🏕️ Henri Stern

BeReal sold for $500,000,000. Me and Omar Zeineddine think we can build something bigger. We aren't the most cracked devs nor do we have funding, but we do know what BeReal got wrong and that is our leverage. Today we sat down with 6 of our beta testers and just listened. What stood out to us the most wasn't even about features, it was about behavior. Here are some things that they told us they like about using Vlogit, Inc.: -They like how you don't just see a moment in your friends day as you would with just a photo, but rather you get to see their whole day - How its only targeted to their friend groups and they dont have to worry about other people watching or if their posts are "post worthy" - They love how you can always come back and rewatch you and your friends vlogs - They also said the app has motivatived them to do more with their days so they can show their friends Now more importantly, here are some of the things that they didnt like as much: - The biggest thing was that there isnt much to do on the app right now when you are not picked to vlog - When mentioning a public feed, they didn’t find see themselves watching that many vlogs from strangers unless it was a curated feed (i.e., a feed built for their own preferences.) Those parts matter more than anything. BeReal proved that people want something more authentic, but they failed to adapt to shifts in user behavior. We plan on listening to our users to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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I'm excited to be leading my 9th Demo Day Fund for the YC W26 batch! (Link: https://lnkd.in/ez2wjVCV) I love helping people outside the ecosystem get access to what is the best pool of early-stage startups on the planet. I've been involved with YC since 2015, first going through YC myself, staying closely involved with the community for 7+ years, and culminating in working there as a Visiting Partner, where I invested in over 120 companies and helped them raise over $200M in capital. YC companies continue to get better and better, with AI accelerating how quickly they can build and grow revenue and more amazing hard-tech companies that will change the world going through the batch. I've been shocked at how many companies have grown to over $1M ARR in under a year and gone on to raise subsequent rounds. The old stat was that 5% of companies each batch become unicorns, but it seems to me like that's going to start ticking higher and higher. Click here to join me! https://lnkd.in/ez2wjVCV

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This week in my rising women in VC series, I'm excited to feature Bukie Adebo Umeano!! 📌 Title: Principal 📌 Fund: Anthemis Group 📌 Stage & Sector: Pre-Seed and Seed stage companies across fintech, software, and AI 📌 If you were founding a company, what space would it be in? I actually co-founded a company in the credit-building space that didn’t pan out. I tend to love products that increase access to things that I consider fundamental to human well-being like financial security, healthcare, housing, etc. Even if a product feels simple, the idea that it can play a meaningful role in someone's day-to-day life really energizes me. If I ever found/co-found another business, I would probably build another B2C business, in a traditional market, with arbitrary or inequitable barriers to access. 📌 What about AI most excites you? I am very excited about the infrastructure that needs to be built to support the agentic economy. We see so many solutions that promise fully autonomous AI agents that will execute real world tasks on behalf of consumers and businesses. But how will the orchestration and protocols surrounding those agents evolve? There are so many unknowns in that space–from how to authenticate agents to how to enable agents to move money. I am excited to see this supporting layer emerge because I think that enablement layer is critical to reaching the level of automation and efficiency that AI promises to bring. 📌 Any advice to founders? Don’t be afraid to be contrarian. I love hearing founders take a unique approach to a market or challenge conventional wisdom. Your strategy is what you do, but it’s also what you don’t do. I love when founders have a clear vision and POV on how to attack a space and I love when a pitch forces me to think differently.

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