Daniel Michaeli

HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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Should you let customers onto your cap table early on? In Vertical AI, we're seeing it more and more. Casca, an AI-native loan origination platform for community banks, raised a $29M Series A led by @canapiventures. And joining in the round was: → Live Oak Bank (#1 SBA 7(a) lender by dollar volume) → Huntington National Bank (#1 by loan volume) → Bankwell (their first customer, who tripled down from the pre-seed) Three of the most important SBA lenders in the country, writing checks into a company replacing the infrastructure they use every day. A strong signal no doubt. Casca is processing loans 30x faster than industry averages, and they love the product. What's the consideration set for founders? The upside is real. Strategic capital accelerates design partnerships — Casca built alongside Bankwell before scaling, and Live Oak is now a design partner, automating their Express loan process. Investors as references, and hopefully referrers, helps. Esp. in regulated industries like lending. But there are tradeoffs. Customer-investors can slow you down. Priorities as customers (build X features for me) and as investors (scale & generate return) don't always align. It can be tempting to get pulled off the venture-scale roadmap by a giant first customers with a lot of leverage. There's also the competitive question — if your largest customers are investors, does that make it harder to sell to their competitors? The framework that makes sense to me: Customer capital works best when there is some combination of: (1) Marquee names that validate the category and drive industry trust. (2) The market is fragmented enough that competitive conflicts are manageable. (3) The strategics are product evangelists, not well-known startup tire-kickers with a likelihood of quietly churning. (4) Customers on cap table are small-stakes and rights-limited. Casca seems to be threading that needle nicely. And we're seeing more of it to great effect. Vertical AI founders considering customer capital: Ask whether the strategic value outweighs the complexities... and whether it means immediate cred + distribution vs. a leash. 👇 Have you taken investment from a customer? How did it play out?

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🚀 Meet PACT, simplifying SBA-backed acquisitions with investors. Think YC’s SAFE, but built for Main Street M&A. 📘 What is PACT and why we built it PACT (Partnership Acquisition Commonsense Terms) is a free, balanced starting point for the agreements used in SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors. For too long, SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors have been the wild west: every deal is different, inefficient, and confusing, especially for first-time searchers raising capital. PACT gives everyone a common baseline so reviews are faster, expectations are clear, and operators can focus on acquiring the business. 🧩 SAFE for ETA Y Combinator’s SAFE gave startups a shared template that made early investing easier to execute. PACT brings that same idea to ETA. It teaches the key concepts in plain English, aligns searchers and investors on the economics, and sets a fair place to start. Our goal is for PACT to become the default baseline for investor-backed small business acquisitions using SBA loans. 🤝 Who contributed 🏛️ Legal input from top SMB M&A attorneys: Joseph Spina (Cullen and Dykman LLP), Mark Dittrich (Groundswell Advisors, LLP), and Eric Hsu (Clear Focus Law, PLLC) provided feedback on drafts. 💼 Early investor adopters: Jordan F. (Shareholder Ventures), Grant Hensel (Entrepreneurial Capital), Jason Ehrlich (Fruition Capital), Sean Smith (Search Fund Ventures), Adam Kaplan (ETA Funding Partners), Jacob Hall (Kando Capital), Tony Cappaert (Workbench Capital) and Adam Markley (PROX Search Capital) have adopted PACT on new deals. 🎓 Community support: Chelsea Wood and Walker Deibel at the Acquisition Lab and Buy Then Build have committed to start educating the community on how investor deals work using PACT. 👉 What to do next 🔍 Searchers: download the docs and ask your lawyer to start from PACT. ⚖️ SMB M&A Law firms: review the templates and send feedback so the next version is better. 💸 SMB investors: adopt PACT as your starting point and share redlines from real deals. This is a community-led standard, and we will keep versioning PACT as feedback comes in from all sides. 📝 Thanks: Special thanks to Joseph Spina for leading the legal drafting with me and helping shape a true middle ground. 🔗 Download PACT and see the key terms: ETAPACT.com (link in the comments) Let’s make investor-backed acquisitions clearer, faster, and fairer for everyone. 🚨 DISCLAIMER: PACT is not legal advice. Searchers must engage experienced SMB M&A counsel to review and tailor these documents to their deal.

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