Today’s Menu ☕️

• El Segundo Tech Breakfast Club Mar 11th (LA)

• SF Tech Breakfast Club March 13th (SF)

• NYC Tech Breakfast Club March 19th (NYC)

• Citrin Cooperman (Accounting/Tax)

• Laura Hamilton (Notable Capital) and the future of Dev Tools

👋 Hi, Breakfast Club Members!

Thank you Tom @ Citrin Cooperman for sponsoring today’s edition. Tom works with the fastest growing tech companies on tax/advisory

Scroll down to read my interview with Laura Hamilton (Tech Breakfast Club Royalty) on her past year at Notable Capital and the current state of AI/dev tools.

Last week, Valar Atomics dropped massive news about their $19m seed round - yeah in 2025 that counts as a seed round - and some major advancements. Ward Zero, Valar’s thermal prototype, is complete. They’ve also inked a deal with Philippine Nuclear Research Institute for a Coordinated Research project and they’re well on their way to developing/building their first nuclear reactor.

Long time readers of the Tech Breakfast Club Newsletter will remember my interview with Isaiah, the founder of Valar, about a year ago. I got an overwhelming number of replies after that - most of which were saying that Isaiah’s vision of using nuclear power to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into jet fuel was crazy. And you’re not wrong. It’s crazy. But I think it’s going to work. Congratulations to the investors - especially our friends over at Riot Ventures.

If you’re in LA and want to come check out Valar’s prototype and eat some breakfast with a bunch of founders and VC’s, definitely sign up for the next LA Tech Breakfast Club. We’re cohosting it with Isaiah and the rest of the Valar team.

And if you want to read the interview I did with Isaiah last year - click here

Resources:
-Clerky offers a $100 discount for TBC Members on their formation packet. Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you an invite
-Fixing the YC SAFE: Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you a redline for the YC Postmoney SAFE that can save founders millions in dilution
-Ramp is offering a $500 bonus to TBC members when they start using Ramp.
-Did you know that J.P. Morgan has a complimentary Cap Table free up to 100 stakeholders? If you like to learn more visit their site link

Tech Breakfast Club Events

El Segundo Tech Breakfast Club March 11th
Cohosting with the legend, Isaiah Taylor, and the rest of the Valar Atomics crew. We’re celebrating some big news so come join!

SF Tech Breakfast Club March 13th
Cohosting with the absolute menace, Jack Raines (Slow Ventures).

New York Tech Breakfast Club March 19th

Tech Breakfast Club 🤝 Citrin Cooperman

Meet Tom, Partner and co-leader of the Technology practice at Citrin Cooperman

Citrin Cooperman handles tax and advisory and it has a huge footprint - it covers all industries, but you focus on Tech. Tell me about the clients you work with
Generally our clients are SaaS developers, other software developers, digital media companies, data analytics companies, FinTech, AdTech, to name a few.  They’re VC-backed or intend to raise outside capital.  We work with pre-revenue start-ups all the way up to our largest client, which is about a half billion in revenue. Our clients tend to be growth-oriented and extremely dynamic, so they often deal with business, accounting and tax issues earlier on in their life cycle, including state and local tax issues, international tax issues, accounting for complex equity transactions and valuation matters. Other issues that we work with our clients on include revenue recognition matters and accounting for software development costs, from an accounting perspective, and Section 382 and 1202 stock from a tax perspective.

Usually, founders are so focused on the product and then go to market, financial housekeeping isn’t a priority. Maybe the thought is that they’ll get to the next round of funding and bring in a CFO to clean everything up
Exactly, a lot of founders are very cost conscious early on, especially if they are a first-time founder. Many resort to bootstrapping as a way to reduce costs until they start generating revenues. We help by customizing our services to meet the needs of early-stage companies, while maintaining flexibility to tap into the full expertise and resources of our firm as they grow. This allows us to become the trusted advisor from day 1.  

What does that mean? How do you actually work with early-stage startups?
We offer a fixed-fee program for early-stage companies that includes business tax return preparation, outsourced bookkeeping, and access to advisory services like the R&D credit and QSBS. The goal of the program is to provide guidance on issues that many early-stage companies may not have the answers to or know how to handle. In other words, we’re here to help them get their “house” in order. We've found that there are often key missteps at this stage that can lead to costly and time-consuming clean-up if not addressed properly from the start.

We’ve designed it to be as simple as possible, bring us in at the beginning so you can focus on running your business or - “focus on what makes your beer taste better”

Hah, I like the Jeff Bezos AWS reference and there’s definitely some similarities. Basically, it’s like infrastructure for running your company. 
You’re trying to build an incredible company. Any part of your brain that’s worried about tax compliance or how to maximize tax credits in multiple jurisdictions or company structure, or should we be recording this as a debit or a credit, that’s taking away from your core mission.

If people want to chat with you or learn more about Citrin Cooperman, what should they do?
Feel free to connect on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected]

Also, check out Tom’s upcoming webinar (Feb 26th) on Tax Strategies for Tech Companies

Member Spotlight: Laura Hamilton

People say they work hard but Laura Hamilton works harder. Maybe her grit comes from growing up on a farm or playing D1 soccer at Penn - whatever the source, though, she’s a true competitor. I wish we had official stats because no one is logging more air miles, more calls, and more late night emails. If you’re even thinking about building a dev tool, she probably already knows. And if you’re fighting her for allocation, good luck.

Laura, thanks for taking time to chat with me – this past year at Notable, you’ve spent a lot of time thinking deeply about security but also dev tools. Why the focus on dev tools?
It’s one of the best times to be investing in dev tools, especially with the tailwinds of AI. My partner Glenn Solomon has a great analogy for AI - you can think about AI like a three layer cake. You have the foundation model layer like open AI and Anthropic. Then, you have the infrastructure layer and, finally, the application layer. Up until recently, the layers remained siloed, but we are starting to see companies move up the stack.

So, when I joined about a year ago, we were definitely starting to hit the inflection point with the foundation models, and all signs were pointing to the next part of the wave focusing on developer tools and AI infrastructure. Around that time, the copilot space was dominated by GitHub, but then Cursor came along and rocketed to $100M+ in ARR. So, even in areas where people might not have thought there was room for innovation, you saw a lean startup with young founders find product market fit and crush it. 

It’s tough to compete with Open AI or one of the other foundational models, or at least it’s hard to raise enough capital, but we’re seeing some amazing developer tools. People probably know Cursor – what are some other dev tools that people should be aware of? 
We’ve seen a lot of innovation in the code generation space but there’s still a lot of opportunity adjacent to that – code needs to be cleaned up or edited. I think that opens up opportunities for greater contextual understanding. Code reviews, code testing, code refactoring, etc. AI-generated code is not the same as code written by a Databricks engineer. It requires more scrutiny. We’re going to see a new wave of companies coming out to facilitate the implementation of AI generated code. 

I’m impressed by Unblocked. Not a portfolio company, but I think it’s doing a great job. It’s well-named since it helps developers get unblocked and empowers users to have a stronger understanding of their codebase and increase productivity.

We were also talking about non-human identity verification and I found that fascinating – can you bring everyone else up to speed?
We've been spending a lot of time on non-human identity. With the rise of these AI applications, and just AI in general, it creates unknown security threats and security hygiene issues. 

You think of identity companies today for humans, and it’s pretty much solved. Identities, meaning like humans invading systems. You have Okta helping with that, as well as other companies like McAfee, Microsoft, and Ping. Largely, identity is in a good spot.

But then, non-human identity is like machine to machine. So, it's other threat actors that aren't humans trying to penetrate your system. With the rise of agents operating on behalf of users, it’s an interesting authentication problem but also a massive opportunity. 

An initial wave of companies like Astrix and Oasis Security popped up. Many of the players around seed through Series B. It’s a new era for identity, and we need to be aware of machine identities and properly map credentials, whether they are cloud-based, SaaS, or on-prem. We are excited to partner with Token on their journey to be the go-provider in automatically securing any type of non-human identity across any system and environment at scale. Their platform enables enterprises to discover, manage, and secure these identities while maintaining operational efficiency. A category defining company with an exceptional team is a recipe for success. 

What’s got you excited in the Notable Portfolio?
2024 was a monumental year. Notable made eleven new investments and invested over $80M in follow-on funding across 17 companies. 

Local Stack, which emulates your AWS environment locally, is doing really well. We led the Series A in November. It’s a team based out of Switzerland that has built a virtual environment allowing developers to build and test cloud applications by removing the friction of cloud-based testing. Starting as an open-source project in 2017, LocalStack has now scaled with over 56,000 GitHub stars, 25,000 Slack users, and 500+ contributors. They have a vibrant community of developers and are becoming the de facto product for AWS local development.

Recently, we led the Series B round in FaL, an infrastructure platform for AI-driven media creation used by companies like Canva, Perplexity, and more. Building off the tailwinds of multi-modal opportunities, FaL’s proprietary inference engine is built for the demands of real-time video. The platform reduces cost and latency by up to 10x and processes over 100 million inference requests daily with 99.9% uptime. The team has propelled the growth of AI applications and now powers over 1 million developers worldwide. We are excited to continue to support Burkey and Gorkem on their journey to accelerate AI capabilities.

Series A is the sweet spot?
Ideally, we want to invest as early as possible and have a few stealth investments that are pre-product. As a multi stage fund, we have the flexibility to deploy early and then support through IPO.

Yeah, and that’s not just a talking point. Notable is serious about supporting all the way through IPO. Last time we were chatting about a partner at Notable you work with, Glenn Solomon, being a really important player on HashiCorp’s board. 
Yes, 100%! In early 2024, IBM announced its acquisition of HashiCorp for $6.4B, and Glenn has been part of their journey since they had 4 employees. As an investor early in my career, I’m super fortunate to learn from value-additive partners. You work so hard to source a deal and win the opportunity, but the most critical aspect is post deal execution and adding value to the founders and company. Through our board seats and platform team, Notable does a fantastic job of being the first call for founders and supporting everything from hiring, GTM, marketing, customer introductions, and more.  

We pride ourselves on building and maintaining networks that are an asset to our portfolio companies. Oren Yunger, with whom I work closely, co-founded SVCI, a group for chief security officers, with which angel invests and strategically helps early-stage security companies. Founders value their feedback because, at the end of the day, they’re the ones buying these tools and have seen what good looks like. In general, operators are a crucial part of our diligence, and we want their feedback to help us make the best decisions. Similarly, we run a cohort of VP of engineers, who meet quarterly to chat about new AI dev tools and market opportunities. 

I’m impressed by Notable’s thoughtfulness in curating events.
I think something impactful last year was “Rising in Cyber,” our inaugural event to honor the top 30 early, mid, and late-stage cybersecurity companies in the world. We went right to the buyers and asked CISOs to vote on their favorite companies and celebrated with the winners at the New York Stock Exchange. It was really cool for these early-stage companies to see their logo and name on a billboard in Times Square and celebrate with their peers on the trading floor of the stock exchange with the hope that it could be them one day. It was great for us to meet breakout companies and support the security ecosystem. 

And I’ve been really proud of our efforts in New York to grow our AI infrastructure and developer presence. There’s an event every night for VCs in New York, but there’s not always something for developers. Along with my colleague Dan Cahana, we launched a series of tech talks with engineers - more of a round table discussion – and that’s led to meeting a lot of incredible engineering talent. 

I’m catching you right after your return from Israel. How was it? You’re going quarterly to Israel and it’s always fascinating to hear about it.
It was amazing. We invest in cloud infrastructure and cyber security companies, and those segments are booming in Israel. Generally, the tech ecosystem in Israel is thriving, with an incredible density of technical talent. The pace of innovation and iteration is impressive, which has led us to invest in 14 companies. 

Is that because of the IDF?
I think it plays a big role in entrepreneurship. Many founders have met their co-founders through serving in the IDF and have built infrastructure or security products. So you have a ton of technical training. It’s intense and creates a breed of resilient entrepreneurs. For those who don’t know, most Israelis serve in the IDF for three years, usually after high school. 

Yeah, you talk about mission critical technology, the stakes are so much higher in Israel.
I’m very humbled when I come back to the United States. We take a lot for granted here. Many founders are still in the reserves so they’re trying to run a company while also fighting for their country. With the training and exposure, there’s a lot of young talent, and they translate what they learned in the military into building incredible companies. You have some of the brightest minds working together on similar problems, which fuels innovation.

Why do you think you’re so competitive? Everyone says they work hard but your work ethic is on another level. 
I think when you grow up in a town of 5000 people with one traffic light and no grocery store, you aspire for larger opportunities beyond the farm – 

Here that’s not just an expression. You actually grew up on a farm
We do have a farm, hah. Yeah, I saw something bigger for myself, and soccer gave me that opportunity. I’m super grateful to my parents for driving me an hour and a half to practice in Tampa. Through soccer and playing at a highly competitive level, I could go to the University of Pennsylvania. Fast forward to graduation, my whole identity was wrapped up in soccer. I had to find another competitive outlet, which ended up being VC. Whether it's sourcing companies or founders, doing quick but thorough diligence, or competing with other venture capital funds to have the lead position – I’m applying the same mentality I did on the field. 

But, in working with you a lot over the past year, I have to say you’re also a great teammate. I don’t have your college stats in front of me but I’d imagine you have some assists. Like if you’re not scoring yourself, you’re setting up the people around you to score big. 
I do feel like venture capital is easier when you're playing together. One of the things Notable does well is when we go after an opportunity, we don’t just send one player; we run the full-court press together. It’s a team effort to source, diligence, and ultimately win/support the best companies. While I primarily sit on the cloud infrastructure team, Notable is a collaborative environment with cross functional collaboration across the platform and other investment teams. The partners set a very high bar for the fund, and everyone works together to achieve that level of excellence.

Additionally, VC has gotten more and more competitive, with impressive funds popping up monthly at this point. If you want to have longevity and win deals, you have to work as a team and hold a high standard for one another. 

About Morgan Barrett:
Morgan is the creator of Tech Breakfast Club. He hosts breakfast meetups in NYC, LA, SF, (and occasionally Austin, Miami, Boston) that bring together the best founders and investors.

Morgan is also a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, an elite lean boutique startup law firm repping clients funded by a16z, Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and countless other VCs. He works with clients from formation to exit, in collaboration with Optimal’s partners.