Max Altschuler

Big day! Super excited to announce GTMfund Fund II, a $54m fund continuing our focus on the very best early-stage B2B SaaS founders. Fund II is our first institutional fund and was oversubscribed from a target of $50m to $54m. We did this during one of the toughest fundraising environments - while many emerging funds are shutting down or raising a fraction of what they set out to raise. A testament to our team, our LPs, and the success of our current portfolio. Since the beginning, our thesis has been simple: for the best founders in the world, capital is a commodity. They get to choose who is on their cap table and what partners they work with. Our singular focus at GTMfund is delivering a value proposition that gives us access to the top .1% of deals. As software becomes easier to build, faster, and with fewer resources, go-to-market remains one of the last few moats. The founders want our help. The other VCs in the deal want us there to help. Everyone wins. And when we invest, we're able to leverage the robust Infrastructure we've built around our active network of GTM leaders to fully support our portfolio companies. This raise marks a pivotal moment for our firm. We're just getting started. It all starts with our incredible team - Scott Barker, Paul Irving, Sophie Buonassisi, Vaibhavi Nesarikar (and a new addition to be announced next week.) A huge thank you to the founders we’re privileged to work with every day. A huge thank you to our Limited Partners who have placed their trust in us and are a massive part of the journey. None of this is possible without your support! Sharing today's TechCrunch coverage of GTMfund’s Fund II announcement and story in the comments below. techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/how…

Big day for Cerebras. I've done well in secondaries and publics over the past few years. But I'm even more excited about the portfolio we've built at @gtmfund. We are way more than just GTM support. We are pretty savvy investors - typically well ahead of market talk. Since we invest pre-seed, it's just early. But we're already beginning to see similar momentum across the portfolio. Investing from Fund III now. Exciting times.

The AI bubble debate is a distraction. Yes, there are parallels to 1998: big money, fast growth, infrastructure buildout. But the numbers tell a completely different story. 4 years after the internet launched publicly: 70 million users globally. ChatGPT and AI apps today: 1 billion monthly active users (in less time). 90% of the current infrastructure buildout is pre-committed. In the fiber era, it was 3%. This is real demand, real revenue, and real constraints (energy, land, GPUs) that make it structurally different from what we saw before. But here's what operators and founders need to understand right now: 1. The value destruction is real, too. Legacy B2B SaaS is being written down to zero faster than anyone expected. Companies worth $10 billion in 2021 are gone. It's the cost of a platform shift. 2. Distribution is the game. The gap between the #1 default brand in a category and everyone else is widening every single week. You cannot build your way out of a distribution deficit anymore. 3. Speed compounds. Move fast, establish the brand, let the product catch up. The companies getting this right are pulling away fast, and the mega funds are watching. @PaulGTM and I cover this in full before the next VC episode with the incredible @JenniferHli, Partner at @a16z. Available in full here on X, and the full episode wherever you get your podcasts!

Pratt in LA and Mandani in NYC could be one of the greatest political A/B tests in history. Would love to see it play out.

@gtmfund @confluence_vc_ @harmonic_ai @ClayNorris10 The list (paywalled): confluencevcweekly.beehiiv.com/p/50

@gtmfund made the Confluence 50 50 firms @confluence_vc_ and @harmonic_ai believe are shaping the next generation of the asset class. The whole point of the list is to find who will look obvious five years from now. Honored to be in the mix. Thank you @ClayNorris10, ConfluenceVC, and Harmonic!

Solid post from @michaelpwalrath

@GTMnow_ @auren @flexcapital Apple: podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/vc-… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5MdiVa… YouTube: youtu.be/dFzmuUWQFww?si…

Episode 8 of the @GTMnow_ VC Series is live! I sat down with @auren (GP at @flexcapital, CEO of NQB8). He’s someone who has built, invested, and thought deeply about data, AI, and venture for decades. We get into how AI is reshaping venture workflows, why software is getting more competitive, and how he’s scaling a fund with hundreds of “AI analysts.” Before the conversation, @paulGTM and I also talk through what we’re seeing in the market right now, from the rise of distribution as a moat to why this is a key deployment window in the AI cycle. A few takeaways from the conversation that are particularly worth sitting with: 1. AI analysts are already part of the investment team. Auren shared they effectively run 500–600 AI analysts across their workflows. Each one handles a narrow task, from sourcing to research to evaluation. This creates leverage at a level that was not possible even a year ago. 2. Sourcing is becoming an agent-first game. Flex uses agents to monitor signals like job changes, stealth startups, and market activity. These agents surface opportunities and even initiate outreach. The human layer focuses on high-context interactions. This is turning venture sourcing into something that looks a lot like a scaled outbound motion. 3. Agent-to-agent conversations are coming fast. Auren believes first meetings between founders and VCs will soon be agent to agent. These interactions will filter for fit before any human call happens. Founders will save time, investors will see more deals, and both sides will enter conversations with more context already established. 4. The best founders are still the entire bet. At Seed, there is almost no data. Decisions are made on people. Auren breaks it down: great founders, invest at any price. Good founders, pass. The hard category is “very good,” where judgment and pricing matter most. This is still an imperfect science. 5. Missing great companies is the real mistake. There are two errors in venture: investing in losers and missing winners. The second one hurts more. Flex tracks every Series A and B company and asks if they saw it and why they passed. They optimize for seeing more deals first, then improving decisions second. 6. Software competition is only getting more intense. Every layer of the stack is becoming more competitive over time. AI is accelerating this by lowering the cost to build. That means differentiation is shifting away from just product into distribution, brand, and execution. 7. Building software vs buying it is a real shift. Auren still prefers buying over building when possible, but AI is changing the equation. More companies will build internal tools when it is faster and cheaper. That creates pressure on traditional SaaS vendors to deliver clear, ongoing value. Huge thanks to our partner @AngelList for supporting the series.

If you need an argument for how safe self-driving cars are: This is NEWS.

Billionaires have had a massive PR problem for a while now. Target on their back and haven’t done much to help themselves.

@edsim @GTMnow_ @Boldstartvc @etdurbin We'll have to do a part 2 one day! Fun chatting with you and great episode, Ed.

@HackItMax @GTMnow_ @Boldstartvc thanks for having me, could have spent hours but we covered a ton of ground! also shoutout to my partner @etdurbin who has worked with Clay team from early days and I believe is scheduled to get a tattoo soon - incredible story you'll have to ask him! x.com/edsim/status/2…

Episode 7 of the @GTMnow_ VC Series is live! I sat down with @edsim, Founder and GP at @boldstartvc, to talk about what 30 years of early-stage investing teaches you when the market is moving this fast. Ed has backed companies like Kustomer, Clay, Superhuman, Snyk, Protect AI, and more, and writes one of my favorite weekly reads, What’s Hot in Enterprise IT/VC. A few takeaways from the conversation that are particularly valuable for founders: 1. Founder obsession is still the first signal. Ed’s framework starts with people. He looks for technical founders with a unique insight born out of real pain, the kind of people who can’t stop thinking about the problem because they lived it. That level of obsession matters even more because the road won’t be linear and the founder has to keep going through long stretches of uncertainty. 2. The AI jet stream. Startups now get dropped into a market moving at jet stream speed. Categories can shift in days or weeks. With that in mind, the real consideration is whether the company has enough technical depth, workflow ownership, community pull, or data advantage to keep adapting ahead of the market. 3. Agent-native companies will outrun the rest. One of Ed’s first questions now is how much of a company’s code is written by agents. That provides a window into how AI-forward companies are. Companies should be using agents across product, marketing, finance, and operations from the very beginning. 4. Clay is a case study in patient iteration. One of my favorite parts of the episode was hearing Ed talk about Clay. For years, the team kept iterating, kept burn low, and kept listening closely to where users were finding value. That eventually led them to a prospecting wedge that delivered hockey-stick growth. The timeline says a lot: roughly $600K in year one, $4.6M in year two, then $30M, then $100M+. 5. Leadership teams have to evolve with the product shift. The AI era changes what kind of leadership a company needs. Ed pointed to examples where becoming more product-led and more agent-native required real changes at the leadership layer too. That applies across engineering, GTM, and the rest of the org. Big thank you to our series partner, @AngelList, who have been instrumental in helping GTMfund scale since the early days.

@GTMnow_ @edsim @Boldstartvc Apple: podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/vc-… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6YqJud… YouTube: youtu.be/HH20QTO7hBM?si…

We are not allowed to call @dougleone the GOAT or a legend But we can announce that he’s BACK investing! Legends are horizontal and doers are vertical… all time

Before every episode in our VC series, @PaulGTM and I talk through what we're seeing across founders, funds, and go-to-market teams right now. Here’s what we covered - available in full here on X. - Why the core of great GTM hasn't changed in 30 years - Why you should show the product earlier and deploy before you close - How the entire discovery and research layer just became automatic - What happens to the humans in the motion when the admin work disappears - Why the rep who used to spend half their time on Salesforce hygiene now has no excuse not to show up prepared

@DavidSacks LFG!

I am honored and grateful to be appointed by President Trump to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and to be named Co-Chair along with OSTP Director Michael Kratsios. PCAST is the principal body of external advisors tasked with shaping science, technology, and innovation policy for the President and the White House. Thirteen of the world’s most accomplished leaders in science and technology will join us as this PCAST’s initial members. Together we will make policy recommendations to ensure that America leads—and wins—in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies.  I look forward to working with the initial members: Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, Safra Catz, Michael Dell, Jacob DeWitte, Fred Ehrsam, Larry Ellison, David Friedberg, Jensen Huang, John Martinis, Bob Mumgaard, Lisa Su, and Mark Zuckerberg. Thank you to President Trump for his visionary leadership on technology policy which attracts the top luminaries in their fields to serve. It is an honor to be part of this distinguished group.

@benln we lead/co-lead

Who are the pre-seed / seed investors every founder should want on their cap table these days? Refreshing my shortlist.

Huge news here at GTMfund. We’re excited to share that we’ve brought on a new Partner: @JasonDemant ! It’s a big moment for @gtmfund . Most importantly, it’s a big moment for our founders and LPs, as Jason is going to bring so much value to multiple areas of the firm. After deploying Fund II, we knew the team would grow. We weren’t strapped for capacity, which allowed us to be opportunistic on the new team member joining the mission. We could be patient and wait for the right person. Over the past year, we’ve had a ton of inbound - Partners and Principals from well-known firms, institutional LPs, and world-class operators. It’s also been incredibly meaningful to see that momentum. The firm, the media company (GTMnow), and the GTMfund brand have grown a lot since we started the firm 5 years ago. Jason had invested in 100+ emerging manager funds over his 6 years at Foundation, and GTMfund was at the top of his list of firms he would join if the opportunity arised. We spent months talking about what a partnership could look like. His vision for the future of GTMfund, our vision, and how those intersected. It was a perfect fit. We couldn’t be more excited to have him onboard! There’s a bonus episode on The GTMnow Podcast that just went live today if you’re interested in more details on the decision from me, Paul Irving, and the team, along with hearing from Jason directly.

Episode 6 of the @GTMnow_ VC Series is live! I sat down with @bqueener (Partner at @bonfire_vc) who joined Salesforce early, a co-founder of SmartRecruiters, and is one of the sharpest seed-stage investors I know, to talk about what three decades of building and investing taught him about what actually wins in a world where anyone can build anything. Before the conversation with Brett, @PaulGTM and I also talk through what we're seeing across founders, funds, and go-to-market teams right now. A few takeaways that are particularly worth sitting with: 1. The GTM playbook most of us learned is already gone. The entire motion from SDR to CSM was designed around one problem: the product didn't do the job, so humans had to explain it. When the product actually does the job, that whole layer of explanation collapses. You're showing product earlier, deploying before you close, and tracking outcomes from day one. The people who built careers on translating software into value have to find a new edge. 2. Your right to win becomes table stakes every 30 days. In SaaS, you could build a wedge, raise a Seed round, hit $1M ARR, and spend 18 months turning that into a go-to-market machine. That’s a thing of the past. The rate of change in what your product does (and what your competitors can ship) means the messaging, positioning, and value prop have to move in lock step. 3. The founder profile that wins now looks inherently different. Brett looks for founders who are building, not managing people who build. You need to be actually in the tools, shipping, and learning what the product can do firsthand. If you're not building, how can you expect to have a clear enough point of view on what you're selling or how to sell it? 4. Face-to-face matters more in the AI era. Buyers right now are more nervous than ever. They're betting their careers on products that are evolving fast and vendors who might look completely different in 6 months. They're buying whether they trust you to build what they'll need tomorrow. That trust is still built in person. It’s no surprise that events are creating 75%+ of the pipeline for Brett's early-stage portfolio companies. 5. Vertical software is the most defensible bet in AI right now. In vertical markets, customers hand you everything: their workflow, their edge cases, their entire context. That data is the moat. And to make matters even better, the non-technical buyer is now one of the most attractive customers in the market because AI finally makes their job meaningfully easier without requiring them to learn anything. Big thank you to our series partner, @AngelList, who have been instrumental in helping GTMfund scale since the early days.

At Outreach we accidentally ran what might be the world's best sales experiment. We had 50-70 SMB/Mid-Market reps. Half were remote, half were in Seattle. The in-person reps won. It wasn’t even close. You can’t replicate the energy of being in the room over Zoom. — Big thank you to our series partner, @AngelList, who have been instrumental in helping GTMfund scale the early days.