CapitalG

Congratulations to Amar Hanspal and the entire Motif team for being named a Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startup. We're thrilled to support you in your journey to help architects and construction professionals design 21st century buildings using 21st century tools. Jill (Greenberg) Chase

Huge congratulations to Farther for being named the #1 fastest-growing financial services firm in America by Inc. Magazine and #8 overall! Jesse Wedler Kelly Barton

We’re excited to announce CapitalG’s lead Series C investment in Clay, the leading AI go-to-market (#GTM) development platform. We are honored to partner with the visionary founders, Kareem Amin and Varun Anand who have built an exceptional company. Clay is not just building a great platform that helps companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Canva, Intercom, and Rippling personalize outreach at scale and discover new revenue opportunities; it is also actively demonstrating how AI can be a powerful job creator. The GTM Engineering role, pioneered by Clay, shows that AI can lead to new, high-value career paths. A huge shoutout to CapitalG investors Jane Alexander and Will Noddings for leading this investment. Read Jane and Will’s thoughtful blog post outlining the 18 months of deep thesis work that brought them to this point. As they write, “Clay’s founding team brings the technical depth, customer obsession, and long-term orientation we believe necessary to build a truly generational product in this category. We believe that Clay has the potential to be the de facto go-to-market platform of the AI era.” We are incredibly excited to welcome Clay to the #CapitalGfamily! https://lnkd.in/gHz3EbBU

What does it take for a startup to stand out in today's rapidly evolving #AI landscape? A culture rich not only with innovation, but also adaptability, transparency, and a unique wedge--but that's just for starters, according to CapitalG partner Jill (Greenberg) Chase, Khosla Ventures' Kanu Gulati, and Accel's Sara Ittelson in discussion with TechCrunch's Rebecca Bellan. Additional advice for founders: 🔷 Don’t wait for the perfect pitch. Jill shared that founders shouldn’t get caught up in crafting a flawless deck. What truly stands out to investors are founders who demonstrate rapid learning and adaptation as market conditions shift. The best founders are in constant feedback mode, iterating on their products, business models, and go-to-market strategies in response to customer signals. 🔷 Differentiation is critical in a crowded market. In a market flooded with nascent AI startups, Jill urged founders to identify and articulate their “wedge”—the unique insight, technology, or data advantage that sets them apart. She challenged founders to answer: “What can you deliver that incumbents can’t, and how will you widen that gap over time?” Kanu added that it’s not just about building from scratch; smart founders leverage existing infrastructure and platforms and then zero in on underserved customer pain points that others overlook. 🔷 Security, trust, and transparency are now table stakes Sara highlighted a major shift: customers and partners are demanding much greater clarity on how AI models are trained, deployed, and governed. Founders must proactively address concerns around data privacy, model bias, and explainability from day one. Building a culture of security and transparency isn’t just good ethics; it’s a competitive advantage that can accelerate sales cycles and open doors to enterprise customers. For the full discussion, watch the panel here: https://lnkd.in/g2BmgCeE Or listen to it on the #TechCrunchEquity podcast https://lnkd.in/gm-KgYPj Or read Rebecca Bellan's recap here https://lnkd.in/e974Nyyy #TechCrunchSessions TechCrunch UC Berkeley

"We're the biggest business you've never heard of," Whatnot co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine told Fortune's Jason Del Rey in this extensive deep-dive on the livestream shopping company, which is now #1 in the Apple App Store and is forecasting $6B in GMV (gross merchandise volume) in 2025. We're proud that CapitalG has partnered with Whatnot since 2021 and are excited to support Grant and team as they redefine what's possible in live shopping--and in commerce. Laela Sturdy Alex Nichols

What an incredible #BloombergTech event, with speakers ranging from Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi and San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉. While #AI dominated many conversations, the #VC panel, which featured CapitalG Managing Partner Laela Sturdy and Accel General Partner Rich Wong in discussion with Bloomberg’s Katie Roof, tackled a different but highly salient topic for the startup ecosystem: liquidity. Specifically, what does liquidity look like when generational companies like Stripe and Databricks can stay private as long as they want? And beyond that, are 2021 valuations a thing of the past, and how should founders adapt to the current funding–and valuation–realities? Key takeaways: 🔹 Quality companies attract quality capital. Laela emphasized that operational excellence and durable business models stand out in today’s market. Companies like Tebi, nEye.ai, Pennylane, NinjaOne and Motif, which recently fundraised from CapitalG, demonstrate that even in a more disciplined environment, exceptional businesses continue to raise capital and thrive. 🔹 Yesterday's unicorns must work hard to retain--or grow--their value. Rich predicted that some startups highly valued in 2021 won’t survive as capital remains selective. He said, "there’s a generation of companies that were built in a zero-interest-rate world, and now they’re facing a very different reality.” Wong’s perspective underscores the importance of operational discipline and adaptability. Laela advises founders to focus less on chasing old valuations and more on building real, sustainable value. 🔹 The exit playbook is evolving. Private market liquidity is strong, with numerous options available to early investors, founders and employees, from tender offers to secondary sales and a resurgence in M&A. As Laela noted, there are numerous "multibillion-dollar companies that are private and that the public markets are excited to access.” Want to learn more? Watch the full recording here https://lnkd.in/g3eUEyfW

Thrilled to announce our investment in Tebi. Couldn’t be more excited to partner with Arnout (CEO; previously co-founder of Adyen), Rob (CTO; previously Adyen), Aki (COO; previously Notion), Patrick (CCO, previously Wolt), and the rest of Tebi’s exceptional team. Europe’s hospitality businesses are sorely underserved by software. While payments are at the center of most SMB workflows, 75% of payments systems are still distributed by banks and disconnected from software. Tebi is unifying everything an SMB needs to run its business into an integrated, delightful product that saves both time and money. Read more about our thesis at the link below. Arnout and his team combine incredible customer centricity, speed, and ambition with unique founder-market fit. We couldn’t imagine a better team to pursue this massive opportunity and are excited to support them as they build a generational company. They are hiring *a lot*: https://tebi.com/careers Our thesis: https://lnkd.in/g4CPjVpZ

Congratulations to Databricks, AlphaSense, Stripe, Rippling, Abridge and all of the other great companies that made it onto CNBC's #Disruptor50 list that came out today. #CapitalGfamily https://lnkd.in/edaqBRt3

We’re excited to announce our investment in Tebi, an Amsterdam-based startup revolutionizing hospitality operations with its all-in-one financial operating system! Led by Adyen alumni including serial entrepreneur and former Adyen co-founder Arnout Schuijff (CEO) and Rob Vonk (CTO), Tebi team recently added Aki Tas (COO, ex-Notion) and Patrick Studener (CCO, ex-Wolt) to its exceptional team. Tebi is building a powerful platform that unifies POS, payments, inventory, and more into an intuitive, mobile-first system. As highlighted in our blog post below by CapitalG investors Alex Nichols and Miriam Finnemore, a significant portion of European SME payments remain disconnected from software, creating frustrations and inefficiencies for hospitality entrepreneurs. Tebi solves this. As we explain in this blog post, we believe that the next generation of SMB software will be defined by tightly integrated suites of tools. This is a thesis we have been investing against for years, from Odoo to Freshworks to Rippling to CrowdStrike. https://lnkd.in/gcdBffGV Merchants in the Netherlands are already processing nine figures of payments annually on Tebi, which is now expanding to the UK. We’re proud to partner with Arnout and the exceptional Tebi team as they build the operating system for hospitality and retail businesses. Welcome to the #CapitalG family, Tebi!

What do VCs REALLY want from #AI startups in 2025? And how does that vary at the very early stages and the growth stages? Hear from the experts themselves: CapitalG AI partner Jill (Greenberg) Chase, Khosla Ventures' Kanu Gulati, and Accel' Sara Ittelson in conversation with TechCrunch reporter Rebecca Bellan at last week's #TechCrunch Sessions: AI at University of California, Berkeley. https://lnkd.in/gfwGzkC7