🦸🏻 Issue #95: Giving Developers Superpowers With APIs
Sagar Batchu and Speakeasy emerge from stealth backed by Google Ventures, Casetext's recent $650M exit, and a free course on AI building from CoRise and OpenAI
💬 Welcome to issue #95 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. We hope you all enjoyed the holiday weekend! During the last week, the Claremont startup world was simultaneously setting off its own fireworks display. 🎆
Claremont grad and StoryHouse portfolio founder Sagar Batchu and his company, Speakeasy, emerged from stealth backed by Google Ventures and Quiet Capital. Jake Heller and his AI legal tech company, Casetext, were also acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650M. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Sagar Batchu & Speakeasy
Sagar Batchu (HMC) graduated from Claremont in 2015 with a focus on physics and programming. He started his career as a software engineer for IoT proptech startup Enlighted, where fellow Claremont alumni Joe Costello was the CEO. After Siemens acquired Enlighted, Sagar left to join LiveRamp’s new London office and grew into a Director of Engineering role, helping build and scale the company’s London engineering team. Now, Sagar is the CEO and co-founder of Speakeasy — a developer-first API DevEx platform that enables developers to offer best-in-class self-service experiences for API consumers.
Speakeasy recently emerged from stealth with their $11M total fundraising led by Google Ventures and Quiet Capital. StoryHouse is excited to be an investor in this round, along with Flex Capital and Firestreak Ventures.
Speakeasy is using AI to automate API creation and distribution
Just about every developer wants to create APIs to help other companies connect to their services more easily, but creating and documenting an API is a time-consuming process. Speakeasy, an early-stage startup, wants to make that an easier and more automated set of activities.
Today, the company emerged from stealth with a $7.6 million seed investment.
Speakeasy co-founder and CEO Sagar Batchu describes his startup as an API infrastructure company, and that means it’s building tools to make it easier to create and distribute APIs, something that is near and dear to him as a developer himself. “We’ve started by working on an important problem to me, one that I’ve faced a lot myself as a developer, which is really dramatically simplifying how developers are able to ship APIs to end users,” Batchu told TechCrunch.
He sees APIs giving developers a kind of superpower. “As developers, APIs allow us to take advantage of another company’s capabilities. And so making it really easy to ship those APIs to developers means that we can really help companies accelerate how their products are adopted, as well as we reduce the burden on developers when they integrate with those APIs,” he said.
While the goal is to build a platform of features eventually to help with that mission, the company is starting with two tools, one to help developers create the APIs, and one to help their users implement them more easily.
“With Speakeasy, API producers can, for the first time, easily create and maintain Terraform providers from an OpenAPI specification – dramatically reducing engineering burden, while unlocking an entirely new developer community,” the company said.
The startup currently has nine employees, but is hiring engineers to help build out the platform further. As he builds the company, Batchu believes being remote will help him find a more diverse workforce. “So first of all, I think about how adopting a remote-friendly hiring philosophy means that we’ll be able to access more places, more diverse communities. It’s definitely something really important to us. And as we move forward, we will be looking to hire great talent from everywhere,” he said.
Read the full TechCrunch article to learn how Speakeasy built the tools to help developers create APIs. 👇
👩🎓 Claremont Introductions: Julia Stiglitz & CoRise
Claremont entrepreneur Julia Stiglitz (PO) is the co-founder and CEO of CoRise – an AI-driven EdTech platform that works with organizations looking to arm their tech and data teams with the latest skills and best practices. She recently shared their collaboration with OpenAI on a free course:
We're thrilled to announce that we're launching a free course in collaboration with OpenAI on building AI products.
This will be a one-week hands-on course in which you will have a working AI product by the end of it using OpenAI's LLM. The course is led by two phenomenal instructors Ted Sanders (OpenAI) and Sidharth Ramachandran.
Class starts August 14th.👇
🤝 Claremont Introductions: Mike Morris & Inception Studio
Claremont grad Mike Morris (HMC ‘97) is the co-founder of Inception Studio – a non-profit that curates a community of the most exceptional entrepreneurs and builders in the AI space. Prior to starting Inception, Mike started as an early engineer at VMware, where he spent 12 years. Fun fact: he was the first Claremont grad ever hired by VMware, eventually leading to a larger Claremont pipeline at the company. After VMware, Mike joined NetCitadel (acquired by Proofpoint) and then UnifyID (acquired by Prove) as VP of Engineering.
In late 2022, Mike started Inception Studio along with his co-founder, John Whaley, to bring talented builders together in an environment designed to rapidly catalyze company formation, refine ideas, test and develop co-founder relationships, and match them with potential teammates, customers, and investors. Inception Studio is a new venture studio model for experienced builders built around intense, fully-immersive, in-person retreats. Their first three retreats formed 11 companies (a16z recently backed one of them with a $10M investment), and three more were formed from their most recent Demo Day.
Applications to Inception’s Cohort 5, which will run August 10th to 13th in the Bay Area, are now OPEN! Check them out if you want to apply or nominate someone great.
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Jake Heller & Casetext
Claremont grad Jake Heller (PZ ‘07) is the co-founder and CEO of Casetext, a leading legal tech company specializing in AI-powered technology for lawyers. After Pitzer, Jake clerked for Judge Michael Boudin in the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He then trained at Stanford, where he was president of the Stanford Law Review, and joined Ropes & Gray as a litigator.
Last month, Jake and his co-founders celebrated CoCounsel’s 10th anniversary of founding Casetext. More good news came this week as global tech company Thomson Reuters acquired them for $650M. More info below. 👇
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Hank & Maza
Claremont grad Andrew Hong (PO ‘13) is the co-founder and Head of Design at Hank – a digital platform designed to connect adults 55+ with people and activities in their community. Hank connects active people online, which leads to offline activities and friendships through curated group activities like pickleball, canasta, skydiving, and more. Last year, the company raised a $7M Seed round led by General Catalyst to continue building out their team. Check out their current opening for a Frontend Developer:
Maza is building the best digital banking app for native + bilingual Spanish speakers in the US. By eliminating predatory fees and empowering customers’ finances through a 100% digital experience, their platform aims to become the #1 banking option for Latinos in America. The company also recently raised an $8M Seed round led by a16z. Claremont entrepreneur Robbie Figueroa (CMC) is the co-founder and COO of Maza, and he’s looking for a Senior Mobile Engineer to join their growing team:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s must-watch 📺
Claremont grad and Forbes 30 under 30 Sana Javeri Kadri (PO ‘16) recently joined CBS Mornings, where she briefly shared the founding story of her spice company, Diaspora Co. She also talked about why Diaspora emphasizes equity for all and gave a shout-out to Pomona College’s organic farm where it all began.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Congratulations to Claremont serial entrepreneur Robbie Figueroa (CMC) and his fintech startup, Maza, on their recent $8M Seed round led by a16z. Maza is building the operating system for 25M+ immigrants in the US. Through their platform, tens of thousands of customers have accessed credit, banking, and taxes for the first time.
Everything else you need to know💡
With his company’s recent $200M funding round, Claremont entrepreneur Kurt House (CMC ‘01) was interviewed by BBC to explain how AI can help hunt for important EV battery minerals and share KoBold’s plans for the future. Kurt is the co-founder and CEO of KoBold Metals – a mining startup that uses data science and ML to identify deposits of cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium, crucial components of the electric-vehicle boom.
Claremont tech founder Jacques Nadeau (PO) sat down with the Snowflake Startup Program at the Snowflake Summit to discuss how Sundeck allows analysts, data engineers, and DBAs to influence where, how, and what queries run on Snowflake. Jacques is the CEO and co-founder of Sundeck – a query engineering platform that recently came out of stealth.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🌱 Supercharging Nature To Remove Carbon From The Air….. In a recent article by WSJ, Living Carbon and its co-founder Maddie Hall (CMC ‘14) were highlighted for their groundbreaking work in genetically engineering poplar trees. These "Carbon-Hungry Trees" have shown remarkable growth rates, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air much faster. The company's research also extends to genetically modified algae, exploring their potential as long-term carbon storage agents. Their pioneering efforts are garnering attention and shaping the future of carbon removal technologies.
💲Raising Millions For More Data With Less Power….. The semiconductor company NLM Photonics recently secured a $1M lead investment from its strategic partners. NLM develops cutting-edge photonics solutions for transforming networking and computing. This latest financing round paves the way to continue the commercialization supported by NLM's robust R&D and groundbreaking contributions to materials and process technologies for hybrid organic EO modulation. Claremont grad Lewis Johnson (PO ‘07) is the co-founder and CSO of the company.
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