🤔 500 free resources, $2.9M+ in funding, Q3 TL;DR, agents at checkout, events and more
🤔 500 free resources, $2.9M+ in funding, Q3 TL;DR, agents at checkout, events and more
What actually matters in startups and capital, once a month. Funding to apply for, data to act on, and the rules nobody taught us. For underestimated founders, funders, and friends.
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Lucy Guo helped start Scale AI in 2016. She left two years later, kept her shares, and Meta's Scale deal made her a billionaire by 30. The company she walked away from still paid her. Both versions of Lucy won. Somewhere in your head there's a waiting room full of future yous.
Psychologists call them possible selves: the versions of you that exist depending on which path you pick. Money is one of the biggest forks. Take the check, and one version of you and your company starts growing: faster, bigger, on someone else's clock. Skip it, and a different one grows: slower, steadier, still yours. Neither is wrong.
But the fork edits you quietly. It even decides if you still love the work in year three. So choose on purpose. With a real reason, not a borrowed one.
📖 The rule nobody taught us: take the check or skip it on purpose, with a real reason, not a borrowed one. Read more about when raising helps and when it hurts in Chapter 3 of What Actually Matters.
Lolita Taub, GP at Ganas Ventures and Author | X | LinkedIn | Lolita AI
Ganas Ventures invests $100K checks into early-stage startups.
What Actually Matters: Startups, Capital, and the Rules Nobody Taught Us is a book for first-time founders, angels, LPs, and GPs navigating venture without inherited access - from someone who has sat in every chair.
Featured in Forbes, Nasdaq, Techcrunch, and more
🎉 Congrats
Mercury (port co) crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue. Toolhouse (port co) turned its first profitable month in September. Luma (port co) landed an Inc. feature for powering Silicon Valley’s event boom: seven people, 3x growth this year, and eight-figure annual recurring revenue. Dame (port co) put its Emojibator brand on CVS shelves nationwide. LiquiDonate (port co) was named a 2026 IDC Innovator in AI-powered sustainability software. Neopausia (port co) won the 2026 Innovadoras en Salud award from Mujeres Empresarias and CIF Chile and has reached more than 10,000 women. Careerflow.ai (port co) was named one of 2026’s best job-search Chrome extensions by Analytics Insight. Bump (port co) was recognized as a fintech leader at Intersekt 2026, FinTech Australia’s flagship event.
Sponsored | Founders, funders, and friends: my book, What Actually Matters, is the map to startups and capital. The one I never got but 100% wish I had as a first-time founder, angel, GP, LP, and ecosystem builder without an inherited network.
📣 Want your company, program, or product featured here? Sponsor a spot.
🗓️ Events
💰 Funding to apply for
Ganas Ventures | Early-stage founders: apply for $100K
NSF Seed Fund | Deep tech founders: apply for up to $2M by Nov 4
Sephora Beauty Grant | Beauty founders: apply for $100K by Nov 6
Entreprenista Grant | Women founders: apply for $5K by Nov 30
Verizon Digital Ready | Founders: apply for $10K by Dec 31
SecretSOS | Founders: apply for $2.5K by Dec 31
Amber Grant | Women founders: apply for $10K (rolling)
HerRise | Women of color founders: apply for $1K (rolling)
Hey Helen | Women founders: apply for $10K (rolling)
Freed Fellowship | Small business owners: apply for $500 (rolling)
Awesome Foundation | Founders with a project: apply for $1K (rolling)
McKinney Innovation Fund | Texas founders: apply for up to $500K (rolling)
PSBC | Philly founders: apply for $50K (rolling)
Chicago SBIF | Chicago founders: apply for up to $250K
NAACP | New England Black founders: apply for $25K (rolling)
🤓 Investors
CB Insights | Mega-rounds ate the quarter: $100M+ rounds took 80% of Q3 funding across just 299 of 6,913 deals, per CB Insights, and 2026 is already the biggest funding year on record at $698B. The other 6,614 deals are where angels and small funds actually play. Price your game, not theirs.
PitchBook | LPs are checking GPs' math: secondary market volume hit a record $121B in the first half, up 19%, per PitchBook, and the SEC now says GP-provided valuations alone aren't enough. LPs: compare a fund's marks to secondary prices before you re-up. Fund managers: mark honestly. The market is grading you.
TechCrunch | Family offices want in on AI: 65% plan to prioritize AI investments, and they manage $5.5 trillion headed toward $9.5 trillion by 2030, per TechCrunch. Raising a fund? Add family offices to your list.
First Check Framework | Investors: how to evaluate pre-seed and seed when there's barely any data.
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Investors: meet thesis-aligned founders.
😎 Founders
a16z | Consumer AI money is narrow: only 4.5% of US consumers pay for an AI app, and the top 1% of payers drive nearly 20% of all spending, per a16z. Building consumer AI? Price for subscriptions (84% of top products do) and take care of your heaviest users.
AI Market Fit | Ben Horowitz’s read on AI: money can now buy the head start that used to take a decade of engineering, and the whole stack under AI is getting rebuilt, per AI Market Fit. Your model isn’t the moat. Distribution and locked-in customers are.
a16z | Agents are coming for checkout: personal AI agents can only buy things if they can pay, and wallets with 250M to 400M users are fighting to be the default, per VGS's Terry Angelos on a16z. Selling online? Get your checkout ready for AI agents before the defaults get set without you.
Non-Dilutive Capital Cheat Sheet | Founders: find the money that doesn't cost you equity before you decide to raise.
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Founders: get intros to investors that get you.
Want more? Follow Lolita on X or LinkedIn for additional resources. Support our newsletter and get featured to our 23K+ community by becoming a sponsor.
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