Upal Basu

From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

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I had the opportunity to speak to the CEOs of the startups funded by Shift4Good, which is investing in sustainable transportation. In full disclosure, I chair their impact committee. I argued that firms should think about scaling deep (building stronger relationships in existing communities), rather than simply thinking about scaling fast (wide geographical spread). Research by Suntae Kim and Anna Kim shows that scaling deep can build resilient organizations and communities. The standard Silicon Valley orthodoxy is to scale up and fast, which arises often because of investor pressures. Many people do not question this orthodoxy, and yet it comes at a cost. There are numerous firms that sit in a graveyard of companies that scaled too fast and failed. I could sense the skepticism from many of the CEOs. Yet, one CEO and cofounder, Sriram Kannan, of Routematic agreed with me. I had the privilege to talk to him again and he was able to articulate so clearly how the scaling deep model works, partly by contrasting how scaling deep model of Routematic contrasts to the scaling up model of Uber. The fundamental principles of scaling deep are: 1. Grow organically from profits, not from investor cash 2. Master one market before opening up others 3. Focus on relationships, not transactions I think my biggest epiphany was that scaling deep does not mean slow growth or weak profits. Routematic has been able to achieve 8-10% month-over-month growth in revenues and has largely been profitable since it began offering its transportation services. Uber took almost 15 years to be profitable. I captured these ideas in the Forbes article I posted today, which was fun to write and taught me a lot. This is one of the many ideas I am exploring to see how systems thinking is encouraging a different way of thinking--where businesses can contribute to and benefit from stronger communities and a natural environment. As always, I welcome your reactions and provocations. Ivey Business School at Western University, Innovation North, Network for Business Sustainability (NBS), Kavitha Ramachandragowda, Ameya Uchil, Sebastien Guillaud, Thierry de Panafieu, #systemsthinking, #ScalingStrategy #SustainableGrowth #StartupStrategy #ProfitableGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #ImpactInvesting #SustainableTransportation https://lnkd.in/gM74UmYM

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Excited and proud to announce that we’ve just closed $400 million in new funding, bringing Greenfield Partners to over $1 billion in AUM. This capital allows us to keep doing what we set out to do: back early growth technology companies and help them scale with intention. Raising a fund is always a moment to reflect - not just on the numbers but on the responsibility that comes with it. Investing at this stage isn’t just about capital; it’s about helping founders navigate the transition from product-market fit to sustainable, repeatable growth. That’s why Greenfield Growth Momentum (G²M) is a core part of our strategy, offering structured support to help companies build the right go-to-market foundations early. We’re also expanding our presence with the formal opening of our New York office, strengthening our ability to support companies as they scale globally. This isn’t something we do alone. I’m incredibly grateful to the investors who trust us to be responsible stewards of their capital. I’m equally grateful to the team at Greenfield - a group of people deeply committed to helping founders succeed. The hard work, dedication, and thoughtfulness they bring to every conversation, every challenge, and every decision is what truly sets us apart. It’s a privilege to work alongside them. And most importantly, I want to thank the founders we partner with and the teams driving these companies forward. Building something meaningful is never easy, but we’re honored to be part of the journey.

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"Build the event you wish existed" That's what we at Monadical did last week at #NYTW. We wanted an AI Engineers discussion for Engineers. There's always a lot of events out there for VCs to network, or for startups to learn about G2M, but very little on lessons learned from actual engineers in the field. So that's the event we hosted. Big thank yous to our awesome panel, Roy Pereira, Ben Cohen and Corey J. Gallon. Here's the key takeaways and the AI tools we're using. 🚀 All three panelists independently called AI Agents the most transformative LLM application they’ve used. They specifically called out Claude 3.5 Sonnet for its accuracy and reliability. 🪨 We dug into how LLMs are “jagged”, not general. They can be shockingly good at some tasks and completely fail at others. Everyone agreed: good evaluations are critical (and hard.) 🧪 Corey noted how public benchmarks and reality are two different things. Most public evals are saturated or gamed. ♊ Ben emphasized that AI projects are actually two projects: building the tool and building the evaluation process. 🧱 We explored how falling dev costs may impact startup defensibility and labor demand. Roy shared that founders are already shifting strategies in response. ⚒️ In a world of daily AI launches, the panel discussed how they decide what’s worth attention, and what’s just noise. They called out tools like Goose, Aider, Claude Code, and Monadical’s own Cubbi, which helps run agentic workflows safely in dev environments. (links in the comments). CTA: What would you want to hear in an AI Applied Engineering talk you attended?

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Founders, you’ve had to navigate so much over the past five years. And now…tariffs. Today, IVP hosted a session for our portfolio company CEOs and CFOs about navigating tariff uncertainty and market volatility and what all of this means for the tech world. As the market bounces back and forth this month, Alex Zukin and Stephanie Roth at Wolfe Research, LLC joined me for a candid conversation. The realities pre-IPO companies are facing right now: 🔹 While the M&A market will be meaningfully constrained in the near-term, large-scale M&A could see an uptick over the course of the year 🔹 Depending on how the next few weeks play out (specifically regarding China), the IPO window could open in earnest post-Labor Day 🔹Tariffs are less likely to directly impact digital goods and services. For physical goods, we may see reshoring to North America more broadly 🔹 That being said, if meaningful tariffs are ultimately implemented, they will impact demand for software products, as well as the cost to build them. Tooling that's mission-critical or has a very clear and compelling ROI will be less impacted The advice we’re giving our portfolio companies right now: 1️⃣ Your annual budget process isn’t enough. You need to be able to generate a monthly POV given how quickly the macro environment can change. Think about whether you have the right team, software products and processes in place. 2️⃣ Build a clear and comprehensive view of your cost structure. Most companies wait too long to do this, but now is the time to understand the operational flexibility you might need if you have to extend runway or modify pricing. 3️⃣ Capitalize on uncertainty as an opportunity. The current market contraction is a unique window to invest in new products and new avenues for growth when your competition is retrenching. 4️⃣ Raise sooner vs. later if you’ve been waiting. Liquidity matters more than valuation in an uncertain environment, and holding out for an up round is not a viable strategy if you need more capital. 5️⃣ Lean on investors and advisers who’ve lived through multiple market cycles. (In our case, for the past 45 years.) Get their perspectives and support. In many ways what we’re going through right now is unprecedented—but the market volatility and macroeconomic shocks we’re seeing are not. What did we miss?

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GPUs have gotten faster, and models have gotten larger. But storage is still stuck in the past. Modern AI workloads need instant access to huge datasets. Instead, teams waste time on slow retrieval, idle GPUs, and costly pipelines. Archil is changing this. It delivers object-storage scalability at block-storage speeds. The platform allows for seamless, high-performance access to massive datasets. By eliminating cold starts and accelerating throughput 30X, Archil enables teams to fully utilize their infrastructure and move faster on training, analytics, and AI deployment. Archil’s founder Hunter Leath brings rare technical depth and operating experience from building Amazon EFS and optimizing Netflix’s cloud performance. This is a team building the foundational layer that AI workloads desperately need. I’m thrilled to lead Archil’s seed at Felicis with Nancy Wang and support their mission to reinvent cloud storage for the AI era. https://lnkd.in/gWueXhzz

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Camber Creek led the $3.7 million Seed round for TwinKnowledge, which is tackling an important problem in the built environment. Construction projects get delayed and rework is required because of discrepancies across construction documents, submittals, requests for information, design, and other plans. TwinKnowledge’s AI Agents absorb structured and unstructured project data, surfacing and preventing conflicts before the work begins. We’re excited about our partnership with CEO Ivan Panushev and his team. #construction #AEC #AI #technology https://ow.ly/mBYX50VtaVG

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