Medium: Web page (About section - replaces “why we paused” when no longer timely)ToV: General
Venture starts with a person and something they noticed.
Ten years on a factory floor, watching an old process break the same way, knowing what would fix it but not enfranchised to try.
AI can’t read this founder.
There is no dataset for the new “right” that could change the industry.
As AI transforms every other workflow in venture, human judgement remains the first and only gate. It has greenlight every explosive growth trajectory, every billion-dollar exit, every decacorn in history. As long as AI runs on data, AI can’t replace it.
Judgment (or taste, or instinct, or other intangibles humans have) is all VC is now. Applying it at seed is probably the only window to 100x returns left in existence. The only problem is: you have to make a call on no data.
At seed, the call isn’t optional. Someone has to go first.
Before AI, VCs spent their weeks getting through the workload. Some still are. It was harder to spot winners amid the fog of manual sourcing and endless DD and avalanching pitch decks.
AI burned all that off. Now, every working hour is an act of judgement. The white hot core of venture, and the mechanically correct way to run it, is the same as it was a half-century ago.
Back the right person, early, at a fair price, and pick up the phone when they need you. Let AI run the sourcing, the research, the memos, sure. Only a partner and their judgement can sit across from someone the world hasn't noticed yet, and decide to back them anyway.
This judgement is not easy. In fact, it’s a rare asset, and a tall order.
But we do it because the opportunity is bigger than anything that’s gone before. Bigger than dotcom, cloud, or SaaS put together. And after a decade spent at seed, we know we’re the ones to take it.