We are thrilled to announce Inspired III, a $330M fund dedicated to backing founders solving the hardest challenges facing humanity. Let’s build an Inspired Future together: inspiredcapital.com/

Founders ask me when they should invest in brand. My honest answer: as an early-stage investor at @InspiredCap, the most important thing to me is the founder. But as AI makes it easier to start anything, brand becomes one of the few things that actually sets you apart. So, built credibility first. Brand next. Get the order right.

The world is obsessed right now with what AI can automate, optimize, and predict — and rightly so, given how much is changing. But in all that focus on artificial intelligence, it's easy to lose sight of something simpler: real joy, in real life, for real people. Not every great business is trying to replace a human task. Some of the best ones are just trying to make an ordinary day a little more fun. That’s where Buywander comes in. Buywander is an auction-based marketplace connecting value-seeking buyers with returned and overstocked goods from vetted retailers, including Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Home Depot - and the best part is that every auction starts at $1. We're thrilled to announce that Inspired led Buywander's $21M Series A. We've been impressed by Jordan and Brock's leadership since we first started talking with them over a year ago, and it shows in how far they've taken this. Buywander started as one warehouse in Spokane and has now grown to eight cities nationwide, with recent launches in Denver and Chicago and an upcoming opening in Minneapolis. Excited to welcome Jordan, Brock, and the Buywander team to the portfolio! Read why we invested here: ordnl.link/waTg2MW Read more in Axios here:ordnl.link/JztOEnR

A better retirement for every American? We’re on it.

Not every milestone needs dilution. Rho Capital is a revolving working-capital line for Rho customers. Draw what you need. Repay as you get paid, up to 180 days out. Reuse it next cycle. Non-dilutive. Decided on your business data.

We're thrilled to announce the promotion of Lex Gellman to Principal at @InspiredCap! Two years ago, Lex joined Inspired to partner directly with our Founder and Managing Partner, @alexavontobel, on sourcing, evaluating, executing early-stage investments, and everything in between. Since then, she's become someone founders want in their corner, the kind of person who shows up with real conviction and just as much care for the relationship behind every deal. Lex is thoughtful, sharp, and genuinely generous with her time and ideas, and this promotion is a true reflection of just how much she's already given to this firm. Congratulations, Lex, we are so excited for you!

organization network analysis - @trywindmill

For the growth leaders obsessed with building from scratch, these roles are for you: @standinsurance — Market Lead | SF @rhobusiness — Growth Lead, Product & Virality | NYC Dandy — Manager, Enterprise Growth | USA @getbasiccapital — Enterprise and Strategic Accounts Leader | NYC Share or tag someone who might be a good fit for these roles! Join our talent portal to stay on our radar for roles across Inspired's portfolio. ordnl.link/O1r4jTx

.@dylan, Chairman and CEO of @voyagertech_, joined us on the Inspired podcast to talk about building the infrastructure that will define humanity's future in space, from defense and space solutions to Starlab. One thing he said stuck with us: everyone says follow your passion. Almost nobody actually does it. The founders who build something real are usually the rare ones who go all in on that gap. Listen to Dylan's episode of Inspired with @Alexavontobel: ordnl.link/BXjwI2C

We're popping up in Soho on Tue. 9/8 🌆 Rooftop. Food. Drinks. Vibes. Come hang with the DRF team + our favorites @isabellevop and @almostcmb. All our downtown students, this one's for you. RSVP in thread 🔗

This week's stories all point to the same thing: leverage, and how much of it now sits with a handful of AI labs. 1. @NVIDIA's revenue doubled to $96.2B 2. @OpenAI cut off @cursor_ai's model access following its @SpaceX acquisition 3. A federal judge reversed the Pentagon's blacklist on @AnthropicAI 4. OpenAI's ad business hit $1B in annualized revenue in just 200 days Which of these stories are you watching most closely?

In a survey of our portfolio, we asked founders and operators how much of their code AI is writing right now. Two years ago, AI meant small suggestions as you typed. Today it's writing most of the actual product. The median came back at 85%, with top answers reaching 99%, and it wasn't just engineers saying it. Product leads and CEOs landed on numbers just as high.

Congrats @getbasiccapital on this partnership with @deel, bringing real-time 401k visibility to employees right where they already work!!

Keep getting back up. A little reminder via Nelson Mandela.

A sense of urgency is one of the sharpest tools a founder has. The best founders set their own pace. Nobody handed you that timeline. You just accepted it, same as everyone else around you. Most deadlines are convention dressed up as necessity. Catch yourself defaulting to that convention, then stop and ask what's actually true for the work.

Quantum computing just hit its "transistor moment," the point where the science works and the real race becomes manufacturing at scale. We've been building conviction here for a while, and we break down why in our latest thesis. Read more here: ordnl.link/5kKDokk

If you're a marketer looking to build somewhere fast-moving, one of these could be it. @arketafitness — Brand Marketing Director | NYC ShopMy — Senior Product Marketing Manager | NYC Dandy — Marketing Operations Lead | US @KalepaInsurance — Senior Content Marketing Manager | NYC Share or tag someone who might be a good fit for these roles! Join our talent portal to stay on our radar for roles across Inspired's portfolio. ordnl.link/hOpaenz

Healthcare used to happen on the system's schedule. Now it happens on yours. A decade ago, feeling "off" meant calling your doctor, waiting weeks for an appointment, then waiting again for results. Today, a ring on your finger can flag something before you feel it. A same-day test can tell you what's wrong without a referral. A scan can catch something early, before symptoms ever show up. This shift, from reactive care to consumer-driven, proactive health, is one of the most important structural changes happening in healthcare right now. We broke down why it's happening and where we're investing because of it. Read our full healthcare thesis here: ordnl.link/dCq0EBg

Our new Lock In campaign begins today, and there are three things that I’m certain about: 1. Founders really like seeing their questionable life choices validated on the side of a vehicle. 2. Our customers can reach a human at @rhobusiness faster than these trucks can go 0 to 60. 3. Our marketing team is unhinged. The first Lock In campaign was about the early days of company building: founders missing birthdays, dates, and gym sessions to get the company off the ground. It worked. Now they've got Series B problems: the real and the somewhat hyperbolic. Like explaining how tech works to Congress, mostly. They’ve moved on to bigger things, so we have too. If you see one of these trucks in the wild, be sure to send your Rho rep a pic.

E-commerce conversion rates have been stuck for over a decade. Legacy CRM platforms haven't kept up, they've only added more rules, more flows, more segmentation logic that customers don't want and brands don't enjoy building. We're proud to share that Queen One raised $25M to keep scaling the industry's first fully AI-governed Commerce CRM. We backed Ryan and Maricor in 2025 because they were the pioneers who built the last generation of this category and understand exactly where it is headed. Queen One replaces static, rules-based CRM infrastructure with real-time, AI-driven decision-making that helps brands cut costs by 50-75% while significantly improving performance. In just over a year, the team has grown to 80+ people, signed over 200 launch partners, and opened a new headquarters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn! Congrats Ryan, Maricor, and the whole Queen One team! Read more: ordnl.link/AqT8e2Z

4 signs of a leader built for the long run. Share or tag someone who passes all 4. 👇