We wish we'd known Ed Han when he was building Tiny Prints (acq. by @Shutterfly). We hear about the unicorns and exits. We rarely hear about the years of doubt, sacrifice, and near-death moments behind almost every company that gets there.

@KevinChou signed Kabam's Series B term sheet the week Lehman Brothers collapsed. The deal died. Nine months, 90 rejected pitches, and an 80% revenue drop later, he closed a smaller round anyway. Kabam later sold its Vancouver studio for $800M.

Investors recall more from accented founders' pitches. They just rate them lower on "mentorability." In Laura Huang's study, told exactly which perception worked against them, those founders flipped it and out-performed founders without accents entirely.

"You don't need a 100,000-person company to serve the world anymore. A small team with the right people can do it, but that also means every hire carries a thousand times the leverage, for better or worse." - Steven Hong, co-founder of Oculii (acquired by @Ambarella_Inc)

@Motive_inc's AI-powered safety platform is cutting at-fault collisions by up to 95% and delivering $7.8M in safety savings over three years, per an independent IDC study. See article below:

We're excited about what Steven Jiang and the team at @hireez are building. One of the reasons we backed Steven was his ability to see around corners. He called the shift to an agentic solution well before the rest of the market did. Congrats to the team on today's launch.