Seth Berman

E20 with @SethGB, cofounder of @SusaVentures and @KivuVentures is now available on @WeThe_Builders wherever you get your podcasts. We go over the history and state of early stage venture capital. Seth started angel investing at Y Combinator demo days back when there used to be twenty companies and a handful of investors looking at them. He then went on to start one of the early few seed funds funding 10 unicorns across ~100 investments. Some of these include companies like @RobinhoodApp, @flexport and @askchapter (Cofounded by Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz, who has also been on the show). Seth cofounded Susa Ventures with Chad Byers and Leo Polovets back in 2013. Kivu Ventures is a sister Series A/B fund focused on Vertical AI and AI Infrastructure. Venture Partners at the firm include Paul Sciarra, Cofounder Pinterest (@sciarra) and Michael Stoppelman, Fmr SVP Engineering at Yelp (@stopman) Some of my highlights from the conversation: - Back when Robinhood was starting, Susa was the only investor willing to open up thier books to become the investor of record for FINRA. - There could be a world where we get more public market AI analysts that might accelerate more IPOs - There are too many events and platform teams, that might not be the differentiator anymore - AI scientists might be the next big opportunity - Series A is the new seed and funds in this stage have way better returns on average - You make money when you catch the wave - Go-To-Market now is as important as product and sales and you need world class players from Day 1 Special thanks to Cobi for the intro. We filmed this in Aspen CO on my first trip there. Since I don’t ski, the only reason I had heard of the city was Aspen Institute and their events. Timestamps: 02:03 – The Early Days of Seed Investing 05:34 – The Explosion of the Seed Ecosystem: 900+ Funds and Rising 09:00 – The Series A Opportunity 10:30 – Missing Out on Pinterest 12:50 – The Era of the "No-Deck" Fundraise 13:34 – Vertical AI and the Super Cycle 14:43 – AI 2.0: Physical Intelligence and the Future 22:28 – Starting a Company vs. Solving a Problem 26:17 – The Prototyping Era 32:10 – The AI Scientist: Replicating Einstein-Level Intellect 35:51 – Vertical vs. Horizontal AI Models 39:19 – Why Founders Don’t Care About Your VC "Platform" 45:36 – The Shift from Collaborative to Competitive Venture Capital 48:04 – Investing is Harder Than Tweeting 01:10:48 – Identifying Talent: Broken Resumes and Extreme Persistence 01:15:23 – Why Immigrants are Among the Most Successful Founders 01:32:00 – Timing in Venture: Catching the Wave Before it Passes 01:38:16 – Public Markets, Tokenization, and AI Analysts 01:45:00 – The Robinhood Story 02:00:04 – Why Exceptional Go-To-Market is Now Mandatory @CobiBGantz @vladtenev @BaijuBhatt @typesfast @chadbyers @humbavc @lpolovets @pratyushbuddiga @denwezoh @shaheersan

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