Another month of building Daring Ventures in the books, and we’re continuing to make great progress! We thank you for your continued support for what we are building here at Daring Ventures.
Why start Daring Ventures?
Resumes and pitch decks never tell the full story. The real insights are hidden between the lines. That is our story. On paper, we never really looked quite right.
Most saw unusual experience, weird pivots, and strange career paths. But they missed the real story: resilience, curiosity, and self-belief.
So why start Daring Ventures? We can see the incredible, illegible talent everyone misses. For us, this isn't just a thesis. It's who we are.
From Maddi & Joe:
July is full of the “OOO” automatic reply as many fall into the cyclical slowdown that is summer. While vacations consume many this month, we have continued to capitalize on the quality time that comes with people being in their slower seasons.
Our conversations with potential LPs and colleagues continue to reaffirm Daring’s mission and leave us excited to continue to build. The support and constructive feedback we continue to receive is extremely helpful, and we’re grateful to those who have taken the time to meet with us.
We’re continuing to refine our language and strategy and remain dedicated to getting in front of LPs who will be the right partners for us for Fund I.
We believe in the power of in-person connection and are looking to speak to as many people as possible. If there are any individuals you think would be great partners, or simply people who embody what we represent at Daring, we would love to meet them.
Being first-time fund managers comes with a lot of ups and downs, and we remain in awe of the people in our corner cheering us on through both the highs and the lows.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if there is any way we could be helpful to you; supporting our ecosystem is truly what we enjoy the most.
Warmly,
Maddi Holman & Joe Alalou
Your two GPs
Focus for August: Fundraising & Meeting People Where They Are!
Operations Updates:
While building infrastructure, we've also been executing, and the early developments are encouraging:
Increased access to founders through our media presence (OOS newsletter, podcasts, posts).
Continued to source deals, adding 22 to our pipeline as of July 1st. Over 1,000 companies reviewed since forming Daring Ventures.
Maddi was featured in the Wall Street Journal article “How Will AI Talent Wars Shape Venture Capital?” View the article here.
Maddi was selected to be a judge for the Planet Positive Pitch Competition held on July 31st with Wallet Max. View her post about it here.
Maddi spoke on the Wallet Max podcast hosted by Bhuva Shakti. Listen to the episode here.
Maddi was featured on the Capitalist Culture podcast hosted by Kip Knippel. Listen to the episode here.
Joe was featured on The Innovators and Investors Podcast hosted by Kristian Marquez. Listen to the episode here.
Portfolio Highlights
Hostie: AI customer experience platform for restaurants
Hostie created a blog post showcasing their product vs. Slang. Read more about this comparison here.
Hostie sat down with Nick Amano-Dolan from Trick Dog in SF to chat about his experience with Hostie. Watch the short clip here.
Results for DACHA Kitchen & Bar from April show that 76% of DACHA’s calls are now handled by Hostie with no human intervention, reservations are up 23%, and walk-ins have increased by 32%. View DACHA’s story here.
Hostie published a customer case study demonstrating their ability to increase walk-ins by 13% within one month which added an increase in reservations by 20% for Flour + Water. View the case study here.
PraxisPro: AI-powered intelligent backbone for the future of life science commercialization
Wrapping up their new round of funding; our team has made 13 investor intros for this round so far! PraxisPro will use the proceeds to accelerate growth and expand the team to execute on their pipeline.
Had a booth at LTEN 2025 Annual Conference and was able to showcase their product to make commercial training smarter and faster for pharmaceutical sales reps.
Finalizing conversations with a large biotech company based out of San Francisco.
Expanding commercial contract with existing customer pharma customer to include more users and additional product solutions.
Steer: All-in-one influencer marketing solution built for consumer service brands
Steer continues to expand their two-sided influencer marketplace and have opened up access to their platform to get the word out. Read more about their offering here.
Steer released a brand newsletter for the brands on their platform that included an influencer onboarding video guide. Check it out here.
Exploring onboarding process for 5 new health and wellness customers.
Beagle Labs: AI platform that empowers insurance carriers to underwrite homeowners and commercial property policies up to 10x faster with significantly fewer errors
Signed $1.6M in new contracts and expansion into commercial properties.
Inspected over 12,000 properties to date averaging 4 days per inspection.
Executed over $4M in auto adjusted premiums to date.
In the early stages of organizing a few Beagle community and launch events for new products toward the end of 2025. Stay on the lookout for more details on these events through their website!
Can’t Get Enough Daring Ventures?
You can find us 'thinking out loud' here:
📝Out of Scope
This is where we explore ideas in more depth and have a little fun along the way.
We partnered with Jesse McLean at Ancient Teens to give it a brand new look!
🎙️Let's Be Heard Podcast Maddi turns whispers about women's health into powerful conversations. Latest Episode: I've Got 99 Problems, And Fertility Is One with Traci Keen Co-Founder & CEO of Onto Health
Daring Ventures in the Wild
Daring Ventures Summer Office Hours (Powered by Gathyr) led by Joe Alalou every Monday at 8:30am ET
Makin’ our way downtown, walkin’ fast, faces pass and we’re lunchbound.
Farewell lunch for Dawson & Sarah… this crew is the best!
We’re smiling but we’re actually very sad.
Past Travel—did we miss someone we should connect with? Let us know!
Joe was in Michigan July 24th-28th
Maddi was in Massachusetts & Maine July 25th-30th
Upcoming Travel—should we look forward to seeing you? Is there someone we should meet?
Maddi will be in LA August 28th - September 3rd
Behind the Scenes
One of the intern’s (Kira) breakfast of champions… a whole rotisserie chicken.
Daring Venture’s Snack of the Month! Biiiiig antacid team over here.
Deal Flow Questionnaire
Fill out our deal flow questionnaire for tailored exposure to the deals we see.