Hadley Harris

@GoogleLabs @stitchbygoogle x.com/hadley/status/…

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12 years later the VC who passed on Figma’s seed because Google could kill them is finally feeling seen

@theantonchain At least the way I think about it, there are industries and layers. I’m using verticals and horizontal in industry sense. Seems you’re talking about platform layer which tend to be horizontal but don’t have to be

@Hadley Vertical is a business. Horizontal is a primitive. Investors paying $100M seeds aren't buying what you built. They're buying what gets built on top of it.

This is the answer to people who scratch their heads at VCs doing seeds at $100M valuations. That said, the company needs to have the potential to be bigger than we can imagine. Too often I see investors paying up for vertical-focused bets. If you’re going to swing for $T, the potential needs to be horizontal. It needs to touch a big chunk of the world economy.

@PeterJ_Walker @marcepntoja Not sure I agree with your last point. As are mainly raised on potential so very high conversion rate could be a good sign for swinging big

For seed VCs looking to benchmark your portfolio - what is a "good" graduation rate to Series A? Depends on the time since seed, of course. After year 1: - 5% is low, 20% is high Year 2: - 15% is low, 35% is high Year 3: - 20% is low, 40-45% is high 100% graduation rate is probably bad, actually - not taking enough risk!

@azaztrader01 Not industry specific. Most app layer/agentic layer companies these days are vertically focused

@Hadley Interesting point about horizontal potential. What do you think makes a startup truly horizontal in today's market?

@HarelDan Being in a hot niche is a factor of perceived quality so yes

@Hadley wait, does this change if you're in a hot niche like ai or enterprise? curious how much those metrics flex when the market's going crazy. what have you seen with outliers?

The bar for series A is as high as I’ve ever seen it in my 14 years of seed investing. For example, most SaaS cos will need >2m ARR, >2x growth, great retention and some expansion. Founders need to keep burn low to give themselves the time to finger out how to hit these targets

In the current environment, the difference between pre-seed and seed is not traction but perceived quality. Founders who can are jumping straight to seed. Founders who can’t are raising pre-seed to put points on the board before raising a seed.

@paulg This is more an inevitability than a prediction. Also inevitable, MAGA will believe it without hesitation

Prediction: When fighting Iran gets too painful because of oil prices or polls or whatever, Trump will claim that the current state of things, whatever it happens to be, was his goal, declare victory, and retreat.

@vijaychattha @nihalmehta @Penn @scottmelker @johnlegend Counterparts reunion for anthem!

@nihalmehta @Penn @scottmelker How do we get @johnlegend to sing the national anthem?

definitely not known for its basketball program, proud of our alma mater @Penn for making the NCAA tourney! 🤓🏀💥

@Jason Ahhh, yeah I see your point. The odds of him pulling something out of his ass can only go so low.

@Hadley Trump is a political savant — and betting on him against long odds has paid off twice before

Unless Trump pulls a rabbit out of his hat — which is something he has done twice before — he’s sunk his presidency… … and according to the polls, its because of starting a war with Iran, letting ICE run wild, making the working class feel ignored and not releasing the Epstein files. He’s basically gifting his presidency to the democrats at this point. He’s gotta find an off ramp for Iran

@CoyneVC Exactly!

@Hadley I think this is ALWAYS true bc VC and Growth Businesses need to evolve so fast to thrive, but especially now!

Right now, with extreme levels of uncertainty, founder dynamism is the single most important thing I’m evaluating. Can they navigate what none of us can predict?

@robgo Finance people love calling companies names, it always makes me cringe

Even worse than VC's calling investments "deals" are secondary brokers calling companies "names". How transactional can one be?

@HarelDan Probably the best way I found of assessing how deeply founders understand the point of customers is how many customers they’ve gone and talk to

@Hadley totally get this but hard part is actually asking the right questions. most founders ask surface level stuff and miss the real insights. what technique have you found works best for digging into those deep pain points?

A common mistake when founders first start talking to potential customers is to focus on selling them the exact product they plan on building when they should be focused on asking lots of questions to figure out what product attributes solve the customer’s deepest pain point

@jonetxeberriai 💯

@Hadley More than ever, investing in people with high resilience.

Every VC is understandably scared of making investments that will get crushed by the model companies. So they’re searching for things that feel protected. I wonder if that’s the right approach. Focusing on downside protection has generally been a terrible way to invest in startups.

@welldonemalone That’s cool

I started one to solve the problems no one else would, including that founders and top talent just aren't into working more than a year or two at their own startup. I don't see any other model that can coax that talent to collaborate, and make investors feel comfortable taking a lot of smaller risks that only cost them a vacation out of pocket. Obsanity.net is my studio. We build solutions to enormous problems no one else even tries. Decentralizing science, history, even justice. Approach: Novel projects supported by an always growing ecosystem of tried and true ways to make money. 2-4 sprints per year, building mvps that get spun out into startups. Hire only the best talent qualified to build each product, offer them equity in the startup to stay. Small core teams build out new businesses. Labs keeps some equity, development contract, annual dividends. Investors have a piece of the lab rev, consistent cashflowing dividends, and a pipeline of new startups they can throw $10k-$25k at without blinking because every one has to meet quality and business sense. -- What do you think?