Itamar Novick

Operating in Japan since 2021, our autonomous vehicles continue to navigate complex traffic and pedestrian patterns with precision.

@jefielding It's true!

This pains me to say but there’s a mass founder exodus from NYC to SF right now. These founders, all AI focused, believe everything is going to be easier out there - fundraising, hiring, scaling👋🏼

Today, we’re showcasing @OrbitAI, the identity layer of the internet that resolves human entities across the web. People discovery represents 10% of web searches, but it’s still a scavenger hunt to find who you’re looking for. Orbit has reorganized the web from the ground up, unifying all data about a person in one searchable graph. We built an interface for the X community to preview it. Try it out👇

To all my friends on the left. Before you make up your mind about Iran please ask ALL your iranian friends. They'll tell you today is the happiest day of their lives. Who should you believe? Politicians representing interest groups and money, or actual people who lived through this?

Excited to be featured in the VC Uncovered Investor Spotlight! open.substack.com/pub/vcuncovere…

@RoKhanna I'm honestly ashamed of myself for evr supporting you. You have shown your true anti-Semitic face @RoKhanna and we will never forget. Ever. You're done.

Ms. Rachel immediately apologized for hitting the like button on an antisemitic tweet. Have you apologized yet for supporting the Israel government's genocide in Gaza?

Big news 🚀 TI Bluetooth Low Energy chips will now ship with global connectivity via Hubble and Texas Instruments. • 90M+ terrestrial gateways worldwide • No GPS • No cellular • No gateways to deploy See it live at #CES2026 — TI Booth N115 Details: prnewswire.com/news-releases/…

The biggest wins in AI will come from applications that do the work. In my conversation with @Itamar_Novick, we discussed key shifts shaping the future of AI. #AI #Startups #Innovation #VentureCapital

Your CEO is your chief storyteller, chief recruiter, and chief decision-maker. If they can't show up to pitch investors, how will they show up for customers? Exception: If your "CEO" is really a placeholder and your CTO is the actual leader, then call them CEO and own it. But don't send a surrogate to your most important meetings. Would you let someone else pitch your life's work? #StartupAdvice #FounderLedSales #VentureCapital

Here's what pitching with your CTO instead of CEO shows me: Your CEO doesn't prioritize fundraising Your team doesn't understand investor expectations You might not have clear leadership hierarchy I'm not investing in your CTO's coding skills (though they matter). I'm investing in your CEO's ability to sell the vision, recruit great people, navigate difficult decisions, and scale the business.

"Our CEO couldn't make it today, but our CTO can walk you through everything." This happened in a first meeting this week. (sigh) Welcome to my "Worst Pitches I Heard This Week" series. In this case, I didn't even hear it from the CEO. 🧵 #CEO #Leadership #VentureCapital

Here's what a founder who nailed it told me last week: "There are 2,500 mid-market manufacturing companies in North America. 400 currently use quality control software averaging $50K annual spend. We've identified 60 in our initial target segment. That's our bottom-up TAM." Specific. Defensible. Realistic. Big markets don't matter if you can't access them. How do you calculate YOUR real addressable market? #StartupAdvice #VentureCapital

How these founders calculated TAM: "All businesses spend money on X, so our TAM is all business spending" "The global software market is $Y trillion" "If we capture just 0.1% of this massive market..." What they couldn't tell me: How many potential customers actually have their specific problem What those customers currently pay for solutions How many customers they could realistically reach in 3 years Top-down TAM tells me you Googled market research. Bottom-up TAM tells me you understand your customers.

"Our Total Addressable Market is $100 billion because everyone uses software." I heard variations of this 4 times this week. All from different industries. From my "Worst Pitches I Heard This Week" series. Please do NOT do this. 🧵 #TAM #MarketSizing #StartupAdvice

Protect yourself with these term sheet clauses: ✅ Board size caps (max 5 through Series B) ✅ Founder seat tied to founder status, not CEO role ✅ Board expansion requires founder consent ✅ Define "independent" (no investor relationships) Ask: "Can this term sheet let investors pack the board without my approval?" The answer should always be NO. #StartupAdvice #VentureCapital #FounderRights

The Dilution Playbook: Year 1: Clean 3-person board (founder, investor, independent) Year 2: "We need more expertise" → Add 2nd investor + "strategic independent" (investor-aligned) Year 3: "We need governance" → Add 3rd investor + another "independent" Result: Founder went from 33% of votes to 14% One founder told me: "At Series A, I had board control. By Series C, I had 1 vote out of 9. The board voted to fire me 8-1. I voted against my own termination."

"I went from 3 board seats to 7, and suddenly I had zero control." This happened to Etsy's founders - and it's happening everywhere. VCs don't take control in one move. They do it gradually. Here's the playbook: 🧵 #BoardControl #VentureCapital #FounderRights

September, 2023. Zohran Mamdani: "We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."

We grew to $1B ARR faster than Stripe, Salesforce, and Palantir, while being 100% remote This was a combination of a lot of luck, focus and an excellent team Looking back, I can our team's success boils down some key principles I'm sharing in a 700-word long post: I hope that it will help every startup as much as it helped us: 1. Everything is sales. Recruiting is sales. Fundraising is sales. Retaining your best talent is sales. Dating is sales. And sales is sales. A founder’s effectiveness = (technical skill × ability to sell). 2. You need to be in the details. The best founders can zoom all the way in and out. If someone tells you to “scale yourself” by pulling back too early - they’re wrong. Being in the details is important to understand what org structure best fits your company's goals. Every 'in the weeds' founder designs their org structure from first principles. Jensen: 40 direct reports, Elon: Engineers in charge of everything, Jobs: Creative Dictatorship with Directly Responsible Individuals. Zuck: The first growth-hacking team with @chamath Founders not in the details forget what makes their products great and eventually recede into designing a standard org with standard departments which lead to standard results. 3. Your company's fate is 70% sealed by the first 20 hires Ben Horowitz: "I got this advice like 27 times. They said 'Look, here's the key: Hire A players:' and I was like ok yeah, my plan was to hire a bunch of morons but now I'm going to hire A players" The hard part isn’t intent, it’s judgment. The problem is you can't spot a top 1% engineer if you're not a top 10% engineer yourself. This applies to everything. Your definition of great is just what you've seen. Founders have some blind spots. Technical founders usually build bad marketing orgs. Sales-focused founders sometimes build mediocre product teams. You need the right eyes to be able to spot genius. Ego aside, bring on a technical expert and have them vet talent for you. Your first hires are your culture, your standard, your work environment. They are the company. Get the first 20 hires right. 4. Live with your customers. You can’t know what’s working if you’re not talking to them - all the time. Be where they are: WhatsApp, calls, DMs, in person. The closer you are to customers, the fewer mistakes you make. "The customer is the boss. They can fire everybody by choosing to spend their money elsewhere." - Sam Walton 5. Be extremely responsive. If I reply in 30 seconds, what usually takes a day gets done in hours. What takes hours gets done now. Speed compounds. 6. Your TAM is limited by your imagination, not by the market. Constantly rethink the pod, find other big issues that need solving and are valuable, and solve them exceptionally well. We went from contracts ($100M) to Employer of Record ($300M) to Payroll ($200M). Each 3x'd the TAM. 7. Never run out of cash. The only way a business dies is by running out of cash. Profitability = power. You call the shots, not investors. You can always act in the company's long-term interest because you know you are safe. We reached Series A after spending <10% of our seed. We have been profitable for the last 3 years. Cash discipline buys freedom. 8. Over-index on angels early. Angels are your best shot at making important people care - when it matters. They might not be involved day to day, but when you really need help, they’ll show up. If you don't know how to solve a problem, you should know at least a person who knows the person who can. Pick the right ones, and time your asks well. 9. There's always something out there that can kill your company. Your job is to de-risk the company. Capital, talent, and products are all a small part of a larger effort to de-risk your startup and build an enduring business. Covid-induced work from home grew our payroll and EOR business. And it seemed like RTO might kill it. But we were prepared. If you worry, you won't have to worry. 10. Stay focused. Fundraises, competitors, headlines - all noise. Focus on your customers. Focus on your product. Keep executing. In the long run, the most relentless team wins. 11. Trust your instinct. If something feels off - it probably is. Dig deeper. Courage in your convictions matters, especially as the team grows. Don’t let “performative democracy” slow you down. As long as you’re in the seat, lead decisively - and unapologetically.

Here's what a founder we recently funded said: "We think PMF looks like 40% of trial users converting to paid within 30 days. We're at 15% now with design agencies, 25% with consultants. We're doubling down on consultants." Clear hypothesis. Real data. Logical next steps. What does product-market fit look like for YOUR business? #StartupFunding #VentureCapital

There's a difference between early-stage uncertainty and having no plan: ❌ "We have no idea who wants this, but someone must" ✅ "We think our ICP is X, but we're testing Y and Z to validate" The best founders have a clear hypothesis, show initial validation, understand what PMF looks like, and know what metrics will prove they've found it.

"We're not sure who our ideal customer is yet, but we know there's huge demand." A founder said this while asking for $2M to "find product-market fit." Translation: "Give us money to figure out if we have a business." Another post from my "Worst Pitches I Saw This Week" series. 🧵 #ProductMarketFit #StartupAdvice #VentureCapital