisyphus. We push our proverbial boulder up the hill every day and start again every morning. Only question: what are we being punished for?
Joining everyone in congratulating
@Basti
,
@splaice
,
@Wirah
and the whole
@postmates
team for their acquisition by
@Uber
. What a ride since we led the seed rounds of the company in 2011! 1/
Awesome interview of the incredible
@juliahartz
. I'm always surprised that a lot of my fellow VCs outright pass on entrepreneur couples. It certainly involves challenges in tough times, but it can also lead to very powerful results (like EB)
@jefielding
Life is too short to work with people you feel won't be a fit. In my 23 VC years, I have always lost my capital when the spidey sense kicked in and I moved forward.
Most companies will take 10/12 years to succeed. You will have to work with your founders for most of that journey
Our bar in the new office is now fully stocked (yeah
@Bandrew
went wild but he’d say the same about our cellar 🙃). You will notice the “Uncorked” bar sign: it’s an “hommage” to all the people who mistakenly butcher our name. It’s only been 6.5 years that we rebranded as Uncork!
For the millionth time: Founders, please take time to research investors you send emails/decks to. You want to fit their portfolio constructions: stage, size, geography, sectors, specialty. And not have the cos you list on your competition slides in their portfolio. FFS.
Of all the catch phrases that you could use for your cold fundraising email, do you really think that's the best?
"Jeff,
We have the potential to be a Unicorn."
OMG?
For realz?
Seriously.
First dose injected (Pfizer). Grateful to all scientists, beta testers and health workers who made this possible. Now your turn: get your jab so we can get back to normal!
We have switched to WFH for everyone in the firm on Monday. Trying to support our founders on how best to get through this, and make sure everyone is as safe as possible. Just executed paperwork for our latest investment (YC batch co I am incredibly excited about)
#showmustgoon
Today marks a new chapter in
@sendgrid
's journey as they become part of
@twilio
. I could not be more proud of the team we joined over 9 years ago - rising 1,000x to a $3B acquisition. I am incredibly bullish/long 😀 on the combined TWLO. Thank you
@spdholakia
& griders
#uncorkcap
I want to give my warmest welcome to the 450 SendGrid employees to Twilio...
#YouBelongAtTwilio
! I also want to welcome the nearly 80,000 customer accounts, and the millions of developers who use SendGrid to create amazing applications... we can't wait to see what you build next!
And just like that,
@uncorkcap
turns 18 today. Grateful to all our founders, exec teams, LPs, co-investors (and acquirers 🤑) who got us there 🙏.
Q: are we leveling up from “Emerging Manager” to “Grown-up Manager”? 🤭
Can’t believe it’s already been a decade since you joined us
@stephpalmeri
- investing in great companies, helping grow our firm, and putting our founders first. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you. I’m grateful for our time together and excited for your next chapter 👏
I am obviously biased but there are countless examples of immigrant founders building iconic companies in the US, bringing jobs, revenues and wealth to this country. It's insane we're not doing EVERYTHING we can to support this. A startup visa is so obviously needed...
My new piece on why a Startup Visa is needed in the competitiveness bill:
🇺🇸 Foreign-born entrepreneurs have created iconic American companies, but are held back by immigration law that pushes founders overseas
Let's 🔓 innovation by recruiting entrepreneurs to the US
Proud of the work my friend and former Partner
@chudson
is doing at
@PrecursorVC
. Congrats on Fund II, and looking forward to many more deals together!
#uncorkcap
Menlo, Benchmark, First Round sold Uber stakes worth hundreds of millions > DPI, baby. DPI. Congrats to our friends at
@firstround
for being believers of the first hour. And massively cashing out. That's when paper profits turn real. Before then, it's BS.
Major
@xfinity
outage where even their outage map has an outage - cuz you know, it's raining in the bay area... That's when you appreciate having a 5MB DSL backup on an old twisted pair from AT&T...
.
@Bandrew
and I are immigrants,
@uncorkcap
has funded tons of immigrant founders. Their companies have created thousands of US jobs, and will generate massive profits for our US LPs . But no, this administration does not want any of us. Clueless. Stupid.
Hello, old friend ;-). I agree with you that there is a lot of negativity (assholes who want us to fail) and some VC twitter self serving (as always) but what I mostly see is a bunch of GPs who are working their asses off to help their portfolio companies - and each other.
Grateful for the work and dedication of my
@nvca
colleagues. The impact of their day to day effort is not always visible, and their results don't get the appreciation they deserve.
Getting that non-sensical treatment of stock options out of both tax bills was critical. Thank you
NVCA led the charge to protect
#startup
-employees' stock options & we are pleased the updated Senate
#TaxReform
bill removes the damaging tax on stock options & includes a much needed 5-year deferral on forced exercise of options. Learn more:
Thank you
@emelton
for your service and best wishes to my dear friend and former partner
@chudson
as he takes the Chair gavel. I am so glad I nominated you for the board 4 years ago. You’ll be an incredible leader for our industry.
Congratulations to
@emelton
on the successful completion of her one-year term as our board chair and to
@chudson
on his incoming term. The gavel has officially been passed! 👩⚖️👨⚖️
What can I say?
@collinmathilde
does things her own way! Congratulations to everyone at
@FrontApp
for the work that made this round possible. And it's only the beginning (can't believe it's been 5+ years since we led the seed round)
#uncorkcapital
When Front CEO Mathilde Collin raised $59 million for her startup looking to make work email better, she turned to an unusual source: executives from other successful software companies, including Atlassian, Okta, Qualtrics and Zoom.
1) Have more than one banking relationship, as a starter.
2) Have less than $250K in cash in your account, everything invested in off balance sheet assets.
3) Light a candle for the Feds, as they did their job and preserved a lot of jobs and companies.
Startups are hard to build and scale, but it takes another dimension when a co-founder is hit with a critically serious health issue.
@collinmathilde
's account of what happened at
@FrontApp
when
@l_perrin
got sick is worth the read
#uncorkcap
Well deserved win, Argentina. This was the most insane WC final I have watched. What a game! My homies will be sad, but they gave it all. And Mbappe is the GOAT.
I finally had a chance to watch the on a flight from France. It's one of the best startup documentaries I have seen. It shows how one of the best startup teams ever assembled had the right vision of the future, but ultimately failed. (1/2)
Congratulations to
@MKRocks
and the team at
@CendanaCapital
for their latest fund. We're grateful to count you as one of our largest and most supportive LP since Fund III. Any seed manager would be lucky to have you
#uncorkcap
I have had the privilege to work with
@marrc
since 2005, first on Kaboodle and now
@Poshmarkapp
. He
@tracy_sun
and their team have built a very special community/business, with the support of awesome investors, including our own
@stephpalmeri
for the last 8 years
#uncorkcap
Huge piece of news:
@molekuleair
's Air Mini and Mini+ are FDA cleared as a Class II medical device that destroys viruses. Congrats to Jaya and her team for all the hard work on behalf of consumers and businesses
#uncorkcap
News so fresh ✨ Air Mini & Mini+ are FDA 510(k)-cleared for medical use as Class II medical devices. The 510(k) process ensures healthcare devices are compliant & do exactly what they say they’ll do—like destroy viruses.
Impossible to resist countless cheesy metaphors when investing in SpaceTech, but I couldn't be more thrilled to launch
@LoftOrbital
's Series A round along with
@Jeff
and
@sunilnagaraj
.
@thatbergness
and a dream team on a bold mission... 🙏🏻🚀
Wyvern, a two-year-old hyperspectral startup, is signing on to secure observation time on a Loft Orbital mission slated for next year to expand the capacity of its Dragonette constellation.
Super excited to announce that
@LoftOrbital
has secured its first mission. It's unusual for space startups to achieve that milestone while they are still in their seed stage. Congrats team! 🚀
#uncorkcapital
Huge congrats to our friends at
@OrbitalSidekick
for deploying their hyperspectral payload on the ISS! Exciting times!
We are also ecstatic to be flying OSK's next-gen sensor on our first mission in 2019! More announcements on this mission coming soon!
[FR] Xavier Niel et Roxanne Varza : via
@MadameFigaro
< Une super interview de
@Xavier75
et
@roxannevarza
. J'essayais de convaincre Roxanne de revenir dans la Valley quand Xavier lui a propose de diriger Station F. Elle a pris la bonne decision ;-).
Congratulations to our friends at
@IndustryVC
- to date, they are the only Limited Partner who has bought a piece of every single institutional Uncork fund we have launched. Grateful for your support!
#uncorkcap