From the Maven Team

Sara Deshpande brings 'tough love' to seed investing — and why she's not backing down in a turbulent market

Sara Deshpande first met Rene Caissie, the CEO of Medeloop, in 2022 at Startup Garage, the Stanford business school class she helps teach. He pitched her a fledgling startup idea.

He and his classmates shared a few business ideas with Deshpande: consumer genetic services, health data tracking, and health management for conditions like diabetes. But Deshpande wasn't convinced. She told Caissie and his team members that they needed to think of their potential consumers first to identify more unique and novel problems.

So Caissie reworked his concept and came back to her 18 months later with something better.

That second version became Medeloop, an AI-powered medical research startup that now counts Deshpande's venture firm, Maven Ventures, as an investor. It has since raised $23 million from General Catalyst, Maven, and other firms.

Deshpande's criticism was emblematic of her approach as an early-stage investor. She isn't the kind of VC who politely nods and writes a check or supports her founders' ideas without question.

"With my founders, I'm really known for tough love," she says. "I never say anything I wouldn't say directly to them, and they know everything I'm saying comes from a place of wanting them to succeed."

Deshpande has been investing at Maven Ventures since 2014, when she joined as a general partner. Founded in 2013 by Jim Scheinman, Maven set out to become a go-to seed-stage firm for consumer startups, with bets including the $22 billion videoconferencing company Zoom and the $9 billion AI search startup Perplexity.

At Maven, Deshpande invests in consumer applications across digital health, climate, and AI. She's backed companies including the fertility benefits startup Carrot Fertility and the sustainable seafood company Wildtype.

Above all, she looks for founders who share her vision of chasing emerging consumer trends and are relentless in their pursuit.

"We like to back people who'll tear through a brick wall to bring their vision to life," she said.

From healthcare strategy to startup advisory

Deshpande began her career at Deloitte in healthcare strategy during the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

"It was a moment when all our clients were trying to figure out what the next wave of consumer healthcare would look like," she says.

That experience sparked a lasting interest in how consumers interact with big, complex systems — and what it takes to simplify those systems through tech. While still at Deloitte, she began volunteering at the Idea Village, a New Orleans-based startup accelerator.

The day she paid off the loans she took out to attend Stanford's business school, she called the Idea Village's CEO and asked if she could come aboard full time.

"That's where I got this knack for helping founders identify and achieve bold visions, against all the odds," she said of the Idea Village.

By the time one of Maven's limited partners introduced Deshpande to Scheinman, she had years of experience coaching founders but had never raised outside capital. Scheinman had a few seed investments under his belt, including in Zoom, and needed a partner to help make his vision of identifying and supporting forward-thinking consumer founders a reality.

"Within 24 hours of that first meeting, I wrote Jim an email like, 'Here's my job description,'" Deshpande said.

Deshpande has been at Maven ever since, helping to grow the firm's portfolio and reputation. She's been a board observer or advisor to companies such as Hello Heart, Carrot Fertility, Daybreak Health, and Medeloop.

Finding bold founders in a shaky market

Now more than a decade in, Deshpande still sees long-term potential in sectors like consumer health, concierge medicine, and personalized care.

Deshpande said consumer health technologies remain a resilient sector despite market challenges. An analysis by the digital health advisory company Galen Growth found that consumer health tech investments grew by 9% between 2023 and 2024.

But Deshpande isn't blind to the moment. She acknowledged that recent recession fears and market volatility may shape consumer and founder behavior.

"It's a really turbulent time to be a founder," she said. "We'd all been hoping for a rosier economic picture. That now seems way less certain."

Still, Deshpande said that great companies are often created during periods of economic uncertainty.

She's keeping her eye on founders willing to push forward, including through layoffs or dramatic market shifts. "Sometimes that's the kick somebody needs," she said.

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Select investments: SpaceX (via X.ai), Perplexity, bot.co, Zoom, Hello Heart, Fathom, Carrot, Cruise

Scheinman is the founder and CEO of Maven Ventures, a VC fund that invests in consumer internet and mobile startups. Before Maven, Scheinman was a successful startup founder and executive, and he has achieved six unicorn exits across his career as a founder and investor. He's perhaps best known for naming Zoom while working as an advisor at the company.

At Maven, Scheinman is heavily focused on consumer AI, with his VC firm investing in the likes of Perplexity and SpaceX through its stake in XAI.

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Autonomous vehicle company May Mobility is merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and will become a publicly traded company. It’s a deal that could raise more than $300 million for May Mobility at a valuation of $1.4 billion, the company said Wednesday.

Once the merger is complete, May Mobility said it will be the first public company in the U.S. that is focused entirely on autonomous ride-hailing vehicles. This is meant to differentiate it from a number of other public companies working on autonomy, including Tesla, Rivian, Alphabet (with Waymo), and trucking-focused Aurora and Kodiak.

The move sets up May Mobility to be a test of the stock market’s appetite for pure-play robotaxi ventures.

It will also be a test of May Mobility’s approach to autonomy, which it pitches as “asset-light” and “partnership-first.” Instead of owning and operating the robotaxis, May Mobility’s business revolves around selling its autonomous vehicles to its fleet partners over time while maintaining control of any remote supervision and software updates. In exchange, May Mobility receives either fixed fees or per-trip licensing fees.

Founded in 2017, May Mobility currently operates autonomous Toyota Siennas in three locations in the U.S. It has a partnership with Lyft in Atlanta, and offers rides in two cities — Eden Prairie and Grand Rapids — in Minnesota.

These deployments helped May Mobility generate around $10 million in revenue last year, with a cash burn of around $93 million. It has offered more than 550,000 paid autonomous rides to date, covering more than 1 million miles. The company recently spun up its first trial deployment in Japan and is planning commercial launches in Arlington, Texas, with Uber, at the end of this year or in early 2027.

May Mobility is merging with ACP Holdings Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company established by Houston, Texas-based investment management company Atlas Credit Partners. The merger will involve a $120 million “private investment in public equity” transaction, and up to $217 million from a trust account maintained by ACP Holdings — though shareholders in the SPAC may choose to redeem their stock at the time of the merger, which could reduce the amount of money going to May Mobility.

May Mobility said Wednesday that it will use the proceeds to fund more research and development, especially around removing its safety drivers, as well as supply-chain investments to reduce its bill-of-materials costs. The company is also targeting new geographic deployments, some of which it expects to announce later this year.

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Superhuman acquires YC-backed notetaker Fathom as productivity platforms push for agentic work

Superhuman is joining the cadre of productivity platforms launching notetakers — but rather than building one internally, it is acquiring Y Combinator-backed Fathom.

AI-powered productivity platforms aim to automate work. Typically, that automation is triggered when a user types prompts and creates workflows. It would be even better, however, if AI could proactively start work, and for that, the topics and action items discussed in meetings are key. Hence the desire by Superhuman and similar platforms to move into notetaking.

To date, Fathom, which was founded in 2020, has raised over $30 million in funding, and it was valued at $94 million in 2024, according to data from PitchBook. Its investors include Zoom Apps Fund, Telescope Partners, BoxOne Ventures, Character Capital, and Maven Ventures. Its cap table also includes individuals such as Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt.

The notetaker offers a generous free plan, and that has resulted in over 400,000 monthly active users. The company said that over 1 million people have recorded meetings until now.

TechCrunch learned that earlier this year, Superhuman tested a notetaker internally with select users, but eventually chose to acquire a finished product to integrate with its productivity suite, with AI at the center. Shishir Mehrotra, Superhuman’s CEO, acknowledged this; he said that in the process of testing, the company realized how hard it is to create a notetaker.

“We’ve been working internally on this area for a while as well. I think it greatly increased our confidence in the demand in this category. It also becomes very clear how deep the products in this category are and how much you need to build. A lot of these products make the job feel really easy, but it’s actually quite tricky to do a great job in all parts [of meeting recording],” Mehrotra told TechCrunch over a call.

Mehrotra said that he was impressed with some of the technical intricacies built by the Fathom team, but didn’t elaborate on which ones. He did tease that with a notetaker, Superhuman can work on surfacing meeting context in real time.

Competition in the meeting notetaker space is intense, and startups like Granola, Read AI, and new entrant Wispr have raised millions of dollars to aid that growth. Despite having a healthy customer base or revenue run rate, venture-backed notetakers are feeling the heat from the market to do more than just notetaking. Some of these factors did matter in Superhuman acquiring Fathom, while Fathom’s CEO Richard White said that Superhuman’s 40 million user base was a good opportunity to reach users at scale.

“The reach of Superhuman is massive. I have always thought about M&A in terms of speed of building a product that everyone uses, and a part of that comes down to distribution. If we were to operate Fathom as a stand-alone company, we would have to build a lot of things that are already in the Superhuman platform,” he said.

On the platform front, Superhuman already has an email client, a docs app, a calendar, a database solution, and a newly launched AI agent builder platform. With a meeting notetaker in the middle, Superhuman can draft emails, update data entries, schedule follow-up meetings, and have AI agents start work and extract insights from meeting data.

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Fintech Wealthfront valued at $2.63 billion in Nasdaq debut

Wealthfront's (WLTH.O) shares opened flat in their Nasdaq debut on Friday, valuing the automated digital wealth management company at $2.63 billion on a fully diluted basis, as investors remained selective in a crowded fintech listing.

The Palo Alto, California-based company's stock opened at $14.

Wealthfront and some of its existing shareholders raised $484.6 million in its initial public offering on Thursday after selling 34.6 million shares at the top end of its $12 to $14 marketed range.

The debut contrasts with strong first-day performance from other fintech listings this year, including digital bank Chime (CHYM.O), opens new tab and Sweden's fintech Klarna (KLAR.N), opens new tab.

"While several high-profile deals saw strong first-day returns, the broader aftermarket performance for large fintech deals was mixed," said Lukas Muehlbauer, IPOX research analyst.

"This shows that investors are still selective."

After a sharp post-pandemic slowdown, fintech issuance has started to rebound.

So far in 2025, about 10 fintech IPOs have raised more than $6.5 billion in the Americas, up from $148 million in 2022, according to Dealogic data.

Founded in 2008, Wealthfront provides automated tools and software for cash accounts, low-cost loans and investing in ETFs and bonds, as well as planning tools tailored to millennial and Gen Z clients.

CEO David Fortunato told Reuters in an interview that the median age of clients who had joined the platform in the last year was around 23 or 24.

"We appeal to those folks, and our goal is to continue building products that help them grow their wealth more quickly with tax-efficient strategies, global diversification and low-fee investing," said Fortunato.

The company, an early mover in using automation to build low-cost investment portfolios, has incorporated elements of artificial intelligence into its financial planning software.

The debut comes as companies rush to squeeze in deals before the year-end holidays.

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SpaceX pulls off the largest Initial Public Offering in global history

[Transcript]

ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:

SpaceX had the largest initial public offering in history yesterday. At the closing bell, it was valued at more than $2 trillion, making it one of the largest companies on Earth by valuation. But is SpaceX really worth that much money? Joining me to discuss this is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. He's been following the space launch company for years and has been covering the IPO. Hello.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi, Elissa.

NADWORNY: OK. So just remind us how SpaceX got its start. Where did this company come from?

BRUMFIEL: Yeah. It was founded by Elon Musk in 2002. It made its name building these really cool reusable rockets that could sort of shoot up to space, and then the booster could come back and land on Earth. These rockets ended up even taking astronauts to the space station. But the thing is, the rocket business really isn't all that big. Only about $10 billion a year globally is spent on launching things into space. So a few years ago, SpaceX started a satellite internet business called Starlink. And...

NADWORNY: Oh, yeah.

BRUMFIEL: Elissa, you probably used that in Ukraine, right?

NADWORNY: I did. That's right.

BRUMFIEL: Yeah. Well, that one turns out to be a moneymaker, but it's still not enough to justify this valuation. So this year, SpaceX remade itself into an AI company. In February, it acquired xAI. That's Elon's other AI company. And a lot of this valuation rests on AI making the company a lot of money going forward.

NADWORNY: In the future. OK. But is SpaceX making money today?

BRUMFIEL: No. It's actually losing tons of money. This is one of the things we found out when it released its financial disclosures. According to those documents, SpaceX lost $5 billion last year and another $4 billion in the first quarter of this year.

NADWORNY: Whoa.

BRUMFIEL: A lot of those losses are due to the AI side of the business. It's been burning cash at an incredible rate. I've been calling it a financial black hole as...

NADWORNY: (Laughter).

BRUMFIEL: ...A bit of a space joke. Now, the satellite internet part of the company and the rocket part are doing better. But as I said, they're still not worth that much money. My colleague John Ruwitch spoke to Morningstar analyst Nick Owens. Here's what he said.

NICK OWENS: We value the base business - the rockets and the Starlink - at $40 a share. And then we did a range of scenarios for what might happen with AI.

BRUMFIEL: And in the end, Owens says he believes, including AI, SpaceX shares might be worth around $63 each. But the closing price on Friday was just under $161.

NADWORNY: Whoa. That is - that's a big difference. Can you explain why SpaceX is worth all this?

BRUMFIEL: I'd say there's two things. First, Morningstar itself admits there's a great deal of uncertainty as to how much the artificial intelligence market is actually worth. It's a new technology. But, second, this is really a bet on Elon Musk. You know, people want to pay for his vision of the future. They hope it'll make them money. And this vision is crazy ambitious. In its financial disclosure documents, SpaceX said - I want to read this to you - "our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So, you know, that could be worth $2 trillion, I suppose.

NADWORNY: How far along is SpaceX on this actual journey to extend the light of consciousness?

BRUMFIEL: Yeah. As someone who looks at the technical side of things, I do think it's important to note they have a ways to go. They want to fly huge AI data centers into space, build factories on the moon, colonize Mars. And to do all that, they're really depending on a giant new rocket called Starship. That rocket's behind schedule. It's costing billions to develop. We've got some critical tests coming up this year. And I think seeing how well it does and whether they can get into orbit - that should tell us more about the company's future.

NADWORNY: That's NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. Thanks, Jeff.

BRUMFIEL: Thank you, Elissa.

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Today the Maven team is thrilled to unveil our $60 million Fund IV. This latest fund culminates a decade of working together for our team — investing in talented, bold founders building tech companies addressing emerging consumer behavior and trends. We are driven to help those visionary founders unlock their potential to build iconic brands like Zoom and Cruise. Read more about our plans for Fund IV in today’s exclusive coverage from TechCrunch: Consumer tech investing is still hot for Maven Ventures, securing $60M for Fund IV.

In the backdrop of this market climate, the significance of crowning a ten-year history and successfully closing a new pool of capital is not lost on our team. We are immensely grateful to the bold founders we back and to our LPs for their continued belief in Maven’s team and strategy. Fund IV brings total assets under management to $200 million with more than 60 total investments.

With this new fund, we’ll continue exploring new trends while staying consistent with our investment strategy that’s proven successful. We have a knack for identifying phenomenal, technical founders with a Vision Worth Fighting For and the potential to build a massive company due to a new consumer trend. This strategy has led to an incredible hit rate, beating industry average by 10x, with 16% of the companies we’ve backed reaching a minimum $500 million exit or valuation. Our investments have yielded three billion-dollar-plus exits in Zoom, Cruise, and Embark, and enabled the return of significant capital to our LPs.

Fund IV: The Path Forward

A decade later, there continues to be so much opportunity ahead. The world has evolved significantly since Maven was founded. Society’s increasing complexity and technology’s continued rapid pace of change require a new generation of founders harnessing the power of emerging technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI).

Fund IV will continue our focus on seeding companies rooted in high-growth, consumer tech trends such as applications of AI, personalized healthcare, climate and sustainability, family technology, and fintech. Maven maintains a concentrated investment strategy, making only 6–8 core investments each year.

Once we invest, we become truly engaged partners. We provide devoted support to founders from inception and continue with follow-on investments as their companies scale. Throughout the years, we’ve effectively implemented this strategy across various domains and sectors, spanning over 10 years of successful investments from the emergence of mobile technology, autonomous vehicles, video communication, the consumerization of digital health, and more.

We feel particularly fortunate that this new fund aligns with the incredible evolution of AI technology. As consumer investors, we are hungry to find and fund new startups that are leveraging the power and promise of AI to make life better for everyday consumers. B2B, foundational, and infrastructure AI startups have boomed in the recent months, and we believe now is the time for new consumer applications of AI to blossom. Most people have yet to experience the true promise of AI that improves their life — and we believe we are just now seeing the emergence of nascent companies that will become household names as they make it happen. With this latest Fund IV we’ve already invested in a few, like MultiOn, a leader in building consumer AI Agents and Medeloop, a Stanford spinout leveraging AI to improve health outcomes by accelerating clinical research, with more to be announced soon.

To the bold, consumer-oriented founders that have a unique insight about how AI can deliver on this grand dream: we would love to hear from you.

Our strategy for Fund IV is to stick with what’s working. We’ll retain our highly concentrated approach led by our core investing team — Jim Scheinman, Sara Deshpande and Robert Ravanshenas. In a unique approach to success in our industry, our core team has remained largely unchanged. Jim Scheinman founded Maven in 2013, and Sara Deshpande joined as the first employee in 2014. She continues as a General Partner in Fund IV. Robert Ravanshenas, Maven’s first Associate, has returned as an Investing Partner after pursuing an operating role within a Maven portfolio company. We are incredibly excited for this next chapter together.

We do not do this alone

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our founders, limited partners, families, as well as many friends and colleagues in the industry for your unwavering partnership and faith in Maven.

Moving forward, our objective remains steady: to invest in and back bold founders in creating iconic companies that enhance the world, all while delivering outstanding returns for our LPs.

Collaborating with entrepreneurs, portfolio companies, industry experts, co-investors, and limited partners is an honor. Thank you. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and dive into the work ahead!