June Newsletter
Updates from a lively Q2.
We’re honored to announce that Somak Chattopadhyay has been named to the Emerging Technology Advisory Board, a council of tech luminaries hand-picked by NY Governor Kathy Hochul to help chart the course of innovation in the region. The Advisory Board — which includes the CEOs of IBM, Micron, JetBlue, and Girls Who Code, among others — will be tasked with helping to “build a modern, inclusive economy, driven by artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and other fast-growing sectors, that will unlock opportunity for countless New Yorkers.” AI will be a primary focus area in the first six months, dovetailing on Hochul’s Empire AI initiative, which aims to transform New York into the national leader in responsible and civic-minded AI adoption.
It was a travel-packed Spring for the Armory team. We hosted full-house happy hours in Rochester and Cleveland and attended conferences in cities like Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, and Indianapolis. As ever, we remain laser-focused on underserved founders, old-line industries, and legacy cities; in our latest Roundtable, Somak dug into the nuances of building companies in these environments alongside Foundry VC co-founder Seth Levine and ASV’s Platform Advisor Elizabeth MacBride. The trio swapped takes on a bevy of topics, including underdogs-turned-unicorns, AI hype bubbles, and the psychological impacts of big companies sprouting in small cities. Seth and Elizabeth also teased their forthcoming book, Capital Evolution.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth accompanied several members of the Armory team to Cleveland for the Ohio Tech Happy Hour we co-hosted alongside JumpStart Ventures. She came away impressed by the city’s entrepreneurial verve, as her latest feature in Forbes attests. In the post-Covid era, she writes, “the fastest pace of job growth is happening in the lowest-wage metro areas.” In Ohio, for example, the number of startups likely to become employers rose 42% from 2019 to 2023. Elizabeth previously toured cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Kansas City as part of her Deep Dives on Secondary Markets series, following the trail of tech innovation in unsung locales. She’s one of a small cadre of tech writers wise to the pendulum’s swing away from the coasts and towards the heartland; word has otherwise been slow in spreading, due in part to the scrappy, bootstrap mentality that makes many founders reluctant to take VC money too early.
Our investment committee returned East equally energized by the host of impressive founders we met in Cleveland, while Pia Sawhney had a similarly invigorating experience in Pittsburgh at the Invest in Women event hosted by Chloe Capital. Later in May, Pia spoke at Bryn Mawr, a women’s college and her alma mater, on a panel titled, “How We Built This,” with two other executives from VC and tech. Data now reflects that 2023 indeed brought more investments in women, with 25 percent of venture funding going to women-led startups, a ten percent jump from the prior year. This is another pendulum we expect to continue swinging in 2024.
Company Updates
Multiplayer CEO Steph Johnson recently appeared on the VentureFizz podcast hosted by Keith Cline, as did Somak in a subsequent interview. After launching its beta in Q1 of this year, Multiplayer is poised to dissolve the boundaries that make remote collaboration a headache for distributed engineering teams.
Out in Indy, Qualifi recently launched the Hire Quality podcast, hosted by cofounder Devyn Mikell. The podcast has run 21 episodes so far and features deep dives on topics like high volume recruiting, DEI, and the impact of AI on the talent search process.
Clement Cazalot of Machinery Partner sat down with ASV for an interview to discuss the state of built world innovation and the importance. Clem continues to make the rounds of worksites and industry conferences alike. In late March, he was a featured speaker at the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA)'s AGG1 in Nashville, TN.
Armory Square Prize
We’re delighted to announce Sana R. Chaudhry as the winner of the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation, in recognition of her superb translation (from Urdu) of Pakistani writer Fahmida Riaz’s final novel, Qila-e-Faramoshi or Fortress of the Forgotten Ones.
Chaudhry’s translation of the novel will be published by Open Letter Books in the Fall of 2026. This year’s shortlist also included the following works:
Mridula Garg (Hindi) Miljul Mann.
Translated by Aditya Vikram (Novel, 2009);Mahua Sen Mukhopadhyay (Bengali) “The Well Wisher and other stories.”
Translated by Sayari Debnath (Short story collection, 2024);Abha Purbey (Angika) Gulabiya.
Translated by Shivangi and Tejaswi (Novel, 2008);Anuradha Sarma Pujari (Assamese) “Ten Love Stories and a Novella of Despair.” Translated by Aruni Kashyap (Short story collection).
Jobs
Armory Square Ventures is hiring a Chief of Staff to work out of our HQ in Skaneateles, NY.
Machinery Partner is hiring a Head of Sales and a Staff Accountant. Both are hybrid roles based in Boston.
Compyl is looking to fill several hybrid Engineering roles.
Heretto is hiring a Sales Executive and a Content Conversion Manager.
Upcoming Events
June 24-26: Finger Lakes Summit (Canandaigua)
June 26: VC Investment and the AI Ecosystem (NYC)
Feat. ASV Operating Partner Prabhdeep Singh
July 12: Tech Point Venture Connect (Indianapolis)
July 17-18: The Saratoga Forum (Upstate Capital)
Aug 27-28: Rally Innovation (Indianapolis)
Oct 26 — MIT AI Summit (NYC)
Oct 29-30: 3 Rivers Venture Fair (Pittsburgh)
About ASV
Armory Square Ventures (ASV) is a returns-oriented, mission-focused technology venture capital firm based in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. We created the company to seed greater opportunities and jobs for those living in our region and across the Midwest. Over the past decade, ASV has catalyzed the creation of over 2,500 jobs in Upstate New York. We like to say we are an optimism engine for secondary cities and a community catalyst for regions outside Silicon Valley. As a firm, we are also enriched and nourished by individuals from a range of backgrounds, who are all passionate about uplifting and inspiring growth across America's smaller cities.
• Stage: Seed & Series A
• Location: Management based in New York State and/or other emerging cities across the US
• Check Size: $1M - $3M in the first round with plenty of reserves for follow-on capital
• Business Profile & Model: Software, mobile, or technology-enabled services (emphasis on B2B) with repeatable, recurring, or transaction-based revenue models
• Market: Addressable markets of at least $1B+
• Team: Full-time technical/product leader and sales/marketing leader
• Traction & Unit Economics: Prototype of product deployed with a small sample size of customers; capital efficient
We’re hard at work scouting new investments. If you or someone you know has startup questions, reach out to either Anthony or Preston (emails below). We are actively investing out of our third fund and look forward to sharing more on it as it continues to take shape.
Best wishes in the meantime.
The Armory Square Ventures Team
Get in Touch
Have an opportunity to discuss, or want to talk startups?
Anthony Santaro - anthony@armorysv.com
Preston DeGarmo - preston@armorysv.com