2024 was a year of building - building our relationships, networks, deal flow, events, communities, and portfolio. At Redbud VC, building has always been at the core of our philosophy, but this year we’ve been relentlessly focused on building the things that actually matter to our founders. Over the past year, we’ve:
Reviewed 3,000+ companies
Invested in 11 companies
Made 300+ customer, investor, and talent introductions to our portfolio companies
Crossed 14,000 subscribers on the Redbud VC Newsletter
Joined over 700+ attendees at our events
Broke 1M impressions across our website, Medium, Linkedin, and X
Investments:
We invested in 11 pre-seed startups across the US and Canada in 2024. We take pride in driving our own convictions in the companies we invest in, and when we say generalist, we really mean it. Take a look at our investments from 2024 below ⤵️
Trially
AI-enabled clinical trial recruitment software
Kansas City, MO | Kyle McAllister, Trevor Welch, Ramon Prieto | Health Tech | Why We Invested
Braid
API platform for financial institutions to manage complex third-party programs entirely in-house
Santa Clara, CA | Randy San Nicolas, Jake Zhu | Fintech | Why We Invested
Reactiv
AI-generated apps and app clips for Shopify merchants
Toronto, Canda | Ross Correia, Zack Elias, Michael Pezzi | E-commerce | Why We Invested
Biography Health
Personalized DNA-based healthcare
Columbia, MO | Bill Turpin, Dr. William Stanford | Health Tech | Why We Invested
Stealth
Salt Lake City, UT | Proptech
Fair
Subscription-based embedded auto warranties
Rockland, DE | Will Betteridge, Saritha Ivaturi | Auto | Why We Invested
Stealth (Incubated @ Redbud)
Columbia, MO | Proptech
Stealth
New York, NY | AI
Synvect
Next-generation biotechnology platform to eliminate vector-borne disease
San Diego, CA | Pooja Patel, Dr. Nikolay Kandul | Biotech | Why We Invested
Reelist
Recruiting for skilled trades via social media
Norfolk, VA | Katy Schuck, Sean Worden | HR Tech | Why We Invested
Scribe Social
API for social video transcription & content moderation
Kansas City, MO | Jordan Mryyan, Cole Robertson, Warren Wang | DevTools | Why We Invested
Events:
Missouri Startup Weekend - April 2024
Missouri Startup Weekend is a three-day business pitch and development event we hosted at the EquipmentShare headquarters. This is year marked the 12th annual Missouri Startup Weekend and the 3rd year of Redbud VC has hosted.
Missouri Startup Weekend offers a unique opportunity for anyone to be an entrepreneur while providing the talent, mentorship, and resources needed to launch a company. Participants can pitch their ideas on Friday night and then form teams around the top ideas. Teams work on their ideas throughout the weekend (e.g., talking to customers, building an MVP, researching the market, etc.) and pitch on Sunday while being judged by successful entrepreneurs, operators, and investors. This year we brought in 20+ high-caliber mentors to work with the participating teams on Saturday, including:
Willy & Jabbok Schlacks, Co-Founders of Equipment Share (MOSW Winner)
Wade Foster, Co-Founder of Zapier (MOSW Winner)
Kelsey Raymond, COO & Co-Founder of Intero Digital (MOSW Founder)
Sarah Hill, CEO & Co-Founder of Helium
Andrew Wegrzyn, Principal at SixThirty
and many, many more….
We also brought together a panel of judges composed of highly successful founders and investors who have many years of experience building startups and investing in successful companies, including:
Catherine Williams, Principal at Dundee VC
Brent Beshore, CEO & Co-Founder of Perminate Equity (Judge at the 1st MOSW)
Dr. Katie Thompson, CEO & Co-Founder of Elemental Enzymes
Riddhiman Das, CEO & Co-Founder of Tripple Blind
Sandy Kemper, CEO & Co-Founder of C2FO
We crowned 3 winners at Startup Weekend in 2024:
1st Place Winner of $15k Grand Prize: Solvtax - A platform to manage business property tax.
2nd Place: Soundcheck - Coworking and collaboration spaces for musicians
3rd Place: Fynch Interactive - Game development studio for mature Roblox games
RMG Summit - July 2024
The RMG Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only gathering designed to unite leading executives, investors, and entrepreneurs who are redefining the future of the built environment and connecting key players from Middle America and the coasts.
We hosted the RMG Summit alongside MetaProp and Gateway South in Brooklyn, New York. We brought together 150+ construction/proptech founders, investors, and industry execs from over a dozen states and three countries for >three hours of curated networking and a pitch competition.
Networks = Shared. Demos = Booked. Customers = Closed.
We curated a panel of judges for the pitch competition, including:
Willy Schlacks, Co-Founder of Equipment Share
Sarah Liu, Partner at Fifth Wall
Zach Arrons, Co-Founder and GP at MetaProp
Sarah Buchner, Co-Founder and CEO of Trunk Tools
And Brooke Mercy, CEO and Co-Founder of Offload was crowned the winner.
Main Street Summit: Startup & Venture Track - October 2024
For our final event of the year, we co-hosted The Startup and Venture Track at The Main Street Summit alongside Mercato Partners. The Main Street Summit brings over 1k operators, owners, and investors to Columbia, MO, for a three-day festival. We hosted 20+ venture track exclusive speaker sessions and main stage events, including:
Early-stage investing with Far Out Ventures, Narya, & Hyde Park Venture Partners
How fund managers can grow a social presence with Turner Novak at Banana Capital
Implementing AI into your business with Wade Foster from Zapier
Investing in emerging managers with an LP panel
Oh yeah, and we also had some exclusive activities for track attendees. Some of our favorites:
Tequila & Mezcal Tasting at The Arcade District
Pottery Classes
Redbud Rooftop Yoga and Juice Bar
Poker Night at 6 Mile Distillery
Communities + Media:
We crossed 1M Impressions across our website, Medium, Linkedin, and X this year, and we launched a few community + founder initiatives:
The Redbud VC Newsletter broke 14k subscribers.
We launched The VC List - a list of 18k investors that can be filtered on our website
We launched the Mizzou Startup Community - to support Mizzou students and alumni on their company-building journey + connection
Brett joined the University of Missouri as Adjunct Faculty for the Allen Angel Capital Education Program (AACE)
Equipment Share looks to eye a 2025 IPO
Travel:
This year took our team from coast to coast talking to founders, investors, and communities about what we’re building at Redbud.
January →
Windy City Venture Crawl | Chicago, IL
April →
Missouri Startup Weekend | Columbia, MO
Invest Midwest | Kansas City, MO
VCIC | Chapel Hill, NC
May →
Camp Hustle | Saratoga, CA
Capital Camp | Columbia, MO
Rise of the Rest Summit | Washington DC
Soapbox Dinner Series | Minneapolis, MN
June →
RMG Summit | New York, NY
August →
Rally | Indianapolis, IN
September →
M25 Summit | Chicago, IL
October →
Main Street Summit | Columbia, MO
November →
MidxMidwest | Kansas City, MO
Sierra Ventures Summit | San Francisco, CA
Personal Updates:
Willy & Jabbok:
Been heads down as EquipmentShare looks to IPO in 2025
Grew ES by ~2k employees
Raised $600M in the primary debt capital markets via a bond
Brett:
Got Married in Florida
Added Tom to the family of French Bulldogs
Bought a house in Columbia
Maria:
Backpacked and worked in Europe for 10 weeks (If you need to know the best WeWork locations or public libraries across Europe, let her know)
Moved from Columbia to Chicago, IL! If you’re building something in Chicago, email her maria@redbud.vc, first cup of coffee is on Redbud.
Taught Brett lots of Genz slang #slay
2025 Predictions:
Our Year in Review wouldn’t be complete without some of our predictions for 2025. Here’s how our 2024 trends shook out:
Middle America will have an increased rate of capital invested due to the appetite for profitability and decreased deal flow on the coasts. ✅
Multi-stage funds will continue to eat market share, and emerging fund managers will struggle to raise subsequent funds.. ✅
Crypto investing will make a comeback, but not at pandemic levels. Progress will be made toward deregulation, but hurdles will carry this into 2025 and 2026. ✅
Capital deployment will rise significantly in H2 of 2024 after capital pools swell and rates decrease. ➖
The prestige of educational institutions will decrease. ➖
VCs will add “dividend investments” as a new class of venture. ➖
AI hype will cool. ❌
2025 Predictions:
IPO window opens, but many companies will have down rounds to their latest private market valuation.
Valuation reckoning as IPOs and M&As heat up at much lower valuations.
YC companies will have to give on the $15M minimum valuation as many struggle to raise post YC and/or raise flat round 12-18 months later.
Mega funds start buying early stage emerging manager funds, providing liquidity to LPs.
OpenAI will be surpassed as the leading AI company.
Lackluster exit multiples from depressed valuations and over raising will further decrease distributions to early stage funds decreasing Fund III and IV raises and pushing multi-stage funds away from Pre-Seed, opening a window for new and existing managers on Fund I or II to take advantage of reasonably priced deals.
