Official18VC

Most cold emails get a 1% reply rate and eat 3 hours of your day. 👀 The new 18VC episode is live — with Manuel David (@Manny2techy), founder of Paradigm Outreach (@UseParadigm), an AI that runs your whole outbound cycle. Lead research → email → reply → booked meeting. What stuck with us: → Paradigm rejects ~70% of signups on purpose. If it can't nail your ICP first, it won't let you in. → His take on "my emails sound too AI": that was never the problem. Who you target is. → The moat question every AI founder dreads? "Bring the best model out – all it does is make my product better." → He dropped out of ASU and moved to a San Francisco he'd never once visited to build this. → The line he won't cross: the AI never takes the meeting for you. ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/sbacIYWPbSM 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2LhUCL… #startups #founders #AI #venturecapital #youngfounders #buildinpublic #startuplife #coldemail #techpodcast #entrepreneurship #18VC #ParadigmOutreach

Most apps are built to keep you scrolling. This founder is building one to make you put the phone down and sleep. 😴 In Ep 12 of 18VC Podcast, we sat down with Andy @zinzazilin , founder of Lullaby, an AI sleep companion that talks you toward sleep, then gets out of the way. What stuck with us: → It started at 2 AM and a boyfriend's improvised bedtime story beat Calm, Headspace, melatonin & magnesium. → She posted it on Reddit. Top comment: "Protect that man at all cost." That was the signal. → North Star = the opposite of every companion app: take you "from scrolling your phone to turning off your phone." → If ChatGPT & Claude Voice already sound human, what's the moat? Her answer: "sleep intelligence." → The ICP: overstimulated achievers who can sleep but can't turn their brain off. ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/HUl38V2SLUQ 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5oaw4E… #AI #sleeptech

At 15 he ran a 200%-margin snack "dark market" out of his dorm – until the principal shut it down. 🍜 Ep. #11 of 18VC is live with Barry (@BarryLi5936), founder of OMNIAPATH, an AI-native entrepreneurship school for young founders, and Wov3, a sportstech company developing recovery footwear and customized insoles using 3D printing. Barry is also an advisor to Hacker Dojo's first accelerator cohort. What stuck with us: → He killed a profitable $100K business the moment he saw ChatGPT 3.5. → His AI survival rule: be super well-rounded, or go absurdly deep. "Medium deep" gets replaced. → The "one-person company" is coming – solo founders are the default future of work. → 5 ventures. 40 partners come and go. He's the one who stayed. ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/chrjP3g93I8 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7LEKg9… #startups #venturecapital #youngfounders #AI #entrepreneurship #18VC #OMNIAPATH #WOV3

Thank you @Official18VC for hosting this awesome sharing event with @SjiangSijia @huang74540 @Tonyhaoyu & Alex! Wonderful audience full of inspiring interactions!

Ep #10 Why Korean Startups MUST Go Global NOW! The Korean market isn't large enough for sustainable startup growth. Learn why success hinges on a repeatable formula for global expansion. #18VC #TheVentures #StartupGrowth #GlobalExpansion #KoreanTech #BusinessStrategy #startups #founders #venturecapital #earlystage #AI #youngfounders #buildinpublic #startuplife #techpodcast #entrepreneurship

Ep #10 Raise Your First Fund: Beat AI Trend & Nail Your Thesis! Emerging fund managers: Stand out to investors. Challenge trends, show true differentiation. Your unique edge is the key to securing that first funding round. #18VC #TheVentures #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #StudentStartups #InvestmentTips #startups #founders #venturecapital #earlystage #AI #youngfounders #buildinpublic #startuplife #techpodcast #entrepreneurship

Ep #10 Attention is GOLD! Why Influencers Now Rule Venture Capital In the age of AI, authentic attention is the ultimate currency. Discover how 'influencer VCs' leverage credibility to attract top talent in this evolving landscape. #AttentionEconomy #AIContent #InfluencerVCs #Credibility #startups #founders #venturecapital #earlystage #AI #youngfounders #buildinpublic #startuplife #techpodcast #entrepreneurship

A founder sends a flawless, AI-polished deck. Clean narrative, perfect grammar, every box ticked. It's the fastest way to get a "no." 🧵👇 New 18VC episode — with Ethan Cho, CIO of TheVentures, one of Korea's earliest accelerators-turned-VCs, now across 14 countries. First, the scale: up to 3,000 pitches a year. They built their own AI agent, "Vicky," just to filter them. So a sharper AI-written pitch should be the edge, right? Opposite. The second the Q&A starts, AI stops mattering. Seasoned investors "disarm you from that clean sentence." He'd rather hear a broken sentence from your own mouth than a perfect one from a model. What he's really testing is three questions: "Why this? Why now? Why you?" And from there: → Attention is becoming the asset — as AI slop floods the world, capital follows familiar, believable faces. → His #1 career regret: not founding a startup in his 20s. Want into VC? Build first – failure is reversible, the lesson isn't. → On co-founders: "You will fight. It's only a matter of when, not whether." → The one thing AI can never mass-produce: your instinct to try something new. The throughline: in a sea of AI polish, the unfakeable human signal is worth more than ever. Special thanks to @duckduckhero for making this episode possible!!! Full episode ▶️YouTube:youtu.be/eGNeq3KZlIA 🎧Spotify:open.spotify.com/episode/4sLY7m… #venturecapital #startups

Most AI apps own their users, their workflows, their data — but rent the one thing that matters: the intelligence. 🧠 Ep. 9 of 18VC is live — with Fernando, founder & CEO of Model OS @I3_Cubed, the "survival infrastructure" that turns prompt wrappers into companies that own their own models. What stuck with us: → Most AI apps are "prompt wrappers" facing an extinction event — and 3 forces are quietly killing them. → The trigger moment: Jan 20, 2025. DeepSeek hits frontier performance for ~$6M while OpenAI spends tens of billions. → "Turnitin on chain" — watermark model weights, and the original creator gets paid every time someone fine-tunes their model. From an investor at YC China to building the infra himself. Full episode 👉 ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/gyAFxSfVKmg 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3DRxvG… #AI #startups #VC #18VC #IntelligenceCubed

"'Commander, we're encircled.' 'Great — we can attack in any direction.' Our latest guest lives by this." Ep. 8 of 18VC is live — with Tigran Ghukasyan, founder of CyNet at USC, co-founder at Spheroid, with experience across Plug and Play US, Armenia & — on his current Tokyo exchange — Japan. What stuck with us: → He grew up in Artsakh — an unrecognized state he calls a real-world Neverland — and fought in the 2020 war before transferring to the US without losing a single semester. Everyone said it was impossible. → His first startup failed in every possible way. Lesson: middleman arbitrage is dead. → Spheroid pivoted from metaverse to an XR-native engine by building momentum with developers, not pitching the board. → AI's new bottleneck isn't code — it's energy, compute, and sensors. That's why he thinks this is the age of Japan. 🇯🇵 → For uncertain founders: "We're encircled? Great — we can attack in any direction." Full episode ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/cLY5fZOb0YY 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5UMxKw… 18VC Team: @Philip_ZENG_, @Lucas_Newgen #venturecapital #startups #18vc

An investor emails you, ready to invest. You miss it — and you never even realize it. 👀 Ep. 7 of 18VC is live, with Tony Xiong, founder of Bubbl (bubblai.com) — an AI assistant that lives in your texts. No app to install. What stuck with us: → The real problem was never information overload. It's knowing which 100 of your 1,000 daily messages matter. → "Invisible AI": the best productivity tool has no interface. You just text it. → 47% day-7 retention. 260 beta testers. 60K+ messages in 2 months. → Why he calls Bubbl "an introvert" — it listens in the background so it can strike at the right moment. → The campus-signup stunt that taught him virality ≠ reach. He's been building since 15 — including a camera he shot into the stratosphere for Sony. 🛰️ Full episode ▶️ YouTube: youtu.be/yrkIwFR1zZ0 🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4qSuL8… #AI #startups #Bubbl #18VC #Podcast #VentureCapital

A new episode of the 18VC Podcast is out. We talked to Rylan Jimenez and Diora Juraboeva, the co-founders of ThreadLabs — the AI operating system for apparel production. This one is for student founders and early-career investors. A few things from the conversation that we are still thinking about: 1/ The pairing. Rylan is a USC Marshall MS Finance student. He spent his career on the VC side — 1752vc, Fortify Ventures, and now Mucker Capital. He also freelanced as a fashion designer from the age of 16. Diora ran composites for USC Racing's Formula SAE team. UK National Champion at F1 in Schools. VR at Honda. Spark SC president. They met in month two of college on the race-car team. The lesson: the best co-founder pairings are rarely "two of the same person." 2/ The pivot. ThreadLabs was originally going to be an AI ERP for apparel shops. They killed the plan. Rylan - "ERPs are made for humans, and they're also very, very complicated." So they stopped trying to replace the ERP. ThreadLabs is now the intelligence layer that sits on top of whatever a shop already uses - WhatsApp, Gmail, the legacy ERP a Chinese factory has been running for 20 years. That positioning works for a 40-year-old LA cut-and-sew shop AND a Chinese factory with an existing tech stack. Different problem on the surface, same underlying need. 3/ The customer truth. Rylan has spent hundreds of hours on factory floors in DTLA. His learning: "There's only one thing manufacturers care about at the smaller stage — how do I get more business?" Build the thing that helps your customer make money. Everything else is secondary. 4/ The closing advice for student founders. "Genuine value doesn't come from AI alone. Genuine value comes from solving an issue and solving it in the best possible way. So go solve the issue without any tech or any AI first." That line probably runs counter to half of what student founders are pitching right now. If you are a student weighing whether to build now or take the safe option, listen to this one. 🎥 Watch on YouTube: youtu.be/3GHDPO7riaY 🎙️ Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4nJBcL… 🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18v… #18VC #StudentFounders #ThreadLabs #VentureCapital

"If I know more about your category, that's a red flag. I should not know more than you." That's Diana Melencio (@DianaMelencio ) — GP of @xrcventures' Brand Capital Fund and one of the few consumer VCs running a model that looks more like growth equity than traditional VC. Three things from this week's 18VC episode that are worth your 45 minutes: 1/ The contrarian thesis. Consumer VC is hugely out of favor. "Talk to any consumer VC — it's very difficult to raise a fund in our category." But that's exactly why Diana's strategic-LP-backed model works: less competition, deeper relationships with the strategic players who eventually buy the brands she invests in. 2/ The diligence framework. Since the Allbirds and Casper IPO failures, single-category consumer IPOs aren't a real path. So XRC starts every theme by going to Fortune 500 CFOs and asking, "What do you want to buy?" Then runs a Venn diagram between acquirable white space and the fastest-growing categories. Then bakes off 25 brands inside that intersection. The board deck is built for the strategic exit before the first board meeting. 3/ The honest part. Both of Diana's own startups (OK My Outfit, Quinn) had product-market fit and major retail partnerships — and neither was venture-scale. "I would implore founders to not necessarily look to venture capital first when they have a great idea." On whether she'd found again: "It was soul-crushing. The highs are few, the lows are many." She sold Christmas trees and Airbnb'd her spare room to extend her runway. Bonus: the Naked Sundays origin story (Australian news correspondent watching colleagues get skin cancer cut out of their faces and needing a sunscreen that worked over makeup) is one of the better "taste in a founder" examples we've heard in a while. 🎬YouTube: youtu.be/xU8QH4nnexk?si… 🎧Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/03JLjm… 🌟XRC is hiring SF-based investment summer interns focusing on consumer tech and will work directly with Diana and her team, apply here: careers.xrcventures.com/companies/xrc-…

new 18VC episode is live 🎙️ we sat down with Sabrina Li of Sunstone Management — an early-stage VC writing pre-seed and seed checks out of Southern California. a few things she said that we're still thinking about: 1/ on traction at the earliest stages: if your product is good, somebody should be using it from day one. otherwise the demand is fake — or you can't sell. 2/ on demand itself, there are three levels: must-have (water, food) good-to-have (nice sunglasses) status-driven (the organic Whole Foods aisle) founders who can't tell which one they're targeting rarely find PMF. and the best founders sometimes create a fourth — demand from nothing. (Elon comes up.) 3/ on moats in the age of AI: IP isn't the moat anymore — except in deep tech and medical, where licensing actually gates entry. the real moats now: team, speed, and verticals the big models can't easily enter. 4/ on what a strong founder actually looks like: top schools and big-name resumes can filter, but they don't predict. what predicts is whether the founder is desperate to solve the problem vs. just "wanting to build a company." 5/ on contrarian investing: "you don't have to invest differently. you have to pick differently." trying to be different for the sake of being different — when every other VC is doing the same — is the new consensus. 6/ on Gen Z in venture: AI can do the data, the comms, even the memos. what it can't do is sit inside the culture where new demand is forming. that's the edge young investors actually have. full episode → 📽️YouTube: youtu.be/_JFgLsG4O7Y?si… 🎧Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3zHPs3… #18VC #VC #startups

New episode 🤖 Michael Chen, @chenouttaten , co-founder & CEO of @yonduai (YC W24), on putting humanoid robots to work in real warehouses — not lab demos. From a robot waitress in his parents' Chinese takeout → MIT CSAIL → automating logistics with a fleet of off-the-shelf humanoids. A few of the bets we get into: 🔧 Why Yondu deliberately doesn't build its own hardware. Michael's take: the real bottleneck for humanoids over the next 5–10 years isn't AI — it's manufacturing capacity. So stay hardware-agnostic, tap every supplier (China, Korea, US), and put your team on the model + deployment instead. 📦 Their wedge is "brownfield" automation. Drop a humanoid into an existing warehouse. No new racks. No shutdowns. No infrastructure rebuild. ROI in months — not the 10 years an ASRS system takes. 🎮 On data: teleoperation sits at the top of the quality pyramid. Yondu also scrapes 10,000+ hours of open-source data and auto-labels it with AI. A general-purpose home robot may need 10M hours of data. A warehouse task? A few hundred to a thousand. Vertical focus pays. 🚗 The "Waymo for humanoids" framing: Build the model AND run the real-world deployments that feed the data flywheel. "How many companies have several live humanoid deployments running every single day? You can count them on one hand." 🥊 Competing with Figure ($2.3B), Galbot ($1B), TARs ($700M), plus Amazon & Symbotic — on a fraction of the funding. Their edge: focus + actual deployments. Plus his worst decision as CEO, why the YC community mattered more than the funding, and advice for student founders staring at their own mountain. P.S. Yondu is hiring for robotics researchers and engineers right now!! ycombinator.com/companies/yond… 🎥 On YouTube: youtu.be/BvIYyx1BfbI 🎧 On Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0Tst5s…

Excited to share that Episode 2 of the 18VC Podcast is now live with Jack Crawford (@CerraCap), founding managing partner of CerraCap Impact Venture Capital and professor at USC Marshall. 🎙️ We went deep into: • Why CIVC focuses on vertical AI + AI infrastructure • How corporate co-investment changes venture outcomes • What VCs actually look for in founders • Why founder pitches should feel like conversations, not presentations • The rise of secondary markets and longer private company lifecycles • What makes a startup truly defensible One insight that stood out: CIVC is bridging the gap between market-innovating startups and market-leading corporations — helping portfolio companies access not just capital, but customers and acquisition pathways. Jack also shared practical advice for founders: → Get warm referrals whenever possible → Talk to customers early and obsessively → Bring evidence of demand into fundraising conversations Huge thanks to Jack for joining us in the early days of the 18VC Podcast. 🎧 Watch here: 18-vc.com/podcast/civc-j… More episodes are already in production — stay tuned.

The best student founders are not waiting for permission. For Ep. 1 of 18VC Podcast, we spoke with Mackenzie + Luna of Immuny — who met at a USC hackathon, built from lived allergy experience, and pivoted after 40+ customer interviews. 18-vc.com/podcast/ep-1-i…