Dandy will be the largest dental company in the world. VCs and Founders talk a lot about the impact robotics and AI will have on high mix, low volume manufacturing industries. Nothing gets more high mix and low volume than dental prosthetics. The team at Dandy has obsessed over two customers: the dentist and the patient. Dentists need restorations that fit, a lab they can rely on, and fewer appointments spent fixing problems. Patients want to eat, speak, and smile without their dentures becoming the center of their lives. That focus led Dandy to rebuild the process from scan to finished product. Today, they’re introducing dentures designed to take two appointments instead of the traditional five or six. We all know that better, faster, cheaper is the strongest value proposition a company can have. In high mix, low volume environments that is extremely challenging. Over the last 18 months though, Dandy has had dozens of breakthroughs in material science, robotics and AI to bring this vision to life in a precision manufacturing market that nearly no one knows about, but almost everyone experiences in their daily lives. The hard work and determination that this team has had to bring these products to market will not only have an impact on peoples smiles globally, but many more markets to come.

Can anybody with great precision walk me through the ai human extinction level scenario that is truly ai-inflicted versus ai-started and human self-inflicted? Assume you can't say "a bioweapon is created that kills everyone"

We raised $22.5M to fix both halves of the custom medical device supply chain: the paperwork that blocks them and the manufacturing that slows them. In America 🇺🇸, it's easier to prescribe a patient opioids than to get them custom insoles to prevent amputation. Three generations of my family watched that up close and couldn't fix it. Here's what we've built @HikeMedAI :

Every serious manufacturing company in the next decade will be a software company that happens to own its factories. Physical AI, precision robotics, agents, 3D printing. These stop being separate technologies the moment you own the whole chain. I've watched this happen twice, going from zero to unicorn/decacorn. Excited to share I joined Hike Medical as COO in January to do it again, in a $200B market that has never seen it. Thread on what I learned at GE, @flexport, and @meet_Dandy, and why DME is next. 👇

Edge Markets, which provides banking tools for gambling and prediction markets, including real-time payments on Kalshi, raised a $29.2M Series A led by CoinFund (@giangiuliodavis / CNBC) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital. You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious. It's a dance. And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious. If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird. No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there. It is weird.

Good debate happening right now about VC portfolio construction, but no receipts. @IndicatorVC decided to share all the details of a ~4x NET/>1x DPI 2018 fund (gross is meaningless), and how we view the strategy as AUM scales. Feedback welcome! papermark.com/view/cmo296zg5…

UnitedHealth just told Wall Street it'll use AI to cut $1B in costs this year. It sounds like progress. But something way more concerning is happening.

Introducing Starlight Air, the world lightest space solar panel. Order today at terawatt.space/ Engineered by Starpath in California.

I am thrilled to share that we raised an oversubscribed $82M Fund III to lead pre-seed and seed rounds in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare and Biotech startups in NYC and Boston. To be exact, we raised $82,048,000 - a number that felt on-brand for a nerdy firm like ours that loves riddles, the future, Morse code, and Easter eggs. We are immensely grateful to our LPs for their ongoing belief in our strategy and approach. We are equally grateful to the founders who have chosen to partner with us. Here is 2048 Ventures Ventures Fund III in a nutshell: - We back exceptional, ultra-competitive, visionary founders. - We lead pre-seed and seed rounds with $500K - $3M checks. - We invest in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare and Biotech. - We invest primarily in NYC and Boston. - We seek businesses with strong data moats. Read more about where we’re excited to invest: 2048.vc/blog/2048-ventures-f… If you are a builder and visionary looking for the highest conviction first-check investor, please reach out or re-share with your network!

First interview with Saurav Shroff (@SauravShroff5), co-founder & CEO of Starpath (@StarpathSpace). We talk about what it takes to build a self-sustaining city on Mars, creating rocket propellent production plants on the Moon and Mars, and selling solar panels to satellite companies. 0:40 Inputs to create a self-sustaining city on Mars 3:53 Creating rocket propellent production plants 6:21 How much a Nasa rover costs to build 8:02 Building solar panels 15:51 Scaling Starship production 17:56 Why it’s important to make life multi-planetary 24:16 Starting Starpath 26:53 Creating the first 10 Starpath rovers 31:20 Rover testing 33:09 How to simulate Martian soil on Earth 35:11 What if SpaceX didn’t exist 40:14 Keeping fast iteration loops as you scale 49:19 How many Starships it takes to make Mars viable 1:02:43 What are Starpath’s biggest risks 1:11:31 Finding talent that’s aligned with the mission 1:15:30 Living on Mars 1:18:46 Idiot index in the space industry

1/7 We needed power for building gas stations on the Moon and Mars. Suppliers quoted us $100/W for solar and 14 months lead times. So we built our own. Space-rated solar, scalable, and 90% cheaper. Now it powers our mission. And yours. Launching today 🧵