This month at January Ventures: January Ventures 6th Annual Founder Survey launches with coverage in Fortune, Systole Health closes $2M pre-seed round, and more!
The 6th Annual January Ventures Founder Sentiment Survey Launches
The results are in! We surveyed over 300 early stage founders to get data about what the startup building environment is like “on the ground.”
What did we find? This year’s report revealed glimmers of a comeback.
Key findings from 6th annual founder research:
Runways are ticking up - For the first time in three years, the majority of early-stage startups have more than six months of runway.
But it’s a bifurcated market - Sentiment among founders of color is at a three-year low. Women founders continue to feel less optimistic about their ability to raise capital and less supported by VCs than male founders.
More than half of founders struggle with mental health - When facing these impacts, founders turn to their co-founders, other founders, and friends and family.
Remote work is here to stay, at least for startups - Today, 66% of early-stage founders are running fully-remote startups. Three years ago, only 38% predicted being fully remote.
While San Francisco still leads, founders have more tech hubs to choose from - Cities like New York City, L.A. and Boston are popular places to build.
AI isn’t coming for your startup job, yet - 96% of founders are applying AI across startup workflows to make their teams faster and more efficient. However, only 17% believe AI can replace jobs at their startup or trim down hiring plans.
You can see the coverage in Fortune here and read the full report here.
Our mission at January Ventures is to make venture capital more accessible and transparent to the outlier founders who will define our future. Each year, we publish this report to drive conversation on how we can work together and drive both change and returns in the broader tech and venture communities. We encourage you to share the results and continue sharing your stories, so we can better serve the next generation of innovators.
We’d like to acknowledge and thank our partners: Fidelity Private Shares and Gunderson Dettmer. Both organizations are similarly committed to supporting the startup and venture capital ecosystems, starting at the early stage. We will jointly host an event this Spring in Boston to discuss the report with founders, operators, investors and ecosystem builders.
Portfolio Highlights
Systole Health, a tech-enabled virtual care platform focused on women’s heart health, has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Benchstrength, with participation from January Ventures, J Ventures, and One Medical founder Tom X. Lee.
Founded by cardiologist Simin Lee and healthcare operations expert Lauren McConnell, Systole Health is on a mission to “bend the curve of heart disease in women” via their care model that focuses on prioritizing outcomes and connection. Currently operational in Massachusetts and Florida, Systole Health plans to expand to additional markets in the US while forming partnerships with providers and payers as it embeds into the wider healthcare system.
Guidehweel co-founder Lauren Dunford spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos alongisde Jesper Brodin of Ikea, Peter Vanham of Fortune, Melanie Nakagawa of Microsoft, and more for Action Speaks. The panel spoke about the business case for action and “how science can guide us in investing and scaling climate solutions.” You can watch the panel here.
Portfolio News
TomKat Center, powered by Stanford University, shared a profile on Guidwheel, which is on a mission to streamline and improve efficiency in manufacturing.
Sown to Grow has been named to the EDInnovators Collective list!
Quarter20, a CAD-connected wiki to automate hardware documentation, announced their public launch.
Food for thought
Fred Wilson’s predictions for what will happen in 2025
Paul Krugman compares today’s AI bubble with the late 90’s tech bubble in have we been partying like it’s 1999?
DeepSeek’s shock: 9 critical things you need to know
The AI industry was thrown for a loop when DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, rolled out a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Was Silicon Valley right to panic?
Reviews of the best AI writing apps
Maren Bannon was quoted in an article for Business Insider: For “VC Twitter”, LinkedIn is becoming the place to be.
Where we were last month
Maren Bannon kicked off the new year by hosting an emerging manager dinner in London with Dan Bowyer at SuperSeed and Paul Kirby and Ella Goldner from Zinc. Thank you to HSBC Innovation Banking for sponsoring the evening.
Jennifer Neundorfer attended the JOURNEY to Lead Summit at Oracle Park in San Francisco. The event brings top female leaders together to discuss leadership and innovation across industries.
Save the Date
Jennifer Neundorfer is judging the Harvard Business School Women’s Student Association Conference Pitch Competition in Boston on February 22nd.
Maren Bannon will be speaking at the London Business School EQUALL Conference 2025 on March 6th.
Jennifer Neundorfer is hosting a series of venture 101 and fundraising sessions at the Harvard Innovation Labs.
Jennifer Neundorfer is attending the Equity Summit, a gathering for thought-leading LPs and GPs, on March 18-20th.
Maren will be speaking at the Tech.eu Summit in London on March 25th.