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Rebecca Lynn spins out of Canvas Ventures to found Canvas Prime as solo GP

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Rebecca Lynn doesn’t believe in first-mover advantage.

“Never be a first mover,” says Lynn. First movers bear the burden of proving that a market exists, she says. “You’re paying to get consumer awareness of that market. You’re fighting this uphill battle. You’re spending a ton of money to prove out the market—and by the time you finally prove it exists, you have an aging tech stack. Why not let somebody else break that pick? You watch where the puck is going, and then come in with a better product and better marketing as a second mover.”

It’s advice Lynn has gleaned from decades of experience on the operations and investing sides of the table. Lynn never planned to be a VC—a first-generation college kid from the Midwest, she spent her early career in the late ’90s at Procter & Gamble. In 2007, right before the Great Recession fully materialized, she ended up taking her first venture gig at Morgenthaler Ventures. The very first term sheet she gave out was for financial services company Lending Club in 2009. 

“Always keep an eye on the macro,” Lynn says. “So, when Lehman crashed, that’s what made Lending Club a great deal. Without the crash of Lehman, we wouldn’t have invested in Lending Club. But there was this macro opportunity where suddenly their product just nailed it. They were doing peer-to-peer lending and, before the crash, it was a good idea. Then, the market goes down in flames, and even if you have an 800 credit score, you can’t get a loan. It created this opportunity where they had a clear runway ahead of them.”

In 2014, Lending Club would become the biggest tech IPO of the year. Since then, she’s also been an early investor in Doximity, Luminar, FutureAdvisor, Check, and Casetext. Now, twelve years after cofounding Canvas Ventures (spun out from Morgenthaler Ventures in 2013), Lynn is spinning out on her own, launching new firm Canvas Prime as a solo GP, she exclusively told Fortune

“We got a lot of guidance from our LPs that they liked my strategy and results,” she says. “And I had really, from a top-down level, wanted to focus more for years. Because focus—that’s the Kool-Aid we tell our entrepreneurs to drink: Focus, focus, focus, execution, execution. Make a decision, and make it fast. Because not making a decision is also making a decision.”

Lynn is keeping the Canvas name, as she’s retaining board seats and continuing to support her current portfolio companies, including Savvy Wealth, Airvet, and Marvin. In some ways, Lynn is part of a broader trend in venture, of solo GPs who have a deep well of experience, leaving older or larger firms behind. Her strategy for Canvas Prime is defined: The firm concentrates on a few sectors—primarily fintech, digital health, and AI—where she has proven expertise and a track record, plus a concentrated, high ownership portfolio. They invest in 12-15 companies a year while taking significant ownership stakes of 15% to 25% to maximize returns. 

“I think the days of the mid-market, generalist fund are absolutely gone,” says Lynn. “They don’t work. Smaller funds outperform, and here’s a number: Specialized funds have 37% higher returns than generalist funds… And when we did the bottom-up analysis on where we made money for our investors, it was blindingly clear we made money in fintech, digital health, and AI—and that was it.”

In a lot of ways, Canvas Prime is about remembering that it’s important, and necessary, to say no. 

“You just can’t be an expert at everything,” Lynn told Fortune. “What we tell the CEOs all the time is that knowing what to say no to is the most important skill set you can develop. So, it’s all about having focus and clarity on what we need to cover, how we need to cover it, who we need to hire, and what we need to build out to be helpful to our companies.”

Term Sheet Podcast, Episode 3… This week, we’re trying something new on the Term Sheet Podcast—pairing an episode with an essay! In my Term Sheet Podcast interview with Rebecca Lynn, we discussed her roots in the Midwest, her path to Silicon Valley, and what she’s learned as an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Plus, my take on the Nvidia-AMD-Trump deal and newly minted AI billionaires. Listen here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X:
@agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

Appcharge, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based mobile game payments platform, raised $58 million in Series B funding. IVP led the round and was joined by Playrix, Creandum, Moneta VC, Play Ventures, Gilot Capital Partners, Smilegate Investment, and others.

Gameto, a New York City-based cell engineering company focused on women’s reproductive health, raised $44 million in Series C funding. Overwater Ventures led the round and was joined by Insight Partners, RA Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, and others.

Kustomer, a New York City-based AI-powered CX platform, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Norwest led the round and was joined by Battery, Redpoint, and Boldstart

GoodShip, a Bellevue, Wash.-based operating system for the freight industry, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Greenfield Partners led the round and was joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and FUSE VC.

Jump, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based fan experience platform for sports, raised $23 million in Series A funding. Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six led the round and were joined by Courtside Ventures, Will Ventures, Forerunner, and others.

Arintra, an Austin, Texas-based AI-powered medical coding automation platform, raised $21 million in Series A funding. Peak XV Partners led the round and was joined by Endeavor Health Ventures, Y Combinator, Counterpart Ventures, and others.

Ultraviolette, a Bangalore, India-based electric motorcycle company, raised $21 million in funding. TDK Ventures led the round.

Transak, a Miami, Fla.-based developer of fiat-to-crypto infrastructure, raised $16 million in funding. Tether and IDG Capital led the round and were joined by others. 

Datumo, a Seoul, South Korea-based generative AI evaluation company, raised $15.5 million in Series B funding from KB Investment, Shinhan Venture Investment, Kiwoom Investment, SBI Investment, Salesforce Ventures, and others.

Mako, a New York City-based AI infrastructure company that builds intelligent agents to generate and optimize GPU kernels, raised $10 million in seed funding. M13 led the round and was joined by Torch Capital and Parable VC

Dealops, a San Francisco-based developer of pricing infrastructure for revenue teams, raised $7 million in funding. Pear VC and General Catalyst led the round and were joined by Depth VC, Elsa Ventures, Weekend Fund, Flex Capital, Allison Pickens, 20 Sales, and others.

Refold, a San Mateo, Calif. and Bangalore, India-based developer of AI agents for integrating  enterprise software systems, raised $6.5 million in seed funding. Eniac Ventures and Tidal Ventures led the round and were joined by Better Capital, Ahead VC, Karman Ventures, Z21, and angel investors.

Infinity Loop, a New York City-based AI-powered deal analysis platform, raised $5 million in seed funding. Glasswing Ventures and TIAA Ventures led the round and were joined by Plug and Play, Restive Ventures, and angel investors.

HoneyCoin, a Nairobi, Kenya-based cross-border payments platform, raised $4.9 million in seed funding. Flourish Ventures led the round and was joined by Visa Ventures, TLCom Capital, Stellar Development Foundation, Lava, Musha Ventures, 4DX Ventures, and Antler.

Levr Bet, a Costa Rica-based decentralized sports betting platform, raised $3 million in funding. Blockchain Capital and Maven 11 led the round.

TLIKI, a London, U.K.-based AI-powered game creation platform, raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding. Twin Path Ventures led the round and was joined by Atlas Sgr, XTX Ventures, and SFC Capital.

Private Equity

Ruppert Landscape, backed by Knox Lane, acquired Greatscapes Property Management, a Winchester, Va.-based landscaping company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Exits

Hubbell Incorporated agreed to acquire DMC Power, a Carson, Calif.-based provider of connectors and tooling for utility substation and transmission markets, from Golden Gate Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Apollo agreed to acquire Trace3, an Irvine, Calif.-based digital and IT services provider, from American Securities

Proterra Investment Partners acquired AcreTrader, a Fayetteville, Ariz.-based farmland investment platform. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Funds + Funds of Funds

Pacific Avenue Capital Partners, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based private equity firm, raised $1.65 billion for its second fund focused on corporate carve-outs and divestitures.

Periscope Equity, a Chicago, Ill.-based private equity fund, raised $370 million for its third fund focused on founder-owned business services companies.



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Kimberly-Clark exec says old bosses would compare her to their daughters when she got promoted

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Women have their own unique set of challenges in the workforce; the “motherhood penalty” can set them back $500,000, their C-suite representation is waning, and the gender pay gap has widened again. One senior executive from $36 billion manufacturing giant Kimberly-Clark knows the tribulations all too well—after all, she’s one of few women in the Fortune 500 who holds the coveted role. 

Tamera Fenske is the chief supply chain officer (CSCO) for Kimberly-Clark, who oversees a massive global team of 22,665 employees—around 58% of the global CPG manufacturer’s workforce. She’s in charge of optimizing the company’s entire supply chain, from sourcing raw materials for Kimberly-Clark products including Kleenex and Huggies, to delivering the final product into customers’ shopping carts. 

It’s a job that’s essential to most top businesses operating at such a massive scale; around 422 of the Fortune 500 have chief supply chain officers, according to a 2025 Spencer Stuart analysis. However, most of these slots are awarded to white men; only about 18% of executives in this position are women, and 12% come from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. It’s one of the C-suite roles with the least female representation, right next to chief financial officers, chief operating officers, and CEOs. 

In fact, Fenske is one of just 76 Fortune 500 female executives who have “chief supply chain officer” on their resumes. However, the executive tells Fortune it’s an unfortunate fact she “doesn’t think about” too often—if anything, it motivates her further.

“Anytime someone tells me I can’t do something, it makes me want to work that much harder to prove them wrong,” Fenske says. 

The first time Fenske noticed she was one of few women in the room

Fenske has spent her entire life navigating subjects dominated by men—something she didn’t even consider until college. 

Her father, aunts, uncles, and grandfather all worked for Dow Chemical, so she grew up in a STEM-heavy household. Naturally, she leaned into math and science as well, eventually pursuing a bachelor’s in environmental chemical engineering at Michigan Technological University. It was there that her eyes first opened to the reality that she was one of few women in the room. 

“It definitely was going to Michigan Tech, where I first realized the disparity,” Fenske said, adding that there was around an eight-to-one male-to-female ratio. “As you continue through the higher levels and the grades, it becomes even more tighter, especially as you get into your specialized engineering.” 

Once joining the world of work, it wasn’t only Fenske who noticed the lack of women in senior roles—some bosses would even point it out. 

The Fortune 500 boss is paying it forward—for both men and women

After Fenske graduated from Michigan Tech, she got her start at $91 billion manufacturer 3M: a multinational conglomerate producing everything from pads of Post-It notes to rolls of Scotch tape. Fenske was first hired as an environmental engineer in 2000. Promotion after promotion came, but all people could seem to focus on was her gender.

“It would come to light when I moved relatively quickly through the ranks. Some of my bosses would say, ‘You’re the age of my daughter,’ and different things like that. ‘You’re the first woman that’s had this role at this plant or in this division,’” Fenske recalls. Over the course of 2 decades, she rose through the company’s ranks to the SVP of 3M’s U.S. and Canada manufacturing and supply chain. 

And anytime she was asked about her gender? She’d flip the questions back at them while standing her ground. “I would always try to spin it a little bit and ask them questions like, ‘Okay, so what is your daughter doing?’…I always try to seek to understand where they are coming from, but then also reinforce what brought me to where I am.”

Now, three years into her current stint as Kimberly-Clark’s CSCO, the 47-year-old is paying it back—but not just to the women following in her footsteps.

“I never saw myself as necessarily a big, ground-breaker pioneer, even though the statistics would tell you I was,” Fenske says. “I tried to give back to women and men, to be honest. Because I think men [are] one of the strongest advocates for women as well. So I think we have to teach both how to have that equal lens and diverse perspective.”



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SpaceX to offer insider shares at record-setting $800 billion valuation

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SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at as much as $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, reclaiming the title of the world’s most valuable private company. 

The details, discussed by SpaceX’s board of directors on Thursday at its Starbase hub in Texas, could change based on interest from insider sellers and buyers or other factors, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. SpaceX is also exploring a possible initial public offering as soon as late next year, one of the people said. 

Another person briefed on the matter said that the price under discussion for the sale of some employees and investors’ shares is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion. The company wouldn’t raise any funds though this planned sale, though a successful offering at such levels would catapult it past the record of $500 billion valuation achieved by OpenAI in October.

Elon Musk on Saturday denied that SpaceX is raising money at a $800 billion valuation without addressing Bloomberg’s reporting on the planned offering of insiders’ shares. 

“SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform X. 

The share sale price under discussion would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier reported the $800 billion valuation target.

News of SpaceX’s valuation sent shares of EchoStar Corp., a satellite TV and wireless company, up as much as 18%. Last month, EchoStar had agreed to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $2.6 billion, adding to an earlier agreement to sell about $17 billion in wireless spectrum to Musk’s company.

Subscribe Now: The Business of Space newsletter covers NASA, key industry events and trends.

The world’s most prolific rocket launcher, SpaceX dominates the space industry with its Falcon 9 rocket that lifts satellites and people to orbit.

SpaceX is also the industry leader in providing internet services from low-Earth orbit through Starlink, a system of more than 9,000 satellites that is far ahead of competitors including Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Leo.

Elite Group

SpaceX is among an elite group of companies that have the ability to raise funds at $100 billion-plus valuations while delaying or denying they have any plan to go public. 

An IPO of the company at an $800 billion value would vault SpaceX into another rarefied group — the 20 largest public companies, a few notches below Musk’s Tesla Inc. 

If SpaceX sold 5% of the company at that valuation, it would have to sell $40 billion of stock — making it the biggest IPO of all time, well above Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. The firm sold just 1.5% of the company in that offering, a much smaller slice than the majority of publicly traded firms make available.

A listing would also subject SpaceX to the volatility of being a public company, versus private firms whose valuations are closely guarded secrets. Space and defense company IPOs have had a mixed reception in 2025. Karman Holdings Inc.’s stock has nearly tripled since its debut, while Firefly Aerospace Inc. and Voyager Technologies Inc. have plunged by double-digit percentages since their debuts.

SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off SpaceX’s Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company — a concept President Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020. 

However, Musk cast doubt on the prospect publicly over the years and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”

The Information, citing people familiar with the discussions, separately reported on Friday that SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it’s aiming for an IPO of the entire company in the second half of next year.

Read More: How to Buy SpaceX: A Guide for the Eager, Pre-IPO

A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.

SpaceX is working to develop its new Starship vehicle, advertised as the most powerful rocket ever developed to loft huge numbers of Starlink satellites as well as carry cargo and people to moon and, eventually, Mars.



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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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