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Investing in and supporting Early Stage Technology Companies.
Co-founder Alpha…
Co-founder Alpha…
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Eric Chin shared thisAlpha Network Team is off to an Epic 2026!!!!! Mahalo to the best team in the business!!!!Eric Chin shared thisThe best part of Alpha is the people in it, and March and April made that clearer than ever. Here's a look back at some of the moments that brought us together, across San Francisco, LA, and New York. Interested in upcoming events? Apply to join or nominate an attendee: https://lnkd.in/gJKh4EM8 A big thank you to our annual sponsors who make this community possible: Stifel Financial Corp., Crosslink Capital, Airwallex, True Search, Fenwick & West, Burkland, SAP, Christopher & Company Inc. Grateful for the community and event partners helping bring these moments to life: Ben Fried, Sutian Dong, Ebrahim Bhaiji, TJ Taylor, Ryan Duitch, Richard Kerby, Jillian Williams, William Namen, Sujay Khandekar, Sophie Buonassisi, Gaurav Vohra, Susan Liu, Will Coffield Eric Chin Mike Jung Alexis Elfend Andie Campos Kristen D. Matt Bigge Gabby Contro Phil Boyer David Silverman Tobias Nilsson-Roos Anduena Zhubi Julia Gonzalez Sanders
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Eric Chin shared thisAmazing AFS....best one ever!!!Eric Chin shared thisWhat an unforgettable few days in Carmel for Alpha’s 13th Annual Founders’ Summit — and an incredible way to celebrate 20 years of Alpha! 🎉 From thought-provoking fireside chats and breakout sessions to impromptu hallway conversations, golf tournaments, and evening gatherings under the lights — every moment captured what makes this community so unique. Founders, investors, and friends coming together to share ideas, learn from one another, and celebrate two decades of connection and collaboration. A huge thank-you to our fireside chat speaker Chris Degnan, our thoughtful moderators, and everyone who joined us in Carmel to make this milestone Summit so special. Your energy and openness continue to define what Alpha is all about. Here’s to 20 years of building, learning, and growing together — and to the next chapter of the Alpha community. 💫 Thank you to conference sponsor, True Search, and to our generous annual sponsors who make events like this possible: Stifel Bank, Crosslink Capital, Fenwick & West, Burkland, SAP Labs, Christopher & Company Inc. Eric Chin Alexis Elfend Andie Campos Kristen D. Catherine Calleja-Caumeran Mike Jung David Silverman Phil Boyer Gabby Contro Matt Bigge Tobias Nilsson-Roos Caitlin Lohrenz Sofia Montoya Anduena Zhubi Julia Gonzalez Sanders Ted Wilson Jacob Moseley Matt Trotter Thomas Kang Kat Duncan Faisal Rashid M. Reynolds Morgan Kiran Kaza Stephanie Mosqueda Christopher Chandler Danielle Chandler Daniel Miller Shawn Thorne Jason Nazar Raj Kapoor Kirby Winfield
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Eric Chin shared thisCongrats to the AMAZING Step Team! Doing GOOD for the world!Eric Chin shared thisStep is honored to be named to CNBC's list of the World’s Top Fintech Companies for 2025! The recognition highlights the work we have been doing to drive innovation in the fintech industry and improve the financial future of the next generation. Shout out to the Step team, our investors and customers! 🎉
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Eric Chin shared thisGreat times with such an awesome group of people!!!!Eric Chin shared thisBay Area Alpha members – thank you! Check out our highlight reel from Alpha’s Summer Party, where we brought together over 100 founders, executives, and investors for a memorable evening in Menlo Park. Thank you to our spot sponsor, RJR Partners, for helping us bring this event to life! Another special thank you to our Annual Sponsors: Stifel Bank, Crosslink Capital, Fenwick & West, and Burkland, and to Christopher & Company Inc. for capturing this event! Eric Chin Mike Jung Alexis Elfend Andie Campos Kristen D. Gabby Contro Phil Boyer Tobias Nilsson-Roos Sofia Montoya Julia Gonzalez Sanders Ted Wilson M. Reynolds Morgan Ian O'Leary Ryan Roskovensky Christopher Chandler Danielle Chandler Mandi McCarthy
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Eric Chin shared thisAlpha member Al Ramadan and his partners just launched The Existing Market Trap!!!!! It's a stunning and eye opening Field Guide for successfully navigating the challenges facing Category Defining Companies. https://www.alpha.network/ Find the book here https://lnkd.in/eUfHza99Eric Chin shared thisYes. We did it. We wrote the prequel to Play Bigger. And it’s the book we should’ve written first. For almost a decade, something’s been bugging us. We introduced Category Design to the world with a best seller. But we never clearly named the problem it was solving. The guys who preach Frame it, Name it, Claim it… Never named it. Kinda ironic, right? Like the electrician with bad wiring. Or the mechanic whose car is always in the shop. Call it a blind spot, call it life, but we finally saw it. And once we saw it—we had to write it. | It’s called The Existing Market Trap. It’s what happens when you build something new— and the market compares it to something old. When you’re solving a real problem— but get dismissed as a “nice feature.” When you’re trying to change the game— but you’re still playing by someone else’s rules. We have seen it again and again, across more than 100 companies we have worked with. Startups and scale-ups. B2B and B2C. Seed to post-IPO. Brilliant teams with world-class products stuck in categories they didn’t create. Fighting uphill and losing belief. That’s the Existing Market Trap. And it’s everywhere. So we mapped it. 13 Deadly Sins—patterns we’ve seen destroy companies from the inside out. And we built a system to help founders, CEOs, execs, and investors escape it. This isn’t a storybook. It’s a diagnostic. It’s a belief-building field guide. And this one… this one is personal. Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴☠️ and I got the band back together. Along with two new band members—Jason Wellcome and Mary Grice. But it wasn’t always like this. After we launched Play Bigger, Chris and I went in different directions. We disagreed, we separated and it hurt. But the one thing we never lost was belief. In the work, in the problem and—most importantly—in each other. Love is powerful. So is belief. That word—belief—is the real heartbeat of our new EMT book. | Belief is the most powerful thing you can build. | And most companies never do. We believe this work matters. We believe it can help teams go from stuck to unstoppable. We believe there’s a language for what you’re going through. If you’ve ever felt like: You’re building something great, but no one gets it… You’re being compared to the wrong thing… You’re pushing uphill while others coast downhill… You’re not alone. You’re not failing. You’re likely in the trap. The Existing Market Trap The book we should have written before Play Bigger. Out now. Short, sharp and very real. Written for founders, CEO’s, executives and investors in flight. You can find it here: https://lnkd.in/gnMcCU-a Let me know what lands. Let me know what doesn’t. A minus 1 is just as powerful as a plus 1. Let’s make building belief a discipline. #PlayBigger #EMT #ExistingMarketTrap #CategoryDesign #Startups #Founders #Messaging #Leadership #GTM #Positioning #VentureCapital #innovation #BuildBelief #Believe
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Eric Chin shared thisAwesome news for an amazing Team!!! Congrats!!!Eric Chin shared thisToday, DataStax officially joins IBM as our acquisition closes. This isn’t just a closing. It’s the beginning. Our mission remains the same -- empowering enterprises and developers to build and scale mission-critical applications. With this new chapter, DataStax and IBM will unlock the power of unstructured data and accelerate AI app development at scale. Why this matters: → With Astra DB, Hyper-Converged Database, and now watsonx.data, we will provide seamless access to both unstructured and structured data for production AI. → With Langflow and watsonx.ai, we’re giving developers the power to design, build, and deploy AI apps faster. → And with Apache Cassandra® at the core, we’re continuing to deliver scale, reliability, and openness at the heart of mission-critical infrastructure. To our customers: IBM’s commitment means a seamless continuation of your journey, with even more support, scale, and innovation behind your most critical data and AI initiatives. Let’s build what’s next, together. 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gNRSGq3V
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Eric Chin reposted thisEric Chin reposted thisWhen I co-founded Mashery in 2006, few people who weren’t developers knew what APIs were or why they'd be important. APIs seemed technical and abstract to most business leaders. But we saw how they would transform digital business by allowing systems to connect, data to move, and ecosystems to form. Today, it's hard to imagine any successful digital business without an API strategy. The API revolution taught us that when technology enables powerful new connections, governance is essential. Poorly managed APIs led to bad user experiences, missed opportunities — or worse. Successful companies balanced API innovation with strong governance. Today, we see the same pattern with AI agents — at far greater scale and with much higher stakes. Just as APIs became the foundation of the mobile and SaaS revolutions, AI agents are catalyzing the next wave of enterprise innovation. What makes this challenge particularly daunting is the sheer scale of agents each enterprise will deploy — hundreds or even thousands of them, each specializing in specific tasks performed on behalf of specific people or roles in the organization. Just as you actively manage your human workforce — what they have access to, and what they can do with that access — you need to actively manage your AI workforce, too. Proper AI governance starts with controlling what data and tools agents can use and what actions they can take, then extends to monitoring and managing their performance, granting more access as they prove they can handle it. Scaling this to thousands of agents is a recipe for chaos. And that's exactly why we’re launching Barndoor. Barndoor is the Control Plane for the agentic enterprise — giving IT, security, and developers the guardrails they need, and business teams the freedom to move fast without compromising control. Governance is the key to realizing AI's potential. Not because it restricts what's possible, but because it enables teams to move faster and deploy AI broadly — with confidence. Just as Mashery helped companies manage, scale, and control APIs (the backbone of the mobile revolution), Barndoor helps enterprises manage, control, and deploy AI agents at scale (the backbone of the agentic revolution). Barndoor lets you: • Control what agents can access and do with granular permissions • Get real-time visibility into how agents are being used • Connect agents securely to your systems through MCP servers • Scale AI adoption across teams without increasing risk The need is urgent. Traditional security, visibility, and control systems weren’t built to manage non-human actors. And agents are already running in your enterprise — as they should be, if you are to remain competitive. We’ve assembled a world-class team to launch the first Control Plane for Agentic AI and deliver the governance layer enterprises need to scale AI safely. Our mission is to help enterprises turn the promise of AI into real results. Oren Michels Co-Founder & CEO, Barndoor
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Eric Chin posted thisA major milestone for DataStax! Crosslink Capital joined the Series A journey in 2011 and had the privilege to witness the amazing evolution and momentum of DataStax!!!! Congratulations to Chet Kapoor and the DataStax team on the planned acquisition by IBM—a strong validation of the company’s vision, execution, and impact in the data space. This acquisition highlights the growing demand for innovative data solutions as businesses continue to embrace AI. With IBM’s backing, DataStax is well-positioned to drive even greater impact in the enterprise world. A huge congratulations to the entire DataStax team—this is a well-earned achievement, and we look forward to seeing what’s next! Mahalo, Eric Chin #AI #Innovation #CrosslinkCapital #DataStax #IBM
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked this25 years ago, Shazam closed its first round of venture funding. $7.5 million. Three venture capital firms, including IDG Ventures. Hundreds of pitches to get there. A ton of rejections, long and tortuous negotiations, and finally, finally some cash in the bank… Back then, Spotify didn’t exist. The iPhone had not been invented yet. Even iTunes was a few years away. Nobody knew if any of this would work. What followed was years of building from scratch. False dawns, unexpected setbacks, and many moments where the whole thing could easily have gone the other way. But here we are, 25 years later. To our investors who believed in us and backed us from the very earliest days - a huge thank you. I know we didn’t help you sleep well at night… 😇 To my amazing co-founders and colleagues - I treasure the friendships which have now lasted 25 years and more. To leaders and everyone building a business today - bon courage and best wishes to you. My experience is that the best companies are not the ones that avoid the hard times. They are the ones that survive them. #Shazam #Entrepreneurship #investment
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisThrilled to share that AVP has co-led a $25 million round in Abstract, the pioneer of composable security operations. The round brings Abstract's total funding to nearly $50 million, following a year in which the company grew ARR 380%, reached 264% net revenue retention, and tripled its customer base. Abstract's streaming-first platform gives security teams more control over their data, AI, and costs, moving away from rigid, all-in-one systems towards something more flexible. "Security teams are putting AI at the center of how they operate, and AI is only as good as the data underneath it. The teams that come out ahead will be the ones that own their data, route it on their terms, and detect in real time rather than after the fact. Abstract is building the platform to get them there," said our General Partner, Manish Agarwal. Huge congratulations to Colby DeRodeff and the entire Abstract team. Excited to be on the journey alongside Cheyenne Ventures, Crosslink Capital and Rally Ventures! Ethan Volk
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisExciting times at Presso®! Our first large-scale manufacturing units are getting just about ready to ship. I'm extremely grateful for our customers who have been incredibly understanding and patient, as our order queue is already well into 2027. Very soon we will be installing multiple robots every single business day for the rest of the year and beyond! So proud of our manufacturing & operations team and our co-founder & CTO, Thibault Corens who has been flying across the globe to set up our supply chain. Who else is deploying robotics at scale in 2026? Our second product, the 90s stain removal robot, AirTouch™ will also be delivered at scale in 2026. Stay tuned as physical AI powered laundry gets into all 50 states in the US 🇺🇸 in 2026 (including Hawaii 🏖️)
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisBig congrats to Abstract on $25M in strategic growth capital. 380% ARR growth and 264% net revenue retention in a single year. Security teams are leaving the monolith, and Abstract is where they're going. Crosslink Capital is proud to have been an original investor in Colby, Aaron and the team. https://lnkd.in/ghn5mp5U
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisDay 1 at #FarnboroughAirshow is a wrap. The show opened with a massive focus on affordable air defense. While others unveiled concepts, we unveiled hardware. Buckler™. Flight-demonstrated. Sub-$100K. Designed to defeat Group 3 drones. Day 2 is underway. Find us at Stand 3545 | Hall 3 (Texas USA Pavilion) — let's talk affordable mass. #FIA2026 #Buckler #MissileDefense #AffordableMass #DefenseTech #CUAS
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisFired up to be speaking at Ruggedized by RESERVOIR next month. RESERVOIR is the place to see where Silicon Valley technology is actually being deployed in agriculture. I'll be covering how we've used world models, foundation models, and world action models to scale a single model that can be deployed across a wide variety of specialty crops and beyond. Register: https://ruggedize.ai/
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisBefore 43 was a fund, it was a lease I found on Craigslist and signed personally, without knowing exactly what it would become. After leaving Accomplice, I started writing first checks on my own, but felt stuck and lost. So I took a lease on a really gross workspace on Dore Street. To make rent work, I put my condo on Airbnb. I spent most of my time turning Dore into a third place for first-check investors to meet, share notes, and learn together. During the buildout, I slept on an air mattress in the Writing Room, using my coat as a comforter. Then the pandemic arrived. Offices closed. Dore went quiet. In April 2020, my dad died. After getting my family situated in Kansas City, I drove back to San Francisco in his 2008 Prius, packed with tchotchkes to make the space come to life. Maxine Minter was the first person I saw when I got back. She was alone in the city, too, and asked if she could co-work at Dore to be around another human. Of course I said yes. Those hangs mattered. Maxine introduced me to Anabel Paksoy, who had built a community of operator angels. We began co-investing, then decided to start a fund. So that dirty warehouse space became 43: a fund built to write founders their first meaningful check, give them a space to work and help them find product/market fit. Two founders from our portfolio, Luke Kulik and Kieran Strobel, asked to work from our couches. Then they asked if their team could, too. Eventually, they nudged us to expand. So we did. 43 Dore Street organically evolved into a place for pre-product founders in San Francisco: for deep work, coffee, team meetings, and the occasional (World Cup) watch party. Space isn’t the point, though. When you are trying to find product/market fit, information is rarely the constraint. The harder bits are knowing which questions to ask, who to trust, and whether your instincts are getting sharper. That is where the person at the next desk, a few steps ahead of you, matters. It is why we still believe in working in person. And why I think San Francisco remains the best place to build from scratch. Never build alone. If you’re a pre-product founder in San Francisco and want to work from Dore, come join us at 43 Dore Street. Link in comments.
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Eric Chin liked thisEric Chin liked thisMeet the Amiga Max. Our autonomy-first, diesel-hybrid electric platform out in a Sonoma County vineyard this week. It runs a full spray shift on a fraction of the fuel, labor, and CapEx of a conventional tractor. The electric rate controller puts product only where it's needed, shutting off on turns and skips, so you spray fewer chemicals. And every acre is logged automatically: full traceability and reporting, without lifting a pen. One operator can run the whole fleet from the Bonsai app. Plan it, watch it, adjust it, send it to the next block. Less fuel. Less chemical. More efficiency 🦾 Big thanks to the RESERVOIR for organizing, great grower turnout!
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