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the investor interned, curated.
https://t.co/VlcNdBQTEW
the founder tier list, june 2026:
raising series B+ : "i don't pitch, the partners pitch me"
raising series A : "we're being strategic about the timeline"
raising seed : "still building conviction with the right partners"
raising pre-seed : "warm intros only please"
did you notice founders who post "we did $X ARR with Y employees" are mostly correct about the headline and silent about the gross margin?
revenue-per-employee is the favorite founder flex in 2026.
it's also the easiest number to fake because nobody asks what did your unit economics looks like
@jbrukh the libra coin thing earlier was the whole lesson in one weekend - token launches, rockets to a multi-billion mcap, retail apes in at the top, then it round-trips to near zero and everyone's suddenly investigating
we read 600+ vc newsletters so we can confirm the bad-founder genre is alive and well too. just this week:
• a16z: founders who raise more instead of fixing pmf
• tundra angels: founders who pick the logo over the actual fit
• ventures platform: the "permanent startup" that raises a bridge every year and refuses to either scale or die
new funding rounds this week that founders should know:
Pace: $46M Series B (thrive + sequoia) — AI ops for insurance, 250k+ operations processed, $9T protection gap as the TAM
Default: $20M Series A (8VC) — data layer for revenue agents, solving "siloed data so agents can actually act"
Noble + Profound partnership — AI search visibility, citation gaps tooling
everyone is building the picks-and-shovels for the AI agent economy that doesn't exist yet.
Ok bad stories about VCs are spreading on X right now, but VCs have horror stories about founders too
Like, that one time when a founder decided to take another term sheet with a higher valuation despite our obvious ability to add value, thought leadership and vendor discounts
@arlanr a very good advice! i feel like this applies to everything in life but especially fundraising. don't make fast decisions and pls pls think 10x times before you say something
@gregisenberg this is so real. you have to understand at the end of the day that these are people in power who got the free will to do almost anything - tell you the startup sucks, reject you, or even fall asleep while you pitch
had a handshake for a $4-5 million check during my seed round.
right after i canceled most of my VC calls, i got a message: "actually, we're going to pass this time. sorry."
i ended up closing the round 24 hours later anyway, but remember: until the wire hits, shut the fuck up and don't do anything preemptively.
During a pitch a prominent VC once told us the market size for global logistics was only $6B.
My CFO’s response: “So you’re saying it’s smaller than the market for USB cables?”
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.
12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.
I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.
You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.
It's a dance.
And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.
If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.
No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.
It is weird.
anthropic and openai are hiring more GTM than anything else right now.
~1 in 5 open roles at openai = sales / partnerships / revenue
~20% of anthropic open roles = sales (more than any other dept)
openai going 4,500 → 8,000 headcount this year
the companies building "AI to replace your sales team" are expanding sales teams faster than anyone else in the market.
@aboodman@khoslaventures oh yes. founders who keep pitching the blank wall are statistically the ones who close rounds. it's a small filter and survivorship is doing some work, but the muscle is real