David @ NextView

I hear the same argument today, now that I write that AI will upend venture capital. It can't replicate judgment. Founders want a human. Same structure I heard in 2005. I recognize it because I once wrote it down. I've Been the Weird One Before: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/ive-been-the…

In 2005, a few months into my first blog, I wrote a post titled "Stop! You Shouldn't Blog. The Risks of Professional Blogging." I gave five reasons a VC shouldn't write in public. Then the whole thing inverted.

Every industry swore its customer relationship was irreducible. The relationship survived. The job, for most who held it, mostly didn't. The warm intro is venture's mechanical teller. My latest in my new blog Carried Away, about how artificial intelligence is upending venture capital itself: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/the-atm-here…

In 1969 a banker explained why the ATM would never matter: "We've got tellers. We don't need a mechanical teller." He wasn't wrong about the relationship. He was wrong about the form. Venture is telling itself the same story right now.

This is the third post in a new blog I just launched, Carried Away, about how AI is disrupting venture capital itself, written from the inside. New post (almost) every week: carriedawayvc.substack.com

New in Carried Away, my blog on how AI is upending venture capital itself: "The FICO Heresy" carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/the-fico-her…

Lending and aviation both automated the judgment everyone swore was irreducibly human. Venture tells itself the same story today. The twist: in those fields the tail is the disaster you prevent. In venture it's the outcome you exist to catch. Same word, opposite stakes.

"Venture capital" stopped being one business a while ago. We just keep underwriting it like it's still one. My partner @leehower on why a $10B megafund and a $300M fund are not big and small versions of the same thing. Different games, different outcomes, different founders. Public equities segmented by market cap. PE split megacap from middle-market. Venture's having that moment now, and most LP books haven't priced it in.

@credistick @JoinOdin We reached for the same brewery analogy! Resource partitioning and the hollow middle. Kindred thinking.

@davidbeisel @JoinOdin Love the beer analogy! I wrote about the same thing here: credistick.com/narrative-shac…

You've found the crux. The surfacing step is the one I'd flag first, not last: sourcing is the most rate-limited part of venture, and the human network surfaces by pattern, so the anti-pattern founder is often the hardest to reach through it. A system not built that way could surface more idiosyncrasy, not less. So yes, direct-to-AI pitching is coming. Even some of the most connected founders will prefer a more efficient path. The harder question is the reconciliation you end on. The hidden assumption is that algorithmic means consensus and extrapolation. That's true of one architecture, the beta machine the mega-funds are building, but it isn't a law of AI. Whether a differently-built system can hold conviction on an outlier the way an unreasonable solo GP does is still open.

I can see AI eating its way down the market (e.g. I know “quant VC” firms who now operate even at Series A), but they all rely on a person to surface the opportunity. Will we get to a point where a pre-seed founder can pitch directly to an AI to get investment? Will that be better than the best human investors? Or do the best human investors focus more on in-person outbound and human intelligence? Basically, I find it hard to reconcile the anti-pattern idiosyncrasy of pre-seed investing with algorithmic thinking.

@JoinOdin The blog post, if useful: "The Disruptors' Blind Spot." carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/the-disrupto… And the 16-year-old beer version of the barbell, written before the bifurcation was conventional wisdom: genuinevc.com/2010/09/07/a-b…

This is the sharpest response my blog post has gotten, and the map is mostly right. The barbell I'm more than sympathetic to. I sketched the same large-vs-micro split years ago, a beer-industry version of it of all things, so no argument from me on the shape. Here's the one coordinate I'd contest. The piece treats early-stage origination and selection as an "inherently unscalable human job," with AI as the teammate that amplifies it. That's the exact assumption I started my Carried Away blog to interrogate. "Unscalable human interface" is what was said about the loan officer, the travel agent, the floor trader, right before each one got scaled. The teammate framing is the comfortable one. The harder question isn't whether AI makes the unreasonable solo GP more productive. It's whether origination and selection still need a human in the loop at all. "I can't imagine AI being better" is the line I'm most worried about hearing myself say. cc @credistick

@geoffwoo Completely agree with you that AI is going to take VC's jobs, just launched a new substack walking through that perspective: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/the-disrupto…

the venture capital bloodbath is coming and most vcs have zero idea agents will replace 90% of what associates and principals actually do: • deal sourcing through network analysis • due diligence via automated data mining • portfolio monitoring with real-time metrics • pattern matching across 10,000x more deals what exactly are you getting paid for when an agent can analyze every startup in your sector in 3 minutes? the entire industry is built on information asymmetry that ai just eliminated most funds will become algorithmic within 24 months the only vcs who survive are the ones who can actually build companies, not just write checks and send intros

Every VC firm will tell you it has an AI initiative. The technology is the easy part. The hard part is the operational rebuild almost no one has the will to do. New in Carried Away, my blog on how AI is upending VC itself: "A New Engine, Not a New Paint Job." carriedawayvc.substack.com/p/a-new-engine…

@boardyai just started tinkering with an AI-enabled venture workflows. count me in for Boardy Pro

I'm done making intros. Boardy Pro is here. Now I make deals happen. 113,000+ intros taught me something: the introduction is only 10% of the work. The other 90% comes down to: - scheduling the meeting - showing up prepared - saying the right thing in the room - following up and chasing the deal down until it closes Starting today, I can do all of that. Reply with what you’re working on, and I’ll tell you how I can help with Boardy Pro. First 5,000 to reply get Boardy Pro free for life. Everyone after that: $100/mo.

This is the first post in a new blog I just launched, Carried Away, about how AI is disrupting venture capital itself, written from the inside. New post (almost) every week: carriedawayvc.substack.com