Martin Gedalin

Founder @ Rings AI, Founder/GP @LumiaCapital Prev:PM/Strategy @Oracle & @NCRCorporation; @Wharton/@EmoryUniversity. Tech nerd & art lover

[Pavel Prata @pavelprata]

Do solo and emerging GPs actually have a network edge?

I've been speaking with a lot of emerging VCs lately, and every second one leads with the same narrative: "we have a broad, defensible network."

So I looked at the @RingsApp dataset (74 funds, 275 user accounts) to check whether that's actually true. And a few numbers stood out to me:

- Solo and duo GPs carry 2.9x more relationships per person than funds with 5+ people
- The peak is at 2 people – 4,110 relationships per person. Solo GPs sit at 3,618
- Cross into 3-4 people and you're already at 2,529
- At 5-10 people the median drops to 1,296. That's a 68% decline from peak
- Mid and large funds are essentially identical – 1,296 vs 1,311. Adding headcount at that point changes nothing

And yeah, it seems that the edge is real, but based on my experience talking to GPs across fund sizes, I don't think it's because solo GPs are unusually well-connected people.

I think it's structural and a few things explain it:

1/ Survival pressure. At a larger firm you can be an average networker and still get deal flow through the brand, through partners, through inbound. Solo GPs don't have that buffer. You build relationships or you don't see deals. That's an existential pressure, and it produces genuinely different behavior.

2/ Time allocation. Every growing firm pays "a scale tax" – internal meetings, team management, etc. Solo GPs don't pay it. Every hour a partner at a larger firm spends on internal alignment is an hour a solo GP spends on a call with a founder or LP.

3/ Relationship quality. When you're one person, you can't delegate relationships, so you do the intro yourself, the follow-up yourself, you remember the details. At larger firms relationships often become institutional (like "we know that founder!"), but nobody specifically knows them well. Solo GPs build connections that are personally held, which makes them informationally richer and harder to replicate.

4/ Signal clarity. At a big firm people come to you because of where you work. The brand amplifies deal flow – but it also distorts it. When someone calls a solo GP, it's because they know that specific person. I think this makes a real difference in the quality of the relationship, not just the quantity.

And the part I find most interesting (and maybe a bit uncomfortable for EMs to sit with) is that this advantage is time-limited by design.

Based on the data, it starts compressing not when you raise Fund III, but when you make your 3rd hire. The cliff happens between 2 and 5 people, not between 10 and 50.

I think the funds that preserve the edge are the ones that build infrastructure early enough to turn individual relationships into something the firm actually owns (automated CRM enrichment, shared context, real visibility into who knows whom), because without it the network doesn't belong to the firm, it belongs to a person.

For LPs this reframes the DD question, because team size is commonly used as a proxy for network breadth, but the data says it's almost the opposite — the right question isn't how big the network is, it's where it lives, who owns it, and what happens to it if the key person walks out the door.

[Pavel Prata @pavelprata]

My recommended tech stack for emerging VCs:

Fund setup

Bank: @mercury
Fund admin: @cartainc
SPVs: @sydecario
ManCo banking: @brexHQ
Legal: @CooleyLLP
Accounting: @frankrimerman
Fund modeling: G Sheets

General

Workspace: G Suite + @NotionHQ
Messaging: @SlackHQ
CRM: @attio
CRM + Relationship mapping: @RingsApp
Scheduling: @calcom / @blockitAI
Call transcripts: @meetgranola
Video: G Meet / @loom

IR

LP chats: WhatsApp / G Mail
Decks: @figma
Docs: @NotionHQ / G Docs
Doc tracking: @papermarkio

AI

AI Agents: @NotionHQ
Automation: @claudeai
Complex workflows: @zapier / @n8n_io

Research

Media: @murphcapital
Data: @harmonic_ai
PortCo updates: @cura_inc

Platform

Website: @framer
Social: X / LinkedIn
Newsletter: @Substack
Events: @LumaHQ
Community: @circleapp

Talents

Hiring: @alexklein0x
Marketing: @imlaurieowen

You’re welcome.

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@KyleSamani Check out https://t.co/ochlW71Vsq @KyleSamani I'll DM you

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@lessin Agreed, especially the warm intro point. Mapping this at enterprise scale and exposing it to your legacy and future/agentic infrastructure is where we’ve seen enterprises win.

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

Thanks @joshferrufino - We love you guys too!

[FINO @filmedbyFINO]

@Gedalin @LumiaCapital @RingsApp great launch video and great product. we love Rings at Brex!!

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

This is our thesis as well at @RingsApp, @theinformation @DJ_CURFEW - effective, secure, agents will increasingly rely on context centralization.

[The Information @theinformation]

ClickUp CEO Zeb Evans believes consolidating enterprise software into one app gives its AI agents an advantage over competitors that struggle to tap information across different apps. Read: https://t.co/mdCCVI7XkV

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@bhalligan @nikunj Yes I think we went down memory lane on this over the summer. Ours was higher but they sent pizza! 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@bhalligan @nikunj Scale and Focus no?

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@bhalligan @nikunj You had at least 2 for the C! 😉

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@PhilChen22 @LumiaCapital @RingsApp Thank you for the amazing support and helping us get here!

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

As a longtime investor and founder at @LumiaCapital , I've felt firsthand how difficult it is to manage relationships at scale.

I'm excited to introduce what my team at Rings AI (@RingsApp) have been building over the last few years to solve this.

If you're evaluating CRM decisions for 2026 or would like to explore how to add relationship intelligence to your current stack, let's chat:

https://t.co/h5yPazNaXf

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@shaig @RingsApp Thank you as always to you and team Brex for the awesome support on all fronts!

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

A legendary statement from the President of the University of Florida:

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

I went to an ancient village in northern Iraq once when reporting for 60 Minutes. I asked them to take me to the oldest building in the village. They did not take me to the mosque as I expected, they took me to the synagogue. Then I asked to go to the second oldest building and they took me to the Assyrian church. Then I asked “what about the mosque”? They said that came “after”. So I looked it up. Turned out the Assyrians were the first to convert to Christianity as a nation in the 1st century AD. And 500 - 600 years later the first Muslims came to that land. I was surprised because there is no mention of this ever. I lived in Iraq for five years before this and never considered for a moment that anyone else had a claim to any of that land - it was never part of the narrative there or in the US or anywhere else. And then a Kurdish man educated me on their history and how many of the Kurds were taxed into extinction by Muslim conquerors/invaders and forced to convert. It’s why some Kurds still bear hatred towards their Muslim neighbor’s today. What is the point? That there’s enough blame to go around - you can find it everywhere you go. But there is never an excuse for slaughtering innocent, unarmed people in cold blood. Never. And if you are justifying this, you are on the wrong side of history.

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

@peteryared @IbrahimAjami @ADGlobalMarket @hub71ad Excited to see you two working together as part of @hub71ad @ADGlobalMarket !

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

Kicking off day 1 of the Milken Asia Summit. Let me know if you’re here! #MIGlobal

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

Congrats @davidu @whereisyaffe @anyroad! Always fun when some of my favorite people join forces! #proudinvestor

[David Ulevitch 🇺🇸 @davidu]

Awesome blog post by @whereisyaffe on the @anyroad funding. They’re hiring!

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

Enjoyed chatting with @bayareawriter on the state of venture funding in Brazil. Exciting times ahead!

[Mary Ann Azevedo @bayareawriter]

My latest for @crunchbasenews: Venture funding in #Brazil exploded in 2018 to $1.3B, representing nearly 2/3 of all VC money raised in #LatinAmerica as a whole last year. Meanwhile, deal volume more than doubled to 259 in 2018 compared to 113 in 2017.

https://t.co/EJbZgQfe1t

[Martin Gedalin @Gedalin]

Try being his partner @MudassirSheikha 😛

[Mudassir Sheikha @MudassirSheikha]

From our very own, ⁦Chris Rogers ⁦⁦@MobileRogers⁩. We were blessed to have him as an investor in @careem. He is always available and brutally direct. https://t.co/OKIyUfjXxS

[Alex Konrad @alexrkonrad]

Curious what Careem's $3.1 billion acquisition by Uber means for the startup ecosystem in the Middle East? Its first U.S. investors, @MobileRogers and Peter Weed, break it down for @forbes. https://t.co/ipi2cpKLo5