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👋 Hey — Egemen here.
My feed this month was a parade of nine-figure seed rounds.
A founder I follow called it proof the drought is over. I almost bought it, then I opened Carta's Q1 report and the story came apart.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the menu today:
💡 Spotlight: Executive Assistant for Normies
🧠 Deep-Dive: Venture is back. Just not for you.
🗺️ Method: Their first after-hours call was a $20,000 job.
⚾️ Catch: Half of your market is one app away.
☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Runlayer
💡 Spotlight
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🧠 Deep-Dive: Venture is back. Just not for you.
Venture did come back.
Carta logged $30.4 billion in Q1 2026, ahead of where last year sat at the same point.
Down rounds fell to 11.4%, about where they were in 2019, and dilution fell with them. Terms tilt toward founders again. On paper it looks like the best market in years.
Then you see where the money went.
More than 60 cents of every venture dollar on Carta landed in AI companies, the highest share they have ever recorded.
Carta now splits valuations into three buckets: non-AI, AI applied, AI foundational. The gap is brutal.
An AI foundational model startup raising a Series A sits at a $300 million median. A non-AI startup at the same stage sits at $55 million. Carta's own words: these are not comparable markets.
This should change how you raise.
If you build B2B software and you are not an AI lab, the boom on your feed is not your boom. Investors will judge your round against a market you do not live in. Even inside SaaS, 83% of new capital went to AI startups, so the non-AI slice is fighting over scraps.
👉 The mega-round on your timeline is not your comp. Raise against the market you actually live in.
🗺️ Method
Their first after-hours call was a $20,000 job.
Air Texas was paying $2,000 a month for an answering service that couldn't close jobs.
Their first after-hours call with Podium’s AI Employee booked a $20,000 job.
Now no call goes unanswered after 5PM.
⚾️ Catch
Half your market is one app away.
Your business is already on Instagram, SMS, and web chat. But 52 million immigrants in the US rely on WhatsApp to connect with businesses they trust — not email, not phone calls.
Wati helps you show up on WhatsApp and every channel they use. Are you still not there?
☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Runlayer
Runlayer raised $30M - it’s the scale of the week!
As companies hand real work to AI agents, those agents need the keys to your systems, from the CRM to the data warehouse, and most security teams cannot see what the agents are doing with them. Runlayer sits in the middle.