Viktor Marohnić

Legal AI startup Harvey just raised $150M at an $8B valuation.  Niche vertical SaaS is where the biggest winners are emerging. Here’s why you should pay attention👇 In Q2 2025, 46% of all SaaS M&A was vertical SaaS. And the bigger players are buying smaller, niche SaaS to dominate entire industries. Traditional verticals (healthcare, real estate, education, hospitality) are strong. Hyper-niche ones are stronger. Think: - Software just for dental clinics - Tools for boutique hotels - Platforms for small schools Hyper-specialization is creating tons of M&A action. Private equity firms lead this buying spree by acquiring niche SaaS, combining them, and creating valuable companies. > Thoma Bravo acquired NextGen Healthcare for $1.8B > Vista Equity Partners bought Mindbody for ~$1.9B > Bain Capital bought HealthEdge for $2.6B The winning formula is clear:  Deep industry integration + embedded finance + AI defensibility. The next decade belongs to founders who build the operating systems of industries. --- Our team at FE International is more bullish than ever on the rise of AI-first businesses. If you're a founder curious about your company’s true value, get a free valuation. (Link in comments) 👇

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Dear Founders, Early-stage investing is nothing like stock market investing. And when Angels or pre-seed VCs invest, they’re not thinking like growth-stage investors. You’re too early for that. You’re pre-product. Pre-revenue. Sometimes even pre-team. So what are they really betting on? Not your idea (there are thousands of those). Not your business (there isn’t one yet!). They’re betting on: 1) You. The kind of person who gets things done even when it’s hard. 2) Your market. Whether this is a wave worth catching. 3) Your timing. Whether now is the moment to catch it. Yes, traction matters. Any shred of data that derisks your story helps. The more you have, the better. But no amount of traction will overcome the above 1, 2, and 3. Early investors don’t just invest in companies. They invest in people they want to see win, and in macro trends too big to ignore. If you want to raise early… Don’t just polish your deck. Show them you’re the person who will find a way, no matter what. Yours truly, David

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The most common mistake I see in corporate venture studio design is not the cap table or the incentive structure. It is the org chart. Most corporate studios get placed inside the innovation function. It feels like a natural fit. Both deal with new ideas. Both sit outside the core business. But innovation is the wrong home. Innovation labs are staffed and budgeted for exploration. They are evaluated on pipeline volume, idea generation, partnership counts. They are not structured to own equity, make long-horizon capital commitments, or operate with the patience that company creation requires. Corporate development is the right home. Those teams already manage timelines that run years. They think in portfolio terms. They have access to every business unit when they need involvement. And they have the budget authority to actually see something through. I have watched this play out more than once. A studio launches inside innovation, gets early traction, then stalls when it needs board-level capital allocation or cross-divisional resources. Innovation does not have the internal weight to pull that off. Corporate development does. The frame I keep coming back to is simple. Buy, partner, build. Corporate development already owns the first two. The studio is just the third, run by the same team, evaluated against the same strategic framework. That alignment is also what protects the studio when the executive who championed it moves on. A function with institutional permanence survives leadership turnover. A pet project inside innovation does not. If your corporate studio reports to innovation today, that is a governance decision worth revisiting before the next planning cycle.

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