True Ventures

AI is making filmmaking more accessible, but the tools that matter will be the ones that preserve creative control, not flatten it. That’s what stood out when we first met the team at Flick: a rare combination of deep product engineering and real creative instinct, built by founders who understand both how modern software scales and how stories actually get made. Today, Flick announced a $6M seed round to keep building an AI-native filmmaking platform that gives creators something most generative tools still miss: cinematic control, iteration, and the freedom to direct, not just prompt. Ray Wang and Zoey Zhang are building at the intersection of AI infrastructure, product design, and storytelling, and in our view, that intersection is only getting more important. Early, thoughtful builders tend to create the categories everyone else names later. Flick feels like one of those companies.

Come celebrate the launch of Bennie today in San Francisco— the first AI family assistant by @bumoparent designed to handle complex tasks. Join us for an intimate happy hour where you'll get to experience Bennie firsthand and enjoy a special surprise experience on-site. Spots are limited — RSVP today by clicking the button below and texting Bennie! bennie.bumo.com/e/sf

Some of the most interesting companies get funded before the world knows what they are yet. That’s the space Puneet Agarwal was speaking to at @StartupGrind Conference, where he joined @illscience and Frédérique Dame for a conversation on How VCs Actually Decide at Seed in 2026, moderated by @MTemkin. It's the part of venture that isn’t about “kingmaking,” headlines, or consensus but rather about backing something when it’s still forming. When the category isn’t clear, the metrics don’t exist yet, and belief has to come first. At True, that early moment is still the work we’re drawn to. The craft of seeing a signal before it’s obvious. Sitting with an idea long enough to understand what it could become, not just what it is today. As more of the ecosystem shifts toward amplifying what’s already working, that kind of investing can feel less visible. But it hasn’t gone away. It’s just quieter. And in many ways, it matters more than ever. Grateful for the conversation and especially to Marina for guiding it with clarity and depth.

@smart has always had a knack for seeing around corners and with @joinsuppco. And before that: @splice. At SuppCo, he built something a lot of people didn’t realize they needed until they used it: a clearer, more trusted way to understand what’s actually in the supplements we take every day. Today, that vision scales even further as @function announced its acquisition of SuppCo, bringing supplement intelligence into a broader, more connected view of personal health. Steve, you’ve been building with conviction, curiosity, and a deep respect for the consumer from day one. It’s been a privilege to watch. Big moment for you, the Supp team, and the future of more personalized health. Onward.

We love believing in what you build @smart. Excited for what comes next.

The new @digg alpha is coming soon. First up: AI news. 9M+ graph connections. 15+ AI judges. Real-time X ingestion. Sentiment analysis, clustering, and signal detection built to surface what actually matters.

The seed market is moving faster, categories are forming earlier, and founder conviction is often showing up before traditional proof points. That was the backdrop for “How VCs Actually Decide at Seed in 2026,” where @puneet324 joined @illscience, Frédérique Dame, and @MTemkin on stage at @StartupGrind Conference in Redwood City. Across firms, one thing came through clearly: In early stage, the hardest decisions rarely come down to spreadsheets. They come down to pattern recognition, technical fluency, and the willingness to back founders before the path is obvious. Good to be in the room with some of the sharpest investors and operators in the ecosystem, and even better to spend time in spaces where founders can hear how conviction actually gets built. A special thanks to Marina at @TechCrunch for leading the conversation.

Home ownership is one of the last major consumer experiences still held together by spreadsheets, sticky notes, and “I’ll deal with that later.” That’s what made @getcasa stand out to us. Instead of building another marketplace for one-off repairs, Casa is building something more ambitious: a living system for the home. Using lidar scans, AI, and an in-house network of handymen and concierges, they’re turning home maintenance from a reactive chore into something proactive, personalized, and increasingly automated. The company launched publicly this week and announced $27M in funding. The future of AI won’t just live in your browser or your workflow. Increasingly, it’ll show up in the physical systems and spaces around you, including the place you spend the most time. A big week for the Casa team. Worth watching. Read more: nytimes.com/2026/04/30/bus…

I love the vision of @audos_com to help democratize starting a company. If you’ve got an idea, your a few prompts away from bringing that idea to life, check it out at Audos.com. cc @trueventures

@mvanhorn 👀

Have something wild cooking if you live in Claude code / cli / open claw / Hermes land . @ me and tell me why you should get an early look

Wrapping up two days with @kevinrose @danshapiro @BuiltByJustin @nbaschez @kieranklaassen and so many more @trueventures founders and builders. We designed an AI Accelerator that was basically a high-value AI-pilled WhatsApp group come to life. It definitely delivered.

Thrilled for @trueventures to be backing @getcasa, who just announced their $27M raise. Casa's building something genuinely new: a personal property manager for your own home. Casa provides a dedicated team that knows your home deeply, handles the work, and is actually in your corner. Every other corner of modern life has been rebuilt by software. Homeownership is the one that got left behind. Casa is the layer underneath that finally fixes it. cc @mikemontano

@iamdavidokeke2 @sandbar is! We're simply along for the ride.

@trueventures This is next level. A ring that lets you whisper to AI without looking insane in public? Sign me up yesterday. True Ventures is killing it again.

Most AI products are getting better at answers. The harder problem is access. When and how do you actually use it? In the early days of AI, interacting with it still looked the same: typing a prompt into a box, or speaking a command into your phone. For something so personal, it felt surprisingly public and often interruptive. That friction shows up in small, everyday moments. You’re mid-conversation. Walking down the street. Sitting in a meeting. You could use AI, but the interface gets in the way. @minafahmi and @hokira kept coming back to that pattern. People don’t avoid AI because it isn’t useful. They avoid it in moments where interacting with it feels unnatural. Typing mid-thought. Speaking commands out loud in public. Pulling out a device just to ask a quick question. So they started with a different question: What would it look like to interact with AI quietly? That question led to @sandbar. At the center is a wearable ring: a system designed for subtle, continuous interaction. It can pick up whispered input close to the hand, interpret touch and finger gestures, and connect those signals directly to AI. No screen required. No need to break the moment you’re in. The idea isn’t to make AI louder or more visible. It’s the opposite. As AI becomes more capable, and more present, the interface starts to matter more than the model itself. The bottleneck shifts from what AI can do to how naturally we can access it. That’s the shift Sandbar is building toward: AI that fits into how people already think, move, and behave. Not something you have to stop and use. Something that’s simply there when you need it.

Keerthi Nalabotu just joined True as our first AI Builder in Residence, working on the systems, workflows, and automations that help our investment team move faster and operate with more leverage. She’s approaching this from a builder’s lens: designing tools around the unique rhythms of early-stage investing. Keerthi graduated from UC San Diego, where she led the builder community. There, she organized hackathons, led demo days, and brought together hundreds of students building something from nothing. Welcome to True, Keerthi. We're so glad you're here.

Drug discovery didn’t hit a wall. It just stopped looking in one of the most important places: nature. Nature wasn’t abandoned because it lacked value. It was just too hard to analyze. For years, pharma moved toward biology-first approaches that felt more predictable. In the process, it stepped away from natural compounds, even though many of our most important medicines started there. @lifeschemistry is built on a simple idea: nature is full of potential. It’s just been too hard to search. For Founder @viswacolluru, that belief is personal. He grew up around his father’s pharmacy in India and later lost his mother to a treatable cancer because the medicine was too expensive. That experience shaped what he chose to build. In 2019, he started Enveda with $55K and one question: What if we could search nature’s chemistry the way we search the internet? Because drugs like Aspirin and Metformin came from nature, but we’ve never had a scalable way to explore it. Enveda is building that system. So far: 18 drug candidates identified 3 in clinical trials (eczema, obesity, ulcerative colitis) ~$1M per candidate vs. $10–15M industry average Enveda is reopening a part of discovery we stopped exploring, and now we have the tools to do it right. The recent podcast, "The $1B Search for Hidden Plant Drugs", by @mariogabriele, is worth a listen if you’re thinking about where biotech is heading, or how personal experiences shape what founders choose to build. Tune in to the podcast, The Generalist: youtube.com/watch?v=BCpsdL…

Read the blog: trueventures.com/blog/quantum-i…

Quantum isn’t one timeline. It’s several, moving at different speeds. True Associate, @soul_dayan, recently spent time learning from researchers, builders, and investors at a recent quantum roundtable hosted by Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs, and this view became even clearer. Hardware is making real progress, with multiple paradigms advancing in parallel. Around it, the stack is already forming. Early software layers are emerging, security is becoming a near-term concern, and applications are shipping, often without needing a quantum computer at all. What’s compounding fastest is the intersection with AI. Models that can reason with physics and chemistry are starting to unlock real outcomes in materials, biology, and drug discovery. At True, we don’t wait for convergence. We like to be the first to believe. The application layer, software stack, and quantum–AI intersection will see value sooner, and that’s where we’re spending time.

Listen to the full podcast → podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

It used to take a team to get something off the ground. Now, in some cases, it takes one person and a system that can keep up. @polsia is built around that shift. On The Kevin Rose Show, @benbroca and @kevinrose talk through what it looks like when a single founder can move from idea to execution without needing to assemble a full team first. Using AI to handle everything from product decisions to go-to-market and ongoing operations. That doesn’t just make things faster. It changes how companies take shape in the earliest days. When the cost of building drops, the spotlight shines on what you're building and why rather than how you'll scale. We’re still early, but this is one of the more interesting unlocks we’re seeing right now.