We are proud to announce that Roble Ventures has been selected to attend the RAISE Global Summit in San Francisco later this month. This exclusive opportunity to connect with LPs and other emerging VCs will strengthen the support we’re able to offer to our founders.
It’s been encouraging to see the appetite for our human enablement approach, seeing as it’s not just what we invest in but the foundation our firm is built upon.
Our internal processes, otherwise known as our VC OS, leverage AI and automated workflows so that we can get more facetime with our founders.
If you want to learn more about how we’re able to deliver human touch at scale, we’ll also be speaking at Affinity’s Campfire conference on October 22nd.
Lens Into a Human-Enabled Future
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
Sergio spoke at VC University’s 5-year anniversary event, hosted by Venture Forward, an organization that supports a more equitable future for venture capital:
Our Founding Partner was also featured by Hispanics in Tech on his distance traveled, and how his uncommon background informed his approach to backing today’s founders:
Our team attended the Angeles Investors Summit alongside 100+ other investors, all dedicated to finding, funding, and growing the most promising Hispanic and Latino ventures.
Despite the promise of AI, there is still the very real threat of AI-generated material promoting fraud and disinformation. Sergio reflected on the potential of blockchain technology to help distinguish between and verify AI- and human-generated digital content.
Though large companies like Meta have AI-detection policies in place, there is a lot of room for startups to add value, similar to what Stripe did for online payment security.
The Latest From Our Founders
PORTFOLIO NEWS AND UPDATES
Once again, Rising Team is blazing forward with their movement to build stronger and more authentically connected teams; Jen went on the HumanizeHer podcast to share her tips for building community and driving change.
Building a movement (and a company) requires people, so you have to know how to be brave enough to stand up and attract followers to your cause, how to then empower them and ask them for help, and how to deal with the inevitable days that suck.
"Do you believe in what you are climbing for, and do you like, respect, and trust the people you are climbing with?"
Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple, or watch on YouTube.
Jen was also recently recognized as one of Engagedly Inc.’s Top 100 HR Influencers of 2024, and Rising Team welcomed their new Chief Customer Officer, Jami Zakem.
Teachy was featured by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, detailing how their tool streamlines the teaching workflow and helps teachers prepare lessons and grade student work 10 times faster than they could without it.
“Teachers can focus on the needs of individual students using quality materials, models, and data they can trust,” says founder & CEO Pedro Siciliano.
Empowering teachers to reclaim their time to help their students has an enormous ripple effect, transforming not only one of the most noble and necessary professions, but the learning outcomes of millions of students who were affected by COVID slowdowns.
To celebrate their recent growth, Hyperbound held their first company offsite; they also penned an article on how AI is redefining sales coaching by helping SDRs focus on quality over quantity.
Dragonboat founder & CEO Becky Flint ran a workshop at the PRODUCTIZED conference in Lisbon on how product leaders can boost their teams and themselves through the use of AI and strategic product management.
What Keeps Us Up at Night
KEY RISK FACTORS
By Sergio Monsalve
In my 17 years as a venture investor and board member, I’ve often been disappointed with how mismanaged boards of directors operate.
It’s not often thought about in the early stages, but this is when it’s crucial to have a board roadmap in place to mitigate the following trouble signs I’ve seen among board members time and time again:
- Inability to provide strategic guidance that’s relevant to the company
- Conflicting interests that lead members to prioritize personal gains
- Micromanagement of the company’s day-to-day operations
- Lack of diversity of thought, background, and experience (→ groupthink and massive blind spots)
- Communication breakdowns and lack of accountability
- Inadequate oversight
Even if you don’t have a board yet, you should start actively thinking about who makes up your “roundtable” — how can you leverage your existing investors to get intros to new ones? What gaps exist among your personal advisory board, and what relationships can you build to fill them?
We’ll have a full blog post going out soon with deeper dives into board mishaps all founders should learn from and avoid, as well as a fuller board roadmap you can use to guide a more intentional, well-rounded board strategy.
A few months back, we hosted a webinar with board experts and portfolio founders on Building an Effective Board of Directors; you can watch the recording here (Passcode: &8tnM4*+).
What Caught Our Attention
NEWS AND RESOURCES
Roadmap: Healthcare AI (Bessemer Venture Partners)
How long it takes to grow a unicorn (LinkedIn)
Beyond Bots: How AI Agents Are Driving the Next Wave of Enterprise Automation (Menlo Ventures)
OpenAI nears “reasoning”-capable AI (Axios)
AI Agents: A New Architecture for Enterprise Automation (Menlo Ventures)
AI Advantage for Startups: Changing the Workflow through Services (LinkedIn)
Agentic AI is Here and These 8 Startups Are Leading the Way in 2024 (AIM Research)
Part I: The future of AI is vertical (Bessemer Venture Partners)
Are you a founder currently raising in the future of work space, or know someone who is? Pitch us here.
About the author
Roble Ventures is a future-of-work focused fund investing in technologies that enable people, teams, and organizations to achieve their most ambitious work.
