Zero Prime Ventures

You wouldn't deploy code without testing. Why launch a startup without practice? Building my first company in NYC I was convinced that security was crucial but overlooked in modern API development. I built exactly what I thought the world needed—an early cloud-based API management and security product. The product worked. The tech was solid. But the company struggled. Apparently the market for the product wasn’t as ready as I thought. Engineers excel at building products. But getting a startup off the ground demands much more—sales, marketing, pitching and team building turned out to be just as crucial as the engineering. The path doesn't have to be this painful. Here is what I recommend: 1️⃣ Join a startup with founders you respect 2️⃣ Experience small team dynamics firsthand 3️⃣ Learn startup operations while keeping your paycheck 4️⃣ Build relationships that compound over time After investing in 70+ technical founders through Zero Prime Ventures, I've seen this pattern consistently. The strongest engineer-founders often cut their teeth at startups before launching their own. Curious to hear if you agree with this advice. LMK in comments.

Big moves from Hex today—Barry and team just released Explore, a beautiful new visual experience for working with data. Having built & backed tooling companies for over a decade I've learned most products either sacrifice power for simplicity or become too complex for broad adoption. Hex’s approach to product development—maintaining power and flexibility while increasing accessibility—is exactly why we invested. It's rare to see complex SaaS products that genuinely serve both technical and non-technical audiences well. The team's ability to tackle hard complex UX problems while expanding reach is product development at its finest. And their Halloween launch video brings some much-needed levity to enterprise software. Props to the team for having fun with it 👏

Data is the mother of AI—and metadata is its compass 🧭 Next Tues & Wed our Zero Prime Ventures portco Acryl Data is hosting their Metadata & AI Summit and you should join me. Teresa Tung (Accenture), Nedra Albrecht (Slack), Sadid Hasan (Microsoft), Shirshanka Das (Acryl Data), Raghavan Muthuregunathan (LinkedIn) and Alicia J. (Netfix)—among 10+ others—are opening the hood on real-time data processing, ML model deployment and AI governance at scale. 2,500+ highly technical attendees Virtual 🗓️ Oct 29-30 See you there? Register → https://lnkd.in/gYBJHybv

The birth of data infrastructure startups often follows a fascinating pattern. I call it the "engineer-founder arc." For us, it looks like this: 1️⃣ An engineer at a tech giant works on an open-source tool or infrastructure project 2️⃣ They apply to speak at Data Council to share their work with the community 3️⃣ Their talk rises to the top during our peer-review process & gets selected 4️⃣ They speak at Data Council 5️⃣ 6-12 months later, they start a company and Zero Prime Ventures writes their first check Through Data Council we spot these founders early. We build relationships, learn their vision and often become their first investor through Zero Prime Ventures when they're ready to leap. Engineer-founders choose us for several reasons, one being the massive global network we've built over 10+ years. It's a living, breathing community that delivers: → Product validation → Design partners → Early customers → Technical hires This is hard-fought leverage you can't fake or build overnight and often a reason founders choose to work with us. And 6️⃣ These successful founders often return to Data Council—this time hunting for the next big thing to invest in themselves. The arc is complete ∞ Curious about transitioning from engineer to founder? Did you attend Data Council (or want to) and are thinking about starting a company? Comment or send me a DM.

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Head of Marketing at Zero Prime Ventures and Data Council! In this role, I’ll be focused on connecting and growing the global community of B2B startups that are building the next generation of data science, ML, AI, deep learning, analytics, data infrastructure, devOps, and web3 tools. Excited to see what comes next while working with this amazing team! Pete Soderling Gillian Jarvis Yang Tran Missy Bass

Congratulations to Orb on closing their Series B! We’ve been so excited to support Alvaro Morales and the team as they continue building modern billing infrastructure for AI and SaaS companies. Their traction shows there's real demand for technically differentiated solutions in this space. Alvaro is a prime example of the type of engineer-founder who develops a deep curiosity about all parts of the business and not just the engineering of the product. Proud to be backing this team and their mission and excited to welcome Sri Pangulur Mayfield Fund as their latest investor. Zero Prime Ventures

Today we celebrate two years of the Zero Prime Ventures Podcast! In that time I've had the privilege of uncovering the origin stories and blueprints of the most innovative data startups. Founders, listeners: What has been your favorite episode so far? Drop a comment and tag the guest—I'd love to hear which stories resonated with you + what you want to see next. If you want a peek behind the curtain of top data companies through the eyes of their engineer-founders, have a listen here: https://lnkd.in/g72G8jzn

Wise words from Zero Prime Founder & GP, Pete Soderling.

Zero Prime Ventures is on the hunt for a Head of Marketing to help us grow the Zero Prime and Data Council platform. If you’re as passionate as we are about working with engineer-founders and have been in the trenches leading marketing at an early-stage startup, please reach out! https://lnkd.in/gAsFHRm6

Excited to chat with Pete Soderling from Zero Prime Ventures and articulate why metrics need to be codified whether it’s via a "metrics layer" or just canonizing data models and business logic. This “metrics back-end” has the potential to drive a new generation of applications for the workflows between data and business teams that are manual, repetitive and tedious.