How @davidsenra built @FoundersPodcast, the show powerful CEOs can’t stop listening to fortune.com/2026/07/05/how-d…

Great @Fortune piece on @davidsenra today. Years ago, David kept texting me and @karimatiyeh to back a podcast with fewer than 1,000 listeners. "Trust me on this one." We did. That podcast became @tbpn. It sold to OpenAI this April and along the way did more for @tryramp's profile than any ad money could buy. What the piece gets right about David and mostly leaves between the lines: he's read 415 biographies of the people who got it right and he turned that discipline into a place the rest of us go to study. @FoundersPodcast isn't a podcast so much as a school for builders. It's why the founders I asked didn't describe it, they revered it. When you've studied the greats that obsessively, you can tell the sublime from the merely great — and you'll bet everything on the difference before the rest of us can see it at all. David earned that audience one obsessed listener at a time. Summarizing a book a week, alone in a room, scraping by for years before anyone was listening. The fame didn't change him. Neither did the money: he turned down $50M buyout offers to keep Founders his, and he takes no equity in the bets he sends others. For David, great work itself is always the point. The lesson I keep relearning from him: when you find talent like that, don't hedge. Back them completely. The returns aren't linear. Nothing better than watching a friend succeed. Grateful to be in business with him too — Founders Podcast, the new show, whatever comes next.

Congrats to @berman66 and the team on @runlayer's $30M Series A. Enterprises want to go all in on AI, but the moment agents start acting, most teams can't see what they're doing or stop one going rogue. Runlayer is the golden path: enablement, security, and control in one platform. After backing the team at the seed, we're doubling down because governance isn't a tax on AI adoption. We see it as the unlock. Read the feature in @FortuneMagazine from @LilyMaeLazarus 👇

Upscale, which is building AI networking infrastructure to rival Cisco, raised a $190M Series A-1 at a $2B valuation, up from $1B after raising $200M in January (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

NY-based A Security, which uses AI to automate offensive cybersecurity, emerges from stealth with $37M in funding from Lightspeed, Wiz's Assaf Rapaport, others (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Honeycomb, which offers an AI-powered insurance platform for multi-unit residential properties, raised $40M led by Zeev, bringing its total funding to $95M (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Town, which is developing personalized AI assistants that connect to users' email and calendar, raised a $55M Series A led by a16z (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Nova Intelligence, which is building agentic AI for SAP ahead of a 2030 migration, raised a $31.5M Series A led by Chemistry, taking its total funding to $40M (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Vori is the engine for grocery: an AI-native operating system that handles checkout, payments, pricing, ordering, inventory, and loyalty. My parents met in a supermarket. My grandparents owned a grocery store. My mom works at Vori. This industry is near and dear to my heart. We're build the technology that powers what comes next for these essential businesses. Since launch, we have processed $500M in payments across 140 stores in 55 cities, serving over 1M consumers nationwide. In the past six months, we have doubled payment volume, with new stores being onboarded every single day. The revenue we used to close in a year, we now close in a month. I sat down with @LilyMaeLazarus @FortuneMagazine to talk about our vision to build the self-driving supermarket: fortune.com/2026/05/05/exclu…

Omni, which is building a "semantic translation layer" for enterprise data, raised a $120M Series C led by Iconiq at a $1.5B valuation, up from $650M in 2025 (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Humble unveils a fully electric cabless autonomous truck called the Humble Hauler and comes out of stealth with a $24M seed led by Eclipse (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

thank you @LilyMaeLazarus you captured our essence wonderfully!

Full story in @FortuneMagazine by @LilyMaeLazarus: fortune.com/2026/03/26/exclu…

Will Wilson wants to make sure the software running everything from your bank account to your favorite crypto exchange actually works—and his company Antithesis is rethinking how software has been tested for the last 80 years.​​ bit.ly/4lMl9fG

Deeptune, which builds high-fidelity reinforcement learning environments that simulate professional workflows for AI agents, raised a $43M Series A led by a16z (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) fortune.com/2026/03/19/andre… techmeme.com/260319/p24#a260… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

Axiamatic, which offers an "agentic control plane" to manage large-scale enterprise transformations, emerges from stealth with $54M from Greylock and Bessemer (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) fortune.com/2026/03/11/exclu… techmeme.com/260311/p32#a260… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

AI startup Black Forest Labs has quietly become one of Europe’s most valuable new companies, with a who's who of investors like a16z and Nvidia and a $3.25 billion valuation fortune.com/2026/02/17/ai-st…

Cogent Security, which aims to use AI agents to decide which software bugs to remediate, raised a $42M Series A led by Bain, taking its total raised to $53M (@lilymaelazarus / Fortune) fortune.com/2026/02/18/exclu… techmeme.com/260218/p36#a260… 📥 Send tips! techmeme.com/contact

How Salient, an AI loan processing startup valued at $500 million, grew ARR to $25 million in two years - @LilyMaeLazarus with the scoop fortune.com/2025/12/18/salie…

Why would Candace Owens say things about Brigitte Macron that are easily proven false, and then double down after she was sued in a lawsuit that - barring a miracle - she will surely lose? Let’s follow the money …