Tag: StrictlyVC

Defense tech, AI, and fundraising take center stage at StrictlyVC Los Angeles

Posted on by faz_business


With just two weeks to go, StrictlyVC Los Angeles is quickly approaching. On Thursday, June 18, at The Aerospace Corporation Campus in El Segundo. Investors, founders, and tech leaders will gather for an evening of conversations exploring some of the most consequential shifts taking place across venture capital, defense technology, artificial intelligence, and advanced industry. Secure your spot here.

For executives navigating a rapidly changing technology landscape, StrictlyVC offers something increasingly difficult to find: direct access to the people building, funding, and shaping the next generation of companies. The conversations are candid, the audience is highly curated, and the insights extend far beyond what can be found in headlines, podcasts, or social media feeds.

Connie Loizos, Pat Gelsinger, and Nicholas Kelez at StrictlyVC
Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / TechCrunch

Who’s taking the stage in Los Angeles

The evening begins with Ethan Thornton, founder of Mach Industries. In his session, “Built for a New Era of Defense Technology,” Thornton will share his perspective on building a hard tech company at speed and how advances in autonomy, manufacturing, and national security are transforming the defense sector. His story reflects a broader movement of founders tackling ambitious challenges in industries undergoing rapid change.

The conversation continues with Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Saif Khawaja of Shinkei Systems. Together, they will discuss the rise of physical AI and how developments in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence are creating new opportunities to transform the physical world. Their discussion will offer insight into what it takes to build and scale breakthrough technologies beyond software alone.

Also joining the lineup is Carter Reum, co-founder and partner at M13. In his session, “Finding the Next Big Thing,” Reum will explore how AI is reshaping industries and how investors are moving beyond short-term hype to identify companies built for long-term durability. He will share his perspective on where innovation is creating the most meaningful opportunities and how venture investing is evolving as new categories emerge.

Ethan Thornton at StrictlyVC San Francisco
Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / Flickr (opens in a new window)

Additional speakers and conversations will be announced soon as the StrictlyVC Los Angeles agenda continues to grow. Stay updated on the latest speaker announcements and event news.

Grab your pass and join the conversations

Beyond the conversations on stage, StrictlyVC Los Angeles is designed to bring together the people driving innovation across technology and venture capital. Throughout the evening, attendees will have opportunities to connect with founders, investors, and operators in an environment that encourages meaningful discussion and the exchange of ideas. Whether you are looking to expand your network, gain new perspectives, or discover emerging opportunities, the value of the event extends well beyond the scheduled sessions. Secure your spot here.

StrictlyVC Los Angeles 2026
Image Credits:TechCrunch

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Uber has always wanted to be more than a ride; now it has reason to hurry

Posted on by faz_business


For years, Uber talked about becoming a super app. Then Waymo started picking up passengers in San Francisco, and the conversation grew more urgent. The company has been trying to embed itself inside the AV industry — as a data provider, an investor, and a distribution platform — but the consumer-facing bet may be just as important.

Two weeks ago, Uber held its annual GO-GET product event in New York and announced something its executives had been circling for a long time: users in the U.S. can now book hotels inside the Uber app, through a partnership with Expedia Group, with access to more than 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members — the company’s subscription tier at $9.99 a month — get 20% off a rotating list of 10,000 hotels and 10% back in credits. Vacation rentals through Vrbo will follow later this year, along with restaurant reservations via OpenTable. In the meantime, a “Shop for Me” feature lets users order from stores that aren’t even on the platform.

The announcements, taken together, were the most concrete picture yet of something Uber has been trying to conjure since at least 2019: that an app with 199 million monthly active users could become the app they use for nearly everything.

Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s CTO, offered the clearest explanation of the company’s thinking at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event late last month in San Francisco. The super app concept has existed for years in India and Southeast Asia, he noted, but U.S. versions have mostly flopped by bolting services onto traffic rather than building toward a reason to stay.

His answer to what fits? Membership. Every new category — food, groceries, now hotels — gives someone another reason to pay for Uber One. “I take Uber, go to the airport, take a flight, take another Uber, go to a hotel, go to a restaurant,” he said. “There is a flow you can actually build into it.”

Flights are not available yet, though Naga didn’t rule them out. Uber tried flight booking in Europe years ago without success. “First let’s get the hotel things done,” he said. Financial services sound like a possibility too — Uber already offers a debit card to drivers in Mexico — though how far that goes, or when, remains unclear. Said Naga: “Never say never.”

Uber isn’t alone in this race. Airbnb, arguably the company most directly threatened by Uber’s hotel push, announced its own transportation ambitions in late March — a partnership with Welcome Pickups to offer airport transfers in 125 cities across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, structured to keep users inside the Airbnb app rather than sending them to Uber. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has spent three years promising to turn X into an “everything app” in the WeChat mold, and is now nearing what he describes as a long-stated goal: X Money, a banking and payments platform built inside the social network, is expected to launch publicly soon. X claims 500 million monthly active users.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026

The big question is how many super apps the American market will actually support. WeChat works in China partly because the alternative was a patchwork of inferior options. In the U.S., people already have apps they like for most of what Uber wants to do. Getting them to consolidate inside a single platform requires either a compelling reason — Uber One’s discounts, say — or a seamless enough experience that switching feels worth it.

Uber’s bet is that its installed base is the moat. Its users have already handed over a credit card. Convincing them to book a hotel, or order from a store they’d never find on Uber Eats, is an easy lift compared with convincing them to download something new. Its most recent earnings, reported a few days ago, suggest Uber Eats may be the strongest argument for that thesis: delivery revenue grew 34% year over year in the first quarter, to $5.07 billion, making it easily the fastest-growing part of the business and pulling almost even with mobility in gross bookings.

Uber’s stock is still down about 8% from a year ago — suggesting that Wall Street isn’t fully convinced. But the company says that 50 million people are now paying for Uber One, and together they account for roughly half the company’s total bookings.

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VCs discuss why most consumer AI startups still lack staying power

Posted on by faz_business


Even three years after the generative AI boom started, most AI startups are still making money by selling to businesses, not individual consumers.

Although consumers quickly adopted general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT, most specialized consumer GenAI applications have yet to resonate.

“A lot of early AI applications around video, audio, and photo were super cool,” said Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, onstage at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in early December. “But then Sora and Nano Banana came out, and the Chinese open sourced their video models. And so, a lot of those opportunities disappeared.”

Chien compares some of those applications to the simple flashlight, which was initially a popular third-party download after the iPhone launched in 2008 but was quickly integrated into iOS itself.

He argued that, just as it took a few years for the smartphone platform to solidify before game-changing consumer apps emerged, AI platforms need a similar period of “stabilization” for lasting AI consumer products to flourish.

“I think we’re right on the cusp of the equivalent to mobile of the 2009-2010 era,” Chien said. That period was the birth of massive mobile-first consumer businesses like Uber and Airbnb.

We could be seeing inklings of that stabilization with Google’s Gemini reaching technological parity with ChatGPT, Chien said.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026

Elizabeth Weil, founder and partner at Scribble Ventures, echoed Chien’s sentiment about the early days of GenAI, describing the current state of consumer AI applications as being in an “awkward teenage middle ground.”

What will it take for consumer AI startups to grow up? Possibly a new device beyond the smartphone.

“It’s unlikely that a device that you pick up 500 times a day but only sees 3% to 5% of what you see is going to be what ultimately introduces the use cases that take full advantage of AI’s capabilities,” Chien said.

Weil agreed that a smartphone may be too limiting for reimagining consumer AI products in large part because it is not ambient. “I don’t think we’re going to be building for this in five years,” she said, indicating her iPhone as she showed it to the audience.

Startups and incumbent tech companies have been racing to build a new personal device that can supplant smartphones.

OpenAI and Apple’s former design chief, Jony Ive, are working on what’s rumored to be a “screenless,” pocket-sized device. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are controlled by a wristband that detects subtle gestures. Meanwhile, a number of startups are trying, with often disappointing results, to introduce a pin, pendant, or ring that uses AI in a way different from how smartphones do.  

However, not every AI consumer product will be dependent on a new device. Chien suggested that one such offering could be a personal AI financial adviser customized to the user’s specific needs. Similarly, Weil anticipates that a personalized, “always-on” tutor will become ubiquitous, with its specialized tutelage delivered directly from a smartphone.

Though excited by AI’s potential, Weil and Chien expressed skepticism about the emergence of several, still-stealthy AI-powered social network startups. Chien said these companies are building networks where thousands of AI bots are interacting with the user’s content.

“It turns social into a single-player game. I’m not sure that it works,” he said. “The reason that people enjoy social networking is the understanding that there are real humans on the other side.”

The future will be explained to you in Palo Alto

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On Wednesday evening at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don’t understand yet will explain what’s coming. This is the final StrictlyVC event of 2025, and truly, the lineup is ridiculous.

The series has bounced around the globe under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a theater in D.C.; we talked to Greece’s prime minister in Athens; and Kirsten Green hosted us at the Presidio in San Francisco. The concept is always the same, though: get people who are working on genuinely important developments in a room before everyone else figures out they’re important.

Our favorite moment? In 2019, Sam Altman told a StrictlyVC crowd that OpenAI’s monetization strategy was basically “build AGI, then ask it how to make money.” Everyone laughed. He wasn’t joking.

This time we’ve got Nicholas Kelez, a particle accelerator physicist who spent 20 years at the Department of Energy building things that shouldn’t be possible. Now he’s tackling semiconductor manufacturing’s biggest problem: every advanced chip depends on $400 million machines that use lasers only one Dutch company knows how to make. (More galling to some: Americans invented the technology, then sold it to Europe.) Kelez is building the next generation in America using particle accelerator tech. It’s as nerdy as it sounds but more important than you might imagine.

Then there’s Mina Fahmi, who’s made a ring that captures your whispered thoughts and turns them into text. Before you roll your eyes, know that he and cofounder Kirak Hong spent years at Meta working on this stuff after their company was acquired. The Stream Ring isn’t trying to be your friend, by the way — it’s trying to extend your brain. Backed by Toni Schneider, an operator who scaled WordPress to a billion visitors, Sandbar just emerged from stealth and might well be onto something. (Schneider is a partner at True Ventures, whose other hardware bets have included Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit; he’s also coming to Palo Alto next week.)

We have Max Hodak — Science Corp founder, Time magazine cover subject, and, earlier, Neuralink cofounder — who has already restored vision to dozens of blind people with retinal implants. Now he’s working on “biohybrid” brain-computer interfaces where chips seeded with stem cells grow into your brain tissue so paralyzed people can control devices with their thoughts. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Hodak views it. In fact, he thinks 2035 is going to look wildly different from today, and he’s happy to share how.

Finally, we’re thrilled to welcome Chi-Hua Chien and Elizabeth Weil, two VCs who’ve backed Twitter, Spotify, TikTok, Slack, SpaceX, Figma, and Coinbase before they were household names. Chien runs Goodwater Capital and thinks Silicon Valley is completely misreading the AI moment while everyone piles into enterprise AI. Weil founded Scribble Ventures after stints at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter, made 100+ angel investments, and has a first fund showing 4x returns. Her network is so good it’s annoying. Both think the best consumer tech opportunities are the ones everyone’s ignoring, and they’ll explain why.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026

PlayGround Global is hosting, along with general partner Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel. There will be drinks, delicious food, and merriment; seating is limited, so if you want to come, act fast.

If you want to partner with the series in 2026, get in touch.

StrictlyVC in Athens will feature the Greek Prime Minister

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We’re thrilled to announce that Greece Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will be joining us at our upcoming StrictlyVC event in Athens, co-hosted with Endeavor, on Thursday night, May 8, at the stunning Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.

For those who might not be familiar with his background, Mitsotakis brings a fascinating blend of experiences to the table. Before entering politics, he worked at both McKinsey and Chase Investment Bank, giving him firsthand experience in the business world that many operators throughout the startup ecosystem can appreciate. The youngest of four children, he also has some Silicon Valley-esque academic credentials – he headed to Harvard, then to Stanford for a master’s degree in international relations, and finally nabbed an MBA at Harvard Business School – and says his education has long shaped his vision for Greece’s future.

Mitsotakis has also been championing Greece’s tech transformation for many years. In fact, after navigating the country through the pandemic, he has doubled down on positioning Athens as an emerging tech hub, recently introducing initiatives to attract international talent, including tax incentives and reforms aimed at cutting bureaucratic red tape for new businesses.

The Prime Minister comes from a political family — his father was prime minister and his sister was mayor of Athens — but he has carved out his own reputation as a reformer focused on modernizing the Greek economy. His administration has been particularly interested in how tech can help diversify renowned traditional Greek strengths like shipping and tourism.

StrictlyVC events are constrained by design to give attendees a unique opportunity for investors, founders, and ecosystem builders to engage directly with power players like the Prime Minister, so if you want to ask about his government’s vision for Greece’s tech future, and how the country fits into the broader European innovation landscape, this could be your chance.

You can check out more details here to learn more about the agenda and other speakers (you can also buy tickets while they are still available). Registration is now open for what promises to be a fun evening, filled with illuminating discussions, but this chat — with one of Europe’s most interesting political leaders about Greece’s emerging technology narrative — is definitely one you won’t want to miss. Register for your StrictlyVC Greece ticket here.

Forerunner’s long game: As startups stall before IPO, all options are on the table

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Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held, along with many other design-forward brands in Forerunner’s portfolio. 

That’s not a failure, according to Forerunner founder Kirsten Green. In today’s landscape, nearly every alternative to the traditional IPO has become the new norm.

Consider that companies like fintech Chime and smart ring outfit Ōura, founded in 2012 and 2013, respectively, were also early bets for Forerunner and have achieved valuations north of $5 billion, proving their staying power in crowded markets. But while Chime has confidentially filed to go public, Ōura’s CEO has said there are no immediate plans for an IPO. 

At TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC evening late last week, Green made it clear she doesn’t mind. Asked specifically whether she is bothered by Ōura’s CEO, Tom Hale, repeatedly telling the media the company is not preparing an IPO anytime soon despite strong sales, she called the outfit an “off-the-charts phenomenal company,” adding that “we haven’t even gotten to the thought around our table about selling, because we’re here for the growth that’s happening.”

She suggested instead that investors long ago adapted to a world with fewer conventional public offerings, including by turning increasingly to the once-secondary secondary market to manage liquidity and exposure.

“We’re engaged in the secondary market, buying and selling,” Green said of Forerunner’s team, characterizing the shift as both practical and strategic. “Companies are waiting so long to go public. The venture model is generally 10-year fund lifecycles. If you now need to be a double-digit billion-dollar company to [stage] a successful IPO or [become traded] in the public markets, it takes time to get there.” The secondary market is “continuing to drive the industry” and allowing “people to unlock returns and liquidity.”

For longtime industry watchers, it’s a remarkable shift. In the past, firms could expect a major liquidity event within a few years: an acquisition, a classic stock market debut. Yet the growing reliance on the secondary market isn’t just a response to public markets that reward scale and favor already high-performing companies.

Another major benefit, Green suggested last week, is that price discovery is more efficient when there are more participants involved — even if it ultimately means a discount to one of her deals.

Green addressed, for example, Chime, the neobank that became a household name during the fintech boom. Its valuation has zigzagged wildly in recent years, from $25 billion in 2021 when it last closed a primary round of funding from a small group of venture investors, down to a reported $6 billion valuation last year on the secondary market, which typically features many more participants. More recently, it reportedly climbed again to $11 billion.

“In terms of the prices,” Green said, “if you think about it, the round that gets done, the Series D, that was a negotiation between the company and an investor. With the secondary market, you’ve got more people in the mix, right? And then when you [eventually] go to the public markets, you’ve got everybody” setting the price for what they perceive to be the value of a company.

Green can afford to be a little less invested, so to speak, in those later valuations. While it’s always nice to be associated with eye-popping numbers, the firm’s strategy of partnering as early as possible with startups gives it more wiggle room than other venture firms might enjoy. “We try to be early,” Green said, pointing to the firm’s framework of identifying major shifts in consumer behavior and pairing them with emerging business models. 

It worked in the early 2010s, when DTC brands like Bonobos and Glossier rode the mobile-social wave to breakout success. It worked again with subscription-first plays like another Forerunner company, The Farmer’s Dog, which sells gourmet dog food and is reportedly both profitable and seeing $1 billion in annualized revenue. And it’s what the firm is betting on now, with a focus on the intersection of invention and culture, as Green describes it.

Great companies, Green noted, need time to develop and not all growth paths look the same. Venture capital, once eager for exits, is learning to wait and, when necessary, to trade.

(You can listen to our conversation with Green from this same sit-down right here, via the StrictlyVC Download podcast; new episodes are published each Tuesday morning.)