Team Ignite Ventures - YC Fund Newsletter
May 2025
We’re excited to update you on the latest investments for Team Ignite’s YC Fund I and YC Fund II.
In line with our mission to support high-growth startups within the Y-Combinator ecosystem, these new investments reflect our commitment to targeting innovative companies with high potential across diverse industries. Below are some recent additions to the YC Fund II portfolio, with insights into why we believe each company has the potential to be transformative.
Asks for you
Invest: Review the YC Fund II Deck and Join the YC fund II here
Refer: Forward the deck above to anyone who might be interested
Ignite: review the asks from our portfolio companies (you’ll need to login with Google or create an Airtable account).
Reach out if you’re passionate and want to be introduced to any of them to potentially mentor or advise.
Connect with us if you’re near our upcoming destinations
NYC: May 9th for Family Office Summit
Saratoga, CA (Bay Area): Camp Hustle on May 12th to 145h in
Portland, OR: Team Ignite Happy Hour at Rontoms on May 15th at 4:30pm
Italy: early June (Rome, Sardinia)
Club Ignite ‘25: Applications Now Open!
We’re bringing together Team Ignite founders, LPs, VCs, and friends for Club Ignite ‘25—our ultimate retreat this November in the Caribbean. 🌴 Expect world-class networking, unforgettable adventures, and an environment built for collaboration and connection.
Spots are limited. Apply now to be part of it—more details coming soon!
New Faces on the Team Ignite YC Alum Scout Team
We’re thrilled to welcome five incredible Team Ignite founders to our YC Alum Scout Team, a select group helping us identify and support the next generation of breakout Y Combinator startups.
Meet our new scouts:
Ferhat Babacan – CEO & Co-Founder at Bluedot
A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and serial entrepreneur, Ferhat brings deep product and growth leadership from Zipcar, Bosch, and now his Team Ignite-backed EV charging platform.🔗 linkedin.com/in/ferhatbabacan
Nick Masters – COO & Co-Founder at Vector
Former U.S. Air Force pilot and enterprise sales leader at Drift and Box, Nick brings unmatched GTM depth and operational rigor.🔗 linkedin.com/in/nicholasamasters
Samir Sen – CEO & Founder at Flair Labs
Built Apple’s central ML platform and was part of the Stanford AI Lab. Now building the most lifelike AI assistant in real estate and lending.🔗 linkedin.com/in/samir-sen-3a2b72123
Omair Ansari – CEO & Co-Founder at Abhi
Fintech leader building one of the fastest-growing financial wellness platforms in emerging markets. 🔗 linkedin.com/in/omair-ansari-40494329
Aamish Ahmad Beg – CEO & Co-Founder at Lopus AI
A rising star in AI-powered sales automation, helping B2B teams identify in-market buyers through real-time online signals. 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/aamish-ahmad-beg/
This group represents the best of founder-led insight, with technical and GTM expertise across fintech, SaaS, and AI. We’re grateful to have them onboard.
YC Winter 2025 Batch Overview
The Winter 2025 Y Combinator (YC) cohort showcased a new generation of AI-driven startups, marking one of YC’s most automation-focused batches to date. Our fund participated actively in this batch, making 8 investments (below) across a range of companies. From AI “coworkers” tackling specialized tasks to developer tools enhancing AI systems, W25’s standout feature was the dominance of automation and vertical SaaS innovation. This update summarizes our fund’s W25 investments, highlights key themes from the batch, and compares W25 with the Fall 2024 cohort.
Our Fund Participation in W25
We invested in eight W25 startups, backing founders applying AI and software to clear, monetizable problems. Our W25 portfolio spans both horizontal developer tools and industry-focused solutions. Mesh is an AI-powered finance coworker automating bookkeeping and budgeting for small businesses, while a0.dev generates production-ready React Native code using AI to accelerate mobile app development. We also funded Sift, an AI-driven observability platform poised as a lean replacement for Datadog in cloud monitoring, and Superglue, an open-source tool that makes integrating APIs seamless for developers.
Equally exciting are our vertical-focused AI investments. Caseflood serves as an AI receptionist for law firms, automating client intake and preliminary case screening. In the sales domain, Lopus uses AI to sift through leads and identify high-intent prospects, acting as a smart assistant for sales teams. In healthcare, YouShift is bringing AI to hospital workforce scheduling, optimizing staff rotations and reducing shortages, while Toothy deploys AI agents to automate revenue cycle management for dental clinics (handling billing, insurance claims, and payment collections). Each of these startups addresses a concrete pain point in its sector with a clear path to revenue, exemplifying the batch’s focus on practical applications over hype.
Batch Themes: AI and Early Traction
AI & Automation Dominate. Winter 2025 will be remembered as the batch where AI-driven automation took center stage. Nearly every company—our portfolio included—leverages AI to either replace or augment human workflows (a phenomenon I’m calling capital eats labor). YC has explicitly encouraged this shift: rather than just assist humans, new startups aim to automate entire job functions in the way prior generations used software for incremental gains. Indeed, W25 felt like the coming-out party for “vertical AI agents,” startups that act as AI coworkers in specific domains (tax accounting, medical billing, legal intake, etc.) with the goal of full automation. This is essentially a 2.0 version of the classic vertical SaaS playbook: whereas traditional SaaS made workers more efficient, these AI agents strive to handle the work outright. Notably, building such deep solutions requires significant domain expertise and integration savvy, a bar that W25 teams have been able to meet. Many founders in this cohort brought years of industry experience, enabling their AI products to hit the ground running with surprisingly capable early versions.
Developer Tools & Vertical SaaS Converge. Another theme was the rise of “picks and shovels” for the AI gold rush. A portion of the batch (including companies like Sift and Superglue in our fund’s portfolio) focused on infrastructure and dev-tools that help deploy or scale AI systems. This mirrors what observers noted at Demo Day: alongside numerous AI agent startups, a “surprising number of startups [were] creating tools to enhance other companies’ AI agents” wrote Techcrunch. In other words, W25 wasn’t just about end-user AI applications, but also about the ecosystem enabling those applications – from code generation platforms to monitoring tools. The synergy between these support tools and vertical AI apps was evident, as better dev tooling accelerates the path to product-market fit for domain-specific AI products.
Early Product-Market Fit Signals. Encouragingly, the Winter 2025 batch showed strong early traction indicators. Many W25 startups arrived at Demo Day with paying customers, pilot programs, or impressive growth metrics. In fact, YC CEO Garry Tan noted that the W25 cohort was the fastest-growing in YC’s history, averaging an aggregate 10% weekly growth in revenue and usage – “not just the top one or two companies, but the whole batch.” This kind of across-the-board momentum is unprecedented and underscores how quickly businesses are adopting AI solutions that demonstrably save time or money. We observed that several of our portfolio companies already have signed pilot customers or LOIs, and are iterating products in tight feedback loops. Such early wins, combined with the inherently scalable SaaS models, give confidence that W25 startups are on a faster track from inception to product-market fit than prior batches. Investors are taking note of this traction: despite a cautious funding environment overall, the clear ROI and early revenue of these companies made them standouts in early 2025.
Comparison to Fall 2024 Batch (F24)
Comparing Winter 2025 to the Fall 2024 YC batch reveals a few key shifts in focus and composition. AI Verticalization Intensified: While the Fall ’24 cohort (YC Summer 2024) already had a heavy AI presence, the W25 batch doubled down on AI agents in specific verticals like healthcare, legal, and sales. For example, W25 included multiple healthcare-oriented AI startups (e.g. YouShift in hospital ops and Toothy in dental admin) and a legal AI agent (Caseflood), whereas F24 had relatively fewer such targeted AI solutions. This reflects an increased confidence in deploying AI into domain-specific workflows and a maturation of the “AI coworker” concept across industries.
More B2B, Fewer Moonshots: Winter 2025 featured a higher concentration of B2B SaaS-oriented plays with clear monetization paths, whereas Fall 2024 had a sprinkling of frontier-tech moonshots. In F24, we saw a couple of ambitious outliers – for instance, a startup building data centers in space, which stood out as an “extreme moonshot” even though it had early customers lined up. W25, by contrast, was more grounded. The batch skewed toward enterprise and SMB software solutions targeting immediate business problems, and there were slightly fewer frontier science or hardware projects than in F24. This isn’t to say W25 lacked ambition; rather, its ambition was channeled into AI-forward software with nearer-term revenue potential instead of longer-horizon tech. The upside of this tilt is that W25 companies generally demonstrated stronger early traction (as noted above), whereas F24’s frontier startups were more focused on prototyping and R&D milestones.
Experienced Founders & Vertical Depth: Another notable difference was the profile of founding teams. The Fall ’24 batch had brilliant founders as well, but W25 saw more industry veterans turned startup founders, especially in those vertical AI categories. Many of the Winter ’25 startups are helmed by people who intimately know the sectors they’re disrupting – ex-lawyers building legal AI, clinicians and hospital admins behind healthtech AI, former sales managers creating sales automation, and so on. This trend of deep domain expertise injected into AI startups meant that W25 projects often started with a clearer understanding of customer workflows and compliance requirements. It likely contributed to the faster onboarding of pilot users and partnerships. By comparison, some F24 companies were tackling bold ideas in nascent fields where founder-domain fit was less established (or the domain itself was entirely new, as with space or advanced robotics). The vertical focus and seasoned teams in W25 ultimately produced companies that felt more “investor-ready” at Demo Day – not necessarily bigger ideas, but tighter execution plans and clearer business models from the outset.
Looking Ahead to Spring 2025 (X25)
Looking ahead to YC’s upcoming Spring 2025 (“X25”) cohort, one theme stands out: an even deeper embrace of AI. YC leadership has noted that the rapid pace of AI innovation is bringing more founders into the pipeline, and fittingly X25 already appears to be the most AI-dominated batch yet. Vertical-specific automation is a hallmark – many teams are building generative AI copilots and robotic automation for niche domains, from hospital billing to enterprise accounting to wet-lab research. Even classic YC sectors like developer tools and fintech are showing up in AI-native form (think an AI-powered mortgage advisor replacing a loan officer or coding platforms that leverage AI to prevent duplicate work). Notably, the founder pool is more global than ever, continuing YC’s push beyond Silicon Valley and into international markets.
Early standouts from X25 illustrate these trends. For instance, Claim Health is building an AI copilot for healthcare revenue teams to streamline insurance claims processing, and Combinely offers a similar AI “coworker” for accounting departments to automate finance workflows. On the industrial side, Zeon Systems pairs AI with robotics to automate lab experiments from a simple natural-language prompt, while Text.ai is embedding generative AI into group chats on WhatsApp and SMS to assist with everyday tasks. Even deep tech hardware is in the mix: Atum Works is developing a 3D-printing process for microchips that could cut fabrication costs to a tenth of today’s standard. These companies exemplify X25’s ambitious scope and hint at the batch’s potential to produce the next wave of industry-defining startups.
Outlook and Closing Thoughts
Winter 2025 has proven to be a compelling batch for our fund, validating our emphasis on AI/automation and vertical SaaS investment. We are excited by the early performance of our W25 portfolio – eight companies tackling real pain points with AI-first solutions – and encouraged by the batch-level traction that outpaced historical norms. This strong showing not only boosts confidence in our current investments, but also sets an optimistic tone for the year ahead. Looking forward, we expect the momentum to continue into the next YC cycle, as the playbook of pairing deep domain expertise with cutting-edge AI is just beginning to show its potential. In summary, our fund’s W25 experience has been extremely positive, and we remain bullish about what’s ahead. We’re grateful for the support of our LPs and are more energized than ever to help these startups scale.
Thank you for reading, and here’s to building on this success in the batches to come!
YC Fund II New Investments
We’re thrilled to share our latest investments from the Winter 2025 Y Combinator batch. This cohort continues the momentum of AI-first, B2B-focused innovation. Each of these startups reflects our core thesis across fintech, healthcare, dev tools, and automation—with standout founders, early traction, and clear paths to scale.
Investments made in the W25 Batch
Mesh – AI Finance Co-Pilot for SMBs
What it does: Automates bookkeeping, reconciliation, and budgeting.
Why we invested: Founded by former Carta execs with deep fintech experience. Early customer adoption signals strong market demand.
🔗 usemesh.com
a0.dev – Instant AI App Builder for React Native
What it does: Generates production-ready apps in minutes.
Why we invested: Tens of thousands of developers already onboarded. Founders have a strong track record building dev tools.
🔗 a0.dev
Sift Dev – AI-Native Alternative to Datadog
What it does: Surfaces only relevant logs and insights to reduce DevOps noise and cost.
Why we invested: Replaces expensive log review tools with a smarter, outcome-based model.
🔗 runsift.com
Superglue – Open-Source AI for API Integrations
What it does: Automates mapping and transformation of data across APIs.
Why we invested: Developer-first go-to-market with strong early interest from enterprises.
🔗 superglue.cloud
Caseflood – AI Receptionist for Law Firms
What it does: Automates client intake, scheduling, and follow-up for high-volume firms.
Why we invested: Strong founder-market fit with rapid early traction in legaltech.
🔗 caseflood.ai
Lopus AI – Sales Intelligence from Online Conversations
What it does: Identifies buyer intent by scanning digital conversations.
Why we invested: Reinvents how B2B teams source and engage high-intent leads.
🔗 lopus.ai
YouShift – Hospital Workforce AI Scheduler
What it does: Reduces admin overhead with smart shift planning and coverage prediction.
Why we invested: Tackles a critical healthcare ops pain point with clear global expansion potential.
🔗 you-shift.com
🦷 Toothy AI – Automated Revenue Cycle for Dental Clinics
What it does: Uses AI agents to automate claims, verifications, and payments.
Why we invested: Serves a fragmented, underserved market with breakout early momentum and experienced founders.
🔗 toothy.ai
For full details, founder asks, and podcast episodes: View Our Portfolio on our website
🎙 Hear their stories on the Ignite Podcast
YC Fund II New Ignite Podcast Episodes
Mesh – AI Co-Pilot for Finance Teams
Episode #155
Automates bookkeeping and budgeting for SMBs.
Strong early traction and velocity since launch.
🎧 Listen now
⚡ Thunder Compute – GPU Virtualization for AI
Episode #134
Tackling global GPU scarcity with breakthrough cloud infra.
Steady technical progress and growing inbound interest.
🎧 Listen now
LightScreen AI – AI Interviews for Engineers
Episode #132
Automates deep signal interviews via voice/video AI.
Signed major partnership and added notable enterprise customers.
Backed by VP of Technology at Deel
🎧 Listen now
Cekura (fka Vocera) – Observability for AI Voice Agents
Episode #142
Ensures reliability of AI agents with simulation testing.
Iterating quickly despite retention headwinds; building toward Series A.
🎧 Listen now
YC Fund I Portfolio Updates
Team Ignite's YC Fund I continues to deliver strong performance, with a growing number of companies scaling revenue, raising follow-on rounds, and hitting product-market fit. Most notably we’re now a top decile Fund according to Carta data for the 2022 vintage.
📣 ICYMI: We celebrated 30+ investments in our YC Funds I in our recent press release.
YC Fund I continues to gain momentum, with multiple portfolio companies achieving markups and raising new rounds. Below are the most notable updates since our last newsletter in February:
YC Fund I Markups Since Last Newsletter
Solve Intelligence (MOIC: 4x)
An AI-powered document editor transforming how patent attorneys draft and manage filings.
Raised a $12M Series A led by 20VC, with participation from Microsoft’s M12 and Thomson Reuters Ventures.
Now serving over 200 IP teams globally, including top law firms like DLA Piper.
Achieved solid month-over-month revenue growth and reached profitability.
Expanding to NYC and scaling the team to meet growing enterprise demand.
ParadeDB (MOIC: 3.75x)
Postgres-native AI search engine eliminating the need for Elasticsearch or Pinecone.
Raised a Series A led by Craft Ventures, a top-tier fund known for backing high-performance dev tools (e.g., Sourcegraph, Mercury, AgentOps).
Allows teams to run fast, full-text search natively within PostgreSQL, simplifying their infra stack.
Trusted by companies like Sweetspot for unified analytics and real-time GenAI search use cases.
PropRise (MOIC: 1.25x)
AI investment analyst for commercial real estate, surfacing hidden opportunities in fragmented markets.
Focused on niche verticals like mobile home parks and self-storage.
Experienced impressive ARR growth and expanding customer base.
Led by repeat founders with backgrounds at Stripe, Facebook, Microsoft, and Embark.
Vector (MOIC: 3.33x)
Relationship intelligence for B2B sales teams, turning your company’s network into a go-to-market engine.
Uses AI to analyze 400M+ social and email signals to identify warm intros and sales leads.
Fast-growing GTM motion post-YC graduation, with high user engagement.
On track to be a breakout leader in relationship-driven prospecting.
YC Fund I Highlights
Team Ignite’s YC Fund I continues to perform strongly, with multiple companies achieving significant product milestones, revenue growth, and follow-on funding.
In addition to recent markups above, here are five companies with notable updates since our last newsletter:
Rollstack (MOIC: 4x)
Automates slide deck creation from live BI dashboards and spreadsheets.
Achieved its highest-ever new enterprise customer growth this quarter.
Closed a Series A led by Insight Partners.
Featured in our Team Ignite press release.
beU Delivery
One of Africa’s fastest-growing food delivery platforms.
Continued geographic expansion, despite a temporary revenue dip due to national policy reforms.
Remains one of our strongest consumer growth stories in Fund I.
Coverage Cat
AI-native insurance product focused on younger demographics and underserved risk categories.
Pivoted from an ad-driven GTM strategy to partnership-led distribution.
User signups exceeded sales capacity, validating demand for its consumer product.
Anchor (MOIC: 2.33x)
Banking-as-a-service infrastructure powering embedded finance across Africa.
Strong revenue growth and the addition of high-profile customers.
Early signs of a potential upcoming fundraising round.
Middleware
End-to-end observability platform for modern DevOps teams.
Shipped key integrations with GitHub, Prometheus, and Journald.
While not yet marked up, product velocity and market fit are accelerating.
We're proud to back these teams and thrilled with their continued progress. As always, if you know founders who fit our thesis or want to get involved with any portfolio companies, reply to this newsletter.
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As a reminder, you can see all updates, founder asks, markups, what each company does, etc on our website, click portfolio, log into Airtable via your Google account, and click the appropriate tab at the top. Also note you can change between Gallery and List views on the top right (the list view has more data)
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Thank you for your continued support of the Team Ignite Y-Combinator Fund! If you’re not signed up for the new fund, it isn’t too late to join the YC Fund II here.
To dive deeper into the stories behind these successes, we encourage you to follow the Ignite Podcast, where many of these founders have shared unique insights into their journeys, challenges, and visions for the future. Listening to these episodes is a great way to stay connected with the innovators driving value in our portfolio, so be sure to check out any episodes that catch your interest!
Sincerely,
Brian Bell
Team Ignite Ventures
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IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE:
This communication is being made pursuant to Rule 506(c) of Regulation D under the Securities Act of 1933. Team Ignite Ventures is currently accepting investments from verified accredited investors only. Verification of accredited status is required prior to investment and may involve third-party validation of income, assets, or professional qualifications.
General Disclaimer:
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Any such offer will be made only pursuant to formal offering documents, which include important information regarding risks, fees, and expenses.
Investing in early-stage startups involves substantial risk, including the potential loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Prospective investors should consult their own legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment.
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While this newsletter is publicly shared, certain underlying data, documents, and portfolio company materials may remain confidential and proprietary to Team Ignite Ventures or the companies referenced. Please do not distribute or quote from those materials without permission.
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