3 BADideas for a Friday: BAD to better with Miranda Gottlieb, Fuel Finance and That Was The Week

Hey there,

Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrated yesterday! Whether you're currently lazing around or still counting hours until weekend kicks off, I hope you'll enjoy these?3 BADideas for a Friday. Check out?BAD to better - this time, a conversation I've been dying to have for ages,?unicorn spotlight?showcasing one of our heroes - startups we've invested in,?and?a?golden nugget?to hopefully help us make sense of what's going on with OpenAI.?

BAD to better with Miranda Gottlieb

"Angel investing makes me a better operator. It helps me keep track of what's happening in the broader landscape, be it prepping for next raise, finding customers or building product. Wearing both hats gives me the best opportunity to make the best decisions."

I love picking Miranda Gottlieb (ex-CMO at the unicorn Curative,?VP at Pappas Capital, fractional CMO to early-stage startups) brain, and not just because her insight brings immense value to our investment committee. After our IC had a small offsite in Miami this fall, I just knew that I wanted to hear more about how she thinks about the world of investing and beyond. In this conversation, we pick up things like portfolio construction, can you prepare for when companies are failing and where is healthtech going - head over to Youtube, Apple or Spotify to listen.

Unicorn spotlight - Fuel Finance ??

• Fuel Finance is a cloud financial department for startups that replaces countless spreadsheets, saving time and money for finance teams.
• Alyona Mysko and Yaroslav Azhnyuk (YC’W16) built Fuel Finance out of frustration that finance management seems to give headache to everyone involved. Fast forward to November 2023 and they've hit $100k MRR with over 60 months of runway.
• One of the things I admire about Alyona is how plugged in the startup community she is - recently she shared her fundraising story with our Fundraising School participants, and her FUEL SHOW (Spotify, Youtube) is definitely worth a listen if you're building a startup.

Golden nugget - That Was The Week

And what a week it was!? This time last week OpenAI's Sam Altman lost his job, only to return 4 days later after the kind of drama that makes HBO's Silicon Valley pale in comparison. The dust is yet to settle, but this whole debacle has underscored the tension between speed and safety when it comes to AI, or, as the kids in the Valley like to say, e/acc vs e/a. That Was The Week by Keith Teare does a superb job explaining the lingo and pointing towards more in-depth reading. Worth a bookmark!

Raimonds