Baukunst

Congrats to Eyebot for their well-deserved mention on Fortune's list recognizing 20 game-changing health breakthroughs in 2024. 👏

2024 was one of the most momentous years of my life. The idea of Bindery Books became real, and in building it, we made meaningful strides on our mission to build a more diverse, equitable, and independent world of books. The tireless effort of the Bindery team and supporters and the creativity and vision of our tastemaker partners resulted in an outpouring of love, on social and in the real world, for our four stunning debuts. The year was full of highlights along the way: 🎉 Our inaugural title list released on October 15th at a launch event in New York with nearly 200 attendees, including dozens of major influencers and media members. We’ve issued three reprints, stocked nearly 40k paperbacks in over 500 bookstores to date including B&N and Walmart, and hit multiple #1 rankings.  📚 We acquired 17 more books (and growing) that will launch throughout 2025 and 2026. 🙌 Bindery and our list received acclaim throughout the year, covered in People, Deadline, Publishers Weekly, Bookriot, Shelf Awareness, Writer’s Digest, Bookish, Autostraddle, Locus Magazine, and more. 🖋️ We received thousands of submissions from literary agencies and from unagented authors in our seasonal Pitchfests. Nearly a third of all Bindery acquisitions were discovered through Pitchfest.  🎬 We signed well over a dozen subrights deals across foreign, audio, and subscription box companies, and partnered with Independent Artist Group and Atlas Literary to represent us in Hollywood. (Stay tuned for exciting developments on the film/tv front after the new year!) 💗 Our incredible full-time team grew from three (me, Meghan Harvey, and Zack Jordan) to seven with the addition of CJ Alberts, Charlotte Strick, Rosemary Campbell, and Shira Schindel. 📈 We accelerated our platform growth since launching mid-last year. In 2024 alone Bindery users grew by ~4x. Our tastemaker waitlist, tastemakers on platform, and MRR all grew by ~3x.  📢 We launched 6 new publishing imprints from thriving tastemakers on our platform for a total of 11 Bindery imprints. Over half of our books’ social promotion to >10M people came from readers and other Bindery tastemakers, a tangible indication of word of mouth. Our work in 2024 has proven that tastemakers want to be on Bindery to deepen relationships with their audience and grow their career. Authors want to publish with Bindery to reach readers reliably while being able to focus on what they do best: write. And readers are joining in droves in pursuit of community off of social media and a front row seat to the publishing journey. Despite the momentum we feel in every aspect of our business, we know we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible. We’re so excited to show you what’s in store in 2025 as we scale this burgeoning platform and community and build the next generation of publishing. Thank you all for being a part of this journey!

We spoke with Andrew McLuhan of the McLuhan Institute, grandson of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and organizer of our upcoming "Understanding Media" Study Group (starting January 9th)—to discuss what to expect of the curriculum, the role of magic in media, and why creative technologists should engage with this critical topic: "Our technologies are complex, and the way they shape and reshape us and our world even more so. We need all the techniques at our disposal to be able to make sense of what's happening, especially if we want to get ahead of the curve. The more we understand, the smarter we can design, the better off we all are." Read the full interview with McLuhan here: https://buff.ly/4gq7Vld And if you're interested in participating in this unique learning opportunity don't forget to send in an application before January 6th for a chance to join the cohort (applications also available via link above)

Our next Study Group with Andrew McLuhan is coming up in just a few weeks, and we're excited to announce we're welcoming a select number of people outside of the Collective to join us (Applications due January 6th). Interested in applying for a chance to join? Learn more about the course and send us your application via our Notion page: https://buff.ly/3OZc9Ej

Google search for the ancient magical practice of scrying—sound familiar?📱🔮  #magic

While astrology and the stock market may seem worlds apart, their parallels reveal intriguing insights about how we seek security in uncertainty. Both systems—one rooted in celestial observations, the other in financial data—have been built over long stretches of time to detect patterns and predict outcomes. Each involves interpreting layered knowledge: historical trends, economic cycles, and cultural shifts for stocks; planetary movements, lunar cycles, and astrological houses for the stars. Interestingly, the two sometimes converge. Astrologers have been hired by investors, CEOs, kings, even presidents, seeking guidance in volatile times. At their core, both astrology and market prediction reflect a shared emotional undercurrent: anxiety, aspiration, and the desire for control. Could it be that each serve as a tool for understanding chaos? One sensitive to humanity’s own patterns, the other attuned to nature’s influence on us. Trading and astrology, in their own rights, are forms of divination. ----- For our latest issue of Baukunst Stories, we're exploring the multifaceted topic of magic. Read our intro to the issue where we dive into mysticism how it intersects with emerging technologies: https://lnkd.in/gZKHNK_h #magic #creativetechnology #finance #stockmarket

Welcome Matt Thoms, Co-Founder & General Partner at Baukunst on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥 Baukunst is a $100M Pre-Seed & Seed software focused venture capital firm writing $500k to $2M checks just as founders are getting their startups off the ground. They have team members in Boston & San Francisco and focus on startups from the idea stage to first product, first hires & finding PMF on capital efficient plans. 🔍 What’s going on inside Baukunst heading into 2025? 🔎 Matt has been doing early stage investing in Boston for 10+ years now! Locally, he’s seeing companies who have reached the $100M / $200M threshold starting to shed off a lot of great talent to go start companies. You hear a lot about Endeca and Toast here in Boston. Now we’re seeing Founders come out of Form Labs, ButcherBox, Rue La La, M.Gemi, and more building a lot of great tech in focus areas for Baukunst like manufacturing, supply chain & e-commerce. 🤔 What has Matt learned from his startup career & building Bakunst? 🤔 Getting in at the earliest stage of company formation, he always encourages teams to find those great early team members who can help you do your best work and bring your startup into new areas, stages & markets. They don’t teach you that in school! Being very efficient in the foundation setting stage (before revenue growth) as you prove out the riskiest parts of your business model on as little capital as possible. This gives you the chance to iterate and preserve agility that you often lose as you enter the growth stage. 🤝 How can we help? 🤝 Matt & Baukunst are always looking to meet founders at the earliest stage possible. It’s never too early for them to get in touch with great talent. Whether it’s folks looking for their next role, starting to think about starting something, or help connecting dots reach out to matt@baukunst.co. He’s happy to grab a coffee with good people in Boston! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston

If you're skeptical of the connections that can be made between magic and technology, consider the fact that the roots of binary code lie in ancient divination. When philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz invented the binary number system, the basis of binary code, he gleaned core influence from the five millennia old text known as the I-Ching. The I-Ching is a divination tool that can be broken down most essentially into a representation of the binaries of reality, "yin" and "yang". It is a complex system of 64 hexagram, made up of six lines in total, created to help anyone reveal their own inner wisdom and make decisions. Liebniz found inspiration in the I-Ching’s simplicity, that life in all its complexity can be understood and rendered through the construct of binaries. The I-Ching’s essence—that reality is defined by change, and shaped by a particular combination in any given moment of yin and yang energy—rings true within the reality of binary code, that any particular combination of 1s and 0s can render completely different realities. So while the system is ultimately what Liebniz took inspiration from for the future shape of the binary number system, it inevitably carries with it the same energies and philosophies of the I-Ching itself. Read more about the history of magic and its connections to technology in our intro piece to Issue 2 of Baukunst Stories: https://buff.ly/3VnYWZa #magic #history #coding #engineering #creativetechnology

At Baukunst, we believe those who contribute to building a better future vision must possess a willingness to embrace the unknown. Yet, as humans, we naturally seek ways to wield control in an uncertain world—through magic, pattern recognition, and other forms of meaning-making. While the future remains a mystery to us all, we do know this: culture and technologies possess their own magical energy. - CULTURE has the ability to cast collective spells, drawing us in through shared desires and a need to belong. - TECHNOLOGY has proven over time to transform not just how we access information, but how we think, behave, and believe. - GOVERNANCE, a more grounding element, then shapes what goes on within these spheres by creating parameters around what is—and isn’t—permitted to scale. It doesn't take much to see that these three areas inevitably intersect. As a result, we think the most valuable products of the future will be those created with a deep sensitivity to: a) The emerging technologies shaping tomorrow, but also, b) The cultural currents in which those technologies will live. Read more in the intro to our latest Stories issue, "Magic": https://buff.ly/3VnYWZa

Baukunst is excited to announce the launch of Stories Issue 2: MAGIC. Embedded in everything we do at Baukunst—whether building an ecosystem of innovative minds or investing in new startups—is a goal to reinforce the potency of a building ethos that melds technology expertise with critical design thinking. We believe this intersectional approach is what generates wildly new tools that exceed, or sometimes wholly divert from, expectation. Within this cross-section is where we are betting the “magic” of the future lies. When you think about it, for centuries magic and technology have shared a similar goal: to transform what seems impossible into something tangible. Founders and creative technologists also share traits of the magician. Digital technologies have proven over time to change our world, and by creating new tools, technologists have the ability to reshape realities. What could we learn if we look at technology and building through this mystical lens? Could principles of magic offer insights into how we design and innovate today? If we were to look at our current landscape of technology and media under a critical lens, what might it reveal about their magical effects on us? In the latest issue of Baukunst Stories, we explore broadly the topic of mysticism—from the the messy magic of building startups, to the connections between magic and current technologies. Read more about why we chose Magic as our next issue theme: https://buff.ly/3VnYWZa