Jack Altman

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Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund closes new $24 million fund

After making investments in 57 startups together, Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra and Eventjoy founder Todd Goldberg are back at it with a new $24 million fund and big ambitions amid a venture capital renaissance with fast-moving deals aplenty.

Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund” announced their first $7.3 million fund just weeks before the pandemic hit stateside last year and they were soon left with more access to deals than they had funding to support; they went on to raise $3.5 million in a rolling fund designed around making investments in later-stage deals beyond seed and Series A rounds.

“We closed right before COVID hit and we had one plan, but then everything accelerated,” Goldberg tells TechCrunch. “A lot of our companies started raising additional rounds.”

With their latest raise, Vohra and Goldberg are looking to maintain their wide outlook with a single fund, saying they plan to invest three-quarters of the fund in early-stage deals while saving a quarter of the $24 million for later-stage opportunities. Still, the duo know they likely could’ve chosen to raise more.

“A lot of our peers were scaling up into much larger funds,” Vohra says. “For us, we wanted to stay small and collaborative.”

Some of the firm’s investments from their first fund include NBA Top Shot creator Dapper Labs, open source Firebase alternative Supabase, D2C liquor brand Haus, alternative asset platform Alt, biowearable maker Levels and location analytics startup Placer. Their biggest hit was an early investment in audio chat app Clubhouse before Andreessen Horowitz led its buzzy seed round at a $100 million valuation. Clubhouse most recently raised at $4 billion.

The pair say they’ve learned a ton through the past year of navigating increasingly competitive rounds and that fighting for those deals has helped the duo hone how they market themselves to founders.

“You never want to be a passive check,” Goldberg says. “We do three things: we help companies find product/market fit, we help them super-charge distribution… and we help them find the best investors.”

A big part of the firm’s appeal to founders has been the “operator” status of its founders. Goldberg’s startup Eventjoy was acquired by Ticketmaster and Vohra’s Rapportive was bought by LinkedIn while his current startup Superhuman has maintained buzz for its premium email service and has raised $33 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital.

Their new fund has an unusual LP base that’s made up of more than 110 entrepreneurs and investors, including 40 founders that Vohra and Goldberg have previously backed themselves. Backers of their second fund include Plaid’s William Hockey, Behance’s Scott Belsky, Haus’s Helena Price Hambrecht, Lattice’s Jack Altman and Loom’s Shahed Khan.

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Lattice raises another $15M to improve performance reviews

Sam Altman’s little brother Jack is an entrepreneur, too.

Jack Altman, whose resume includes a stint as vice president of business development at Teespring, has raised $15 million in Series B funding for his startup, Lattice, a modern approach to corporate goal setting. Shasta Ventures led the round, with participation from Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, the latter being the organization his brother led as president until very recently.

Lattice, used by high-growth companies like Reddit, Slack, Coinbase and Glossier, helps human resources professionals develop insights about their teams. Founded in 2015, Altman and Eric Koslow, like most entrepreneurs, developed the idea for Lattice out of their own pain points.

“We realized that with quarterly goal settings, OKRs, we would write them up and get the leadership together and then they would sit on a shelf and nothing would happen,” Altman told TechCrunch.

Lattice, a SaaS business, is a flexible platform that caters to startups and larger businesses’ specific cultures, management practices and varying approaches to employee engagement. The product, inspired by platforms like Gmail and Slack, is designed with consumers in mind. Lattice, the team hopes, has a look and feel that makes incumbent HR platforms feel antiquated. 

The product makes it simple for employees and their managers to complete engagement surveys, share feedback, arrange one-on-one meetings and complete comprehensive performance reviews with a larger goal of reworking the company goal-setting process entirely. No more once-yearly check-ins; Lattice enables businesses to check-in with their employees on a weekly basis. 

Lattice currently has 1,200 customers, 60 employees and was cash flow break-even for the first time in Q1 2019. With the latest financing, the San Francisco-based startup plans to invest in product development.

“Life is short,” Altman said. “You want to have work that you enjoy and an office that feels good to be at.”

Lattice has previously raised capital from investors including SV Angel, Marc Benioff, Slack Fund and Fuel Capital, Sam Altman, Elad Gil, Alexis Ohanian, Kevin Mahaffey, Daniel Gross and Jake Gibson. Lattice completed the Y Combinator startup accelerator in 2016.

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Slay squad goals, not just tasks, with Lattice

Lattice You know what to do at work today, but do you know why? Goals. Having clear goals is critical to keeping productivity and morale high on any team. Whether it’s a launch date, level of traction, sales quota or hiring objective, teams perform better with well-defined motives. Lattice weaves goals into your workflow. Built by Y Combinator president Sam Altman’s brother Jack, Lattice… Read More

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