The Lowdown #14

👋🏾 Hi friends!

Can someone burn some sage for me because this has been another painful week! We finally got our Tesla back hopefully in tip top condition as I’ll be driving it down to Italy next week - send your thoughts and prayers that we make it all the way without the car falling to bits 😂 but, I also got hit with a bunch of fraudulent transactions when my Hostgator account got hacked with someone acquiring domains like billionairehacks and lord knows what else.

So sadly I’ve been spending the last couple of days on a series of increasingly frustrating calls with both Hostgator as well as HSBC whilst I try to get this all resolved.

Anyone else longing for the days of cold, hard cash?

Anyone?

In other news, I was super excited to receive this recently. Pumped me up to keep putting out great podcasts with incredible guests 💪 

This week on Nothing Ventured Antonio Avitabile, MD Europe for Sony Ventures Corporation.

Here’s what you can expect:

➡️ Moving from off balance sheet investing to raising a fund.

➡️ Launching a fund and training school in Africa and investing in African creativity.

➡️ The cultural barriers that hinder Italian and European startups from truly scaling.

➡️ The high risk and high reward stakes that come from investing in deeptech.

Check it out!

This week there have been a few things that have caught my eye in the tech and venture ecosystem and what we’ll be talking about this evening, namely:

👏 AutogenAI raises ~$40 from Salesforce Ventures and others
🤯 OpenView Venture Partners changes its view
☠️ Founders who have decided not to raise from VC

Also, if you have any feedback, or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online - I’m very open to conversations.

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(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Lowdown” and, more importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

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Now let’s get into it.