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Sim Blaustein shared thisCongrats to our founders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel and the Fractional AI team on their acquisition by Anthropic and Blackstone! We first backed them working on creator startup Xip and were excited by their amazing pivot just a couple years ago to build an enterprise AI services company. Can't wait to see what's next in this unique endeavor... https://lnkd.in/dFSxJjwYThe AI-Native Enterprise Services Firm Backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman Announces Acquisition of Fractional AI - BlackstoneThe AI-Native Enterprise Services Firm Backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman Announces Acquisition of Fractional AI - Blackstone
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Sim Blaustein shared thisExcited and proud of my dad, artist and illustrator Hank Blaustein who is exhibiting his work at a solo show in NYC in July! Link below for more info and to rsvp for the opening.Hank Blaustein: Drawings & Watercolors- Opening Reception · LumaHank Blaustein: Drawings & Watercolors- Opening Reception · Luma
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Sim Blaustein shared thisLooking forward to the conversation with the #Counter community. Thanks Patrick Eggen!Sim Blaustein shared thisWhat does it really take to spin-out a corporate venture fund? Later this month (April 21st) the #Counter community will host a very unique online event which will demystify this process. We are pulling back the curtain with the team behind Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and the creation of 1745 Ventures: from early internal debates to the tradeoffs that shape a successful transition as an independent fund. Typically these events are only for CVCs, but we are opening this event to a broader audience this time!!!!! Please register here to attend - https://lnkd.in/gAMBuASK I will moderate the discussion with the 2 parties which made this spin possible: Sim Blaustein (Founding GP of 1745 Ventures) and Chirag Chotalia (anchor LP) for a candid, behind-the-scenes conversation as they walk through the first internal conversations to the moments where things get complex and got real! Corporate VCs, tap into #CounterClub for the full community events and resources: https://counterclub.vc/ cc Abbie Wolf, Mikey Kailis, Tanvi Narain, Joe Saijo
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Sim Blaustein posted thisDoing a few last college visits with my son Alex, who plans to study Civil Engineering or Urban Planning. He'd love to connect with current students and I'm wondering if anyone in my network can help. We will be at Cal Poly SLO, UC Davis and Purdue in mid April. (hat tip to Sean Atkins for the great idea I'm stealing...)
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Sim Blaustein shared thisamazing opportunity working with one of my favorite people!Sim Blaustein shared thisSUP yall! I'm hiring a Head of Startups for AWS in the UK & Ireland: https://lnkd.in/eXfdyr8w The UK and Ireland are one of the most exciting startup markets in the world right now, with toeholds in Recursive GenAI, World Models, Robotics, Computational Chem, Cybersecurity, Voice Tech, and on and on and on. This role sits at the center of all that, working with the most interesting founders at the moment they're deciding which cloud to build on...and, frankly, well before that. What good looks like for me in this role? A mix of large-company sales and GTM experience combined with time as a founder or exec operator at a startup. You need to know how to run a sales team and close deals — but you also need to genuinely understand what it feels like to be on the other side of the table. Bonus if you have a network in the UKI startup and VC community. If you are the person or know the person, give me a shout.
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Sim Blaustein shared thisA great piece by friend Rachel Weiss, who has been an astute observer of the intersection of tech and culture since the 90s https://lnkd.in/eFEjhrqsThe Adolescence of AI: What We Owe the Next GenerationThe Adolescence of AI: What We Owe the Next Generation
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Sim Blaustein shared thisFinally catching post-CES - an awesome time with many great highlights Urs CeteSim Blaustein shared thisAt 1745 Ventures, we were excited to continue our annual CES tradition post-spinout from Bertelsmann, hosting a group of colleagues from across the media company’s TV and music divisions. In addition to our brunch where we welcomed many friends from our network, it was a great opportunity to host our founders, other major media companies and many tech innovators for conversations, product walkthroughs, and working sessions to explore collaboration opportunities in the Bertelsmann ecosystem. A big thank you to the founders who shared their products, and to our partners and to colleagues from Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, Fremantle, RTL Group, BMG, and beyond for making the time to join us. CES is always an early indicator of tech trends in the coming year, and it seems even more certain that Gen AI will have a major role to play in everything from video creation to marketing to re-inventing existing workflows. It was great to spend time with partners and presenters from across Big Tech, portfolio companies, and emerging startups shaping the future of media, advertising, and AI — including teams from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Adobe, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Antenna, boostr, Rembrand, TollBit, Fairground, Spikerz Security, and Intangible. Additionally it was great to hear the perspectives and candid conversations from thought leaders, including Terence Kawaja, Rich Greenfield, and Hernan Lopez, whose insight was invaluable in assessing the trends facing the media industry. Special thanks to Rhys Nölke, Sebastian Strugholtz, Carsten M. and their team! This is how we like to work: close to founders, alongside operators, and grounded in real product conversations. Looking forward to continuing this momentum in the months ahead and with other partners in the media ecosystem.
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Sim Blaustein posted thisFor my media industry friends - a great opportunity to work with one of my favorite people in the industry, Vip Sharm, who's hiring for his team https://lnkd.in/e3ZDBtSB
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Sim Blaustein shared thisA huge congrats to our portfolio company tvScientific on their acquisition by Pinterest! In addition to expressing our thanks to the incredible team led by Jason Fairchild, we were fortunate to have have invested alongside thought leaders in the space like Sanja Partalo, Adriaan Zur Muhlen, Darcy Frisch, and Krishan Bhatia. ConnectedTV is such an exciting space and we had great insights from our colleagues at Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and RTL Group, including Martin Hoberg and Rhys Nölke in developing our investment thesis. This is still a ton of white space in CTV and exciting to see the category remain a vibrant and competitive one for players outside of the hyperscalers. And of course, thanks to Field Garthwaite for the initial introduction!Sim Blaustein shared thisI’m deeply grateful and incredibly thrilled to share some major news. Today, tvScientific has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Pinterest. This is a milestone that will bring search, social, and TV together into a single, measurable performance ecosystem. From day one, our mission has been bold: make TV a true performance channel by giving marketers the same level of measurement and accountability they’ve come to expect from traditional performance advertising channels. Over the years, our team has built the technology to make this vision a reality, using a science-based approach that’s anchored in transparency, trust, and real technology. And now, we get to take a massive leap forward. Through this acquisition, we expect that marketers will be able to plan campaigns across search, social and TV, reach high-intent audiences, measure outcomes with clarity, and connect the entire funnel at scale. This isn’t the destination; it’s an acceleration. This is a step forward in the evolution of performance marketing, and it’s only possible because of the amazing team at tvScientific. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built and energized for what’s next. The press release is linked in the comments.
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisTaboola showed up to Cannes Lions 2026 in full form. Our week was packed with meeting top enterprise and growth customers, agencies, tech and data platforms, strategic partners and publishers from across the globe incl. the Americas, Europe and Asia. The shift towards a performance-driven ecosystem, need for global scale, increased importance of unique signals and democratization of marketing opportunities for brands of all sizes driven by advances in agentic were the common themes of our customer engagements. I capped the week by joining a topical discussion at ADWEEK House on “Decoding the Agentic Advantage in Performance Marketing” with industry leaders and partners Ami Palan - Accenture Song, Jarrod Martin - Omnicom Media & Acxiom, Imran Khan - proem, Matt Groshong - NVIDIA, Steve Ellis - Paramount, moderated by Ryan Joe. https://lnkd.in/eRiUy685 We also anchored the week with several significant partner announcements, including: - The expansion of Deeper Dive monetization to LLMs, AI Apps and agents: https://lnkd.in/dNgi62kk - Our infrastructure partnership with @Nvidia: https://lnkd.in/edQAiVw5 Thank you to all our customers and partners who made this week so productive and fun! We value your trust and business and look forward to growing our partnership! And thank you to the Taboola Marketing team for making everything so seamless! Special thanks to our partners at Apple for the great portraits shot on iphone 17! Daniel Horowitz Markus Frank Alexandre Fannius Federica Ambrogi Ehud Furman Vincent Meyer Amir Keren Stacey Delaney Ben Nichols Dor Bahat Eyal Pincu Lisa Cummins Nadav Perry Lexie Petrosky Jessica Witten Lauren Karabush Gilles Barre Matt Lidofsky
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Sim Blaustein liked thisIt's been a blast seeing how brands show up during the biggest event of the year. Jessica Corbett wrote an awesome piece on the Suzy blog, check it out. #worldcupSim Blaustein liked thisBuc-ee's spent zero dollars on World Cup marketing and still became one of the tournament's biggest brand moments. A German fan went viral calling Taco Bell "the holy land." The brands that won this summer weren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They were the ones that understood their customers well enough to know what this moment would mean before it arrived. Suzy's Jessica Corbett, Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing, on what brands can take forward from the most unexpected marketing story of the summer. 👉 Read the full blog: https://lnkd.in/g93tJVBj
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisThis past week has been one of, if not the best edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was certainly one of the most productive; an incredible combination of content, networking, wheels, deals, and dinners. And as present as ever the rising tide of #CommerceMedia platforms taking a major share of voice along the Croisette. Progress Partners kicked off the week with the annual welcome reception in the Old Port with a great collection of friends, familiar faces, and great partners Bending Spoons, AdRoll, Narrative I/O, Winterberry Group, Intuizi, Bitmovin, Lemonlight, TitanOS, and People Obsessed. Front and center this week Walmart announced a major (and well timed) acquisition of French connected television platform Vibe.co that had many talking on the impact and importance for the market. This all on the heels of the remarkable acquisition of LiveRamp by Publicis Groupe weeks before everyone decended onto the French Riviera. Progress Ventures hosted executive rides up the Côte d’Azur each moning in partnership with IRIS.TV, Infillion, TVision, Hive Science, Quantum Energy Square, and Plant Athletic. We also brought in our first ever Women’s Executive Ride with She Runs It. Lots of new connections made on the rides and I look forward to seeing everyone on bikes again soon. I was also fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down with Mateusz Drela, Founder and CEO of Retail Media IQ to talk about the challenges facing challenger brands in today’s market, and how #RetailMedia brings a great deal of efficient exposure. The onus now on retailers to better democratize not only their inventory, but also the data that can improve the identity-graph drive greater investment from brands. The dinners also made for some quality time with friends and the opportunity to make new connections thanks to the efforts of Hightouch, Snowflake, SyncMint BV, and the venerable Julie Thompson. And the big surprise from Julie’s dinner came with Jim Stengel’s arrival from the palais after received a Cannes Lions Laureate Award! A big thanks to all the people who helped make this week such a success: Field Garthwaite, Rohan Castelino, Jeremy Woodlee, Calynn Krieger, Alex Grant, Dave Cynkin, Patrick McAuley, Adriaan Zur Muhlen, Nick MacShane, Tyler Lee, Jessica Natale
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Sim Blaustein liked thisCongratulations to Allison Goldberg on being named to the Global Corporate Venturing's 2026 Powerlist, recognizing the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in the world. As Managing Partner of Comcast Ventures, Allison leads our investments across AI, connectivity, health tech, the future of work, energy, and sports tech, recently backing companies like Hydra Host, Runware, and Creatify AI. Allison has also built a tight, collaborative team that evaluates every opportunity on team, product, market, and traction, while staying sharply aligned to the broader businesses of Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky. Team CV is lucky to learn from you, Allison! Full story linked below 🔗Sim Blaustein liked thisWe are excited to announce the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist 2026! 🎉 This year's cohort represents some of the most influential leaders in corporate venture capital today spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. They are venture builders, ecosystem architects, fund-of-funds investors and strategic dealmakers, connecting the world's largest organisations with the entrepreneurs building the future. Congratulations to every leader featured. We can't wait for you to meet them. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ehSkwqRN #GCVPowerlist2026 #CorporateVenture #CVC #Innovation #VentureCapital
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisThis hurts. In 2004, sitting in the Citigroup cafeteria with a turkey sandwich and a copy of Business 2.0, I used to devour Om Malik 's articles. Soon after I moved to SF. And I got to meet Om in person over dinner and thank him. A few months ago, I ran into Om again, decades later, and thanked him again. I can't say that I knew Om well. But he left his mark on my life. His writing is part of the reason that I left Finance for tech 20 years ago, and why I'm in SF today. RIP. 💔 https://lnkd.in/gf5NPyk7
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Sim Blaustein liked thisThe drinks were on the house when barman Darren Summers found out he’d won our £3.5M clifftop home in Cornwall earlier this month. He was busy pulling pints when we called him to share the good news - so busy in fact, that he initially hung up and carried on working! But when his colleague saw our film crew outside, he soon realized something was up. The first thing he did after winning was offer everyone at his pub a free drink, saying they were “literally on the house”. His stunning new home has sea views overlooking Downderry Beach, a heated outdoor pool, hot tub and comes mortgage-free. He also got £250,000 in cash. Darren and his wife Rebecca had never been to Cornwall before, and thought they might go camping there one day. But now they’ll be staying in their very own luxury home. The couple are already planning a big family get together this summer. The draw supported the Eden Project, helping inspire positive environmental action by reconnecting people with nature. Darren said he’s going to call last orders on his career and retire early - so let’s raise a glass to that and give a big cheers to Darren and Rebecca’s future!
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisWe just launched in the LEAST populated state in the country, on purpose, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Wyoming is the fastest-aging state in the nation. It's also one of the hardest places in America to actually get care. The average person drives more than 26 miles to reach a healthcare facility. Most hospitals sit 50-plus miles from the next one. Specialists are scarce, and the state is on track to lose hundreds of physicians by 2030 even as its 65+ population keeps climbing. If you only build for dense cities, none of that is your problem. I think that's exactly backwards. The places with the longest drives and the fewest doctors are the places where families do the most coordinating and get the least help doing it. A parent on a dozen medications, three specialists who never talk to each other, an adult child trying to hold it together from another town. That is the problem we built Gracey for, and the distance is the reason it matters more in Wyoming, not less. We deliver Medicare-covered clinical care coordination virtually, so the miles stop being the thing that breaks continuity of care. We work with the care already in place and add the follow-through families need when healthcare gets complicated. Wyoming families, we're here now. That's the part I'm proud of. Powering Family Care.™
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisEver wonder what it's like having 3 kids while being a Founder/CEO - or being asked by your boss at Uber to lead a re-org the day after your baby was born? I joined Adam Fishman on the Startup Dad podcast for an honest talk about what it actually takes to build something hard and still show up for the people who matter most. We cover Fambot’s origin story and parenting in the age of AI, but more importantly we talk about getting it all done as a parent, being present for what matters, and trying to be a good human while sprinting 24/7. Other topics we get into: • Being present for your kids instead of having the gears churning • Parenting as a founder • Why bringing your kids to work is good for teams, kids, and managers • Being a parent in big tech vs. inside a startup • Teaching kids global empathy • Why being real with your kids matters • Hacks for getting it all done • What Fambot is and why we built it If you're a parent, a founder, or just someone trying to be more present, I think a few of these will land. Thanks Adam for a great discussion! Link to full pod in the comments. Would love to hear what resonates with you. 👇
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Sim Blaustein liked thisSim Blaustein liked thisThe Lopez Fellowship 2026 is already off the ground. I was in New York this week for our first regional gathering: eight new fellows, plus alumni going back to 2021, and a dinner that reminded me why we do this (while the Knicks were playing game 4!) Thank you to Jonathan Carson, co-founder of Antenna, for a fireside chat that walked the fellows through his full arc: entrepreneur to scaling a division inside a large enterprise, back to entrepreneur. We talked about how to find promising talent within an organization, those who raise their hands and overcome the 'permission paradox', as described by James (Jim) Citrin. This is exactly the kind of journey the fellowship was built for. Six years in, the returns compound. The alumni in that room have earned promotions, been recruited into bigger roles, and built ventures of their own. They come back because they remember being the new ones in the room. To the 2026 cohort: the next five months will stretch you. The people in that room this week are proof of what you’re working towards.
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Michael Sidgmore
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Maddi Holman
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