Zachary Parker

Check out the latest funding news from across the Techstars portfolio. → Zipline (Techstars 2011), a drone delivery and logistics startup, raises more than $600M in new funding, boosting its valuation to $7.6B, as it expands commercial deployments. → Language learning startup Preply (Techstars 2015) raises $150M and becomes the 23rd known unicorn from Techstars accelerators. → Hydrosat (Techstars 2019) raises $60M in Series B funding → Tive (Techstars 2017) receives a $20M investment, valuing the shipment-tracking systems developer at slightly more than $500M. → Parambil (Techstars 2023) raises an additional $6M in seed funding ($8M to date). → Seasats (Techstars 2021) receives $24M in Department of War APFIT funding to accelerate the fielding of its autonomous surface vessels. → Hawaiian Airlines’ newly announced $600M Kahuʻewai Hawai‘i Investment Plan features a strategic investment in Ampaire (Techstars 2018) to support hybrid-electric aviation in the islands. → Fintalo (Techstars 2025) secures $500K+ in oversubscribed Pre-Seed funding. → PraxisPro (Techstars 2024) closes an oversubscribed $6M seed round. → Samara Aerospace (Techstars 2024) closes $10M seed round to help bring more stability to sats in orbit. → MyARC (Techstars 2022), a platform that enables fitness creators to train their communities at scale, secures £1.5M investment. Massive congratulations to these incredible portfolio companies!   🔗  Read more at https://lnkd.in/dxtCTvrg 

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You can turn $100,000 into a $50 million business through acquisitions. This is closer to capital allocation than traditional entrepreneurship. Here's the deal structure. First, the capital stack. You buy a business the same way you buy a house. Equity in, bank covers the rest. With SBA loans: 90% loan, 10% equity. A million dollar business might require $100K to $200K down. Target companies with $1 to $3 million in earnings. Go to sellers that are NOT at market. Brokered deals are competitive and sellers want cash at close. This only works off-market. Here's what you propose: Seller keeps 20% equity in a new entity. Asset sale, their company moves into newco, they keep running it at fair market salary. You write them a check for 60% via bank loan. Remaining 20% is a seller's note: 10% straight note, 10% performance earnout. From the bank's perspective, you created 40% equity. The truth? It's really only 20%, and it's the seller's. Your money in? Approaching zero. But you own 80% of Enterprise Value. Why would a seller agree? Tell them: my goal is to make your 20% as valuable as the 80% we're giving you today. What are the odds you double the value on your own in 3 to 5 years? Now stack earnings. $2 million average per company. Buy 10 just like this. $20 million combined earnings under one entity. Centralize marketing, accounting, HR, governance at HQ. You bought each at 4 to 4.5x. A $20 million earnings business sells for 7 to 7.5x or more. That's multiple expansion, just by combining them. Close the first one. Negotiate the next $100K for the next business. Then newco sells to PE for 7, 8, 9x your $20 million in earnings. That's the path from $100K to $50 million. If you're considering buying a business in the next 12 to 24 months, we built Acquisition Lab for exactly this. walkerdeibel.com

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Skilled labor is the bottleneck in industrial ops. Elevāt's platform basically tries to “productize the expert” using machine signals + docs + prior fixes. Now they have $12M to scale. Congrats to them. In industrial AI, the tech is usually the easy part....adoption is the battle. Curious what you think is the real gating factor:  -- trust (techs believe it’s right and won’t get them hurt),  -- workflow integration (it fits into CMMS/ticketing/parts + works offline/on-device), OR  -- incentives (the field team is rewarded for using it vs “just fixing it their way”). Which one kills deployments most often in your experience?

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Most startups sell into verticals. We’re taking over one. Ohanafy is rebuilding the operating system for a $7.6B industry, starting with beverage alcohol, a $1.2b wedge. Legacy players are drowning in disconnected systems: Sales. Ops. Finance. All running on tech that doesn’t talk to itself. The Frankenstein software approach means everything breaks and lags. •⁠ ⁠Fragile integrations •⁠ ⁠Delayed reporting •⁠ ⁠Missed decisions Ohanafy didn’t ask: “What’s the next feature?” But: “What would it take to replace the whole stack?” So they built it: → Native on Salesforce → Multiple tools consolidated into 1 → Customers save 20+ hours/week → Field teams onboard in days, not months → Sales, ops, and finance run from the same screen This isn’t just a product. It’s a platform play. We’re now raising a $3M bridge round to scale faster into enterprise, double down on AI, and shorten our time-to-profitability. If you want to back a vertical category winner, this is the full-scale land grab to look at. DM me to look at the full deck!

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Excited for this Skool community launching soon. Built specifically for agencies and ops teams who want to DIY their automation without the $5K price tag. The Corporate Automation Library gives you: → Pre-built workflows across marketing, sales, and operations → Step-by-step implementation guides → A community of operators building alongside you No more piecing together tutorials. No more stuck projects. Just proven systems, 📑SoP's, 🤖n8n Workflows and OpenClaw Skills🦞 you can deploy this week. Perfect if you're a "I'll figure it out myself" type with a budget under $500/month. 🟣 Comment "SKOOL" to get on the early access list..

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Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events 1. The FTC is finally cracking down on brokers. Key Investment Group is the first to draw the agencies’ ire, but they won’t be the last. The FTC effectively called its next shots by listing companies similar to Key and putting them on notice. Key’s defense is similar to that of many brokers: “Other people are doing it, and Ticketmaster is the bad guy, so we should be allowed to break the law to illicitly profit from an industry we bring no value to.” Putting aside how hollow an existence it must be to spend one’s life in a business built solely on ripping people off, there is an interesting trend bubbling up that we’ve mentioned here before: They’re starting to get caught. And they have no leg to stand on. “The guy next to me was speeding too” doesn’t get anyone out of a speeding ticket. Too many are ripping off content providers on a massive scale. It would be a terrific use of taxpayer dollars—and an easy PR win—to hold these brokers accountable. I hope they do. And I hope the penalties are real this time to deter others from mirroring what Key and others before them, like Wise Guys, did. These actions will have significant downstream effects. The secondary marketplaces will feel it first, starting with Vivid. FTR: I actually like the honest brokers. It’s dishonesty I loathe. 2. That Brand Name Isn’t What It Once Was We recruit a lot. As such, we often receive résumés from companies we recognize. Some of the common names we’re told are positives: GrubHub, StubHub, Eventbrite, Vivid Seats, etc. There’s a common theme in these businesses: their stocks have cratered. For years, we watched companies grow without discipline—or real profit. I feel for those caught in the fallout now. When I’m looking for a top executive, I need someone who knows how to build a business that can turn a profit. Not someone whose only experience scaling is throwing money around. That’s the easy part. And we can’t pay for that experience. It isn’t a positive—it’s a big negative. 3. “Impossible Is Just Something to Do.” – Phillip Brooks (aka CM Punk) We started a small business for my high school son this month. He’s learning about arbitrage, profit, taxes, state licenses, and legal compliance by running a collectibles business we’ve incorporated in California. I gave him seed money to fund his company and told him he’d need to make a return on it before college. That’s our goal together. He asked: “What was the return on your investment in TicketManager?” It’s hard to calculate with other investors coming in later, but here’s the simple math: Joe, Aric, and I invested a total of $67,000 between the three of us in August of 2007. The last valuation: $110M+ (not including salaries and bonuses along the way). CM Punk, in tears reflecting on how he had just achieved his childhood dream of main-eventing WrestleMania, offered a new mantra in our home: “Impossible is just something to do.”

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Also on the “Nice List”: crime‑tech — quietly becoming one of 2025’s most investable non‑AI categories. Peregrine, Flock Safety, Skydio, and Brinc raised $1.2 bn+ this year and are scaling rapidly across U.S. cities (Peregrine: $10 mn → $75 mn in two years). It’s the Anduril‑ization of local policing: AI‑powered search, drones, real‑time analytics, and fast municipal sales cycles. Privacy debates are heating up, but from a demand and revenue perspective, few non‑AI verticals had a stronger year.

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PE used to say about AE industry "We would never buy an AE firm, the IP enters and leaves the building every day." PE now says "AE firms are amazing, they are the picks and shovels of the largest market in the world." VC used to say about AE industry "We don't invest in services businesses." VC now says "Have you heard of AI rollups, lets talk." KP: "I should have stayed a Civil Engineer and would have made so much more money than in tech." :)

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Scaling with Precision: How Invest Ottawa is Powering the SCORE-UX Vision Building a "sports app" is easy. Building a Biotech-positioned Intelligence Layer for the world’s elite competitive athletes is a different game entirely. Today, as we scale SCORE-UX, we aren't just relying on our 1.15-pixel computer vision or our built-in distribution moat of 85,000 players. We are leveraging the world-class mentorship at Invest Ottawa. Through the Flex program, the support from the IO team has been instrumental in refining our "Architecture of the Machine." Specifically, they are helping us navigate: • Institutional Alignment: Bridging the gap between high-performance coaching and deep-tech validation. • Scientific Rigor: Supporting our roadmap toward clinical-grade biomechanical data in partnership with Canada’s leading research labs. • Capital Efficiency: Ensuring our 5:1 LTV:CAC and 86% retention metrics are benchmarked against elite Global SaaS standards. Innovation is a team sport. Having the mentors at Invest Ottawa in our corner ensures that as we move toward the Ignition phase, we aren't just growing—we are building a category-defining institution. Special thanks to our advisors for pushing us to be "insanely great." The future of development intelligence is objective, longitudinal, and backed by the best ecosystem in the country. #SCOREUX #InvestOttawa #SportsTech #Biotech #SaaS #VentureCapital #TennisTech #Innovation

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If you don't know your LTV by payment plan, you're flying blind. Most high-ticket coaches think they're collecting 80%+ on payment plans. Reality? It's closer to 50-60%. That gap is costing you $50K-$200K+ annually. Here's the LTV tracking system I use for info/coaching businesses: MONTHLY (1st of each month): → Export Stripe data (last 30 days) → Update total collected per client → Calculate collection % by plan → Flag clients >30 days late → Update dashboard QUARTERLY (Every 90 days): → Review collection rates by plan → Identify drop-off patterns → Calculate average LTV per plan → Make pricing recommendations RED FLAGS TO WATCH: - Collection rate <50% on any plan - 3+ failed payments from same client - Pattern of drop-offs at specific month (e.g., all 6-pay clients quit Month 4) WHAT THIS DATA TELLS YOU: ✅ Which payment plans are actually profitable ✅ Which plans to push harder in sales ✅ Whether to adjust pricing ✅ When to offer PIF discounts REAL EXAMPLE: I ran this analysis for a $60K/mo coach and found: - 1-Pay: 100% collection (low volume) - 3-Pay: 80% collection ($9.6K avg LTV) ← sweet spot - 6-Pay: 60% collection ($7.2K avg LTV) ← bleeding $288K/year THE FIX: 1. Phase out 6-pay (or increase price to offset risk) 2. Push 3-pay harder (proven model) 3. Offer 10% PIF discount (more cash upfront) 4. Stricter failed payment follow-up for long plans IMPACT: - Shifting 20 clients from 6-pay to 3-pay = +$48K in collections - 10% PIF uptake = +$43K immediate cash - Total: $91K recovered without a single new sale Most coaches optimize for closes. Top 1% optimize for collections. Track your LTV. Know your numbers. Make data-driven decisions. P.S. If you're running a high-ticket coaching/info business and want to audit your LTV by payment plan, DM me. I'll show you exactly where money's leaking (free, 15 mins, no pitch).

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