Loren Appin

Childcare is a movable barrier and the care economy is workforce infrastructure. Siran Cao dropped so much truth on First Builders this week and shared why even capitalists in a vacuum should care.

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2026 federal funding update for ecosystem builders A week ago I wrote about where federal innovation funding stands for 2026. Here's what's changed in 7 days: What's now signed into law: The Commerce, Justice, and Science bill passed the Senate 82-15 on January 15 and is headed to the president's desk. This locks in: NSF → $8.75 billion (with protection against disproportionate cuts to any directorate) → Regional Innovation Engines: Up to $200 million EDA → Tech Hubs: $41 million → Build to Scale: $50 million → MEP: $175 million What passed the House, awaiting Senate action: The Financial Services bill passed 341-79 on January 14, confirming: SBA → Entrepreneurial development: $330 million (Congress rejected the proposed cut to $150M) → Regional Innovation Clusters: $9M → Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST): $9M → Growth Accelerator Fund Competition: $9M What's still in flux: Leaders just released a final bipartisan package for Defense, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education, and Transportation-HUD. The House may vote this week, with the January 30, 2026 deadline approaching. SBIR/STTR authorization remains expired. No new solicitations until reauthorization—though there's been some movement here. There's also a bunch of new AI policy I need to dig into still. The bottom line hasn't changed: You cannot build a 10-year innovation ecosystem on annual appropriations battles. The regions that succeed are strengthening their partnership infrastructure now, and leveraging federal funding as a bonus to accelerate outcomes. See the full analysis: https://lnkd.in/euDxDVkZ

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Building a startup is hard. It is especially hard in a country like Nigeria, where the ecosystem is yet to mature, and there are still many challenges to navigate. It is confusing, lonely, and full of uncertain decisions. Founders, especially early-stage founders, need as much support as they can get. Not “inspire to perspire” posts, but practical support on hiring, operations, funding, customer research, and navigating the regulatory landscape. Too many founders are surrounded by noise, surface-level advice, and generic content that does not reflect their current realities. What they need is a community that understands exactly what they are going through and can offer context that is immediately useful. Sierra Collective exists to be that community. A space where founders learn from one another’s live experiences and shorten the painful trial and error that usually defines the early stages of building. At Sierra, we believe that the most valuable support comes from those who are active in the trenches, navigating the same obstacles. If you are an early-stage founder, you should join the Sierra Collective. You do not have to figure everything out alone. As the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Join Sierra: https://lnkd.in/d-Nzmtkq

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Talking to users and thoughtfully integrating their needs and wants was woven through everything we did at IDEO—threaded through every prototype and product decision. Reading my colleagues Joanne and Leo's latest work brought that to mind. They describe a future where research runs continuously, with AI agents recruiting participants and instantly surfacing insights. Synthetic personas, carefully trained on consumer signals, mirror human behavior closely enough to extend live studies and compress timelines from weeks to hours. Today user research mostly runs in fits and starts, prohibitively expensive and locked away in dedicated project cycles when it could be a constant companion, seamlessly integrated into the product development process. Joanne and Leo lay out the full vision here: https://lnkd.in/gEUBSG_J

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U.S. energy demand is surging — don’t get left behind. New gas projects and large industrial loads are reshaping power markets at breakneck speed. In this high-stakes landscape, timely and accurate data is essential. Halcyon’s Data Products, powered by a regularly updated authoritative data catalog of 4.5+ million documents from all 50 public utility commissions, ensure you always have the latest energy market intelligence. Download this guide to see how AI can help power sector stakeholders find new growth opportunities first.

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A week can look productive on the surface, yet still lack any real coherence. Constantly moving between maker/manager mode is exhausting, but more importantly, it breaks momentum. Since the start of the year, we stopped trying to patch around this problem and built something to solve it. If you're a technical founder who feels this problem firsthand, please reach out or sign up in the link below.

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Don't Build a Better Wheat Farm" - Why Defensibility Stakes Are Higher in Deep Tech Just published a new piece on my "Ignore the Confusion" blog, building on thoughtful insights from Eric Ver Ploeg at Tunitas Ventures about startup defensibility. Eric's core thesis: Too many startups pitch like wheat farmers - "huge TAM, slow incumbents, growing market, domain expertise" - but fail to think through long-term defensibility until it's too late. From a deep tech perspective, the stakes are even higher: ** Unlike software, deep tech founders must commit to defensibility strategies from day one - their funding depends on it ** Patent vs. trade secret decisions are often difficult to reverse and shape your entire competitive strategy ** Even "picks and shovels" providers (the tools that make industries more efficient) become commodities without proper moats The key insight that resonates: Defensibility can't be retrofitted. Whether you're building software or deep tech, your moat must be architected into the business model from the start. Thanks to Eric Ver Ploeg for sharing these insights on startup strategy and letting me build on his framework from a deep tech lens. Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/dEj_iF-Q #DeepTech #StartupStrategy #Defensibility #VentureCapital #Innovation

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Why build in Seattle? One word: talent. GeekWire has recently spotlighted both sides of a familiar debate: should startups stay in Seattle or move elsewhere? For hardware and aerospace founders looking for top talent, though, Gagana and I think this city is hard to beat. From Boeing and Blue Origin to Fortive and Fluke, the region is a magnet for world-class hardware talent. Add in that ~25% of U.S. AI engineers are based here, and you’ve got a powerful launchpad for the space economy and physical AI revolution. Founders see it too: 🔹Dan Shapiro (Co-founder & CEO, Glowforge): “The folks that we’re hiring are people who built airplanes, satellites, medical equipment…the kind of products that are made here in Seattle.” 🔹Philip Johnston (Co-founder & CEO, Starcloud): “We actually incorporated initially in El Segundo…but then we realized everyone we want to hire is in Redmond, Washington.” If you're looking for more evidence, just check out the below data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics - Seattle’s hardware engineering density is over 50% greater than the Bay’s. For those building at the intersection of AI and the physical world, Seattle is a great place to call home. 🔧🚀 cc Jack Callaghan Momo Nakamura Emmanuel Chan Plug and Play Enterprise & AI Joshua Ahmed (thanks for the insights!)

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⛰️ Why Climate Tech Founders Can't Afford to Ignore Fundraising Trends The fundraising landscape for climate tech is evolving rapidly, and staying informed isn't just helpful—it's essential for survival. In the past year alone, we've seen significant shifts in investor priorities, term sheet structures, and due diligence processes. VCs are increasingly focused on technical defensibility, regulatory moats, and clear paths to profitability. The "growth at any cost" mentality has been replaced by disciplined capital efficiency and milestone-driven funding. What's particularly striking is how climate tech investors are now demanding deeper evidence of market validation earlier in the process. They want to see not just promising technology, but proof of customer adoption and revenue traction. This shift means founders need to adjust their fundraising timelines and preparation strategies accordingly. The most successful climate tech founders I work with are those who treat fundraising intelligence as a core competency—they understand current market conditions, know which investors are actively deploying capital in their sector, and can speak the language of risk mitigation that today's VCs want to hear. Early stage climate tech founders: If you're navigating this complex landscape, join us for our upcoming Pachamama Ventures AMA session at 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub where we'll dive deep into the latest fundraising strategies, share real-world examples, and answer your specific questions. Register here: https://lnkd.in/dtMuACFT Let's build the future together—but let's do it with the right capital strategy. #Climatetech #Fundraising #Startups #VentureCapital #Sustainability

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Thrilled to announce that Together Fund is investing in Sentra, alongside a16z speedrun! You track results in Jira. Decisions in Notion. Conversations in Slack. But the reasoning, the debates, trade-offs, and context behind why you chose A over B, disappears into what we call "Dark Matter." A decision made in March looks insane by July because no one remembers the constraints that made it smart. I lived this firsthand at Twitter scaling from 800 to 8,000 employees, and at Google while launching AI Overviews to billions at planet scale. The problem isn't process. Process is compensation for something deeper: organizational amnesia. An organization’s "Systems of Record" doesn’t solve this, they encode it. They store what happened, never why. That's why we are investing in Sentra. Sentra is the always-on collective memory that eliminates organizational amnesia by maintaining accurate context for all members and agents, functioning as an operational nervous system. It connects to every channel where work happens, meetings, Slack, email, code commits, docs, calendars, and treats them not as artifacts to search, but as living signals to synthesize. The fleeting and the permanent, unified into a memory that understands. The founding team is built for this: - Jae Gwan Park (CEO): Product-first founder, memory systems research at UofT and MIT - Ashwin Gopinath (CSO): Former MIT professor, created "Reflexion" (NeurIPS 2023), agents that learn from mistakes, 2x founder - Andrey Starenky (CTO): Early Vapi engineer, ex-IBM, built to process enterprise-scale data firehose Together is an operator-led fund. We invest in problems we've lived. This is one of them. Many congrats Jae, Ashwin and Andrey, we are so excited to partner with you! Read the full thesis: https://lnkd.in/gixj9cE4 Book a demo: https://www.sentra.app/ #OrganizationalMemory #AI #Sentra #TogetherFund #a16z #ContextGraphs

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Living in neighborhoods with a high NatureScore have dramatically lower rates of bipolar disorder, depression, and other mental health maladies, according to an analysis of 61 million outpatient visits across 1,169 urban ZIP codes. The work suggests that crossing a NatureScore threshold of 40 marks a turning point, with the probability of needing treatment for bipolar disorder dropping by roughly two‑thirds and depression by half. NatureQuant #naturescore #naturedose https://lnkd.in/gKDnW4hz

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