The GTMnow Podcast

VC: How VCs Evaluate Technical Founders (TAM, Moats & Diligence), with Amanda Robson, Founder and GP of Modern Technical Fund

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Amanda “Robby” Robson (Founder of Modern Technical Fund) joins GTMnow to break down how she evaluates companies at the very earliest stages and why discipline matters more than ever in today’s market.


Amanda has spent over a decade in venture before launching Modern Technical Fund, investing across verticals ranging from security and compliance to developer tools at firms like Norwest and Cowboy Ventures. Her investment thesis is centered on backing elite technical founders early and helping them translate deep engineering talent into real products, real customers, and real momentum.


In this conversation, we unpack how Amanda thinks about founder quality, market timing, and risk when there’s limited data and plenty of noise, which is more critical than ever in an AI-heavy investing environment.


Guest Links

Amanda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-robson-7227685b/

Amanda’s Twitter: https://x.com/robby_mtf

Modern Technical Fund’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/modern-technical-fund/

Modern Technical Fund website: https://moderntechnicalfund.com/


Host links:

Max - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/

Max - X: https://x.com/HackItMax

Paul - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulsirving/

Paul - X: https://x.com/PaulGTM

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

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As we expanded from Fund I to Fund II, AngelList took care of the back-office operations, allowing us to stay focused on what matters most: investing in world-class founders and building the strongest go-to-market network in venture.

They’ve scaled with us across funds and into the future.

If your fund is growing in size or complexity, check them out at www.angellist.com/gtmfund.

Transcript available under the episode here: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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SPEAKER_03

Modern Technical Fund. It's technical founders only.

SPEAKER_02

Technical founders only.

SPEAKER_03

I'm just like super hardcore about that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's really been the focus of basically my entire investing career.

SPEAKER_03

Amanda Robbie Robson from Modern Technical Fund. What is a technical founder?

SPEAKER_02

It's an elite engineer. Engineers that can be highly commercial and are really focused on solving customer problems. They can see what a product should look like from end to end.

SPEAKER_03

How do you look at commercialization? How do you look at TAM?

SPEAKER_02

It's less like the overall size of TAM now. Like in the case of the compliance software market, I think Gardner said it was like 200 million or something, which is hilarious because now there's like multiple billion dollar companies there. But the tailwind was there to increase the number of potential customers. That's the thing that I look for the most.

SPEAKER_03

Momentum of TAM growth.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

From a company investment standpoint, how do you keep the bar high and deploy on schedule?

SPEAKER_02

I think really comes down to valuation and fun math. I won't do anything that's really over 20 million-ish post for first-time founders that don't have traction where there isn't any product. Like that just won't fly for me.

SPEAKER_03

What makes an actual AI company versus just AI theater? Yeah, so all right, we're back with another amazing, so fun episode of the GTM Now VC series that we're doing. Today's guest is Amanda Robson from Modern Technical Fund. We're here with Paul Irving today, uh, my partner at GTM Fund. But Paul, great guest. You've spoken to Amanda Robson before, well known as Robbie. What trend are we seeing here in venture capital land?

SPEAKER_00

The ecosystem at large is uh I think uh in a pretty interesting place in that we're seeing uh absolutely both ends of the spectrum. I mean, just in last episode uh we recorded uh not long ago at all, we were talking about A16Z's$15 billion fundraise. And then Sapphire Ventures uh and Beezer Clark did a great thread on this. They're one of the more active LPs in the venture ecosystem over the last 20 years, uh, released some data just this week that uh for the first time in their over 20-year cohort, there is fewer venture capital funds in the market as of 2025 than there was the year before. So there is more venture capital funds going out of business or no longer actively investing than there are coming to market. And looking at some pitchbook data to verify that, there's over 10,000 funds on paper at least investing in the US. And if you dig a little bit deeper, only half of those are actively investing. And it just goes to show, I think, the have and have nots of some of the ecosystem at large, but also how difficult it is. You know, they shared some data on graduation rates from fund one to fund two. And keep in mind, too, that these graduation dates, they're really good data points. Uh, but these are from 1990 to 2021. I'm fascinated to see what these look like five years later when you go through, you know, the market correction of 2022, 2023. We've seen some preliminary numbers at just how low the graduation rates have been for venture funds or new venture funds started over the last few years. So think since post the 2022 correction to today in early 2026. But these are the historical rates, which still um shows how challenging it can be. So fund one to fund two, just a 50% graduation rate. Fund one to fund four, which is the, you know, you probably crossed the chasm to being a you know real fund who's been operating in the marketplace for a decade or so, only 17%. And then the fund one to fund eight, where you have become a name brand in the industry, only four percent. Uh so it's it's not uh not an easy road. And um, I think we're seeing both ends of the venture ecosystem in a really acute manner today. Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, we were very fortunate to oversubscribe our previous fund. You know, certainly seeing it when we talk to peers in the emerging manager space, that uh most of them were not able to do that. A lot of them had to kind of tweak their fund size downward to get to kind of a minimum viable fund over the past few years. And I think you're you're definitely seeing the haves and have nots when you get Andreessen with$15 billion, uh Lightspeed with$9 billion, and some of these other funds that are I saw Land from Basis set, somebody tweeted her fund was raised in a day. And you know, some of it could just goes to show if you're you're in a certain set of the right companies and you get DPI quickly and um you build a reputation for being the person in a space that is you know certainly the space to be in right now, and uh you know, props to LAN for being kind of early and and very deep in the in the AI space, that it gets a lot easier for you. So I think there's obviously this kind of haves and have nots. It's certainly happening in the fund and firm building space right now. As we go into a little bit more of like what's happening in the day-to-day, another thing that we're seeing right now is the whole SaaS is dead conversation. And you're seeing that in the public markets with uh you know, HubSpot's down to trading, uh, I think like a Forex, uh uh multiple, um, don't know what it is today, but you know, Datadog, they they have Zscaler, kind of the SaaS companies of the past few years that are kind of suppressed valuations, and it's kind of a reminder back to this time in 2016, although that rebounded, you know, now we have, I guess, another boulder in the way, which is AI, AI up-and-comers that are coming up and essentially um disrupting maybe not even the companies, but the notion that these companies are going to be worth what they're worth in a couple of years if um you know AI continues to trend in the the direction that it is. One of the interesting things that we saw recently online that I I tweeted about was Airtable completely reinvented the company and the product from scratch. I thought that was so gutsy. You're seeing a lot of companies, I think, in the incumbent SaaS arena say, okay, we'll inject AI into our product or we'll do a co-pilot or something like that. And Airtable is one of the first ones that I've seen. It's like, nope, that's not enough. We're gonna have to rebuild this platform from scratch, leveraging AI. And you even saw with Microsoft how Satya kind of was like, yeah, copilot's not enough. I'm gonna go be PM of of this product until it is what it should be. I think there's a lot of SaaS companies have been around since let's call it 2015, 2017, even 2021, that are gonna have to take a look in the mirror and say, hey, what would we build from scratch if we were rebuilding this product today? And maybe that's what we need to build. Maybe we need to cannibalize what we already built. What are you seeing?

SPEAKER_00

What are your thoughts on that? Aaron Powell You can look at it two different ways. I mean, there's the one part of it is, and you mentioned it, and Airtable has done a fantastic job. There's going to be other companies and founders and executive teams that answer the bell, basically, which is a realization that just bolting on a few cool AI workflows on your traditional seat-based price, you know, enterprise software is likely not enough for a lot of these companies. And it's not just the private markets that you know sometimes can be ahead of the curve or should be ahead of the curve on a lot of these things. The public markets are reacting to it quickly as well. I mean, some data to back that up. The Meritech Public Software Index and data is fantastic. I know we had Alex Clayton on earlier in the series, but they did this really uh great split. So they took the public market software index and they put it into two buckets. So companies with AI tailwinds and companies without AI tailwinds. So since January of 2024, two years, the companies with AI tailwinds uh up 56% overall. Uh, those without down 22%, and that's accelerating. They've never seen a wider spread from the top of multiple companies which have AI tailwinds, your sort of Palantirs, your snowflakes, there's a number of others, and the ones that are facing serious questions about their business model, you know, their place within the priority stack of vendors of their particular particular corner of software and technology, given that there's up-and-AI native companies that are trying to take that budget, take that share of mind share within their particular corner of software. The optimistic way to look at it is if I was a founder today, if I was an investor today, if I was an operator joining a startup, there's some hope in that signal in the sense that that's the public markets validating that there is meaningful disruption happening in the private markets that's soon going to end up in the public markets. Not this death to B2B software, but maybe death to the old archetype of B2B software. And the current incumbents either answer the bell and you're an air table and you reorganize your product, your mission, your vision, uh, and re-accelerate as a result, or you're going to get caught by one of these new up-and-coming AI native companies that's got a better product, better workflows, building and moving faster, uh, different business model and structure. And, you know, those are the ones that if I'm an operator today, you know, choosing where I'm going to work next, or I'm an investor choosing the next great company. I think that's as difficult it is for our public market investors or friends that are public market investors. I think it's a really exciting uh opportunity for the AI native startup ecosystem.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, absolutely. So Debbie Downer on the venture stuff, Debbie Downer on the SaaS stuff. Not even going to get into who's going to get jobs where once everything is AI-ified. So uh, but it is a good segue into the Robbie episode of the podcast because I think one of the things she talks about uh at length and is really disciplined on is avoiding what she calls AI theater. So when she's diligencing a company, how do you make sure that this is actually kind of AI at the core of the product, real infrastructure versus this hand-wavy kind of AI theater? Oh, this is uh AI, but it's really more of like if-then statements or not as much of actual e-use case or uh deep use cases of an LLM or kind of AI functionality. And we've seen this before as investors too. I mean, I think this is kind of everywhere. I think it's in vogue to slap AI on a product and say, hey, this is AI, but it's another thing to really get in the weeds. She's got a great network of technical founders and um technologists in different roles across businesses that she's able to diligence these companies with. So she's developed a great eye for it. Obviously, she's been in the BC game for a while, but thought it was a very thoughtful take on how she sizes up um AI deals. And uh I don't know. Any any key takeaways for you uh from the episode?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was I just great first principles way to approach it. Like she approached it from okay, what is my definition for an AI native company? Because people have different definitions. It seems like it would be obvious, and and it's actually non-obvious when you talk to different investors or different founders, they'll give you a different answer. And I think what I liked about her definition was it's not just young companies started within the last couple of years and everyone there is AI native. That's not necessarily true. It's not people that are building their own models internally, even though those are quite clearly AI native companies. But it also can be a company, I think she used Superbase as an example, which is a great one. The product itself is not necessarily AI native, but it is obviously powering so many AI native workflows from a data perspective that you would treat it as an AI company in the sense that it's riding the exact same tailwinds. So their product itself isn't necessarily, you know, AI-ified with all these different workflows and doesn't have to be per se, as long as it's sitting in the right part of the infrastructure stack for companies that are using it and becomes of you know a vital part of the AI story for a lot of other, you know, of their customers and a lot of the rest of the ecosystem. What was cool about the way she diligences it too is she doesn't do customer references traditionally, because she's got this network of buyers, she can go in and make an introduction to somebody who would be a customer, watch the founder pitch live, get the response of somebody who is a almost fresh perspective, fresh mind, and not the customer who gives you a rosy reference because they don't want to lose access to the tool, even though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Um, and we see that all the time. I mean, it's the power of having these 300 operators across AI and software and the technology landscape on GTM fund side of things, where, you know, it's great to do the customer reference side of things, but what can be even deeper and more meaningful sometimes is, hey, let's introduce you to somebody who's sold in this category before. Let's introduce you to somebody who would be a buyer and be a net new customer. You know, usually the founder loves it because you're giving them either a net new lead potentially or somebody who can give them advice on their space. But from our side of things, when we're making investment decisions, it gives you somebody with you know expertise within a market and a fresh perspective on hey, is this novel? Is this interesting? Would you create budget for it? You know, how how does the founder position and pitch it?

SPEAKER_03

Good takeaways. All right, let's get into the episode with Amanda Robbie Robson from Modern Technical Fund. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_02

Of course. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So new fund. Very exciting.

SPEAKER_02

New fund. Though it feels like it's new-ish because technically it like closed earlier this year, but I'm just, you know, riding up the 2025 launch after launch.

SPEAKER_03

What eight deals so far?

SPEAKER_02

Actually, nine. Nine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Sneaky, sneaky last deal since the year. Sneaky last deal just got out. It came in. Yeah. Oh yeah. So how many do you think you'll actually do from this fund?

SPEAKER_02

So the fund will be about 25. So I am actually I I just passed the one year mark since first close. So I'm pretty much on pace, and then from a dollars deployed on pace too for three years.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. Tell us about the fund.

SPEAKER_02

So um I started the fund technically like a year and a half ago, it started getting conceptualized, but really started fundraising for it and everything in kind of like mid to late 2024. My background, I've been in venture for a long time, for 10 years. It's funny because it's basically been my only job. So I have no other skill other than BC and like, what is that? It's like all these different random skills together. But I started the fun because I saw this gap for technical founders in building something that was hyper-tailored to helping them move faster at the earliest stages. And a lot of that's through network. So I built out a network of technical buyers and technical sellers who work really closely with my founders on getting their first products to market. And it's been super effective so far. So of the nine companies, for every one of them, we've either helped with a really key hire, either sourcing it, closing it, or key design partners for some multiple, um, or helped get them really good advice, whether it comes to like pricing, go to market, how to actually do sales, because we brought in, I brought in a bunch of folks onto my team as advisors who were the first like sales or marketing hires at awesome like technical companies like Upland or Drata. Uh so yeah, that's what the fund is.

SPEAKER_03

Love the network model. So it's technical founders uh and technical buyers was the marketplace or the the network.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, the network. Um, and it's uh all cyber data or dev tool-oriented founders, and I'm writing anywhere from 500k to million dollar checks and all super early, so pre-seed or seed. And then focus areas are the US and Israel, but all these really companies are focused on the US market from a go-to-market standpoint.

SPEAKER_03

And it's technical founders only.

SPEAKER_02

Technical founders only. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's really been the focus of um basically my entire investing career. So when I was at Norwest, which is the first VC fund I was at, it's a highly technical team. Like the partners I worked with were all like ex Cisco and like networking. So like you couldn't get by if you didn't understand technical founders. And I kind of found my footing being kind of like the business counterpart to technical founders at the earliest stages. And so it just kind of happened that way. And I kind of built up my first three and a half years at Norwest working with technical founders, was the security and dev tool lead at Cowboy Ventures for five years and then created this fund.

SPEAKER_03

I definitely want to go to your background at these other firms, but um my first question, I guess, is what is a technical founder? Like how do you how do you even size up somebody's technical jobs? Like it's one thing to see on their LinkedIn that they had a technical role. It's another thing to be able to, I mean, you're pre-seed seed stage, so they may not even have any product yet that they built from scratch. So how do you size that up?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Uh so really it's like two things. And I I would think that most people would agree and have the same sense of the first one. It's an elite engineer, um like an elite builder, and also an engineer that has really good product sense. So they can see what a product should look like from end to end. And then the other piece that I really focus on are engineers that can be highly commercial and are really focused on solving customer problems. Probably the best example of a company that I've worked with or a founder that I've worked with that's like that is the CEO Drata Adam. He's like insanely smart when it comes to products and engineering. But actually, I think like his superpowers is his ability to look at what a customer needs and translate that into product specs. So that's kind of what I look for as someone who's a builder, but they're incredibly like customer user oriented.

SPEAKER_03

And are the teams almost always only technical, or do you often find some one is technical, one is go to market?

SPEAKER_02

Almost always at the stage I'm investing in, um, they'll split up who's leading engineering and kind of the main build and who's doing go-to-market, but they're they're both technical. So usually the CEO, and it's not always like this, but like typically the CEO be the one leading go-to-market. So it means that they have to learn go-to-market. And I know this is a huge thing that you guys work on too with your founders, but that's a huge part of the role that I can kind of play and help them with is figuring out what amazing go-to market is like. And they have those instincts and they can really build towards solving customer problems. But a lot of the baseline things around how do you actually manage POCs or sales cycles or like how do you think about going after leads or messaging? I I work really closely with my founders on that. But yeah, it's almost always like multiple engineer, like technical founders, and then one of them will take on this go-to-market role.

SPEAKER_03

How do you then I guess work with them on? So, for example, you've got technical founders you you trust implicitly because you fund them, you did your diligence, they start to build, they go to market. Do you kind of say, hey, you go do what your instincts tell you to do, and I will support with my advice, my network, all that? Or do you say, hey, I've got nine portfolio companies and I've been an investor and I've seen kind of this playbook before, and like here's what the best companies are doing, and try and push that, you know, or the companies in the direction. Hey, PLG is really important for a product like this because of X, Y, and Z anecdotes. Like you should do PLG even if they weren't considering that before.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, that's a really good question. I I will never I well, first, I think that you kind of earn the right to like through trust and through giving good advice and through your own expertise to give that kind of directive advice for founders. Um, usually what ends up happening is they will have a sense of what they need and they'll have a sense of what they're good at and what they're not good at. And so I'll come in and say, okay, like for instance, I was actually just helping um one of my companies with a head of sales search. And they were, and I it's really like probing and asking a lot of questions. So they were like, okay, here's some of the candidates we're looking at. And I'm looking at them, I'm like, so none of them have been at exceptional companies. And if you look at your engineering team, they're all from exceptional companies, they're all like top one to five percent engineers. If you look at these people's profiles, they don't really scream like top one to five percent sales leaders. And so then I introduce them to a few like top, top sales leaders who are part of my like advisor network, and then that helps reorient them. And then I'll also help with like their process. So, with in that case, then helped interview a bunch of folks, gave my direct feedback, helped them kind of understand what greatness looked like. And then they're but it's not me kind of telling them like, hey, you need to figure this out. Like they know what they know and what they don't know, and it's really helping guide them based on the things that I might know better by working with really world-class technical sales teams before. Um, but yeah, it's it's usually not so directive of like, hey, you need to go like do PLG. It's usually like they know what they need, they know that they need to like find someone who's amazing, but they don't know how. So I really help with the how.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, advice is a is a funny thing like that. I mean, we definitely want to set our founders up to you know, meet these CROs and CMOs that we have in our our network, and we also all often vet exactly like who to connect to who that's gonna be relevant like that and what kind of advice they're they're gonna provide. What we like to do is more like anecdotes, you know, like stories, like, oh, in in the past, like this was important, or here's what we're seeing from the marketplace, things like that. Without saying like you need to do this, this is the you have to go and you should go. And like we kind of are more like, hey, this is what's happening in the marketplace, or this is you know what we're seeing as a best practice, but we trust you, we invested in you. You make the decision, you know your space better, you know your product better.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Um I want to get into your background. So started out Norwest, started the career at Norwest.

SPEAKER_02

I had done uh two years in banking before that. Okay. But other than that, yeah, it's all been venture. And actually, how I got into uh banking on the West Coast was like really funny, and actually a skill that helped me a lot. I was in I'm from Canada. So I grew up in Canada, went to school in Canada, didn't even really think about coming to the States. And I did a summer in banking in Toronto and realized that if you did um banking in Canada, you'd be working with metals and mining or oil and gas companies. Like that's all we had at the time. There's more tech now, but like this is like 12 years ago. Um, so I just started cold calling tech like banks and on the West Coast, and like shockingly, people were just very open to it and were like, who's this random Canadian girl who wants to work here? So that's how I got my job in banking on the West Coast. Um, so I did that for two years, and then I loved working with founders, and that's how I ended up in the U.S.

SPEAKER_03

Once you're in San Francisco, it's you know a small amount of time before you go from banking to VC, right? Oh, yeah. And then Norwest, then cowboy, working with uh Aileen. So what do you what are you bringing from that experience to now your own fund?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, so much. Um, so much from both Norwest and Cowboys. Cowboy, but I was at Cowboy for five years. And I learned so much there that I think really helped me not just with like fine-tune my investing because I was all focused on seed and uh pre-seed there versus at Norwest, we were doing kind of everything early stage, which ranged from seed to series A, series B. But at Cowboy, um, we were just doing seed, and I also had to, I was a first sector specialist investor. So I came in to cover um DevTools and Cyber.

SPEAKER_03

And so learned a lot about how many sector specialists were there?

SPEAKER_02

So I was the first. When I joined, they were two GPs, they were both generalists. Um, and then I came in as a first sector specialist, and then we brought in another sector specialist, Jill Williams, who covered FinTech after. So that kind of became the model for like up-and-coming investors for them to be sector specialists. Um, so but I learned so much about brand building, and that's where I started the open source startup podcast, started building networks of CISOs, CTOs, my technical go-to-market network. Um, and that whole brand building kind of exercise really helped a lot when it came to, you know, building not just my brand, but an independent fund brand. Um, and then also uh everything around like the fund model. So if you're at a big fund, like I was at Norwest, but kind of pick any of your big funds, you have no real idea about the overarching fund model. Like you just think about your own PL. Like, how are my companies doing? But like Cowboy and funny enough, like my model is very similar to Cowboys, like 25-ish companies. Um, we like lived in the fund model, and you wanted every company to be able to return your fund when you first invest. And you're looking at dilution along the way, you're looking at follow-ons, you're trying to like make sure you have enough to cover your fall-ons. And so that experience has like was so vital to how I did my fund construction, but also how I think about the fun math and the kinds of exits that this fund needs in order to like return the fund, hopefully have like a really good return profile. So, yeah, that was like insanely valuable, even though at the time it was like painful because I'm like, oh, at Norwich didn't have to do any of this.

SPEAKER_03

Like, well, what so like what exactly did you bring from like a brand standpoint? Because I think the branding is is great for modern technical fund uh MTF. I don't know why I always think it's make the future. Did you do an MTF? No, oh I like that though. Make the future. So do like events on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know what's funny? I think um one of the things that I uh I've like learned about brand from friends who are much better at brand than me is like you can make a lot of brand things work, but you want it to be super authentic to you. And so when I started the open source startup podcast, it's so direct. Like I'm a very direct person. And actually, the founders I worked with are also very direct. Engineers like to know like the name to tie to the thing, and it's like they understand it very quickly. So, Modern Technical Fund was actually a placeholder name. I was like, I want to build a modern technical fund. And then I was like, why don't I like that's literally what I'm trying to do? Yeah. And then I even like coded up my website. It's like the most direct thing ever. It's like we invest in these regions, this check size, here are the companies, here are the quotes, here's it, like, here's the network. Literally, here are all the LinkedIns of everybody who's like a formal advisor. And it's like, there's no fluff.

SPEAKER_03

It's very direct. The website is very direct. I like that it was like, um, if we're not the most impactful check on your cap table, then we fucked up. Because Lou says it right there on the website.

SPEAKER_01

It's funny too, because I co-invest with so many amazing people.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm just like, it's not a sudden you, but I'm just like, I really want to be able to do that. I'm competitive. Yes. Yeah. And you want like, especially at the earliest stages, those key hires when it's like a team of like 10 or like key design partners, like that's everything for a company. Like I closed um one of our like best logo design partners for actually the company that I just invested in, and it's like so meaningful to them. Cause that's like life or death at that stage.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. What about um people? So is it just you? Do you have is it is it you and about it?

SPEAKER_02

I say it's the royal we. I'm like, it's just me.

SPEAKER_03

That's how it was for when I started the media company back in the day. And it was nice because I'd always play off to like, ah, yeah, you know, legal won't let us do that. It's like somebody's gotta be, it can't just be me, right? But um so do you plan on growing a team, building a team? What's the what does that look like? And is there you know, you have fun ones 22? Yeah. Where does that go?

SPEAKER_02

It's a really good question. I'm just gonna be so real with you because this is like something in fundraising. Like every LP like asks you, and they're just like, oh, like what does this become? And to be totally honest, when I started out, my initial thinking was, you know, I could one of two paths. I could either keep this being like a solo thing, or I could go and try and build the next great, like technical oriented fund, like the next like bold start, cyber starts, amplify, whatever. The the last year I probably had the most fun and the most effective investing ever because for my check size with like pre-seed and seed rounds the way they are, I don't have to lead and I can still have this like the same return profile as like a fund that's much bigger. So I'm open to bringing other people on, but it would have to be someone I think who has to who can own everything end to end. Like I think it's really hard at the earliest stages to break up the investing role and be like, oh, I'm gonna have junior people who are gonna source and or like I'm just gonna do the board work, whatever it is. Like, I kind of want to do everything end-to-end. So if there's a person who emerges that's really special that I think would make a ton of sense to partner with, then I'm open to doing that. But I kind of like love what I'm doing now. And I think that this is going to be like some of my best investing.

SPEAKER_03

So I'm kind of like, Do you want to keep the fund size the same then, roughly?

SPEAKER_02

I think so. Someone's gonna come back to this and be like, hey, you said you weren't gonna grow your fund size.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, I don't think they will uh you know take it a task on that, but like you think you'll do every two-year deployment, 22. Every three-year deployment.

SPEAKER_02

And I honestly, my current thinking is it'll be every three-year deployment, it'll be around the same size. Like, I think um 50 million is the dividing point where like once you're over a 50 million fund, then you kind of have to lead. And right now I I I've co-led a number of deals, like a pre seed, but you really don't have that much flexibility because right now my ownership target is like anywhere from three to six percent. And that works with kind of a lot of things, but over 50 million, it it gets tough to like return the fund.

SPEAKER_03

So then, so then you know, people management thing doesn't matter as much. You know, you kind of probably outsource your contract fund admin and all that type of stuff, like a lot of the small funds do. So it makes it very straightforward. You're just focused on all right, I'm finding the best companies, investing in the best companies, my investors are happy. You know, you know, you've you've kind of got your re-up kind of built in there. Eventually you'll have a line out the door of people who are on the wait list, yeah, you know, ideally to come in, and that might push you to to do a bigger fund or something like that. So that's exciting. Um from a I guess a company investment standpoint, um you're getting in it like pre-seed seed, you've seen what great looks like. How do you keep the bar high and deploy on schedule?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I would say um in today's investing environment, keeping the bar high, I think really comes down to valuation and fun math. And can each investment, especially if you want it to return your fund, does it all make sense? Because there are some really high potential founders that I see raising at like 30 to 70 million posts with barely anything built out, with kind of even a vague idea of what exactly they want to build. And they're talented, but they're first-time founders. And to me, those can be really, really hard because like the risk versus potential return, it's just like really, really tough. Um, so for me, I think about maintaining a bar in today's world as um, I won't do anything that's really over like 20 million-ish post for first-time founders that don't have traction, where there isn't any product, like that just like won't fly for me. So it honestly ends up eliminating a lot of YCS stuff. Um, I will and I have done a number of seeds where there was like a product built that already had a ton of validation, traction, or like second-time founders that like had a really, really good exit before. But I think for me, like that is really kind of the bar. It really comes down to valuation because there's some really talented founders out there that just don't make sense for my model. Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Um you do do second time founders though.

SPEAKER_02

I do, yeah. Second time founders at we'll do first time, second time founders. We'll do both, but I'll do second time founders at higher valuations because that they know what they're doing. And like there's so many parts of early stage of like getting to product market fit. Cause that's really like the stages.

SPEAKER_03

They're de-risked slightly.

SPEAKER_02

They're de-risked. Like they have a team of people that they've worked with with before that they can pull from. They know how to get a product to market. They like they're both technical and understand some of the go-to-market side. So there's a lot that they've already like figured out. Um, with first-time founders, you kind of want to see that they figured some stuff out if they're going to be raising a higher valuation. I think right now, like, it's just kind of crazy some of the stuff that I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah. It's a crazy time. It's a crazy time for sure. From starting as a small operator-led role in fund to evolving to an institutional platform, Angelist has been a core partner in every phase of GTM funds growth. Their software-first fund admin infrastructure allowed us to scale without sacrificing agility, from onboarding hundreds of LPs seamlessly to handling compliance, capital calls, and reporting as our fund size evolved. As we expanded from fund one to fund two, Angelist took care of the back office operations, allowing us to stay focused on what matters most. Investing in world-class founders and building the strongest go-to-market network and venture. They scaled with us across multiple funds and into the future. If your fund is growing in size or complexity, check them out at angelist.com slash GTM fund. That's Angelist.com slash GTM fund. What are you looking at in terms of, you know, when you're sizing up a company in terms of moats? Like how do you make sure that this company is not going to be cannibalized and this company will actually be able to defend itself?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, um, it's really hard at like pre-seeds seed stage because like of all the things you can invest behind, like market tailwind, team, product, traction, like you don't usually have a GA product or traction. It's just like the team and the market tailwind. Um, so it usually comes down to why is this the best possible team to go after that opportunity? Like what edge do they have as far as knowledge, network? Like there has to be something that they're the best at for that particular opportunity. Um, but it's usually not so tangible because there's nothing really there at that point. Um, so for instance, actually, there's um there's a company that I announced um not too long ago, but they've been ramping really, really quickly called Run Reveal that I did with Costanoa and Runtime Ventures. And what was so unique about that team, they're building a security data platform. And I looked at that space forever because there's really old school legacy companies like Sumo and Splunk that are huge, um, and like everybody hates them. And the thing that was so unique about this team is they brought like a level of data expertise and data understanding, and just the way that they thought about managing data was so different from every other approach that I'd seen. So they understood, they understood security, but they actually are data experts, almost more so, um, versus so many other teams that I see going after that space, they're much more like security focused. So I think it's like, why does that team have something special that allows them to take a different approach than what others have taken?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And then what about when it is a little bit further along? Like, have you invested in anything that has had tech that you can put your hands on?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yes, but I would say usually if there's tech that I can look at, um, it's been open source founders usually. Um, so there's something that you can look at. There's a community you can look at, you can see how it deploys. Um, and one of the most interesting things about investing in open source companies, like true open source companies where they've open sourced like a majority of what the value is gonna be, um, or at least like a good portion of what it's gonna be. You can just see the quality of build and you can see how customers react to it and how they're using it. If it's core infrastructure, like if it's actually like replacing or being used in kind of really important processes. So there's just a lot there that you can actually work with.

SPEAKER_03

What do you do then from a diligence standpoint for these founders? And what's the um what do you what would you say like the average relationship duration is before you make an investment in somebody? Are these people you've known for a year and you've been tracking them and um you know, and and what does that look like? Is that like a couple of check-ins, invite them to an event, or is that somebody you worked with in the past? Like what does all that look like?

SPEAKER_02

It depends. Um I would say, yeah, like it really depends every time. Like I did a seed investment in a company that I'd actually looked at the pre-seed for, and it's an open source company, it's an Israeli company, and they actually actually we had announced it too, so I can talk about it. It's called Metal Bear. Um, so I'd already met the founders, um, and I'd kind of been tracking what they were doing and saw the project, saw who was using the project, saw kind of momentum on it. It was just a really interesting take on a hard problem. They basically eliminate the need for staging environments and engineering. You can code locally directly in your full production environment, which is just like a really interesting concept. So I'd kind of been tracking it for a while. So there, like that happens sometimes when you kind of meet founders, you think they're really interesting, and you track it. Um, I actually just invested in my eighth investment was in a founder that I looked at his first company when I was at Norwest. And it was in a really tough space. It was in cyber training, which is just like such a hard space. And he still got it to like an amazing exit, like got good traction. And I just like he was like someone I would reach out to for security diligence on things. Cause when I referenced him way back when, he he came out as like an A plus kind of like founder and guy, but I didn't like what he was building. So it was kind of like A plus founder, like C or D opportunity, in my opinion. Yeah. So then I known him and then, you know, for this new company, I love what he's going after and building. So there was already kind of a standing relationship there and references done. I tracked him, so there was a lot kind of background. I would say that almost all founders that I work with, there is some connections that we have. So it's easy for me to get very trusted references on like the quality of work that they've done or just kind of like who they are. It's very rare that someone is completely cold where we have no kind of like overlap in any ways. Um, but then it's up to me to make sure that I have the right networking connections at companies that are going to create kind of the next set of amazing technical founders.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And because your check size, it's very strategic to most other leads, right? So you can co-lead or lead a pre-seed, but not really a seed with uh, you know, a million is your highlight.

SPEAKER_02

Millions a high point. Yeah. So for seeds today, it doesn't, but it is really fun because I've never been able to be so collaborative with people. Like I don't feel like I'm competitive with anyone. Like I'm competitive for allocation, but like, you know, if a founder wants me in, usually it can make sense.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

Um so that's the part that's been really fun, because it just feels like you get more opportunity.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So you have two other things that you work on. So open source um podcasts. Yeah. And then your what is it, the angel network that you have?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Modern angels.

SPEAKER_03

Modern Angels. So how do those I guess provide sourcing support or diligence support? Or are those, you know, do you do you leverage those for the fund?

SPEAKER_02

I definitely do. Um, but a lot of times it comes in ways that aren't so direct, if that makes sense. Like they're just very complimentary to the work that I do. And I would say like there's so many connections that I've made through both of folks who become regular angels, frequent angels into my companies. Um, a number of people that I had on the open source podcast, I became good friends with, and they've either invested in my fund or suddenly like they just become like, you know, part of a network. The open source podcast really started. I uh built it with Tim Chen, who's like an awesome solo GP. Honestly, one of the biggest encouragers of like me to go do this too. And we started it because both of us were looking at a lot of DevTool companies. Naturally, a lot were open source, like four and a half years ago. And we just didn't find very good content out there on how to actually build an open source business because there were so many open source projects that people were trying to turn into businesses. It was kind of unclear like the right model or license to use or when you monetize, like how much you open source. So we started interviewing founders originally for a blog post. Um, and we interviewed like Armand at HashiCorp. Um, we interviewed Ben Siegelman at LightSup for this blog post, and we were like, wait, the conversations were way more interesting than the blog posts. Like, maybe we record those, and then we like start a podcast out of it. And then we just both enjoyed it so much that we've done 160 or 70 episodes now over the like five years. It just keeps going. And it's honestly just because we like it, but it it's it helps with diligence because I get to see and like hear from all these founders on their stories, the opportunities that they found. And they're all very relevant because I'm looking in a lot of their spaces to make investments. But then I also just make connections through them pretty organically. So there's just like so many benefits that weren't like, you know, intentional. They just kind of happen because you're just like in the mix. And by the way, I feel like that is like the one thing. Like so many VC firms, myself included, and like firms I've worked at, try to like productize things so much and be like, oh, we're gonna have this like sourcing strategy or system or like database, whatever, and that's gonna be how we do it. But like the reality is you have to keep doing different things and keep meeting different people and like iterating. And like both of those efforts have helped with that like iteration of just meeting new people and like thinking about things differently.

SPEAKER_03

And then Angel Network that's 400-something angels that just wanted to potentially invest in what you're investing in.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. So that started um now probably three years ago. And it started because I had so many dude friends that were angel investing together, and they would have all these WhatsApp groups and trade deal flow, and I had all these awesome like female operator friends, um, and actually it was specifically two. I was having dinner with the um head of strategy at Figma and CMO at this like public fintech company, Upstart, who were two of my best friends, and they wanted to angel invest. And so I brought them into deals that we did at Cowboy, but I didn't know I assumed they were getting pulled into other deals because they're both just like sick operators. And turns out they weren't. And I was like, this makes no sense. Yeah. So I like basically got their info about check size everything, put it in a Google sheet, shared it with other VC friends, and then like kept talking about this effort. And so many like people basically wanted to join it, and it quickly turned into a hundred women. I brought them all in a Slack group. I'm like, hey, this is not a this is not like us all needing to, you know, like do SPBs and invest together, but a network of people who can trade deal flow, who can bring people into deals, and it just kind of grew organically. And it's been pretty awesome because then I've also made some really good friends out of it. Um, like the head of security engineering, Angie at Anthropic, like she was one of the original ones that got into it, and we've just become like such good friends out of it. And it's like a relevant connection, but also she's just like an awesome person. So I think things like this just help very organically like grow the network, and they're in service of the community as opposed to just like nice little flywheel that yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, you have the media extension on the podcast, you have the community extension with both the folks that are LPs in the fund, but then also the Angel Network, and those folks can all act as deal flow sources, diligence, and you know, portfolio company support, similar to kind of the model that we have. So uh the technical side of things, of of course, was whereas the GTM side of things, when you look at companies and you're sizing them up, um you know, you're talking about technical founders, but um how how do you look at commercialization? How do you look at TAM? How do you look at their the ability to sell, how this is gonna be big? I mean, we had a company we passed on recently where you know, I hate doing like, oh, the TAM is not big enough, but there's there are still some times where it is not big enough. There were like a hundred potential customers for this. They were selling to airlines, and it's like I don't know how to reconcile that because each individual airline is could be a big c customer, but that eventually caps out. I don't know what the exit potential is gonna be. Um and you kind of end up in this like this mess where I feel like the best opportunities are grand slam potential, but like single double de-risk, you know, like at the worst case scenario, and then there's the opportunities where it's like grand slam potential and strikeout risk, and like those are fine-ish too. But if you have like eh, home run potential, but strikeout risk, then it's kind of like well, this isn't gonna be that big of a company, but it's also still super risky. So, shouldn't I be looking for stuff that's like high reward medium, lower risk instead of you know, low reward high risk? So, how are you sizing these things up in terms of TAM commercialization and distribution?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so um I would separate, yeah, the TAM question and then how commercial the founders are. So on the TAM question, there has to be it's less like the overall size of TAM now. Like in the case of Drata, the compliance software market, I think Gardner said it was like 200 million or something, which is hilarious because now there's like multiple billion dollar companies there. But the tailwind was there to increase the number of potential customers. So that's the thing that I look for the most.

SPEAKER_03

Momentum of TAM growth. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think that's a really good way to frame it. Cause like for a while, you only needed something like SOC 2 if you're selling to big enterprise. And then slowly but surely everyone was like, Well, there's so much risk with our vendors and the data that they're handling, like, why don't we make every vendor have to have SOC 2? So literally every startup that wanted to sell to anyone, it was like a complete blocker for them. And there were like kind of inklings of that happening. And so if you kind of could see that and you're like, okay, what if, like, are we on a path to the world uh in the world for there to be the need for every single company to have SOC2 compliance? Yes. Okay, then like that's rapidly growing. And I think that's happening in AI a lot too. Like, I remember one of my biggest um misses was I, when I was at Norwest, um, I was following the scale AI story and um had done a bunch of research in the background, um, because I think it was after the series A. So it was between series A and series B, and like heard really good things about the team. And so had done a bunch of background research just to like get a meeting with the team to basically say, like, hey, here's like basically what all the kind of like the market's saying about you. And they were so concentrated because at the time it was all autonomous car companies. Cause that was kind of like the first big like AI way was very like autonomous focused. And it was heavy customer concentration. And at the time, I couldn't really see like, oh, but this is gonna rapidly change. So this concentration is gonna change. It's Everybody needs AI and suddenly your potential customer set are like all these other companies. So I think it's like having an instinct or insight on that from an investor perspective, that's a thing that can kind of it's like there's something that's changing to make a market really, really big.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And then from my distribution standpoint, how does that channel through?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So um it depends what their distribution they plan on their distribution being. So if they, if it's going to be a direct sale, which honestly, like most companies will have some direct sale component to it, um, why are they the best at it? Or why can they be the best at it? So one of the things I do, I actually almost never ask, if they do have like one or two design partners or customers or whatever, I I never ask to talk to them. Cause I'm like, one, that's like kind of annoying for founders. But then two, I don't know them. And I have my own network of potential customers and users who will give me the full download of it. And they're not warm, like they're not, you know, one of their friends. So I have them pitch, and oftentimes I sit in and watch them pitch and I watch how good they are at engaging them, at like pulling product specs. So actually, my most recent investment is in a very early TAM, but I think is gonna rapidly grow space. And the founder, it's funny because so many of the CISOs of my network were like, this isn't a problem for us yet. We're not looking for tools there. And then they met with her and they're like, God, she's so compelling. Like, maybe, maybe like, you know, for this kind of market, she has to be educating the market and like she kind of has that. And I and I just fundamentally believe that this is gonna become a really big problem in a pretty quick amount of time.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I just try to like test them out, and it's like mutually beneficial. Cause even if I pass, they've met a bunch of like customer prospects from me. So it's like, yeah, great. So I try to do that as much as possible. Um, and yeah, I want to see what their distribution advantage is. And it doesn't necessarily come down to like, oh, they already have a pre-existing network of CISOs themselves, because like I can help bring that. It's how good are they at engaging and like really impressing their like potential user buyer group. So that's where like having the network can really help.

SPEAKER_03

We had very similar one just now uh we invested in where we were like, I don't know if it's a need to have or nice to have. We were kind of on that line. And the uh principal at GTM Fund, Viba V, her um what would it be, brother-in-law works for a potential customer company. And so we're like, Can you take a look at this? And uh his response was like, I want to buy this now. Can I also can I can I write an angel check? Like I was like, ah, those are the responses you want to hear. So uh we ended up making the investment, obviously a couple other data points, but those are yeah, that that's what you want to hear.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, totally. And it's funny too, because it's always so nuanced at the early stages. Cause like, you know, like for instance, run reveal, it's like a sim. So a lot of security teams, like, they're very skeptical of other sim companies because they're like, yeah, we hate Splunk Sumo, we haven't seen anything good. And so there was like nuance of like finding the right potential people for them to talk to that would give me the right advice. I wouldn't just be like, ah, I don't want to do this. And the funny thing is, a lot of the naysayers now are like, oh wait, now I won't look at this. So you kind of have to like find the right people to do that kind of diligence or like hear the pitch.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And yeah, sometimes it's hard because like I'll get not like bad, but I'll get like less interested by your perspectives on something. You really have to dissect that and like be like, okay, wait, did I introduce the wrong profile of person? Or like you kind of have to like almost study your own diligence.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Well, you're verticalized. So are you, do you feel like when you speak to the founder, you're actually learning a ton from them and then you have to go back and verify that, or do you come with a prepared mind in a way where you are almost fact-checking what they're saying in real time?

SPEAKER_02

It's you, I there have I can't remember the last time that I met a founder and I was like, oh, is this a pain point? Is this like usually what happens is like, oh, huh, interesting. I know this is a problem, but I haven't heard someone taking this approach before. And then usually I'm like, can it work? And like that, and then like I try to work through that with them in real time. And that's usually the thing that I'm thinking through is like, is their approach going to actually work or be that different? But there are a lot of meetings where someone will pitch them to me and I'm like, I've heard this almost exact pitch so many different times. And like this just doesn't feel like something that new or different to me. So uh, so then that helps me kind of get through the ones that are less interesting a lot faster. Um, the thing that's tricky about being so verticalized, like I do a lot of cyber investing. There aren't that many, like if a company becomes big, there are maybe like, I don't know, six or seven major categories are gonna go after, whether it's like identity, GRC, and like, or detection engineering. And then some of them you you can't like I'm very mindful of conflicts, but then you get into this issue where like if they're gonna get big, they're gonna end up overlap.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. What do you think you'll do? Honestly, very nice problem to have.

SPEAKER_02

It's a nice problem to have if they get really big, but it's like we have too many unicorns. No, but like at the beginning, you kind of it's even hard because you know, like founders will have really big ambition. So like a lot of founders will be like, well, I'm gonna get there eventually. And they'll almost self-select you out of others. You're like, you have like five of these.

SPEAKER_03

Well, what one day? Like five years from now? Like, oh, that'll be a great problem for everybody to have, right?

SPEAKER_02

Totally. I've like it's that we get to that point. Like, and then the thing is companies will pivot sometimes, so you have to like manage it. But yeah, I try not to have direct conflict risk, but there are some times where like I have two companies right now where they're both like actually one more than the other, is like we might get into that space at some point. And I was kind of like Some point. Get some like, but anyway, they let me do it. Somewhere over the rainbow. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, some point. Um, where are you getting your like news or learning from these days? Is it talking to people, listening to podcasts, any specific specific podcasts, communities?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's a good so honestly, real-time news. I get so much of it from X. Like, I feel like that's like the most real time, because you don't even get like just the event, you get all these different perspectives on it, and you can kind of sort through whose opinions you want. And I actually like to see both sides because it's just like helpful in like you know, forming kind of holistic um view of the situation. But yeah, as far as like podcasts, there's so many different like good cyber ones that I listen to. There's a lot of good content out there from like different founders now. I feel like there's almost too much content that I have to like speed through a lot of it. Um, but yeah, I don't know if there's like very specific ones. It kind of is just like an amalgamation of like different things. Um, like I really like a lot of the new media outlets, like Upstarts, Alex Conrad's. Like, I love his deep dives. He's really, really great. Um, I love uh Eric Newcomers who's like for general tech stuff, but with like a good like a perspective on it and really like well thought through writing. Um so I like all the things.

SPEAKER_03

Are there any cyber-specific podcasts or um any Israeli, you know, newsletters or podcasts or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's a good question. There aren't that many, I would say necessarily like Israeli newsletters that I follow. Um, there's been a few, I mean, as like the war's been going on, there have been a few like individual podcasts that have like really summarized stuff really well. But I would say that like following all the firms, they all will kind of like summarize what's going on there. Like I do a lot of work with TLV partners, for instance, like the teammate team's awesome. And just like following them, seeing what their commentary is, seeing what things they link to has been really helpful. But then I would also say I'm on the ground perspectives from people, especially for that situation, because like you can't really trust a lot of the news out there, or at least I've had a hard time. Um, my founder's perspectives has been like, because they're just in it and like can tell you what's going on. So that's been probably the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_03

So what makes an actual AI company versus just AI theater?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So I think it's funny because so many investors now will say we only invest in AI. And then their definition of it is very different. And so I I've been trying to come up with my own definition. I think like the worst definition are AI native, like what is AI native? AI native is companies built by founders that are like under the age of like 23. Like they grew up with these AI tools, which I think is a terrible definition. Um, there's also um a definition that it's a company that has their own model. And I think that is true for sure. Those are all AI native companies. But I actually think that an AI native company is a company whose core product offering is an AI product. Um, and it's not kind of like an ancillary thing. That doesn't mean that there aren't non-AI companies that are going to be really valuable. And I have invested and looked at companies that are applying AI to automate like different parts of their process, but their core offering is not AI. And I think what's interesting in the infrastructure space, um, I would say more infrastructure and data versus security, but in infrastructure and data, you have a number of companies that are enabling AI in different ways, but they're not like uh if you looked at like, is there core product offering AI? Like, is it an AI product? No, it's a database product or it's an observability product, but it's for AI workloads. So I think that's kind of the way that I think about it when it comes to investing in AI companies, is it are these companies supporting the generation of AI native application companies that are coming out? Um, and usually that comes down to them helping with something around data storage, observability. Like they're really enabling these applications in different ways. Um, and a lot of times they'll apply AI themselves, but they themselves are more of like an infrastructure player. Like Superbase is a good example. It's like enabling so many AI applications, but they themselves aren't really like an AI application. They're just an enabler.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Interesting. What are you uh using internally? Um like are you have you AI-ified to fund?

SPEAKER_02

It's funny because I think like there's so many different perspectives on this. I just kind of use it as I need it. Like I tried a number of the AI products for the podcast, and they were just like kind of okay. And I like the outsourced guy that I was using, so I've like been using him instead. Um I use an AI scheduling bot. That's probably the one thing that's saved me the most amount of time. I basically just like pull in this AIEA and they'll do a bunch of scheduling stuff for me. So that's been like the best use of time. Diligence memos, like But the for memos for me, it's like I'm basically putting down my like raw thoughts, like why I think something is like gonna be huge. And it's like a one-page memo.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Cause it's funny, I used to do these like really beefy memos um when I was at bigger funds. And usually the reason you did that was so that your partners could like really understand and validate the things you were saying. But if it's just you, it's like I want to record my thinking so that in the future I can know if I made a good or bad decision on the basis of like, was I lucky or was I actually right? But I don't actually think that, you know, I have all my notes in different places. Like, I don't need all that. Like, I'm not trying to prove it to someone else. I'm just recording my point of view.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I know we we definitely use a lot of it for competitive analysis. Um, you know, it just just the sleuthing and like copy and pasting you'd have to do pre, you know, GPT to go find competitive analysis, TAM sizing, all that kind of stuff is now just like a well-written prompt or two in a GPT, and then you have like this the whole thing is like written for you. So certainly use it that way, but it's it's almost always like verifying what we already believe, not like helping us get to a belief, you know.

SPEAKER_02

I think it is really like ChatGPT is so helpful with writing. Like when I especially because I'm now trained in on my style of writing. And so I would never, and I think you can tell when someone something is like entirely like Chat GPT built.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

But it's more like, oh, I'm trying to say this thing. Can you make this sound a little bit better? And it just saves you time. So it's kind of like this co-pilot helping with writing. Or you know what I do a lot is if I have like a summary for one of the podcast episodes, I'm like, hey, can you put this into a LinkedIn post using my like style of language? It just saves so much time. Then you can like iterate on it too. But yeah, the writing piece is really good. But yeah, it's almost like it's not that great at it's well, actually, it's not great at all at original thought. Uh so there's like absolutely it's never gonna kind of replace, and it's funny because even on like, oh, you can be like this non-technical person and build a company, do whatever, it's like, no, there needs to be like an original thought, original product, original thing built. And it's not gonna do that. So it can do a lot of like personal things, like personal tasks. But yeah, if you want to build or say or do something differentiated, it's not gonna give you that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. That was another fantastic episode of the VC series on the GTM Now podcast. Head over to Apple, Spotify, or YouTube and give us a like and subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.