firmly

We are thrilled to see our Hawke Ventures portfolio company firmly join forces with Perplexity to reshape GenAI commerce. By combining seamless, AI-powered shopping with complete merchant control, they're setting a whole new standard. Since launching its innovative shopping assistant last fall, Perplexity has experienced a 5x spike in shopping queries. To keep up, they needed a tech partner that could connect them to thousands of brands through one clean integration — without sacrificing control of customer data and transactions. Enter firmly. They're empowering brands of every size to sell directly inside Perplexity, revolutionizing the shopping journey. At Hawke Ventures, we back founders who challenge convention and build what's next — long before the rest of the market catches on. Congratulations to firmly's founders, Kumar N Senthil and Damien BALSAN, on this groundbreaking move.

1 in 3 of the fastest growing startups in August are AI driven startups. At Crustdata we track company and people data - including headcount growth of companies - on a real-time basis. We decided to find out the fastest growing startups this month using our month-over-month growth dataset and here’s what we found: 𝟭. 𝗦𝘄𝘀𝗵: Social Networking App: 104.5% Founders: Weilyn Chong, Alexandra Debow 𝟮. 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁: Event Management Software: 87% Founder: David Roselle 𝟯. 𝗖𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗮𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲: Biotechnology: 70.4% Founders: François PAILLIER, JACKELINE P. 𝟰 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗽𝗹: Fintech: 65.6% Founders: Srinivas Sarkar, Kushagra Manglik 𝟱. 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘀: Alcoholic Beverage: 64.7% Founder: Kylie Jenner 𝟲. 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗙𝗶: Education Financing: 56.3% Founder: Aleena Nadeem 𝟳. 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱: Healthcare Financing: 54% Founders: Arpit Jangir, Shrey Jain 𝟴. 𝗞𝗲𝘆: Professional Networking Platform: 49.69% Founder: Kushagra Shrivastava, Christopher Fong 𝟵. 𝗭𝗯𝘆𝘁𝗲: Blockchain: 49.5% Founders: Krish Kupathil, Nitin Kumar, Saurabh Radhakrishnan 𝟭𝟬. 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗹𝘆 𝗔𝗜: E-commerce: 49.5% Founder: Kumar N Senthil, Damien BALSAN 𝟭𝟭.𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗸𝗲𝘆 𝗔𝗜: AI Software Development: 49.4% Founders: Ayush Garg, Rohit Agarwal. 𝟭𝟮. 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗜: Data Analytics: 49.4% Founders: Felix Beissel, Maximilian Hahnenkamp 𝟭𝟯. 𝗦𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽: Creator Management: 45.8% Founders: Jesse Bouman, Nesha Aurea Hanzdima 𝟭𝟰. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿: Business Acquisitions: 44% Founders: Fouad Raji, Saad Benryane 𝟭𝟱. 𝗦𝗵𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗹𝗲: Online Gambling: 44% Founders: Noah Dummett, Darcy S. 𝟭𝟲. 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲: Healthcare Technology: 43.9% Founders: Juan Sebastián Suárez Valencia, Fadi Haddad 𝟭𝟳. 𝗧𝗮𝗽𝗙𝗶𝗻: Sustainable Finance: 42.5% Founders: Pramod Marar, Terniza Berry, Aditya Singh 𝟭𝟴. 𝗧𝘄𝗶𝗻: Business Process Automation: 42.3% Founder: Hugo Mercier 𝟭𝟵. 𝗖𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗼: Carbon Compliance Software: 42.3% Founders: Daniel Sharp, Gabriel Rozenberg 𝟮𝟬. 𝗭𝗲𝘂𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Blockchain: 42.3% Founder: Jim Chiu If you want to see the full data on these companies, check out the link in the comments 👇

Coming in hot post fundraise, I'm thrilled to announce that I've joined my former PayPal colleagues to deliver on the promise of Firmly.ai. Over the past 4 years, this all-star team has been building a content to commerce technology that equally serves both publishers/platforms and retailers/DTC advertisers.  For retailers/DTC advertisers, they can now engage/convert consumers at the point of inspiration by extending their website/cart to ANY publisher/platform without deploying any engineering resources, sacrificing any data or limiting their product mix. On the flip side, with one API integration, publishers and advertising platforms can now drive incremental revenue and capture first party commerce data through retailer/DTC supported advertising and content by enabling their consumers to shop/checkout with virtually ANY online retailer without ever clicking out of the consumer experience...this means, consumers can buy almost anything with ANY online retailer and keep scrolling...better experience, better conversion. The technology creates true transparency across the eco-system and is truly built to scale. Testament to that, we have successful pilots across various channels (SMS, email, social) and 2 of the largest social networks are deploying the solution with an impressive list of tier-1 retailers this quarter! I'm excited to bring many of you under the hood, so please DM me if you're interested in learning more!  Special thanks to Damien BALSAN, Kumar N Senthil, Brian DeMelo, Chip Overstreet, Donald kingsborough, Toni Stinton and our incredible investors for allowing me the opportunity to ride shotgun on this rocketship! Here is to making every impression shoppable!!!