Robby

Thrilled to announce @mtf_vc - a $22M pre-seed & seed fund helping technical founders move faster 🚀 After 9 years in VC, the pace had changed - tech exploded, and AI gave founders superpowers. So, we built @mtf_vc to help them go even faster. open.substack.com/pub/mtfrobby/p…

Big announcement from @KeycardLabs 🎉 They now allow AI coding agents to safely access tools and data ONLY for the scoped task 🦾 Huge unlock for agent security!

@uninsightful And many uncapped!

the default yc round this batch (W26) seems like 4m on 40m I remember when I first started in venture exactly three years ago (W23 batch) and most venture ppl were complaining about YC pushing their founders to do 2m on 20m in 3 years the market went from a very begrudging 2 on 20 to a more neutral 4 on 40 interesting to think about where things land 3 years from here

@armon 💯

It's fun to be back in SF and see the energy and spark in the city again. Very noticeable the change from a year or two ago. City feels more vibrant, safer, and cleaner.

“We are not pushing them to use mirrord. Everyone is asking for it.” This is what Netanel Abergel, Director of R&D at @mondaydotcom, had to say about mirrord. Read the full case study to learn the impact mirrord has had at monday.com, including: ⚡ Environment setup in 10 seconds (down from 30 minutes) 🚀 New developer onboarding in ~1 hour (down from 3–5 days) 💸 $0 cloud cost for dev environments (eliminated entirely) 👩‍💻 245+ engineers developing on a single shared cluster See how monday.com improved developer velocity with mirrord 👇 metalbear.com/mirrord/case-s…

@HarryStebbings Totally agree! And you can increase that check size a bit if you have differentiated value in offering customer intros / connectivity. But there's an upper limit for sure if not leading.

@robby_mtf Upper limit but 💯 a 250K check can return the fund still at that stage

LPs love the idea of the 30M-75M high ownership seed fund. These will be the worst performing funds of this vintage. Average top tier seed rounds are $5M. These funds don’t have enough to lead and have a diversified portfolio. But they are too large to be collaborative and work with the best leads. Adverse selection takes effect. Be small enough to collaborate (sub $20M) or be large enough to lead ($100M+).

@MichelleVolz Huge congrats!!! Love to see more badass solo GPs out there :D

Excited to officially announce the launch of Pax Fund I, a $50M early stage vehicle dedicated to founders transforming the foundational categories of society. 🇺🇸🚀 Wrote a bit about my journey and the thinking behind Pax below:

@jonsakoda So fun! Expect nothing less from Team Decibel :)

3 Days. 100% Founder Vibes. A New Tiger Cage. Are You Ready??? 🔥 Excited to announce our inaugural “Founder Festival” at the Children’s Creativity Museum next to Moscone during the RSA Conference! Our doors are open to founders and early adopters seeking fresh ideas in our “Founder Oasis” 🌴 We'll have fireside chats, live podcasts, product demos, and our epic “Tiger Cage” competition 🎉 Guests of honor: * Alex Pall (@alexpall, @TheChainsmokers, Mantis VC) * Bipul Sinha (@bipulsinha, Founder of @RubrikInc) * Francis deSouza (@fldesouza, COO, @GoogleCloud) Pat Opet (@patopetciso, CISO, @JPMorgan) Shoutout to our partners partners: @AshishRajan (Cloud Security Podcast), @calebsima (WhiteRabbit), @clintgibler (tl;dr sec), @DanielMiessler (Unsupervised Learning), @riskybusiness (Risky Business) 🙏 Full lineup & schedule link below!

2 of my faves @KeycardLabs + @RunReveal cohosting THE @BSidesSF after party 🎉🥳

@shayanshafii Totally agree. Advice is highly over rated. Generally the things VCs can give great advice on are fundraising and sometimes shared learnings from other portcos. Tangible help aka intros are what can actually move the needle.

Having been on both sides of the table: the value add of an investor is 90% their network + their firm's extended network. Introductions to key hires, design partners, and customers / POCs is a huge chunk of what founders actually should be measuring investors for; the other part is just their integrity. Investors that understand this - and you'd be surprised how few actually do - invest HEAVILY in their network to be able to open these doors for founders. There is no shame in it being "who you know" rather than "what you know". It's the job. If you were a "what you know" person you'd be the founder, but you're not.

@robgo Totally agree! Have been communicating this to my LPs. Being in the best companies in your focus area(s) is THE most important thing. Ownership trending upward could (and often) means more ownership in worse opps.

Actually, it already has changed. Seed funds that don't embrace this will have serious trouble. Each asset needs to be independently priced. Doing this well is part of being a good at the "picking" part of the job.

A mini rant about seed VC models and pricing. Seed VC's lament that rounds have gotten so big and varied and there is no definition of a seed round anymore. They tend to suggest this is a signal of irrational exuberance. Actually, it's not

Luma link: luma.com/hy83h0zp?tk=uZ… Looking forward to chatting with @robby_mtf, @ianlivingstone, @jankytweet, and a special guest from @AnthropicAI 👀

@arian_ghashghai 💯

if current VC discourse is to be believed, it's probably a great time to start a SaaS business the insight: regardless of how much SF might think otherwise, most people don't want to make and maintain their own software (if they did, open source would have killed SaaS long ago)

@Alexoppenheimer @annarchyy Disagree. Being a great fundraiser only takes you so far. The quality of your investing matters the most.

@robby_mtf @annarchyy This is rarely the case, especially if you start your own fund. Being a great fundraiser is how you live and die. Being a great investor is a small part of that.

10 yrs ago, the ultimate win in VC was becoming a GP. Today, that has shifted entirely. The best investors are leaving to start funds of their own. I wonder what changed so drastically that this has became the norm.

@Alexoppenheimer @annarchyy It’s like a founder who’s a great fundraiser but terrible company builder. Building a great company is how you live and die. Being a great fundraiser is important but not the main thing.

@jbotsch @tnachen 🤗🤗🤗

is the @tnachen and @robby_mtf celebration similar?

@robby_mtf on branding: Branding works best when it’s literal. The brands that stick usually sound exactly like the people behind them, especially in technical communities. Engineers don’t want to decode brand positioning fluff. They want to know what you do, who your product is for, and why it exists.

Security teams shouldn't have to choose between coverage and cost. @lumosidentity didn't. Full-stack coverage across cloud, product security, and detection & response — logs flowing in two days, AI handling triage, broader detections without the noise. Read about their journey here: runreveal.com/case-studies/l…