Cash Allred

Antler

One of the most active pre-seed VCs in the world, focused on founders at Day Zero.

Principal

Sweater

Venture Capital Associate

Lucid

Lucid products empower teams and companies of any size, in any location, to see where they are today and where they need to go next.

Data Analyst, Strategy & Analytics

University Impact

UI unlocks donor-advised funds (DAFs) and advises donors on impact investments into both for-profit and non-profit entities around the world.

VC Associate

Banyan Ventures

Early stage venture fund focused on traditional businesses in the Mountain West.

Summer Associate

Peterson Partners

Investment firm spanning early stage VC, growth equity, small to middle market buyouts, and industry consolidation across a variety of industries. Example investments include Bonobos, HireVue, Vivint, and My Hearing Centers.

Private Equity Summer Analyst

Elevate Global

Elevate Global provides training products and technology to microfinance institutions to assist necessity entrepreneurs grow their business, leave poverty, and repay borrowed capital.

Project Manager

Currently a Principal @ Antler, a pre-seed fund focused on backing founders at Day Zero. 

Connect with me about Antler here -> https://superlink.io/cashallred

Follow me on Twitter @ AllredCash

Outside of work, my family and I love adventuring :)

All comments, messages, & posts reflect my personal opinions.

The first Venture Fund for everyone. Join us!

A lot of founder/startup movies out there in disguise. 

Ford v Ferrari - disguised as a car movie.

The Greatest Showman - disguised as a musical.

Sing 2 - disguised as a kid show.

It's A Wonderful Life - disguised as a Christmas movie.

So many good ones out there.

Early-Stage Investor @ Antler | Tech, Startups, VC

Turns out in Canada you can get away with calling someone "bud" without the little brother connotation you get in the US. Makes me wonder how many Canadians unknowingly pissed off an American by calling them bud. Imagine this: 

Founder in the US: "Just sent over the calendar invite."
VC or customer in Canada trying to be friends: "Thanks Bud."
Founder: ???

To any Canadians out there, beware. Bud is most often referred to for children and younger siblings/cousins.

There truly is a time where iterating on an idea is BAD. 

It's hard at the idea/pre-seed stage. Once you pick a direction, your brain starts thinking in modes of incremental improvement on a single idea.  

The best founders do a superhuman job of picking an idea and getting started (there is critial learning here) while also pausing once in awhile, and questioning the entire approach (also critial learning here). 

Eventually you have to do more and more of the former and less of the latter, for practical reasons, but at true day zero finding the right approach is far more important. 

Palmer Luckey is an amazing example of this. He has mentioned on a couple of podcasts that you can't understand it by looking at the current competition. It is about looking at the entire history of the space, everyone who has ever solved this problem successfully or unsuccessfully, and also pulling lessons from the longer histories of other industries. Figuring out the approach before the idea. 

Then, with an approach that is truly unique and innovative, the iterations become about how to make it work.

I am still digging into my personal trigger points as to when to flip the switch, but my hypothesis is that it feels like mining for gold - you keep digging and learning until you strike gold. It feels obvious once you find it, even if nobody else knows about it, and then iterating is like building an operation to extract that gold. 

I would love to talk to more founders about this particular process for them, as I think it is the crux of investing at pre-seed.

This chart should help some founders feel seen 👀. In every ecosystem, there are fewer pre-seed investors than there are seed investors. The fund math pushes them that way. 

VCs who started out doing pre-seed almost always move up to seed once they have a chance to raise larger funds. Write bigger checks, generate more AUM fees, invest in the same number of companies. Combine that with Series A funds who dipped lower opportunistically to justify their own increase in AUM and you get a ton of rounds at Seed that don't happen at Pre-Seed. 

In less-mature ecosystems, Angels are either writing checks into their friends or not writing any checks at all. Younger founders (who don't have rich friends yet) have a really hard time raising at this stage if they aren't in an Angel-rich ecosystem or an ecosystem of rich peers (prestigous alumni networks). 

Another dyanmic is that previous Pre-seed funds (now seed funds) still want to see every pre-seed deal (on the off chance they do one) and waste a ton of time for founders. 

Is it different for 2nd time founders? Not always. The people they raised from on their last company may have moved up stream and require more traction at this point. 

This is why we are seeing so much demand for things like Antler - the check size makes sense even for experienced founders. They get true institutional support from the beginning. It gives them the capital and platform they need to produce real traction, rally up angel money, and go on to raise either more pre-seed or a full seed round depending on the situation. 

Thanks Peter Walker and Carta for the data - so many things we could talk about here!

Most 2nd or 3rd time founders messed up a lot in their previous startups. What distinguishes those who are able to attract great talent and investors on their next run vs those who have a blemeshed reputation?

I have my own thoughts here, but curious what people think.

The holidays are special because even 1 well-intentioned day full of goodwill from people who have known you for life will do more to fight "burnout" than 2 weeks on a beach somewhere. 

Of course this is a very small part of what the holidays are about, but you get the point.

Satlyt announcing their pre-seed round. This is the company to watch if you want to nerd out about compute power and software efficiency in space hardware and satellites.

Founder & CEO at Satlyt | ex SpaceX, Google, Tesla

🚀 Exciting news from Satlyt! We’ve raised pre-seed funding from Antler and XSLA Ventures, and Angels including Capetal Partners and UKX Ventures, with Antler leading the round and XSLA making us their first-ever investment! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ekf52ktT

🛰️ Satellite Operators: Let’s Collaborate
We are inviting satellite operators to join us in transforming the future of space computing. If you’re interested in collaborating with Satlyt, please fill out this form: https://satlyt.ai/sign-up. Together, we can drive innovation that benefits the entire space ecosystem.

📢 We’re hiring! If you're a systems engineer, product manager, or business developer, or if you're in space tech ready to make an impact, we’d love to hear from you. Read more about the open roles and apply here: https://satlyt.ai/careers

💡Let’s shape the future of satellites and space infrastructure together. 🌌

#SpaceTech #Satellites #Innovation #EdgeComputing #Satlyt #Hiring

Open article: Satlyt Raises Pre-Seed Funding, Partners with Antler VC & XSLA Ventures, and Expands Team by satlyt.ai

Satlyt Raises Pre-Seed Funding, Partners with Antler VC & XSLA Ventures, and Expands Team

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