Index Ventures

🇫🇮 Three conversations you shouldn't miss at Slush 1️⃣ Supercell x Index: Nov 19 at 2:16pm, Founder Stage Neil Rimer and Supercell CEO and co-founder Ilkka Paananen, in conversation with Slush CEO Aino Bergius. In a world obsessed with failing fast and overnight success, what does it take to build companies that truly last? → Live stream: slush.org/livestream 2️⃣ Kindred x Index Nov 19 at 3:23pm, Impact Stage Georgia Stevenson and Kindred CEO Justine Palefsky on building a 220,000-member community where people share their real homes. How do you embed genuine human connection into a startup's DNA? 3️⃣ Temporal Technologies x Index: Nov 20 at 1:32pm, Impact Stage Sahir Azam (former CPO of MongoDB) sits down with Temporal CTO Maxim Fateev (ex-Uber, Amazon, Microsoft, Google). Temporal recently hit a $2.5bn valuation and is one of Index's fastest-growing companies. Maxim shares non-negotiable principles for technical founders and why every engineering team is talking about ‘durable execution.’ See you there! Bastian, Carlos, Georgia, Katharina, Khalehla, Neil, Sahir, and Vojtech

When Aaron Katz was a boy, he would watch his dad put on a suit, grab his briefcase, and head out to sell Xerox machines. Sometimes, Katz would tag along. Sitting in his father’s office or roaming the halls of PARC, he was too young to appreciate the innovation unfolding around him, but the rhythm and opportunity of a life in business made a lasting impression. “I could see the quality of life he provided for our family, the joy he brought home when he would close a deal, or he would get promoted, or somebody on his team would achieve something great,” Katz says. “I thought that seemed like a career worth pursuing.” Years later, after a stint waiting tables in the wake of the dot-com crash, Katz found his way to Salesforce. Following in his dad’s footsteps, he spent more than a decade climbing the sales ladder, leading teams across APAC, Europe, and Latin America, and becoming one of Marc Benioff’s senior revenue leaders. That experience shaped his philosophy: customer-first, globally minded, and relentlessly outcomes-driven. Today, Katz is co-founder and CEO of ClickHouse, one of the fastest-growing companies in tech. What began as a popular open-source project has become the real-time analytics engine behind organizations like Anthrophic, OpenAI, Tesla, Mercado Libre, Lyft, Netflix, and thousands more. For Katz, the highlight has been partnering with co-founders Alexey Milovidov and Yury Izrailevsky, and building a team around the traits he believes make people successful: drive, focus, accountability, and a shared vision. “When you meet their spouses and kids, and they say, ‘We have a better life as a result of this company, we bought a house we never thought we could afford, we’re living in a community we never thought would be possible, my spouse loves working at your company’—that’s incredibly rewarding.” https://lnkd.in/g7wzUXXP Explore more founder perspectives at indexventures.com

The internet as we know it was built for humans. Individually-rendered pages, visual interfaces, content designed to be read, not reasoned over—it’s a system made and optimized for human eyes, not intelligence itself. But as Parag Agrawal told us nearly two years ago, the web’s next user isn’t human. AI agents are beginning to browse, research, and synthesize information at a scale and speed no human ever could. And yet, the infrastructure of the web hasn’t evolved to meet them. Since our initial investment in Parallel Web Systems in early 2024, that insight has only grown more prescient. AI systems are quickly becoming the primary consumers of the web. That means they need infrastructure that reflects how machines think, reason, and learn. Parag and his team are re-architecting the web for this new era, building systems that allow AIs to retrieve, reason over, and act on information at machine speed and scale. Their platform already powers deep web research and structured enrichment for some of the world’s most sophisticated AI builders and leading Fortune 100 companies. We’re thrilled to partner once again with Parag and the Parallel team, co-leading their $100M Series A as they build the web’s next chapter. Read more from Shardul Shah on the Index blog 📝 (link in comments)

Wonderful just raised $100M in a Series A we're proud to lead, doubling down after we backed them at Seed. Most AI agent companies are US-centric. Bar Winkler and Roey Lalazar are solving for the world as it actually is – complex, multilingual, and deeply local. Here's what makes them different: they don't build localised AI agents, they rebuild them for each market. That means understanding not just language, but how a customer in Zurich expects to be spoken to versus one in São Paulo. How regulatory requirements shape conversations in Germany versus the UAE, and how cultural context changes everything. The market has responded. Thirty countries live in under a year. Major enterprises across telco, insurance, healthcare, and banking deploying their platform not just for customer service, but for operations, compliance, and claims processing. With resolution rates above 80%, Wonderful is in high demand. This isn't incremental improvement – it's a fundamentally different approach to building AI that works globally. And Bar and Roey are executing and hiring top talent around the world faster than anyone we've seen in this space. Read details about the investment in a blog from our partners Hannah Seal and Juriaan Duizendstraal. 👇

Across America, more than 100 million workers—contractors, real estate agents, landscapers, insurance brokers—run their businesses by phone. But while AI has transformed how knowledge workers operate, little has changed for these frontline workers who power the real economy. Two years ago, Maxime Germain decided that needed to change. After selling his mental health startup Jour and experimenting with how LLMs could enhance therapist-patient interactions at Alan, he saw a broader opportunity. What if AI could handle conversations not only in healthcare, but across the entire services economy? That insight became the seed for Beside—the first cross-platform AI built for the real economy. It starts as a smart receptionist, answering calls and texts, logging details, and responding to customers and leads. Over time, it evolves into a Chief of Staff that remembers context, automates follow-ups, and coordinates schedules. Eventually, it becomes a trusted business partner, surfacing insights and making recommendations to help drive growth. For the past 18 months, Beside has been operating quietly, growing to more than 20,000 paying customers with 30% month-over-month growth. Alongside co-founders Bobby Giangeruso, Aymeric Beaumet, Justin Bureau, Hélène Blonz, Maxime and the team are reimagining the phone from the ground up, modernizing a massive legacy system with an intuitive interface that feels more like a messaging app than enterprise software. We were proud to lead Beside’s seed round, and we’re thrilled to partner again as they emerge from stealth with today’s $32 million Series A. Congrats to Max and the entire team! We can’t wait to see what’s next. https://lnkd.in/ePzdnEKY

The future is bright with these AI founders at the helm! Newcomer's Cerebral Valley Heavy Weights list spotlights some of the key players driving what’s next. Congrats to all who made the list and special shoutout to Index founders and portfolio companies named, including: ✨ David Singleton, Hugo Barra, and Nicholas Jitkoff | /dev/agents ✨ Jim Gao, Vedavyas Panneershelvam, and Katie H. | Phaidra ✨ Jordan Taylor and Kaelan Richards | Vizcom ✨ Parag Agrawal | Parallel Web Systems ✨ Sergiy Nesterenko | Quilter ✨ Tudor Achim and Vlad Tenev | Harmonic These founders – and their amazing companies – are just getting started. Keep an eye out in the weeks and months ahead!

We first partnered with Vizcom because we believed in a simple but powerful idea: that AI could become a creative collaborator - not a replacement - for the world’s best industrial designers. Since then, Jordan Taylor, Kaelan Richards and the team have shown just how transformative that vision can be. Vizcom is empowering designers to move from sketch to visualization in seconds, bridging the gap between imagination and execution. As AI reshapes how creative work happens, Vizcom stands out for keeping human creativity at the center, enhancing the craft rather than automating it away. We’re thrilled to double down on our investment and continue supporting Vizcom as they build the future of design. Congratulations on your Series B, Vizcom!

Congratulations to Sublime Security on their Series C! As the threat landscape grows more complex, Sublime is redefining how teams stay ahead – using AI to detect, adapt, and defend at machine speed. Founders Josh Kamdjou and Ian Thiel are setting a new standard for modern email security, and we’re proud to continue our partnership since their Series A as they scale their vision for smarter, faster, and more open protection. 👏