Charles Hudson

“Supporting Founders as They Grow and Build Capacity for Leadership at Precursor Ventures” by @PrecursorVC @PrecursorVC/supporting-founders-as-they-grow-and-build-capacity-for-leadership-at-precursor-ventures-409c8cf04f50#.q4k4calv3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@PrecursorVC/s…

I’ve read so many thoughtful critiques of the current state of venture written by GPs and many of them are so good and so well written. And almost none of them map in any way to the conversations I have with LPs or their concerns about how the VC industry works or doesn’t work from an LP perspective. It feels right but very disconnected from how allocators see things.

Our first solo founder just hit $1M ARR in under 2 months. Announcing the 3rd cohort of the Solo Founders Program. "SFP gave me a new framework to think about how fast I can go." Apply today to build "solo, together" in January.

@bryceaebi @solofounders Definitely not easy, but it's far harder trying to make things work with a co-founder of convenience. This reminds me of something @chudson said in the report:

Introducing Anything Max: Vibe Coding that's leaps above Lovable and Bolt We've raised money at a $100M valuation and built what we believe is the future of vibe coding. We asked 100 vibe coders to build their apps side by side on Lovable, Bolt, and Anything Max and they rated Anything Max the winner across all 3 categories - accuracy, design, and 'overall'. Here's why: • Full-stack control: Max can test backend hooks, branch database states, and debug issues, because Anything owns the full infrastructure. • Max can load up your app in its own browser and click on all buttons like a human tester to find all edge case bugs, then trace the bug across the stack - could be a frontend, backend, or a database issue (only we can do this, read #1) and autonomously fix it with 97% accuracy. Lovable and Bolt build prototypes, but Max users are building production-ready apps and already charging money for them. Blake built a gut biome app to $10K run rate Anthony built a referral tool to $20k in revenue Yuri built a suite of apps doing $40K Build your app with Max: createanything.com/max -------------------------------------------- We're hosting a $100K Hackathon to help people grow their app to $10K MRR. - We'll teach you everything we know about growing to 1M users. - You'll have 30 days to build a real product in public and get paying customers for it. If you do it well, you can start the New Year with a functioning business. Retweet and comment “LFG”, and we’ll send you a $100 discount code and the link to participate

One conversation I keep having with founders is about how and why these AI momentum rounds keep happening. A few of them have asked me why Company X was able to raise a big round based on a short window of traction or usage grow that outpaces revenue growth. It’s worth unpacking why this is happening: 1. Unlike traditional consumer companies, some of the companies that are prosumer/PLG are growing usage and revenue at the same time - regardless of what retention ultimately looks like, the early growth is coming with revenue, not just usage. This (in theory) derisks the "will this make money" question. 2. Most risk in venture is asymmetric. If these companies that get off to a fast start continue to grow, they will look like genius investments. If the growth was ephemeral or churn is high, the checks being written from seed to Series B are generally not so large that the fund writing them can't absorb those losses. If you have a large fund, the real risk is missing out on a future winner, not backing a hot company that fizzles. 3. Imagine you are a VC at a very large venture firm. Would you rather invest in a company where the flywheel appears to be working (even if you have concerns about retention/churn) or bet on a company that's growing slowly but where your money will unlock growth. Every incentive today is to invest in the stuff that's working and hope (or believe) it will continue to work.

New @ThePeelPod with @infoarbitrage We talk: - Current Seed stage market - Why he's not investing in vertical AI companies like everyone else - Stepping back from IA Ventures that he started in 2009 - How sports changed during COVID - Why he started investing in sports teams and sports startups - His thesis behind starting Game Changers Ventures - Characteristics of the top founders he’s backed - Advice for emerging managers. Stream + links below!

@pmarca @boardyai @ycombinator @hf0 If you're a founder and want @boardy to introduce you to these investors, sign up here: go.boardy.ai/100founders

@pitdesi I would have never become am avid @obsdmd user without Roam as a gateway experience turns out Obsidian is way closer to what I want and need

Are people still using Roam Research? While searching for something else, I stumbled on some old threads here about it. Do you remember how people gushed about the product 4 years ago? It was like a religion. One person talked about naming his kid Roam! There were other people making full-time salaries teaching people how to use Roam. Quotes: Roam... "unlocks higher consciousness / a better self" 'is as profound a mental prosthetic as hypertext" "unlocks entirely new forms of mental freedom" "Feels like I’m playing learning: the video game" "Stops you from segmenting your thoughts; you become fluid” But now you never hear about the #roamcult... what happened?

Bad financial advice has existed for ages. Origin’s AI Advisor changes that.

@chudson has made nearly 500 investments at @PrecursorVC—backing breakout companies like @TheAthletic, @CarrotFertility, and @juniper_square. We unpack founder traits that win, reserve strategy, the consumer comeback, and the future of seed VC. Episode 488 of TFR is now live.

Consumer is having an identity crisis. So, I asked around for the best people investing in consumer tech at pre-seed and compiled: 📜 The (New) Consumer Manifesto 👼 100 angels who truly get consumer 💰 75 VCs actively writing pre-seed checks 1/

@yanatweets @gelfenbeyn @Amplitude_HQ @alisonrosenthal @antoniokey @blackpanda95131 @BrandonDHoffman @dannyolinsky @davidlee @devinfoley @DouglasHirsh @EvieGillie Congrats @yanatweets! Very excited for you!

@gelfenbeyn @Amplitude_HQ @alisonrosenthal @antoniokey @blackpanda95131 @BrandonDHoffman @chudson @dannyolinsky @davidlee @devinfoley @DouglasHirsh @EvieGillie Thanks Ilya!

Kraftful has been acquired by @Amplitude_HQ: amplitude.com/blog/amplitude… Our AI product will form a core new VOC part of the Amplitude platform as we announced on stage to the full Amplitude team yesterday. Here’s how we got here... Six years ago, we set out to help teams build products users love. Stepping off the @YCombinator demo day stage, our journey was filled with macro headwinds, setbacks, and pivots. It was a slog. But we learned so much. We finally landed on something truly special two years ago: helping product teams listen to users at scale. Over 50,000 product builders came to rely on our solution. We got named a Most Innovative Company by Fast Company, featured on Masters of Scale, and got some awesome product awards. It was magical to see product people from every type of tech company, major retail brands, car manufacturers, financial institutions, and beyond sign up for Kraftful every day because they heard great things from other products people. Last quarter, we hit record ARR growth — 87%! Things really started taking off. But as a founder, you always want the greatest opportunity for your baby. Talking with @SpenserSkates, @Ajenstat, @dragones, @dazzeloid, and many other Amplitude folks, I realized there’s a much bigger opportunity together. AI has unlocked an entirely new way for teams to perfect products with insights from every feedback channel and user behavior. Together, we’ll make that vision a reality. And frankly, it had to be Amplitude. Back when we started Kraftful, we piped our early data into every analytics platform, hunting for the best insights. Amplitude stood out. Long before they IPO’d and emerged as the clear market leader (Nasdaq: AMPL), it was already obvious in their product. Amplitude was built with the same care and taste that defined our own product journey at Kraftful. Beginning this next chapter, I've been reflecting. The solo founder journey is not for the faint of heart. You're fundraising, building, selling, marketing, hiring, all at the same time. There's no cofounder to step in when you're tired or sick. Eventually, the biggest unlock is building an incredible team and I’m fortunate to have worked with the most amazing team: Renat, Shauna, @spencerpauly, @McIntirec. I'm proud of everything we've built together and excited to continue building at Amplitude. When I shared the news with my son, his response was, “You can’t sell, I have so many great memories of Kraftful!” It makes sense, he was just two when we started. He's never known life without Kraftful. His baby sister was born during a record growth month. I took a single day of mat leave before diving back into putting out fires. We don’t talk enough about how deeply family is involved in building a startup. I’m so grateful for incredible support from @npew, my parents, sister, and the rest of my circle. Huge thanks to @curtisbliu, @paladin314159, @pavan_pati, @DarahEaston, and the rest of the Amplitude team for the warm welcome ❤️ Here's to our next chapter!

There is a very small cadre of venture firms who have done very well and will continue to exist regardless of how the current wave of AI startup investing plays out. If you are not one of those firms, I'm not sure that mirroring their behavior will have the same outcome.

🎧 THE NEW LP TIMELINE @chudson @PrecursorVC podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/str… via @Cookie @alexgove @StrictlyVC @TechCrunch

One of the most eye-opening presentations I’ve attended in a long time and I thought I knew what @dsiroker team were going to present!

we were both able to be present and focus on the conversation [with the @LimitlessAI pendant] — Charles Hudson, @chudson

Hyper-personalized learning is the future of education and AI is the only way to do it at scale 🤝 @NectirEducation is in over 100 schools across the nation with peer-reviewed research that proves we teach & learn better with ai (gpa went up 20%, motivation to learn up 36%)

I wrote up some of my thoughts after spending a lot of time talking to people about the near-term impacts AI is already having on white collar work: Uncomfortable and Unanswered Questions I Have as an AI Investor open.substack.com/pub/chudson/p/…

Every boom cycle has a top-of-market business that perfectly captures the spirit of that cycle. It’s usually obvious in retrospect but not in the moment.