XYZ Venture Capital

🚀 BIG NEWS: Cavela is teaming up with Clearco to revolutionize how ecommerce brands scale. Smarter capital meets smarter manufacturing—all in one powerful partnership. Clearco gives brands fast, flexible, non-dilutive funding. Cavela connects them to the world’s top manufacturers, cutting production costs by up to 40% and automating the entire sourcing process. Now, Clearco customers can use their capital to access Cavela’s supplier network, move faster, and protect their margins—with zero friction. At a time when tariffs are rising and supply chains are under pressure, this partnership is a game-changer for ecommerce brands ready to grow smarter and stronger. Explore how Cavela and Clearco can help your brand cut costs, streamline production, and fund your next order. Read the article in BusinessWire for more details: https://lnkd.in/eajrAdAC

I've been receiving an alarming amount of brand crisis requests this year with Plot social listening. It's clearly a coordinated effort to intentionally take down brands "the enemy" in an effort to push affiliate sales through sophisticated AI or faceless UGC. That said as both a chronically online scroller and brand owner, I wanted to share what marketing playbooks I've been seeing and what incentive programs exist out there. Hoping we can all be more conscious consumers as we mindlessly scroll, and brands can spot these tactics before they cause damage. Because let's be real.... one minute I'm in a TikTok trance and the next I'm questioning my life choices like.. wait, do I actually NEED beef tallow for my skin? (Spoiler: probably not.) https://lnkd.in/eFNdksSN

Move over, PayPal: there's a new tech mafia in town. Meet the Palantir Mafia: from Y Combinator's Garry Tan, to Joe Lonsdale, to the founders of ElevenLabs, Ironclad, and Partiful, the big data software company has produced a slew of former employees who now run startups and investment funds of their own. Palantir mafia companies have been backed by top VC firms including a16z, Sequoia, Redpoint, and Accel, as well as the prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator. In total, the startups identified by Business Insider have collectively raised more than $6 billion in VC funding, according to PitchBook data as well as founders themselves. More than half of that funding — $3.8 billion — went to one place: Anduril, the defense-tech startup founded by three Palantir alums. See BI's list of 30 Palantir Mafia members who are now startup founders: https://lnkd.in/dsAr_gTM (Credit: Shreya Murthy, Gary Lin, Alex Katz) #palantir #startups #tech

Today, we’re excited to finally announce our partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to streamline defense budget management! Here’s why this matters: 💸 Often seen as the “VC Arm of the Pentagon”, DIU acts as the gateway between commercial technology companies and the #NationalSecurity mission partners like U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. 🧮 As is the case across many federal agencies, planning #budgets and managing programs at DIU is a very time-intensive process under a high-degree of scrutiny, creating undue room for #inefficiency. 🔮 Pryzm’s intuitive workflows and expertise in #acquisition data integration allow for a much more modern approach to financial and program management across the national security ecosystem. 🎯 With Pryzm, DIU leaders and their partners across the innovation ecosystem will be able to focus more on what they do best: “Connecting the dots” of #DefenseTech. Reach out to get involved: hello@pryzm.io 🇺🇲 _______ Full Story here: https://lnkd.in/gsdecby3 United States Department of Defense United States Senate U.S. House of Representatives #DefenseTech #AcquisitionReform #NDAA #DoD #DOGE #ConnectTheDots #Tech #VC #Budgets Nick Matt Justin Joseph David Raj

The next play community is growing worldwide in a BIG way We have in-person gatherings for top talent who are openly / secretly exploring starting / joining their next thing coming up in 30+ cities! Full list here: • Bangalore: early March hosted by Pavithran • NYC: mid-March by Dan Schreter • San Francisco: mid-March by Lucy Wilmot, Camille Ricketts • London: mid-March by Shreman Shrestha • Los Angeles: mid-March, mid-April by Andy Apple • DC: mid-March, mid-April by Amu Fowler • Tel Aviv: mid-March by Rachel Kastner, Avigail Levine • Houston: mid March by Darshan Honale, • Quito: mid-March by Pablo Pinto • Sydney: late-March by Rohit Ghosh • Warsaw: mid-March by Kacper Zambrzycki • Barcelona: late March by Brian Weisner • Paris: late March by Julia Denoly, Hugo Mendes • Brussels: late March, late April by Lorenzo D'Auria • Istanbul: early April by Oz Silahtar • Lisbon: early April by Jenny Romano • Amsterdam: early April by 🦡 Greg Denton • Toronto: mid-April by Vivek Gandhi, Isha Hans • Dallas: mid-April by Peter Phillips • Dublin: mid-April by Matteo Grassi ⁠• Lima: mid-April by Pablo Pinto • Miami: mid-April by Adrian Calderon • Copenhagen: mid-April by Asbjorn Holmlund • South Bay: late April by Nalina Murthy • Singapore: late April by Arjit Bhargava • Delhi: April by Pavithran • Mumbai: April by Pavithran, Shreevar • Atlanta: April by Harris Osserman • Boston: early May by Dan Allon • Austin: early May by Tal Shmueli Huge thanks to our hosts who hand-curate each event 🙂 Will share the link to apply to join next play gatherings in the comments. Space is unfortunately limited. Reach out if you're interested in getting involved in hosting!

Today, we announced our $190m Series C at a 2.5B valuation led by Sequoia Capital. We started Peregrine when I was 26 years old. I didn’t know what “go to market” was. I didn’t know what an “MQL” was. I didn’t really know what “Series A/B/C/N” was. I did know how to code, and I had a passion for building mission-driven software. Below is my ID card for the San Pablo Police Department when we first embedded with them years ago. They jokingly put “Head of Technology” on it. While I was there, I built the initial versions of Peregrine. I also resized many PDFs to fit under the email limit, restarted routers, and ensured case files could be printed. Reflecting on this milestone, I’m most proud that the DNA of this company is rooted in the desk side presence we had in San Pablo. We continue to believe in taking radical ownership of the challenges faced by our public servants. This investment in Peregrine represents a continued commitment to delivering the best possible technology to the most important institutions. Thank you to our customers who do the hard work day in and day out to make our country a better place. Thank you to our investors who have supported this mission through financing and thought partnership. I look forward to many more years working together. Thank you to every teammate at Peregrine who makes this possible. You have chosen to spend your time furthering this mission, and I am deeply grateful for that. Thank you to my co-founder Nick for working side-by-side with me since the beginning. You’ve always understood the importance of building durable, powerful, and user-friendly software. Thank you to my wife, Claire, for her (mostly) unwavering support of this dream from day one—back when it was just Nick, me, and an idea. Wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.

Babe wake up!! Community DRIVES growth!! 🔥 Introducing Plot's Community Hub where teams collaborate to turn superfans into your most powerful growth engine. Here's the problem: Community management requires consistent nurturing—building relationships, engaging, rewarding, gifting and making people feel seen regardless of their follower count. But teams work in silos. Influencer marketing sends PR packages. Community managers engage on social. Rewards teams handle perks. CX jumps in when needed. No one sees the complete picture, and brands struggle to show ROI from these fragmented efforts. Yet we know every touchpoint matters. When brands nurture their community, they get more UGC, brand loyalty, and sales. In fact—this is Plot's main GTM. So I called Gabriel Gomez (one of our early social listening users) about proving community ROI. The idea hit me: we already help MCoBeauty spot their fans in untagged content, what if we connected those insights to actual relationship building? Here's how we bring it all together with Community Hub: 👀 Spot your true superfans powered by our social listening (based on brand engagement, not just followers) 🎁 Spot moments to surprise and delight superfans with our peeking feature 🛑 See brand partnership history before proposing new collabs 📝 Track every team interaction in one place We'll continue building the tools to prove what we've always known: community isn't just nice to have, it's your growth strategy. ❤️ Peek here: https://lnkd.in/e4d9GbSu

Today we announce Rune to the world and the closing of our $6.2M seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz with investments from Point72 Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital. Rune is grateful to have such incredible investment partners, all of whom have deep experience in the defense technology space. Rune is here to revolutionize military logistics, bringing to bear elite Silicon Valley tech talent solely focused on innovating for and with our military logistics warfighters. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e-aquwPK

Excited to announce our $21.5M Series A and rebrand to Venn 🎉 We launched Venn 2 years ago Our mission is to build the best financial platform for Canadian businesses to manage their money. For decades, Canadian businesses have struggled with outdated banking systems that are slow, expensive, and rigid. High fees on basic transactions, in-branch visits to send payments, poor FX rates, and a lack of modern financial tools have made managing money a constant headache. Venn changes that by offering a modern, seamless, and cost-effective banking experience—built to save businesses time and money. I’m most excited about the impact we are making on our customers. We’ve built a great product that is serving more than 4,000 businesses — including Sherpa, MedEssist, and Alan. This fundraising round and rebrand mark a pivotal turning point for us at Venn. We are deepening our commitment to empowering Canadian businesses, and providing the specific financial tools needed to grow, thrive, and compete on a global scale.   A warm welcome our investors joining us in this round: - Dan Ahrens from Left Lane Capital (joining our Board) - Ross Fubini from XYZ Venture Capital  - Ben Belec and Michaela Hirsh from Intact Ventures - Zachary Bratun-Glennon from Gradient who was our earliest supporter and is making his third investment in Venn to date Special shout out Charley Ma and Nik Milanović who are always a text or phone call away whenever needed and have backed us when this was just an idea. Learn more about the fundraise and our future (blog post and media linked in comments)