Odin

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Here's a simple principle that more founders and investors should understand: Funding to private companies, from inception all the way to exit, appears to have a convex relationship with success. Too much, or too little, is dangerous. There is an appropriate amount of funding to achieve the greatest chance of success, determined by a coherent strategy to hit staged risk milestones.

NVIDIA went public at a market cap of about $625 million, and became a $4.42 trillion monster in public markets. This example does not support a thesis of much larger exits, rather it’s an argument for going public sooner. Companies have been going public later (and larger) because VCs wanted to extract rents on private market growth when interest rates were low. Not because it was better for founders. Exits will generally be larger now than in previous eras, but much of the current activity is downstream of ZIRP conditions and will not persist for the next generation. Public markets provide more meritocratic access to huge pools of capital, which will look increasingly attractive to the best companies. And that’s a great thing, for the best companies and their investors.

In 2015, @DStrachman and @William_Blake launched a $20M fund built on the controversial belief that VCs misprice (and misunderstand) founder talent by relying on credentials. It was a thesis they had tested with great success at @thielfellowship . A decade later, 1517 Fund I is comfortably in the top 5% of its vintage, with pre-seed investments in Loom (acq. for $975m), Lambda (current val. $5.9B), and Deepgram (val. $1.3B). Their secret was hunting where no other institutional investor bothered to look; hanging out in coffee shops, hacker spaces, and talking to teenagers without degrees. They have been true first believers, every time...and their returns suggest the rest of the industry has been leaving a lot of money on the table. Full breakdown below from @credistick covering the story of Michael - the philosopher - and Danielle - the principal - and their techno-patronage.

@packyM interestingly @chamath is kind of arguing the exact opposite in his latest piece x.com/chamath/status…

been saying this

It's hard to find a better example of what venture capital should look like than @1517fund. @DStrachman and @William_Blake have been the first believers in many of the greatest and gnarliest tech success stories. The source of their power is a philosophical rejection of lazy thinking. Essentially, if the greatest entrepreneurs are outliers, patterns and credentials must therefore be irrelevant. It sounds simple, but living that principle as an investor means sailing into headwinds. There's no simple narrative to sell LPs, the future is never clear, capital coordination is difficult, and your capacity cannot endlessly scale. It's the harder path, but it's the only true path to greatness as a venture capitalist. Success is extremely idiosyncratic; there are no shortcuts. You might reach this conclusion by studying the library of research on venture capital. Or, you could reach it much more quickly by just meeting a few of 1517's portfolio companies.

Historically, public markets have been venture capital's main customer, and ringing the bell at an IPO remains the crowning moment of any investment — though it happens far less often. It's also the beginning of an incredibly consequential chapter for innovative companies, as they can tap much larger pools of capital on more favourable terms. A period of excess at the turn of the century, followed by a global financial crisis and sustained low interest rates, inflicted real damage on this relationship. Many of today's venture capitalists have never experienced a healthy relationship with public markets. Nor do they appreciate what public markets want from a company, or what a company might want from public markets. Seeing sheer size as the primary dimension of success, VCs have attempted to scale companies into attractive IPO candidates. In doing so, they have compromised other dimensions which are equally valuable, such as governance, competitive position and economics. When these IPOs haven't worked out, the conclusion has been drawn that clearly greater scale was needed, leading to the "higher bar" fallacy. This misunderstanding, reinforced by selection bias and podcast wisdom, is continuing to degrade venture capital's relationship with public markets. As such, not only are VCs missing out on great exits, but we are all missing out on the glorious second act of venture-backed success stories, post IPO. This must be corrected. Fortunately, all that requires is ending a toxic pattern of behavior.

The AI Doc claims to be the most important documentary of the year. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Tristan Harris and ~40 others wrestling with what AI means for the future of humanity. Londoners - we thought it was worth watching with a room full of people who have something interesting to say about it. Far from ridiculing it, we intend to deal with it seriously. Whether or not you share its conclusions, what happens when the most powerful technology ever built outpaces our ability to govern it is a question worth sitting with. Come watch. Then let's argue about it. Hosted by @Fremond_ and I, Friday March 27th from 7PM. 40 spots. Apply below (we're screening for interesting people, not first come first serve). luma.com/1lhckje4

Mucker Capital Fund I returned somewhere between 43 and 53x gross TVPI. In cash terms, they turned $12m into over $500m ($636m at the top end of our estimates). This is the rarefied air of the 99.9th percentile.

“The biggest risk in early-stage investing is likely the ongoing difficulty for emerging managers to raise new funds. While multistage managers may boost their activity, and AI will keep channeling more money into VC, emerging managers invest in many companies both inside and, importantly, outside major capital hubs.” PitchBook 2026 US Venture Capital Outlook Kyle Stanford, Emily Zheng, Kaidi Gao & Susan Hu

hard tech companies have 2-5% odds of achieving $250M+ exits, while saas, fintech, and AI companies have 1-1.5% odds. per-company probability of a large exit is roughly twice as high in deep tech as in software. the exits also arrive 6-24 months sooner on average

USV, IA Ventures, Hummingbird VC... many of the early-stage venture firms with legendary performance are based outside of the Bay Area. @mucker is another obvious entry on the list, with a debut fund that we estimate returned around 50x. These firms share a strategy of finding outlier opportunities in areas where signal is clearer. In doing so, they've delivered excellent returns from the very beginning, and remained consistent. Mucker's strategy is also worth studying in the "value-add" debate, as a small firm that began as an accelerator focused on sharing operational wisdom.

In 2015, Bill Gurley talked about the venture market in terms of a developing "risk bubble". Not a typical speculative bubble, but rather the trend of later and larger rounds of financing. Risk being amplified by delayed exits and greater volumes of capital, postponing the inevitable reckoning. Dismissed at the time by people who only knew of bubbles as frantic 24-month events, Gurley's concerns were eventually vindicated. A risk bubble doesn't play out quickly; it's a saw-tooth pattern; you feel the roller coaster clicking up the tracks until you almost forget what comes next. Such is the nature of private markets, versus public. And just because the roller coaster dips doesn't mean the ride is over. The environment hasn't changed. This steadily expanding appetite for risk (in VC and elsewhere) has been given the label of "casino culture", and it floats on an undercurrent of financialisation. Financialisation is the preference, expressed through policy, for capital accumulation rather than economic productivity — rooted in 16th Century bullionism. It's a significant part of why progress has stagnated over much of the last 30 years. It's why capital (public and private) has been increasingly concentrated in "obvious" companies. And it's why opportunity to participate in wealth creation has felt constrained, expanding the appetite for risk. Today, gambling revenue is surging, savings are down, and debt is increasing. The public is offered more exciting ways to roll the dice on wealth every day, with fewer ways to build it honestly. A large part of the startup economy is trapped in this spiral, preying on desperation. Cheat on interviews to get a job, go double-or-nothing on your bills, bet against insiders on world events... It's the stick stuff of late-stage capitalism. But there's hope: an growing movement of founders and financiers are chanting "Reindustrialisation, Reindustrialisation, Reindustrialisation!"

As an emerging manager, you've basically got two options: Option 1: Co-invest in "hot" opportunities alongside tier 1 firms. The Sequoias and a16zs of the world. They’re good opportunities (on paper) and everyone agrees about that. Option 2: seek out the strange. Good opportunities others think are bad. Investments where you see something others don't. Option 1 has some interesting benefits. Mainly - it feels safe. "I co-invested with Sequoia at seed" is a great line on a fundraising deck (depending on who your LPs are). The downside is that these are - almost by definition - competitive, "consensus" opportunities. You’re more likely to be overpaying. You also might just be indexing their shit deals. You have to ask - why do I have access? Is it an opportunity a16z are investing in for the right reasons, or is it a strategic / political bet? What you can end up with here is a situation where you’re tracking market beta, but probably not the top decile, maybe not even the top quartile. The best LPs don't back emerging managers for market beta. They can get that from umpteen other places. This is where Option 2 comes in. Going after the weird, the wonderful, the different, is where 5x, 10x and 40x  funds come from. If some of the investments you are making don't make people scratch their heads, you're doing something wrong. It’s an incredibly tough decision to make though. If your crazy bets are *ALL* wrong, you look like a nutcase, and you'll probably never raise fund II. Even if you are right, the signal might only emerge in years 3 - 5, which won't help you raise fund II all that much. All the great investments and all great investors follow this pattern though. @paulg is famous for noting that the businesses that raise the most at YC demo day are almost never the biggest outcomes. Airbnb is an interesting example. Early on, it looked like a tiny, niche corner of travel that attracted a lot of derision (renting a stranger's spare bed for the weekend??). They really struggled initially - they had to raise money selling novelty cereal, at YC, they weren’t a hot Demo Day deal and their initial performance metrics were poor, etc. It became one of the biggest accommodation businesses in the world and the once non-consensus became obvious. YC’s Airbnb investment is surely one of the best of all time, with a return multiple in the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds?). As an investor, achieving this kind of outcome requires chutzpa, a willingness to sit with doubt, and the bravery to know you may fail altogether - but do it anyway.

@JoeNordWest 🔥🔥🔥

Today, we're publicly announcing Lucid Capital: our €36M Fund I. - First check. Always. Pre-incorporation, inception. - 3 investments per GP per year. Deep, 1:1 relationships, from zero to product-market fit. - GP-only. No associates. Zero politics. Just building.