Gunderson Dettmer

Thank you Ann McDonald and Zach Crowe for your support of tech entrepreneurs throughout the South -- have fun at the Summit next week in Charlotte! Gunderson Dettmer is proud to sponsor the Seed The South Capital Summit .

As a law firm founded in Silicon Valley, Gunderson Dettmer has provided my partners and me with a unique perspective on dealmaking in the Valley. Join my colleague Zach Crowe and me on June 9th for an insightful discussion on "VC Investing: Atlanta + Silicon Valley - What We Can Learn from West Coast Dealmakers". See details below.

Outstanding presentation by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens on the State of the City at the Rotary Club of Atlanta . My Gunderson Dettmer colleagues Joe Berklund , Archie (AJ) Wilson, Jr. and I were pleased to be joined by our friends and leaders in the tech community Ingrid Curtis ( Sparq CEO), Adam Fish ( Ditto CEO), Gururaj "Guru" Rao ( nuVizz Inc. CEO), and Ron J. ( Tacilent CEO). Special thanks to our good friend Donnie Beamer Jr., CFA, the Senior Technology Advisor to Mayor Dickens. We are all proud to be Atlantans and appreciate the support the Mayor and Donnie provide to our tech community and entrepreneurial growth.

I had an amazing start to my week! Tuesday, I joined Propeller VC’s kickoff for Kernel Camp – a new 8-week program that brings 5 founding teams from the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) to Silicon Valley to live, network, and build together. 60+ founders, operators from Google and OpenAI, investors, and community members packed the room to celebrate the inaugural class of this exciting new incubator. There were off-the-record insights, cheers, tears, and everything in between. The kickoff was held at our Gunderson Dettmer Redwood City office, where I moderated a panel with Omar Shaya and Laila Abudahi . They’re two accomplished founders who have raised millions and learned the hard way what works and what doesn’t. A question came up on our panel I keep coming back to: If you can build a company anywhere, should you still move to the U.S. (and even more specifically, California)? We circled two ideas, sometimes in tension with each other. (1) Yes, because at least two things remain genuinely special here – first, access to high-risk capital at a scale that exists almost nowhere else, and second, especially in California, a cultural default that treats “the way things are” with healthy skepticism and challenges whether the “norm” is the way things should be; and (2) Not necessarily, successful businesses can thrive anywhere. Some of the best MENA teams are proving it by tapping into a deep pool of regional talent to ship world-class products with relentless energy The good vibes continued Wednesday when I joined Husain Misherghi and the cohort at their hacker house for a long dinner about the realities of building world-class businesses. Ghita El Haitmy shared her take on AI-enabled tools and workflows that turn small teams into super producers; Yassine Loqmane walked us through how he thinks about winning the distribution challenge; Asma Basly talked about what it actually takes to get a first enterprise customer across the finish line; Abdalla Odat reflected on how learning the way VCs underwrite investments has changed the way he thinks about building his own company; and Youssef Abolatta tried to close a deal across the table right then and there. I was struck by how these sharp founders already know how to build lean and build global. I’m genuinely excited about this group. A tip: keep an eye on these folks. 👀 Huge thanks to the Propeller VC team ( Hani Azzam , Zaid Farekh , Tala Haddadin) for running a program this innovative, to Omar and Laila for sharing their hard-fought wisdom, and to the Kernel Camp cohort ( Firstflow , Eli by Techbible , OORB Open Organic Robotics , FlowBrave , NexGuards ) for the energy and inspiration you brought. I am rooting hard for all of you and looking forward to Demo Day on May 30th!