Front Porch Venture Partners

We hit print on our latest quarterly newsletter earlier today -- appreciate your thoughts and feedback as always and send us a note if you'd like to be added to the distro! cc: Greggory + Nikin + Joe Here's the preamble -- Dear Limited Partners and Friends, Greetings from one of the best times of the year in the Southeast, where thankfully Florida kept a basketball champion in the region while pollen wages war in our nostrils and tariff talk spins our brains into scrambled eggs. Here on the Front Porch, we wrote the first version of this missive on April 2, and then another on April 4, and then another on April 7, and then one more on April 10, and then a final news check on April 14. And then we had this funny-slash-heated discussion: "of course all of this uncertainty MATTERS, but where does it really matter for Front Porch?" And thus we hit send and we'll beg for your forgiveness if OBE by now...

Come join if you’ll be in ATL on May 1!

Some decades nothing happens, and some weeks decades happen... (we don't frequently quote Lenin, and this is an exaggeration, and NO, we're not going to touch tariffs)... but we did have an exciting and busy week in the Southeast! Big thanks as always to our fund, founder, and ecosystem friends: 🤜 🤛 Benzamin and the Alabama Capital Network for a great Jemison Award luncheon in Birmingham featuring the big winner ProxsysRx of fund partner Fulcrum Equity Partners (extra thanks to Brock for a seat at his table) 🤜 🤛 Juan and the PitchBreakfast crew for giving us a shot as the out-of-town investor in Charlotte with a solid group of founders working their pitches 🤜 🤛 The whole Raleigh-Durham Startup Week crew, emeritously led by Chris and Archie, who put on an incredible five days of FREE content in the Triangle 🤜 🤛 Jamie and the awesome Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship team who continue to kindly allow a few motley alums to join the Startup Showcase Closing the week thankful for such productive set of distractions from CNBC and excited for the opportunity ahead with these folks and many others. cc: Greggory, Nikin & Joe

Had a blast and learned a lot chatting PIVOTS (and navigating them as a leader, and finding investors and stakeholders who are supportive of you through them) with John, Maggie, and David as part of Raleigh-Durham Startup Week… such an energizing few days every year here in the Triangle. In my role as social media manager for Front Porch Venture Partners, the audience was also kind enough to indulge a selfie:

Since we love an extended sports analogy at Front Porch Venture Partners, we took the S&P 500 and the 6+ million other employer firms including today’s scrappy band of startups over to the baseball diamond in honor of Opening Day last week. The punch line? Comparing the rosters of the Yankees and the 12U Little League World Series champion is kind of silly. (CC: Greggory and Nikin with the link in comments to help appease the algo)

Last week was big for the Triangle ecosystem, with both CED (Center for Entrepreneurial Development)'s Venture Connect and UNC's Institute for Private Capital's Alternative Investments Conference on the docket.   It was a long week, to be sure, but one jam-packed with some incredible conversations on today's venture market, inspiring founder pitches, and productive connections between local and out-of-state investors.   I may be biased, but North Carolina is an innovation ecosystem (THE innovation ecosystem??) to watch. At Revolution's Rise of the Rest, we're constantly monitoring the momentum building in startup communities across the country. We hold steadfast to the thesis that founders can start and scale transformative businesses anywhere, particularly in their own (sometimes literal) backyard.   Some stats on what's going on in my own: 🚀 North Carolina currently ranks 10th nationally for total venture capital investments in recent years, with the state's startups receiving a whopping $2.8B+ in 2023. 🚀 Over 70% of NC's venture dollars flow into the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), but emerging hubs like Charlotte have also gained serious traction. 🚀 Approximately 60% of venture capital deployed in recent years has gone into early-stage investments (seed and Series A) — setting the stage for significant growth and scale ahead.   At ROTR, we started investing in the Triangle more than 10 years ago (!!) when our big red bus first rolled through town. We've had the honor of working alongside incredible founders like Anil Chawla (ArchiveSocial), Igor Jablokov (Pryon), Brian Platz (Fluree), and F. Scott Moody (K4Connect) along the way.   Here's to the home team that's worth following or connecting with for all things Triangle startups: Kelly Rowell, Hunter Young, Yash M., Elizabeth Kelly, Scot Wingo, Nikita A. Ramaswamy, Lister Delgado, Zakiya Alta Lee, MBA, Jenn Summe, Kevin Mosley, David Jones, Jason Caplain, Greggory Bordes, Nikin Shah, Joe Mancini, Joe Darcy, Justin W., Shruti Shah, Timothy McLoughlin, Tobias Walter   Needless to say, I'm so excited to see this ecosystem — the very one I call home — continue to evolve.

Let’s kick the #VA2025 conference season off right 🎉 Join us on May 1st at Invesco US’s Atlanta office to network with industry leaders in the Atlanta tech ecosystem and connect with members of the Venture Atlanta Board in a more intimate setting ahead of the conference! You can look forward to thought-provoking discussions on 'The State of Venture Capital' and 'Building AI in the Southeast' featuring these incredible panelists: ▶︎ Mark Flickinger, BIP Capital ▶︎ Joe Mancini, Front Porch Venture Partners ▶︎ Sean Banks, TTV Capital ▶︎ Kim Seals, West Monroe ▶︎ Andrew Davis, Cox Enterprises ▶︎ Rob Bearden, Sema4.ai The event is free to attend and space is limited—Register today to secure your spot: https://lu.ma/o2y0wauv

Last call for Seed The South Capital Summit applications -- apply now and we look forward to seeing you there!

Kudos and a big thanks to Peter at Carta and Bill Spruill for their great fireside this morning at CED (Center for Entrepreneurial Development)’s Venture Connect conference in Raleigh. Headlines are consistent with what we’ve seen in our own data at Front Porch Venture Partners: — 30-50% valuation difference in the Southeast versus coasts — Limited DPI for funds <5 years old (expected, but won’t be accepted by LPs as these funds get longer in the 🦷) — By year 5-6, certain funds do start to break out from the pack from a TVPI perspective, with signals that appear in years 3-4 — Series A+ is rolling with fewer and fewer people, partially due to capital constraints and partially with the help of AI… but what’s especially crazy is that Series A+ revenue thresholds have gone way up, so revenue per employee is 🚀 This data continues to be super helpful to the industry and especially firms like ours that are focused on smaller funds — we have a ton of data on the Southeast, but a national dataset for a analysis and benchmarking is invaluable for us. Maybe next Carta can help with valuation methods on SAFEs and notes to help ensure TVPI is calculated consistently…? 🧐 CC: my partners Greggory + Nikin

On a panel a few weeks back, a great question asked by someone in the audience was: “in such a crazy, fast-changing world, with the news changing every hour, what are examples of things that you believe will ALWAYS be true?” (Gulp — deep! But great). We got a similar version related to AI the next week, so Greggory, Nikin, and I jotted some thoughts down. (We went deep with this one and Nikin's everlasting great hair was left on the cutting room floor in the post). A big thanks to the person who asked this question a few weeks back! You’ve lived rent-free on the collective Front Porch for a good long time now and we hope this is useful. What are the things that you stop and reference in moments of change?