Isabelle

"Games are such a good way to just find out what somebody's made of. How they react when you win, how they react when they lose." – @GauravBhogale, Partner at @mantisVC. Gaurav thinks gaming is underrated as a filter for founders. Competitive but collaborative, high pressure, immediate feedback. The traits that make someone great at games tend to show up in how they build. He'd invest in a League of Legends ranked player without hesitation. Full episode on my profile. Raced with @GauravBhogale and @MarwanRefaat 🏎️🏁

Filmed with @MarwanRefaat & @annabjacoby, Venture LP investor at LGT Capital ($$$B+ AUM): "LPs are consolidating their dollars into the bigger funds." One of Anna's lines that's stuck with me. Her read on the next five years of venture: capital pooling into the biggest funds, AI as a generational reset on par with the early internet, and valuations that look frothy until you check the revenue underneath. Full episode on my profile.

Filmed with @MarwanRefaat and @annabjacoby, venture LP investor at LGT Capital Partners ($$$B+ AUM) - one of the year's most closely watched LP-side moves, as the full Sapphire Partners fund-investing team joined forces with LGT's global platform. Learned that the LP world has a paradox at its core. The managers with the best return data: Fund I, II, III GPs are raising in the toughest environment in a decade. And the one thing she looks for in a first-time fund above everything else? A clear, defensible niche. Anna built her way into one of venture's most competitive seats through a venture ratings startup, a state school, and one rule she keeps coming back to: take every opportunity, even the ones that don't look like opportunities yet. Downturns make the best vintages. 2009. 2010. 2016. The funds that are hardest to raise right now might be the ones that matter most later.

@MarwanRefaat @annabjacoby GOATSSS

Drove through SF with @annabjacoby, venture LP investor at LGT Capital Partners ($$$B+ AUM), one of six who just made one of the year's most closely watched LP-side team lifts, joining forces with LGT's global platform as the full Sapphire Partners fund-investing team. We talked about why emerging managers (Fund I, II, III GPs) consistently outperform on the data but face the hardest fundraising environment in a decade, and why "differentiation" is the one thing she looks for in a first-time fund. Anna got here without the consulting pedigree or brand-name degree that typically open LP doors. San Jose State, a Revere VC rating-analyst seat, and the conviction to say yes to every opportunity that didn't obviously seem relevant. The best-performing vintages are usually raised in downturns. 2009, 2010, 2016, 2017, 2018. If that holds, the top managers getting funded now might be the ones everyone wishes they'd backed.

Merch means officially repping the fund 🫡

How do you take something real and deliver it to someone who wasn't there? I got my first camera at 14. Took a several-week course on photography, then used my technical skills to hone my passion for storytelling in future projects. Growing up in Amsterdam, addicted to music, after school I'd open GarageBand with no tutorials and make songs and remixes I'd listen to. Posted them anonymously on SoundCloud, got positive reactions on social media but never told anyone it was me. Same pattern with DJ’ing last year – said yes to playing at Frontier Tower and ended up learning at a Stanford hacker house the day before. Video and music are the same tool to me – you take something real and translate it into something intangible online so someone anywhere in the world can feel it too. Every composition choice, every color grade, every sound you layer is in service of one thing: not losing what made it worth capturing in the first place. If you lose that thread, the essence of it doesn't survive the translation. When I moved to San Francisco, I ended up at the same hacker house as @MarwanRefaat – ‘the VC who raps in the car,’ who I'd once seen on my feed. We'd stay up late with @sundayajak, looking at each other's cameras, filling Marwan’s car with gear. One walk in the park later, I was helping him shoot the next morning. Now, I’m producing the driving series, Shotgun with Marwan. San Francisco is one of the most interesting places in the world right now to document a generational shift in innovation: the people building, the conversations happening in cars and living rooms and parks, the culture of innovation as it happens. This is the trailer from my perspective

"Back in the day, Google Maps was number 40 in the app store. Impossible to think about right now." – @GauravBhogale, Partner at @mantisVC. Gaurav showed up from Sydney in 2015 as Head of Global Growth for Google Maps. Number 40 in the app store. Growth marketing barely existed as a discipline back then and a lot of the principles were still being codified. Full episode on my profile. Raced with @GauravBhogale and @MarwanRefaat 🏎️🏁

@MarwanRefaat @superpower @maxmarchione PEPTIDESSSSS 🦸‍♀️

When your friends launch peptides and you hand them a controller instead of a syringe. Congrats @Superpower on the peptide launch! @maxmarchione

Power-up dropped. Congrats @Superpower on the peptide launch! 🏁 @maxmarchione

@GauravBhogale @ChristinaPhili5 @BainCapVC 🫡🫡🫡

@Isabelle_D10 @ChristinaPhili5 @BainCapVC @ChristinaPhili5 the 🐐

Just filmed with @ChristinaPhili5, Partner at @BainCapVC ($9.2B AUM) and learned what it takes to go from PM at Affirm to leading Series A rounds and sitting on boards.

Just filmed with @annabjacoby, venture LP investor at LGT Capital Partners ($$$B+ AUM) and learned about her critical role deciding which emerging VCs get funded 🎥

@MarwanRefaat Looking forward to the drone shots🔥

"If we improve health, we improve life." – @maxmarchione, Founder of @superpower Max started Superpower after going through his own health challenges and realizing no one was building the health system he thought should exist. So he built it. Very few things actually matter for humanity at scale. He thinks health is one of them. Full episode on my profile. Raced with @maxmarchione, @claudiaroussel_ and @MarwanRefaat 🏎️🏁

"Every day before work I'd fly from six to eight. Racked up about 300 hours, got my license." – @GauravBhogale, Partner at @mantisVC. Gaurav got his pilot's license while working at Google. The airport was right next to the office, so he'd fly 6–8am (not 6-7) every morning before his day started. His dad was posted at Bombay International when he was a kid. That's where it started. Full episode on my profile. Raced with @GauravBhogale and @MarwanRefaat 🏎️🏁

@mackaygg @GauravBhogale @mantisVC @MarwanRefaat LET'S GOOO Maximizing sauce🫡

@Isabelle_D10 @GauravBhogale @mantisVC @MarwanRefaat sf parc studio looking firee

Played Mario Kart with @GauravBhogale, Partner at @mantisVC($225M AUM, founded by The Chainsmokers), and @MarwanRefaat, GP at Fractal Capital. Gaurav launched PlayStation 3 across Asia, wrote the early growth playbook for Google Maps, earned a pilot license flying 6am shifts before work, almost went pro at Counter-Strike, and is now backing founders across the AI & cybersecurity stack. The throughline across all of it: obsession. Whether it's CS rankings, flight hours, or founder diligence, he said the best people are just laser focused on one thing and bring everything they have to it every single day. "If a founder is ranked in League of Legends, I'm investing. A hundred percent." You can tell everything about someone by how they react when they're losing. Gaming just makes it obvious faster. 🏎️🏁

@AaryanGondal @GauravBhogale @mantisVC @MarwanRefaat Thanks!!

@Isabelle_D10 @GauravBhogale @mantisVC @MarwanRefaat So sick!

@GauravBhogale @MarwanRefaat @mantisVC Counter Strike is the next level🫡🫡 @MarwanRefaat we’ll def get smoked by @GauravBhogale though😬

Blue shells build character. 🐢💥 Loved chatting with @Isabelle_D10 and @MarwanRefaat about AI, infrastructure, and what we actually look for in founders at @mantisVC. At the end of the day, early-stage investing comes down to finding people who are completely obsessed with winning. Next time, we’re playing Counter-Strike!