Josh Kopelman

New product launch: Today we’re launching LV Apex Suite, a new product suite for lentiviral vector production. This marks 64x Bio’s expansion from AAV into LV — and another step in translating our CellMap-driven VectorSelect platform across new modalities. LV Apex Suite begins with a high yield engineered HEK293T suspension cell line for transient LV production, with stable systems and additional production-enabling technologies in development. More broadly, this launch reflects where 64x Bio is headed: expanding CellMap as a data foundation for production biology, and learning from those data computationally to iteratively guide development of better cell lines, reagents, and production systems for viral vectors — and soon, biologics. To learn more about LV Apex Suite, read our press release below and visit 64xbio.com/lvapexsuite. Press release: 64xbio.com/articles/64x-b…

Om Malik, a longtime technology writer, founder of Gigaom, and a partner at True Ventures, died on Wednesday at 59 (@om / On my Om) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

We will need a new tax code for the wealth AI creates ft.trib.al/999yn2u

Endurance is proud to announce our $54M Series A, led by @foundersfund, to develop subsea geothermal energy. We're building mass-manufacturable and mass-deployable generators to access terawatts of low cost, clean, baseload power.

Today I’m thrilled to announce Scotch has raised a $20M Series A, led by VMG Partners, with participation from @firstround , @LererHippeau , and @TobaCapital . In 2024, we set out to fix something that's been broken for 30 years: the technology running America's 40,000+ independent liquor stores. Most of those stores operate on POS software built before the iPhone. Before Amazon was founded. In some cases, before the store owners themselves were born. Since launching our first store ten months ago, we've crossed $1 billion in annualized gross payment volume. That number tells us two things: (1) The problem is real, and (2) operators are ready to move. Store owners are quite literally blowing up systems they've used for two decades to partner with Scotch. While these milestones are fun to celebrate, they're far from what we're focused on. We think about the calls from owners and GMs who used to spend Monday mornings buried in distributor invoices, line by line, for hours. Now they spend that time looking at margins, planning reorders, and growing their store. That's what we built this for. Our CTO, Dan Chen, spent more than a decade in liquor tech, including CTO at Drizly before its acquisition by Uber. Kevin Hodges and I built Skupos in convenience retail. We didn't stumble into this category. We picked it on purpose, and we built the team to win it. This round lets us keep building faster and with more intention. More automation. More time returned to the amazing people running these stores. Independent liquor retail is an $80B market that technology has ignored for a generation. Tens of thousands of stores will be getting the technology they deserve. We're just getting started. scotchpos.com

Today I’m thrilled to announce Scotch has raised a $20M Series A, led by VMG Partners, with participation from @firstround , @LererHippeau , and @TobaCapital . In 2024, we set out to fix something that's been broken for 30 years: the technology running America's 40,000+ independent liquor stores. Most of those stores operate on POS software built before the iPhone. Before Amazon was founded. In some cases, before the store owners themselves were born. Since launching our first store ten months ago, we've crossed $1 billion in annualized gross payment volume. That number tells us two things: (1) The problem is real, and (2) operators are ready to move. Store owners are quite literally blowing up systems they've used for two decades to partner with Scotch. While these milestones are fun to celebrate, they're far from what we're focused on. We think about the calls from owners and GMs who used to spend Monday mornings buried in distributor invoices, line by line, for hours. Now they spend that time looking at margins, planning reorders, and growing their store. That's what we built this for. Our CTO, Dan Chen, spent more than a decade in liquor tech, including CTO at Drizly before its acquisition by Uber. Kevin Hodges and I built Skupos in convenience retail. We didn't stumble into this category. We picked it on purpose, and we built the team to win it. This round lets us keep building faster and with more intention. More automation. More time returned to the amazing people running these stores. Independent liquor retail is an $80B market that technology has ignored for a generation. Tens of thousands of stores will be getting the technology they deserve. We're just getting started. scotchpos.com

Back in February, I got early access to @TownAI. Now 93% of @firstround is using it. There was never a top-down mandate — it went viral inside First Round the way great products do. Today, Town announced its $55M Series A. Huge congrats to @jgreze, @tonydevincenzi and the whole team! It’s hard to imagine getting my work done without my Townie “Brock” helping me. Here’s how Town took off at First Round: 1) Most AI assistants want you to come to them. Town comes to you. It learns how you work and then starts working. After connecting email, calendar and Slack, Town gives you a briefing — who you work with most, what’s high priority, your communication style and patterns. Everyone gets a custom version of this. Connect Town to more tools (Granola, Notion, Google Drive, etc.) and it starts drafting perfect emails and nailing investment snapshots. Customization even extends to “Townies,” the names, avatars, and personalities people assign their Town assistants. 2) First Rounders create routines in Town to solve real problems…then share them. Chiefs of staff were nodal users. Town is a glass of water in the desert for them. So much of their work is processing email, filling out updates, checking spreadsheets and gathering context. Town does this natively. Roy Rosin, one of First Round’s board partners, automatically tracks all his follow-ups (“commitments I made to founders”) at the end of each day. We share new routines in a # town-square Slack channel so it’s easy for other people to use the same routines the chiefs or Roy created. 3) Town works for every function — even people who’d never set up Mac minis to get the benefits of using agents. Our finance team saves hours on repetitive work it can now automate. Our marketing team tells me it “essentially replaced Claude and ChatGPT” for them. Without skills or markdown files but with persistent memory, the more you use it, the better Town gets over time. A few specific routines we’re using across First Round 👇