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One of the best kept secrets in the world of capital is that the federal government has billions of dollars it’s dying to give away to early stage founders and inventors — and all you have to do is ask. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, so here’s a guide to getting in the door of the massive Small Business Innovation Research program.

First, as a bit of background: SBIR is a large network of programs, spread across a dozen federal agencies and the military, established some 40 years ago as a way to help out any American with a great idea but little access to capital.

Over time it has grown to impressive proportions, with a total award budget in 2019 of nearly $3.3 billion. To be clear, this is money intended to be essentially given away to qualified recipients, and not as license fees, or orders, or equity; These cash awards, which range from hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars, come with remarkably few strings attached.

That said, it’s not as if you just reach into the SBIR cookie jar and pull out a million bucks. As with anything involving the federal government, there’s a process — and not a short or simple one. There are extensive official tutorials for later, but this article (informed by tips from officials in the program) should help get you up and running.

It should be noted that this is not the only tech-related government grant program by a long shot, but it is the largest, broadest, and arguably the most accessible to small business entrepreneurs and inventors like you — or it will be once you read this guide. Just be ready to put in a little work.

Step 1: Check yourself

Image Credits: Maskot / Getty Images

The first thing you should know is that the SBIR program operates with a specific (though not uncommon) type of entrepreneur in mind: Someone who needs money to develop and commercialize a new technology or intellectual property, but isn’t yet at the stage where they can attract traditional investment, and the risk or cost is too high for an ordinary loan.

SBIR awards (some agencies offer “grants,” others “contracts,” but you can just say “awards”) are basically cash to bring something from idea to commercialization. They are not for footing manufacturing down payments, repaying earlier loans, or other miscellaneous operating costs.

If your company or invention needs help to cover R&D to get from experiment to working prototype, or prototype to commercialization, you might be a good fit. It doesn’t matter whether it’s software or hardware, your first product or your tenth — just as long as you’re a self-owned, U.S-based small business and you’re building a new technology that needs some cash to get started.

A second, lesser-known benefit of the program is that if you get selected, your company is eligible to skip the line for some government procurement processes that would otherwise require competitive offers. If you picture the U.S. Government as a potential client down the road, this benefit alone may be worth the toil.

The program is generally divided into phases, which you’ll probably want to do in order.

Phase I is for people demonstrating proof of concept — anywhere on the line from whiteboard to prototype. Awards range from tens of thousands to over $200,000, over a period of 6 to 12 months, depending on what is warranted for the specific development costs.

Phase II is for those doing deeper R&D on a proven concept and may be more than a million dollars over a two-year period; As you can see, this is a long term play, not a quick cash grab.

Phase III is where a project may transition to actual paid contracts and purchases — but you can worry about that when you get there.

In other words, while the money has few catches once you get it, the program isn’t a free-for-all. If it sounds like a match and you’re willing to do a little legwork, proceed.

Step 2: Figure out where to apply

Image Credits: Imaginima / Getty Images

Here’s where it starts getting complicated. There isn’t actually just one SBIR program, there are a dozen, spread across as many federal agencies, from Defense and Energy to NASA and NOAA. Each has its own budget and application process — making this already complex enough that many a grant-seeker has bounced right off it (or closed this tab). But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. You’ve got three things going for you.

First, not every technology or business is a fit for every agency.

This is actually a good thing. Think about who the “customer” is for your technology: Your rocket engine isn’t going to be of much use to Health and Human Services; A collision avoidance system for a drone might be good for the Defense Department, but it also might be helpful to the Department of Energy in a different way. What specifically does your tech enable, and why would it be helpful to the work of specifically one agency? That should help narrow it down considerably — but don’t be afraid to think outside the box a little. You might be surprised what some of these departments get up to.

Second, each agency has specific things it’s looking for, both right now and perennially.

This means there’s not much in the way of guesswork. These numerous and various “solicitations” range from general areas of interest to highly detailed requests, are listed publicly (see the links below), and can usually be searched through or sorted by topic. Once you’ve decided that your tech might be useful to either the EPA or NOAA, for example, look through their solicitations — they’re updated regularly, though the schedule differs by agency — and see if one is already asking for what you’re offering or uses similar keywords. You can and should also search through previous years to see if they’ve requested something like your tech in the past.

Third, there are people whose job it is to help businesses through this process.

Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, or PTACs, exist in every state, as well as D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico. These are staffed with people whose job it is to help small businesses navigate the complexities of government grant programs. You can find your local office by selecting it from the list here.

PTACs are more focused on contracts, however, and for these awards you may want to look up your local Small Business Development Center instead. These SBA-funded organizations are also here to help and there are several in and around most cities (select them in the dropdown menu here and hit search).

Though each program has its own requirements and solicitations, they’re all public. Here are the agencies with active SBIR programs, starting with the largest, with links to their starting pages for SBIR applicants. The second link is to their solicitations page (though it may use different terminology), which should list or itself link to current topics of interest.

• Dept of Defense (DoD): SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health (HHS/NIH): SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Energy (DoE): SBIR — Solicitations
• National Science Foundation (NSF): SBIR — Solicitations
• National Air and Space Administration (NASA): SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Homeland Security (DHS): SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Education: SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Transportation (DoT): SBIR — Solicitations
• Dept of Agriculture (USDA): SBIR — Solicitations
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): SBIR — Solicitations
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): SBIR — Solicitations
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): SBIR — Solicitations

Current solicitations are also centrally listed here in a different format. Please note that these addresses may at any time be rendered obsolete, as the government has no standard format for these programs or websites. Even the promotional materials I was given directly by SBIR officials were already out of date. But a little hunting around should get you to the right place. (And feel free to tell us in the comments if something seems off.)

Some of the programs are more similar than others, but there are a couple notable exceptions. The NSF, for instance, has more open-ended solicitations for basic research rather than development. But NASA and Defense are definitely the most complicated.

NASA’s SBIR program is divided up among its various research centers — Ames, Goddard, etc — each of which specializes in different technologies. While the specifics are too many and various to list here, a good way to get started is to look at a list of recent awards for similar or related technologies to your own, and find which center is the lead for it — for example robotic sampling is led by JPL, but small satellite propulsion is at Glenn. Then you can reach out to the SBIR contact for that center.

NASA also has a particularly robust Phase II program, with extended and expanded options for space-based work that necessarily takes longer or costs more money.

Defense has numerous grant programs under several umbrellas, including each branch of the military. To be honest, it’s kind of a mess, but they are working to simplify and accelerate the process. The actual DoD SBIR program, however, overlaps the most with the others and as such should be considered alongside them. You may want to rely on your PTAC or SBA representative to point the way.

Others will have their own idiosyncrasies, but getting started looks similar for all of them.

Step 3: Paperwork

USA, New York, New York City

Once you’ve decided to apply, you’ll want to register at SBIR.gov first thing — you have to get in the system in the first place to be eligible for participation in the process.

The SBIR officials I spoke to emphasized that while understanding the program and finding the right agency or agencies to submit to are important steps, it all falls down if you phone in the actual application — something they’ve seen over and over, apparently.

The applications differ agency to agency, and different topics demand different information, naturally. But in all of them you should be ready to articulate at least the following:

• Detailed but concise explanation of the technology you’re developing
• Company budget, financials, and investors
• Commercial applications and plan to achieve them

Although the applications may only be 10 or so pages long, companies should budget at least 80 full-time hours to complete them. For companies with little experience with this sort of thing, hiring a professional grant writer is a perfectly valid option but by no means required. This is also something that PTACs and SBDCs can help with.

It’s important, officials said, not to focus just on selling the technology or science itself — you must also show that there is a viable path forward for the team and company that the government’s funding will enable. They may not want much in return, but they’d like some assurance that they’re not throwing money down a well.

There is nothing stopping you from applying to multiple programs, though be aware that you probably won’t be able to copy-paste your application from one to the other. You can also apply year after year or quarter after quarter if you like, or to multiple solicitations within the same agency. It’s not uncommon for a company to be accepted only after multiple attempts.

Lastly, if you have any questions about any of this, find and contact the SBIR representative for the agency you’re applying to. These folks are there to liaise and connect you with the right resources, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Just don’t try to pitch them directly — it won’t work.

As you can see, applying to SBIR is not a simple process but if you know the basic steps and resources, you can frontload the hard work while your project is still at an early stage. And while it may sound like a lot of winnowing is being done, recall that there really is a ton of money going into these programs and the whole point is to support American small businesses. That’s you!

Since launching our membership product Extra Crunch 1.5 years ago, we’ve added a number of new features at the request of our community. This includes improvements to login stability, introducing the video Q&A series Extra Crunch Live, launching over a dozen Partner Perks, and revamping our newsletters.

We also listened to the community for where to add payments support. The product is now available in over 20 countries and territories, with Australia and Israel support coming soon. 

Feedback from our community is critical as we continue to build and develop the product. We’re always looking to improve, and we’d love to get feedback on the product in its current state. If you have a few minutes, please fill out the survey below.

mmhmm, the latest project from Evernote founder Phil Libin and All Turtles, has today announced the launch of the mmhmm Beta 2. The 100,000-strong waitlist of people who have requested access are getting their invite to the platform today. Also part of the beta 2: a handful of new features for the video presentation software.

Most notable among them is Co-Pilot. Co-Pilot allows two users to ‘drive’ the presentation simultaneously, with one user speaking and visible and the other running the controls of that presentation, switching slides, playing video and/or changing the look and feel.

But let me back up for those of you who’ve (understandably) missed the mmhmm news in the past few weeks.

What is it?

If Twitch got together with the production team for a late night talk show, and their resulting love child was into corporate presentations, that baby would be called mmhmm.

Essentially, users can elevate their on-screen virtual presentations from a head in a box (or sometimes a screen-shared slide deck) to a more elegantly produced affair.

mmhmm users can run their presentation from a PIP (picture-in-picture) window, change the size of themselves on screen, add interesting filters and effects, and do it all on the fly.

And as fun as that may be, there is a lot involved in running a live production while also giving a presentation, which is why mmhmm is introducing Co-Pilot. Co-Pilot offers users the chance to have their very own executive producer help them with their call, allowing the presenter to focus on what they’re saying instead of the mmhmm controls.

Since Co-Pilot is multiplayer, beta users can invite one friend per day to the platform starting now.

Alongside Co-Pilot, mmhmm is also launching Dynamic Rooms, which gives users the ability to create a background unique to them, selecting the colors, shapes, etc. to have your own ‘template’.

The product has raised a total of $4.5 million led by Sequoia, with participation from Human Capital, Biz Stone, Jana Messerschmidt (#ANGELS), Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten), Taizo Son (Mistletoe), Brianne Kimmel (worklife.vc), Digital Garage, Precursor Ventures, Kevin Systrom (IG), Mike Krieger (IG), Linda Kozlowski (Blue Apron), Julia and Kevin Hartz (EventBrite), and Lachy Groom (Stripe).

Companies have long relied on web analytics data like click rates, page views and session lengths to gain customer behavior insights.This method looks at how customers react to what is presented to them, reactions driven by design and copy. But traditional web analytics fail to capture customers’ desires accurately. While marketers are pushing into predictive analytics, what about the way companies foster broader customer experience (CX)?

Leaders are increasingly adopting conversational analytics, a new paradigm for CX data. No longer will the emphasis be on how users react to what is presented to them, but rather what “intent” they convey through natural language. Companies able to capture intent data through conversational interfaces can be proactive in customer interactions, deliver hyper-personalized experiences, and position themselves more optimally in the marketplace.

Direct customer experiences based on customer disposition

Conversational AI, which powers these interfaces and automation systems and feeds data into conversational analytics engines, is a market predicted to grow from $4.2 billion in 2019 to $15.7 billion in 2024. As companies “conversationalize” their brands and open up new interfaces to customers, AI can inform CX decisions not only in how customer journeys are architected–such as curated buying experiences and paths to purchase–but also how to evolve overall product and service offerings. This insights edge could become a game-changer and competitive advantage for early adopters.

Today, there is wide variation in the degree of sophistication between conversational solutions from elementary, single-task chatbots to secure, user-centric, scalable AI. To unlock meaningful conversational analytics, companies need to ensure that they have deployed a few critical ingredients beyond the basics of parsing customer intent with natural language understanding (NLU).

While intent data is valuable, companies will up-level their engagements by collecting sentiment and tone data, including via emoji analysis. Such data can enable automation to adapt to a customer’s disposition, so if anger is detected regarding a bill that is overdue, a fast path to resolution can be provided. If a customer expresses joy after a product purchase, AI can respond with an upsell offer and collect more acute and actionable feedback for future customer journeys.

Tap into a multitude of conversational data points

Here’s a shout out to all the early-stage founders attending Disrupt 2020. Don’t forget to register for our next Pitchers & Pitches — on August 13 — and get ready to hone your 60-second pitch to a razor’s edge.

If you’re not in the know, our ongoing Pitchers and Pitches webinar series is a pitch-off-masterclass-mashup. It’s a chance to deliver your best pitch to a panel of experts who will provide invaluable critique to help you craft a more compelling pitch. Better pitches equal more opportunities, amirite?

Anyone can benefit by attending Pitchers & Pitches, but only companies exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley can compete. Want to be eligible to pitch in next week’s event? Buy a Disrupt Digital Startup Alley Package here.

We’ll randomly select five startups to pitch, receive direct feedback and have a shot at taking the top prize. We love prizes…especially the kind that help build a better startup. The winning founders receive a consulting session with cela, a company that connects early-stage startups to accelerators and incubators that can help scale their businesses.

Here’s another great reason to exhibit in Digital Startup Alley. You get exclusive access to our three-part interactive webinar series. Check the dates and topics below.

• August 12: The Do’s and Don’ts of Working with the Press
• August 19: Covid-19’s Impact on the Startup World
• August 26: Fundraising and Hiring Best Practices

We’ll announce the pitching lineup — and the specific VC judges those founders need to impress — on August 12. Remember, only startups exhibiting at Disrupt 2020 are eligible to pitch. If you want in on the action, get yourself a Digital Startup Alley Package today.

Register here and join us for the next Pitchers & Pitches on August 13. And hey, even if you don’t compete, you’ll hear loads of good advice on ways to improve your presentation skills and make the most of your 60-second pitch.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

The media landscape is changing rapidly. Even before COVID, media companies were looking at new revenue models beyond your standard banner ad, all the while trying to navigate the oft-changing world of social media and search, where a minor algorithm change can boost or tank traffic.

Anytime an industry is in the midst of a transformation is a great time for startups to capitalize. That’s why we’re amped to have Lerer Hippeau’s Managing Partner Eric Hippeau join us for an episode of Extra Crunch Live.

The episode will air at 2pm ET/11am PT on August 13. Folks in the audience can ask their own questions, but you must be an Extra Crunch member to access the chat. If you still haven’t signed up, now’s your chance!

Eric Hippeau served as CEO for the Huffington Post before cofounding Lerer Hippeau. HE also served as Chairman and CEO at Ziff-Davis, a former top publisher of computer magazine. He sits on the board of BuzzFeed and Marriott International.

Lerer Hippeau portfolio companies include Axios, BuzzFeed, Genius, Chartbeat and Giphy. And while the firm has experience in media, that doesn’t mean that the portfolio is squarely focused on it. Other portfolio companies include Casper, WayUp, Warby Parker, Mirror, HungryRoot, Glossier, Everlane, Brit + Co., and AllBirds, to name just a few.

As an early stage investor, Hippeau knows what it takes for companies to get the attention of VCs and take the deal across the finish line. We’ll chat with Hippeau about some of the do’s and don’ts of fundraising, his expectation for the next-generation of startups born in this pandemic world, and which sectors he’s most excited to invest in.

As previously mentioned, Extra Crunch members are encouraged to bring their own questions to this discussion. Come prepared!

Hippeau joins an all-star cast of guests on Extra Crunch Live, including Mark Cuban, Roelof Botha, Kirsten Green, Aileen Lee and Charles Hudson. You can check out the full slate of episodes here.

You can find the full details of the conversation below the jump.

Details:
Date: Thursday, August 13th @ 11am PT/2pm ET/6pm GMT
Zoom Info: https://zoom.us/j/92633495658
Add this event to your calendar

Clean.io, a startup that helps digital publishers protect themselves from malicious ads, recently announced that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding.

The Baltimore-based company isn’t the only organization promising to fight malvertising (such as ads that force visitors to redirect to another website). But as co-founder wrote Seth Demsey told me last year, Clean.io provides “granular control over who gets to load JavaScript.”

CEO Matt Gillis told me via email this week that the challenge will “always” be evolving.”

“Just like an antivirus company needs to constantly be updating their definitions and improving their protections, we always need to be alert to the fact that bad actors will constantly try to evade detection and get over and around the walls that you put in front of them,” Gillis wrote.

The company says its technology is now used on more than 7 million websites for customers including WarnerMedia’s Xandr (formerly AppNexus), The Boston Globe and Imgur.

Image Credits: Clean.io

Clean.io has now raised a total of $7.5 million. The Series A was led by Tribeca Venture Partners, with participation from Real Ventures, Inner Loop Capital, and Grit Capital Partners.

Gillis said he’d initially planned to fundraise at the end of February, but he had to put those plans on hold due to COVID-19. He ended up doing all his pitching via Zoom (“I saw more than my fair share of small NY apartments”) and he praised Tribeca’s Chip Meakem (who previous investments include AppNexus) as “a world class partner.”

Of course, the pandemic’s impact on digital advertising goes far beyond pausing Gillis’ fundraising process. And when it comes to malicious ads, he said that with the cost of digital advertising declining precipitously in late March, “bad actors capitalized on this opportunity.”

“We saw a pretty constant surge in threat levels from mid-March until early May,” Gillis continued. “Demand for our solutions have remained strong due to the increased level of attacks brought on by the pandemic. Now more than ever, publisher need to protect their user experience and their revenue.”

If you’re exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley during Disrupt 2020 — or you plan to — do not miss this opportunity to sharpen your media skills. The first of our three-part interactive webinar series takes place on August 12th with, The Dos and Don’ts of Working with the Press.

Pro tip: Our August webinar series is open only to folks exhibiting at Disrupt 2020. Don’t miss out — buy a Disrupt Digital Startup Alley Package now and gain entry to all three exclusive webinars. Then get ready to introduce your startup to thousands of global Disrupt 2020 attendees. Talk about opportunity knocking.

Media coverage can make or break a startup, especially in the early stages. Sharing your startup story — the journey, the capabilities, the benefits — in a concise, compelling way draws media interest. And positive media coverage attracts the potential customers and investors that can drive your business forward.

Still, no one’s born knowing this essential skill — it takes time and practice to develop. And no one gives better advice on how to talk to tech media than, well, tech media. Join TechCrunch writers and editors Greg Kumparak, Anthony Ha and Ingrid Lunden as they divulge tips and best practices when it comes to talking with the press.

You’ll come away with actionable steps to present yourself and your startup in the best possible light. That’ll come in handy while you exhibit in Digital Startup Alley. Hundreds of tech journalists from around the world will be there searching for great stories to tell. Give them something worth writing about.

And don’t forget — this is just the first of three webinars devoted to helping Digital Startup Alley exhibitors wring every ounce of opportunity out of their time at Disrupt. Be sure to add these two webinars to your calendar:

• August 19 — COVID-19’s Impact on the Startup World with panelists Nicola Corzine, Executive Director of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurship Center, and Cameron Stanfill, a VC analyst at PitchBook.
• August 26 — Fundraising and Hiring Best Practices with panelists Sarah Kunst of Cleo Capital and Brett Berson of First Round Capital.

Exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley lets you showcase your incredible startup to a global audience. Buy a Disrupt Digital Startup Alley Package, join the first of three exclusive webinars on August 12th, get comfortable talking to the press and learn how to make the best impression possible.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

With the already narrow window of remaining time to complete a census count abruptly cut short by the Trump administration, getting every person living in the U.S. to fill out the form, already a scramble in a normal census year, is a compound challenge in 2020.

The critical once-a-decade count determines everything from Congressional representation to Pell grants to funding for school lunch programs — and as of this week, as many as 60 million households remain unaccounted for. If left untallied, those individuals and their communities will be invisible when the time comes to allocate vital federal resources.

To rise to that challenge, the progressive volunteer and campaign coordination platform Mobilize is launching a central resource hub to empower census volunteers during the six week final stretch. The civic tech startup noticed that a handful of nonprofits doing census work were already bringing campaigns onto the platform, and the new site, GetOutTheCount.com, will amplify those efforts and collect them in one place. 

Speaking with TechCrunch, Mobilize Co-Founder and CEO Alfred Johnson describes the task, reasonably, as “Herculean.” 

“Organizations are trying to reach communities and help them understand what they’re going to be asked in the census, what they’ll not be asked by the census and make sure… that those communities are aware of what their rights are here, are aware of what the deadlines are, and can be counted,” Johnson said. “Because we know that being counted is such a fundamental piece of being included in our democracy.”

One of the biggest challenges this census year is the focus on reaching historically undercounted Black, Latinx and indigenous communities — a key goal if the 2020 census is to capture U.S. demographic shifts and allocate resources and representation accordingly.

Mobilize launched in early 2017 amidst the post-Trump surge of activism on the left and quickly became ubiquitous among progressive causes and candidates. In the 2020 Democratic primary contest, Biden, Bernie and everybody in between relied on the platform to marshal campaign volunteers and steer supporters. This January, the civic tech startup raised a $3.75 million Series A round led by progressive tech incubator Higher Ground Labs. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor, and Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital also contributed to the round.

The digital platform aims to both be a unifying resource to Democratic and progressive campaigns and to do what the events page on social networks like Facebook can’t. For Mobilize, that means translating what on a different platform might remain aspirational online activity into action. It accomplishes that by sending volunteers reminders, prompting them to invite friends and staying connected even after they take action to keep them engaged in similar campaigns.

Groups already coordinating their census campaigns on Mobilize include the NYC Census Bureau, CensusCounts, and Fair Count, an organization founded by Fair Fight founder and former Democratic nominee for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams. Fair Count’s mission is to reach what it calls “hard to count” communities in Georgia, including the state’s historically undercounted Black male population, to win the state the resources and representation that reflect its reality.

GetOutTheCount.com lets anyone type in their zip code to see local census mobilization efforts coordinated across those organizations and others. It stands to reason that if you’re willing to phone bank to reach people who’ve yet to be counted for one group, you’d probably be willing to do it for a different one with overlapping goals. 

For Mobilize, the crucial final census push is something of a crucible for the platform’s power in a year that’s gone all-digital. Johnson has seen virtual events skyrocket on Mobilize as COVID-19 took root across the U.S. Prior to the pandemic, about a quarter of events were virtual — now they all are.  

Johnson acknowledges that the “headwinds” against an accurate census count in 2020 are very real, both politically and logistically, and particularly now that the Trump administration has trimmed the deadline. But he hopes that Mobilize is able to help organizations leverage the power of the platform’s network effect and its scalability during a national crisis that has a nation cooped up indoors rather than knocking on them.

In spite of the crisis, or perhaps because of it, Mobilize has seen a major uptick in volunteer signups between the months of April and July and expects August to be even bigger once the numbers are in.

“2020 is a very hard year for a lot of people for very real reasons,” Johnson said. “I think that is actually motivating even more civic engagement by virtue of the fact that people are wanting to see circumstances change and help their friends, neighbors [and] communities in this moment of existential crisis, on whatever axis you’re evaluating it.”

When Wendell Brooks was promoted to president of Intel Capital, the investment arm of the chip giant in 2014, he knew he had big shoes to fill. He was taking over from Arvind Sodhani, who had run the investment component for 28 years since its inception. Today, the company confirmed reports that he has resigned that role.

“Wendell Brooks has resigned from Intel to pursue other opportunities. We thank Wendell for all his contributions and wish him the best for the future,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch in a rather bland send off.

Anthony Lin, who has been leading mergers and acquisitions and international investing, will take over on an interim basis. Interestingly, when Brooks was promoted, he too was in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

Whether Lin keeps that role remains to be seen, but when I spoke to Brooks in 2014 as he was about to take over from Sodhani, he certainly sounded ready for the task at hand. “I have huge shoes to fill in maintaining that track record,” he said at the time. “I view it as a huge opportunity to grow the focus of organization where we can provide strategic value to portfolio companies.”

In that same interview, Brooks described his investment philosophy, saying he preferred to lead, rather than come on as a secondary investor. “I tend to think the lead investor is able to influence the business thesis, the route to market, the direction, the technology of a startup more than a passive investor,” he said. He added that it also tends to get board seats that can provide additional influence.

Comparing his firm to traditional VC firms, he said they were as good or better in terms of the investing record, and as a strategic investor brought some other advantages as well. “Some of the traditional VCs are focused on a company building value. We can provide strategic guidance and compliment some of the company building over other VCs,” he said.

Over the life of the firm, it has invested $12.9 billion in over 1,500 companies with 692 of those exiting via IPO or acquisition. Just this year, under Brooks’ leadership, the company invested $225 million so far, including 11 new investments and 26 investments in companies already in the portfolio.