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Cross the Country. And one day in Canada
Flight delays, hours on the runway, a canceled flight at midnight before a board meeting, the realities of traveling for business. Curve balls and a reservations that are never really confirmed. It was a hectic few days going from California to NYC to Toronto and back to San Diego. First time also on Porter Airlines which seems like the best way to fly from NYC to Toronto.
Social Leverage continues to back founders across the US & in Canada. I made my way ultimately to Toronto to see two of our growing companies, Fiscal.ai which was having their all hands annual meeting alongside the board meeting and in addition I got to see the team at Ribbon.ai which continues to impress me with their Voice AI technology. The talent and energy of the startup scene in Toronto continues to impress. I also think founders are finding a great opportunity to build out their engineering teams in Canada as the government continues to incentivize hiring local talent. Both these teams are scaling and hiring across the board. Expanding the sales teams with hires focused in the US is of top priority for anyone in my network interested!
While in NYC I got the chance to film a podcast with Ethan Kho who has been putting out some of the most interesting discussions in the finance and hedge fund scene. The episode should come out in the coming weeks and Ethan has a stacked lineup of past and future guests.
I also spent time with our founders and their team at Lea.io, Punchup.live, SlashExperts.com, UseSeeds.com and some new founders in Fund V which we will be announcing in the coming days.
One of the other valuable parts of my travel to NYC which included meeting some of our LPs who always have a lot of insight to share, was my roundtable discussion at Wells Fargo with a about 20 analysts from various hedge funds and long only shops that cover the Data & Information services space. We talked about $FDS ( ▲ 5.82% ) & $SPGI ( ▲ 0.25% ), London Stock Exchange, the changing data ecosystem, the amount of companies offering their data via MCP, how Carbon Arc is aggregating the data vendor industry via their MCP, what voice AI is doing to expert networks, how even the best fund admins are offering access via MCP, what happens to the terminal in the future and does anyone really care or do they have a moat, and which startups from Fiscal.ai to dozens of others are starting to disrupt in this space. It was a great 90min Q&A that I left having a lot of ideas, thoughts and take aways.
The trip was quick and I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted, but the time was well spent. NYC again in October when we host the Social Leverage Annual General Meeting alongside Stocktoberfest, and I imagine I may find myself back in town for other reasons before then, who knows!
