Jared Hecht

Big things happened in the Techstars network in January: →  8 portfolio companies secured funding →  2 portfolio companies were acquired →  2 portfolio companies combined →  1 new global network partner ➕ U.S.-based rare earths processing startup Phoenix Tailings (Techstars 2020) closes $43M Series B funding round. ➕ Tive (Techstars 2017), a startup developing tech to pinpoint freight shipments in real time, raises $40M Series C. ➕ The Helper Bees (Techstars 2016) raises $35M Series C for home care. ➕ First Ascent Biomedical (Techstars 2021), a personalized oncology drug prediction platform, gets $6M to accelerate lab openings. ➕ Crypto tech startup Dfns (Techstars 2021) raises $16M to increase its workforce and expand in the Middle East. ➕ AI-powered mass tort company Parambil (formerly MedThread; Techstars 2023) announces $2M in pre-seed funding. ➕ Accenture Ventures invests in QuSecure (Techstars 2021) to advance PQC solutions for government and business. ➕ Vessl Prosthetics Inc. Prosthetics (Techstars 2023) secures a pre-seed round to drive innovation in prosthetic solutions. ⭐ Infinite Reality will acquire virtual shopping platform Obsess (Techstars 2017). ⭐ Hook Security acquires Haekka (Techstars 2021), a Slack-first training platform. ⭐ Transmute (Techstars 2018) and mesur.io (Techstars 2018) announce a strategic combination to remove disruption from global supply chains. https://lnkd.in/gn5wJZur 

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Future Laboratory Ventures, Georgia’s first licensed venture fund, has achieved a major milestone as one of its first-cohort startups, Quantum Server, secures investment from Silicon Valley-based Ellerra Ventures. Quantum Server offers an innovative solution for game developers, streamlining server infrastructure setup and enabling multiplayer game deployment in just minutes. Ellerra Ventures, a prominent Silicon Valley venture fund, specializes in investing in startups founded by Stanford students and alumni. The fund was established by Stephen D. Torres, a leading mentor at Stanford StartX. This investment marks a significant achievement for both Georgia’s startup ecosystem and the broader regional venture landscape. It underscores the impact of Future Laboratory Ventures’ acceleration program while reaffirming that Georgian startups possess the competitive edge needed to attract funding from Silicon Valley investors. Currently, Quantum Server is in San Francisco attending GDC (Game Developers Conference)—one of the world’s premier gaming industry events—where they are also engaging with investors and potential clients in Silicon Valley. Levan Basharuli Medea Janjghava

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With RL techniques like GRPO, it’s become easy to fine-tune small models to outperform foundation models on vertical tasks. We’re open sourcing Osmosis-Apply-1.7B: a small model that merges code (similar to Cursor’s instant apply) better than foundation models. Links in comments! Using foundation models for high specificity, low complexity tasks like code merging can be overkill - instead, it’s better to use a specialized model instead for higher performance and latency. We fine-tuned the model on 100K real-world code commits where the model needs to merge a code edit snippet into an original code snippet. On the test dataset (subset of CommitPackFT), foundation model performance ranged between 0.77-0.93 reward score. In comparison, Osmosis-Apply-1.7B achieved a 0.98 reward score - while also being 3X-5X more affordable than the next cheaper model AND ~10X faster! Why this matters: the best AI agents use multiple models to ensure task specialization and reliability at scale - on top of cost and latency benefits as well. Links to the model and full write-up (with reward function, hyperparameters, etc.) are in the comments - reach out if you’re interested in using reinforcement learning!

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What Our Top Performing Investments at SpringTide Ventures Have in Common Our most transformative healthcare startups, including PathologyWatch, OpenLoop, IgniteData, and Tava Health, all share three traits in common: 1. Cheetah CEOs These CEOs are exceptional at: ✅ Speed without chaos. They move fast—but never at the expense of execution. ✅ Hiring with precision. They don’t just hire for skills; they hire for speed and alignment. ✅ Betting bold. They go where legacy players have overcomplicated things for decades—and they simplify. They don’t wait. They don’t overthink. They act and embrace the process of failing quickly, often, and cheaply. They learn from these failures to iterate at rapid speed and quickly orient their way to the north star of success more nimbly than others. 2. No Unpaid Pilots The single biggest trap in healthcare venturing may well be the unpaid pilot. It’s a slow death. Months—sometimes years—of proving your value with nothing to show for it. The best founders? They refuse. They find a way to generate real revenue immediately. They structure deals that prove their worth—without giving away their product for free. They don’t waste time on handshakes that lead nowhere. 3. Integrated Solutions Win Point solutions don’t win in healthcare anymore. The best startups don’t just build products. They build systems. They understand the bigger picture—the way everything connects. They integrate seamlessly into existing workflows instead of fighting them. They don’t just add value—they make their solution the only viable choice. This integration often comes with lower margins in the early years of finding and building out product Market fit, but we gladly accept lower margins for such ambitious visions. Healthcare is brutal. Most startups don’t make it. But the bestredefine their categories. They’re led by Cheetah CEOs like Daniel Lambert, Jon Lensing, Zach Taft, MBA, and Dallen Allred—founders who execute relentlessly, think in integrated solutions, and get to real revenue fast.

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🚀 Meet PACT, simplifying SBA-backed acquisitions with investors. Think YC’s SAFE, but built for Main Street M&A. 📘 What is PACT and why we built it PACT (Partnership Acquisition Commonsense Terms) is a free, balanced starting point for the agreements used in SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors. For too long, SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors have been the wild west: every deal is different, inefficient, and confusing, especially for first-time searchers raising capital. PACT gives everyone a common baseline so reviews are faster, expectations are clear, and operators can focus on acquiring the business. 🧩 SAFE for ETA Y Combinator’s SAFE gave startups a shared template that made early investing easier to execute. PACT brings that same idea to ETA. It teaches the key concepts in plain English, aligns searchers and investors on the economics, and sets a fair place to start. Our goal is for PACT to become the default baseline for investor-backed small business acquisitions using SBA loans. 🤝 Who contributed 🏛️ Legal input from top SMB M&A attorneys: Joseph Spina (Cullen and Dykman LLP), Mark Dittrich (Groundswell Advisors, LLP), and Eric Hsu (Clear Focus Law, PLLC) provided feedback on drafts. 💼 Early investor adopters: Jordan F. (Shareholder Ventures), Grant Hensel (Entrepreneurial Capital), Jason Ehrlich (Fruition Capital), Sean Smith (Search Fund Ventures), Adam Kaplan (ETA Funding Partners), Jacob Hall (Kando Capital), Tony Cappaert (Workbench Capital) and Adam Markley (PROX Search Capital) have adopted PACT on new deals. 🎓 Community support: Chelsea Wood and Walker Deibel at the Acquisition Lab and Buy Then Build have committed to start educating the community on how investor deals work using PACT. 👉 What to do next 🔍 Searchers: download the docs and ask your lawyer to start from PACT. ⚖️ SMB M&A Law firms: review the templates and send feedback so the next version is better. 💸 SMB investors: adopt PACT as your starting point and share redlines from real deals. This is a community-led standard, and we will keep versioning PACT as feedback comes in from all sides. 📝 Thanks: Special thanks to Joseph Spina for leading the legal drafting with me and helping shape a true middle ground. 🔗 Download PACT and see the key terms: ETAPACT.com (link in the comments) Let’s make investor-backed acquisitions clearer, faster, and fairer for everyone. 🚨 DISCLAIMER: PACT is not legal advice. Searchers must engage experienced SMB M&A counsel to review and tailor these documents to their deal.

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🚀 setting the record straight: 16VC & our journey so far i know there have been a lot of discussions and concerns around 16vc over the past few months. since these conversations are resurfacing, i wanted to take a moment to address them openly and transparently. 📌 the backstory back in august–september 2024, we had an ambitious plan—to launch our first accelerator program. the goal was to support founders with hands-on guidance and mentorship. there have been claims that i am not from a top-tier university. that’s true—i pursued my education online instead of attending a traditional university. but real-world experience has shaped my understanding of venture capital, running startups, and building an angel network. 💰 the visa & refund situation one major point of discussion has been around the ₹52,000 fee that some candidates paid. to clarify: ✅ this was never a job fee. it was for a planned venture studio (RI5E) in berlin, where we wanted to send talent from india instead of hiring in germany. ✅ we aimed to sponsor visas under the germany opportunity card, but due to long wait times and bureaucratic delays, we couldn’t proceed as planned. ✅ we eventually had to operate through deel, but costs became unsustainable. ✅ regarding refunds, part of the amount is being processed by the embassy, while we are actively working to fulfill the remaining refunds from our u.s. operations. we understand the frustration and are committed to resolving this as soon as possible. 🌟 moving forward i understand skepticism. i understand why people have questions. that’s why i am open to discussions and constructive conversations. if you have any concerns, feel free to dm me or comment below—i’m happy to address them personally. i appreciate the trust and support from those who understand the journey of entrepreneurship. let’s build forward. 🚀 #transparency #startupjourney #16vc #venturecapital #buildingforward

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