Since 1986, Pelion Venture Partners has been helping entrepreneurs turn early-stage concepts into tomorrow’s industry-leading companies. The Pelion team has deep and diverse industry and investment experience. We are hands-on in our approach and work collaboratively on each portfolio company over the life of an investment. Our company partners benefit from our insights and our abilities to focus strategically and tactically on success. We can tap into and leverage a vast network of technology executives in all corners of the IT industry to help our companies achieve success.
Top 3 lessons I learned from the guys who raised Utah’s largest venture fund ever ($500M):
1) “The best founders are crazy.”
It’s nonsensical to believe that your tiny startup can take on the world.
But the best founders fully believe it.
Not only do the founders need to be 100% all-in, but their spouses and team members as well.
Every startup will run into crazy challenges, and it takes a special type of crazy to get through it.
2) “Conditional relationships are short-lived, but unconditional relationships are long-lasting.”
Anyone can raise money in an upmarket, but only the exceptional can do it in a down market.
The difference? Great relationships.
Investing in relationships, no matter how small they may seem, will almost always result in exponentially bigger results.
3) “Criticism from a place of love makes great partnerships great.”
Good partners support each other—but great partners report on each other.
If two partners have enough trust and connection between each other to be able to directly call out when they do well and when they need to improve, there’s nothing they can’t overcome.
Huge thanks to Blake Modersitzki and Chris Cooper from Pelion Venture Partners for coming on the podcast. Congrats again on the $500M Fund VIII.
Check out our conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gjAAAJ6x
🎙️ Excited to announce the latest episode of the IO Podcast featuring an in-depth conversation with Peter Kazanjy, renowned author of "Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook".
In this episode, Pelion Venture Partners partner Tyler Hogge and venture partner Sterling Snow delve into the essentials of founder-led sales with Peter, who shares invaluable insights drawn from his extensive experience in guiding startups to success.
This episode is packed with actionable advice that can transform your approach to sales and business growth. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the field.
Check out the full episode now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
Tyler HoggeSterling SnowPeter Kazanjy
“Strider Technologies…has developed exceptional capabilities by applying AI to the burdensome task of risk profiling, the process of determining who might want to steal company secrets and how they typically do it so that a firm can better protect its most vulnerable assets and staff.”
CEO and Co-Founder Greg L. spoke to Freethink about what we’re doing at Strider:
“We’re building, literally, a digital twin of the global economy, down to the individual level: all of the corporate actors, financial flows, trade flows. We can spin up a digital twin of any organization in the entire world, process all of that, and then run all our analytics through their organization to identify risk and opportunities, without the company giving us any data or access to their network.”
For organizations, the ability to process and act on vast, open-source data with speed is the new strategic edge. At Strider, that’s what we deliver.
Read the full Freethink article here: https://lnkd.in/ew3KTbz4
We made the list! 🎉
Denim is one of Inbound Logistics’ Top 100 Logistics Tech Providers for 2025—selected from 400 nominations.
Thanks to the brokers, carriers, and partners who trust us to help them move faster with flexible factoring and back-office automation.
#freighttech#freightbroker#logistics#supplychain
Huge congratulations to Strider Technologies for being named the #6 Most Innovative Security Company on Fast Company’s 2025 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies!
As a Pelion Venture Partners Fund VIII company, Strider Technologies is pioneering strategic intelligence solutions that empower organizations to protect their people, technology, and supply chains against evolving state-sponsored threats. Their cutting-edge work in AI and open-source intelligence is shaping the future of security—and we couldn’t be more thrilled to see them recognized at this level.
Exciting times ahead for Strider! 🚀
Click here to learn more: https://lnkd.in/eKgHhn78
Utah: A Rising Powerhouse for Unicorns 🚀
Great insights from Ilya Strebulaev and the Stanford University Venture Capital Initiative on which universities are most likely to produce unicorn founders! One standout takeaway? The University of Utah ranks #2 in the nation with a 3.2x higher likelihood of producing a unicorn founder. Brigham Young University is right in the mix as well, contributing to Utah’s growing prominence in the startup world.
For those of us in the Utah tech ecosystem, this confirms what we’ve known for years: Utah is a breeding ground for high-growth startups and future unicorns.
📌 Utah outpaces the national unicorn average—while nationally, 1 in 101 VC-backed startups becomes a unicorn, in Utah, it’s 1 in 61.
💡 What’s Driving Utah’s Startup Boom? The Silicon Slopes ecosystem is fueled by world-class universities, a strong talent pipeline, and a culture of entrepreneurship. Utah’s business-friendly environment, robust VC presence, and collaborative tech community are turning the state into one of the most dynamic startup hubs in the country.
🚀 As an early-stage venture firm in Salt Lake City, we see firsthand the energy, ambition, and innovation coming from Utah founders. Whether it’s cutting-edge SaaS, fintech, or AI-driven solutions, the next wave of unicorns is already being built here.
#VentureCapital#Startups#Unicorns#SiliconSlopes#UtahTech
Professor at Stanford | Bestselling Author | Innovation | Venture Capital & Private Equity
Which universities are most likely to produce a unicorn?
Founders of a US startup who studied or worked at the University of Cincinnati are 3.3 times more likely to achieve unicorn status than average.
University of Utah – 3.2 times more likely. Yale University and Vanderbilt University – 2 times more likely. Stanford University is at 1.6 times the average, University of California, Berkeley at 1.5.
How did we estimate the likelihood of producing a unicorn?
We started by identifying the educational and professional background for founders of 1,110 US-based VC-backed unicorns and 1,028 randomly selected VC-backed companies, matched only by the year of the first VC round.
1,081 unicorns and 961 random sample startups have at least one founder who either studied or worked at some university.
For example, the University of Cincinnati is associated with 1% of unicorns and 0.3% of random sample companies. The ratio between these percentages is 3.3. We call it the odds ratio of producing a unicorn.
Note: This sample included universities that are associated with 10 or more unicorns. A unicorn is associated with a university if it has at least one founder who worked or studied at this university.
Thank you to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Venture Capital Initiative team for spearheading this research.
The news is out—we’ve been named one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes for 2025!
Our team at Strider is made up of incredibly smart, hardworking, and creative individuals driven by the unified mission to protect the ideals and innovations of the free world.
We’re proud of the reputation we’ve earned as a company, the team we’ve built, and the work we’re doing.
This is just the start.
Introducing America's Best Startup Employers:
Smart startups know that keeping employees happy is good for both the workers and the business. And though it’s not easy to assess which companies consistently maintain employee engagement and satisfaction, Forbes has made it easier by researching and ranking America’s Best Startup Employers 2025.
SEE LIST: https://trib.al/9O2hj6i
Pelion Venture Partners is excited to lead Subscript’s $15M Series A as they transform revenue intelligence! 🚀
Revenue management is a mission-critical function for B2B companies, yet it's often bogged down by manual processes, siloed systems, and limited real-time insights. Subscript is changing that.
From our first meeting with Sidharth Kakkar, we saw something special—a founder with deep expertise and an ambitious vision to redefine revenue management. The platform automates contract data extraction, enhances analytics, and brings AI-powered intelligence to financial operations.
Alongside First Round Capital, we're excited to support Subscript as they build the future of revenue intelligence. Congratulations to Sidharth Kakkar, Michelle Lee, and the entire Subscript team—this is just the beginning!
More on why we invested: https://lnkd.in/gWgVPRyj#AI#B2B#RevenueManagement#VentureCapital#Pelion
