Adam Saven

Here's a problem we see all the time in early studios: they copy-paste a VC fund's operating cadence and wonder why nothing feels right. Weekly deal flow reviews. Portfolio monitoring calls. Valuation-focused LP reports. All borrowed wholesale from a fund playbook. But a VC fund's primary activity is deal selection -- source, evaluate, check, board, wait. A studio's primary activity is venture creation -- generate, validate, recruit, build, launch. Those are fundamentally different jobs. When you run a studio like a fund, things break in specific ways: Your meetings are wrong. You're reviewing deal flow instead of venture build progress -- milestones, blockers, resource allocation. The work is building, not sourcing. Your team is wrong. Studios need builders at every level -- operators, designers, engineers. Not just investment professionals. You can't build companies with a team designed to pick them. 📉 Your metrics are wrong. Entry valuations and markups don't tell you anything useful. Cost-to-build-a-venture, time-to-market, and venture survival at 18 months -- those are the numbers that actually measure whether the studio is working. Your LP reporting is wrong. Report operational progress -- what's building, what's launching, what's been killed and why. Not just portfolio movements. Here's the lesson -- the studios that struggle most are the ones that adopted VC templates without modifying them for fundamentally different work. The portfolio companies don't exist until the studio creates them. Not a fund that happens to build things. A builder that happens to have a fund. The operating rhythm should reflect which one is primary. 🎯

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I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement Vertical AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably and unlock generational returns. Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

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40%+ of Seed and Series A funding in 2026 is flowing into $100M+ rounds, as Zachary DeWitt recently highlighted. The market is making a big bet on mega rounds. I'm taking the under on their performance--I'd bet heavily on an index of regular-sized seeds vs the megas.   Here's what I think is happening. Ambitious founders surrounded by AI hype see Anthropic's and OpenAI's returns and think they need to do something similar. In their minds, this means raising huge rounds to fund NBA-level salaries for the most legible AI talent at Meta, Google, other AI labs, etc.   The problem is that this approach is fundamentally derivative. This is not how Anthropic, OpenAI, or any of the other most disruptive AI companies started. Disruption requires doing something that experts dismiss. If a startup requires raising mountains of cash to hire legions of expensive experts, it might have some degree of success, but it will not be disruptive.   Look, this is tricky. Anthropic raised giant early rounds and seems very mission-oriented, so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush here. That said, Anthropic's $124m Series A in 2021 was actually very unconventional in many respects, even in the context of a frothy 2021.   Besides being derivative (and thus not disruptive), this approach also selects for mercenary over missionary culture. And all things being equal, companies with missionary culture outperform. Because if you really care about solving a problem, you're willing to make sacrifices and do non-consensus things—not just copy what worked for the last wave.   So, why does this pattern persist despite these concerns?   The most economically dominant point is that the investors doing the big rounds make a lot of money on management fees. When partners at funds enjoy massive compensation from management fees, investment performance becomes a "nice-to-have."   To be fair, many of these partners are post-economic and are arguably more interested in hiring huge teams and building "platforms." The fees justified by mega rounds align nicely with the expense structure of empire-building. On the other hand, the smaller rounds are done by firms where the principals are making much less on management fees and have much more incentive to see a return on the capital via carry.   The mega firms would surely retort that many of the smaller rounds are done by firms that are here today, gone tomorrow. And there's truth to that. Mega firms with billions of assets are inherently more stable. At the same time, those firms are fundamentally targeting much lower returns. It's trade-offs all the way down.   So when I look at that 40%+ number, I see capital flowing into a pattern that selects for derivative thinking and mercenary culture, with an underlying incentive structure that ensures it keeps happening.   And that's why I'm taking the under on the performance of that 40%.

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This sounds backwards for a VC, but hear me out... There’s been discussion whether profitable YC companies might skip fundraising entirely after demo day. Build with AI agents, stay lean, bootstrap to profitability. … I hope this happens. It's not good for me, but I hope this happens. In reality - I don't see any YC companies actually skipping Demo Day fundraising. Even the most efficient ones still raise $2-4M at elevated valuations. This = Insurance against bad timing. When you're coming out of YC with momentum, you can command higher valuations than usual. Taking $4M at a $40M valuation is only 10% dilution, but it buys you something invaluable: runway. I've watched promising companies die not from product-market fit issues, but from running out of time. They needed three more months to hit their next milestone. Three months they didn't have. Would you rather own 94% of a company with six months of runway, or 90% of a company with 24 months? It’s okay to raise a next round while still having 90% of their previous funding untouched. Raising because cycles change and bad times happen. This creates a paradox. The companies most capable of bootstrapping are often the ones that raise the most capital. They understand that survival matters more than ownership percentage. Customer money beats investor money every time. But in venture capital, timing matters more than purity. If you’re solving hard problems, I would keep advising founders to prioritize runway over dilution.

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VC schedules, and thoughts on being a VC noob. -- VC schedules to know -- Most venture capital firms hold partner meetings on Mondays. This is typically when the investment committee votes on new investments and other key decisions. Savvy founders learn the exact timing and may need to provide additional data over the weekend to stay in motion. It is also well known that many venture capitalists observe a “European summer,” with August often being light or fully off. Similarly, the winter holidays reduce activity across much of December. That said, data from Carta shows a meaningful year-end push to close deals in December, followed by a flurry of activity in January. Founders should be cautious about kicking off fundraising during these slower periods. You do not want a raise to go stale and fall apart. VCs talk to each other, the industry is highly interconnected. -- I’m a mid career Noob! -- I am an “emerging manager,” effectively a new VC, less than three years in. In venture capital, the timeline is long. On my Linkedin you'll see I have two roles at Blitzscaling: Limited Partner means I put money into a fund, but have no decision making ability, and General Partner means I'm actively finding startups, bringing them to the partnership, and funding. As a General Partner, you are often considered an emerging manager for close to a decade, as it takes years for a fund to fully mature and establish a VC track record. Investing is a long game, but the upside can be extraordinary. Fortunately, I entered this role with a positive angel track record from my own bank account, which is often a good idea to have as a VC. When I learn a new VC concept or term, I’m an AI first, I’ll link to my post a few days ago in the comments, I totally live for constant growth and learning, if you’re not growing you’re dying. Fun fact: Many/most start their VC career in their 40s, as they need to have enough tech and biz cycles, a broad enough network, resources, and a platform to stand upon. As we end the year, I'm sharing more career thoughts, and productivity thoughts, rather than industry trends and market maps and frameworks and forecasts. I wrote all of this by hand myself, but used AI to edit some of it.

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Sometimes promising startups get off on the wrong foot with their VC fundraising effort because they step into a trap that signals naiveté. Three very simple starter suggestions for every founder looking to raise early-stage VC: 1. Target a common round size ($3M Seed, $10M Series A) 2. Stay silent on valuation until you have a term sheet 3. Define what the capital enables (e.g., revenue milestone) https://lnkd.in/gEfArG78

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Founders often scramble to prep materials *after* a VC shows interest. That’s backward. You should be ready for diligence before your first meeting with a VC. Smart founders: 🗂 Have their data room ready 📊 Can share a clear KPI dashboard if asked 💸 Keep clean, up-to-date financials 📣 Track and communicate metrics Flailing around getting your files in order can erode investor trust. Put in the work ahead of time and it will build confidence in you and your company. #FundraisingAdvice #StartupTips #RSCMFounderFriday

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