Healy Jones

I'm Healy Jones. I've founded and exited, been on teams that have IPO'd - and also failed. Now running finance for Neo, an early-stage VC and mentorship org.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

I think we are changing the venture industry for the better

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Ali Partovi’s Neo looks to upend the accelerator model with low-dilution terms https://t.co/BINZlwWnFJ

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@aleximm @saltandstraw The line in Burlingame was around the block this weekend. 🍦 Wow, this ice cream emoji does not do Salt and Straw justice.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@TheEthanDing @blackstone This is excellent!

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@Z2H_corp A lot of the big funds are buying optionality in their seed investments.

It's not a horrible investment strategy.

Founders may want to consider this carefully when the raise their first checks.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

First time I've seen the breakdown of bigger funds doing seed deals.

Interesting stats:

[Pavel Prata @pavelprata]

Are mega-funds really taking over seed?

I decided to look at the behavior of the world's largest VC funds ($10B+ AUM) at early stages and answer a simple question: should EMs worry about their structural edge?

So I used @harmonic_ai and looked at all pre-seed, seed, and seed extension rounds across 3 eras:

- SaaS Era (2015–2019): 5 years of a normal market. Cloud, SaaS, fintech were the dominant theses.
- ZIRP Era (2020–2022): 3 years of zero interest rates and free capital.
- AI Era (2023–2026): from ChatGPT to the present day.

We focused on one core metric: average number of early-stage deals per year for each fund in each era.

Here are a few insights we found interesting:

1/ In the SaaS era, a typical mega-fund made 10–20 early-stage deals per year. This was moderate, targeted seed activity – a complement to the core Series A/B and later strategy.

2/ In the ZIRP era, everyone scaled up. Each of the 10 funds increased their early-stage deals/year (some by 2–3x), because capital was free, competition at later stages was fierce, and seed felt like a cheap entry point.

3/ Then came the AI era and it became clear this was no temporary effect. Even as rates rose and capital became more expensive with the end of ZIRP, @a16z and @generalcatalyst posted peak early-stage activity.

> @a16z: 16.6 → 48.7 → 75.3 deals/year. A 4x increase from the SaaS era.
> @generalcatalyst: 15.2 → 31.7 → 61.5 deals/year. Also 4x.

The most interesting finding, though, is 3 distinct behavioral models:

1/ "Accelerators" - deals/year in the AI era exceed ZIRP levels: @a16z (75.3/yr), @generalcatalyst (61.5/yr), @khoslaventures (31.5/yr). These funds didn't just stay active in seed after free money ended – they doubled down.

2/ "Stabilizers" – deals/year in the AI era are slightly below ZIRP peak, but well above SaaS-era levels: @sequoia (19.6 → 49.3 → 50.6), @Accel (15.2 → 43.3 → 34.7), @lightspeedvp (11.6 → 41.7 → 32.1). The ZIRP spike moderated, but activity levels remain sustainably 2–3x above the SaaS era. There's no return to the old normal.

3/ "Disciplined" – steady, gradual growth across all eras: @BessemerVP (9.4 → 23.0 → 20.9), @Lux_Capital (7.2 → 14.3 → 14.7), @IndexVentures (10.0 → 23.3 → 17.6). No ZIRP spikes, no AI explosions – but the baseline has durably shifted upward.

So in the SaaS era, these 10 funds collectively made roughly 140–150 early-stage deals per year. In the AI era – around 370–400. And I think they just set up a new, sustained baseline, not just doubled after a ZIRP-peak era.

For an LP evaluating an emerging seed manager, this is the most important context.

The early-stage market your GP is investing in is one where 10 funds with $10B+ in AUM are doing dozens deals a year.

An emerging manager needs to be able to articulate exactly where, in that market, they have the right to win.

[harsharamesh @harshavramesh]

We will be joining the gold bugs and Gollum in Orlando for the IPMI Precious Metals conference.

We hedge gold, silver, platinum, palladium and the one ring to rule them all. Come say hi at our booth of book in a meeting with the email below.

[Cognition @cognition]

1/ We’ve raised over $1B at a $26B valuation, led by @Lux_Capital, @generalcatalyst, and @8vc.

Our enterprise usage has grown >10x since the start of this year, and our run-rate revenue grew to $492 M.

We launched Devin two years ago as the first AI software engineer. Since then, cloud agents have gone from niche to mainstream, and today they are the fastest growing way to create software.

[Kyle 🚄 @KyleTrainEmoji]

PICARD: Data, shields up

DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy.

[camera shakes]

WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS

DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@imrohan335 @neo Everyone is pumped to get to work with you @imrohan335

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

Join the top community for undergraduates passionate about CS and building!

[Neo @neo]

🏆 Neo Scholar applications are open!

Are you a college student who excels at CS?

Follow in the footsteps of Neo Scholars who founded Cursor, Chai Discovery, Applied Compute, Flint, Cognition, & more.

Apply to join one of tech’s strongest communities. https://t.co/gzG3lS8Bbw

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@zebulgar So many great rocket photos.

First thing I looked at was segment level info:

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

My analysis of the SpaceX prospectus:
-Connective is a great business 🔥
-AI is expensive 💵
-Lots of cool rocket photos 🚀

[Russell Fox @russcfox]

If you're wondering why your tax professional can't quickly resolve your IRS matter, the answer is that he cannot reach a human at the IRS to resolve it. I have a number of issues I need to resolve (and CAN be resolved) at the IRS's Practitioner Priority Service, but... (1/2)

[tmuxvim @tmuxvim]

I put a prompt injection into my LinkedIn bio and recruiters are messaging me in Old English and calling me Lord.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@johnfelix123 Nah, if that were true capital would be concentrating in only a few managers.

OH, wait...

[adaption @adaption_ai]

Introducing AutoScientist.

Most model training fails outside of frontier labs.

AutoScientist automates the full research loop so it doesn't have to.

[Michelle Lim @michlimlim]

Now launching: a 5-minute setup to find what your B2B site is missing:

Sign up for @tryflint and our AI agents will identify pages that are costing you pipeline, and then build them for you.

First two pages free. Build yours at https://t.co/ilDdJ9WcFs

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

If the mega IPOs go well, VC fundraising gets exciting.

If they flop, I don't want to think about it.

We need capital locked in those big startups to recycle back into the ecosystem ♻️, and we need those new public companies acquiring startups.

[Pavel Prata @pavelprata]

A few things seem to be driving VC fundraising based on my convos with both GPs and LPs:

1/ Potential mega liquidity events (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) are making a lot of ppl think DPI might finally reopen after a pretty frozen period. Mid-sized LPs who historically allocate into EMs will probably follow the broader market once liquidity starts flowing again, so a lot of managers are trying to position early now in order to go “all in” once that fundraising window properly opens.

2/ Market also became super barbelled. In practice it increasingly feels like there are only two venture products left: mega AI platforms / index-like allocators and sub-$100M Fund I-IIs.

And smaller funds basically became outsourced R&D for larger firms that are willing to aggressively fund validated category leaders later. So naturally more ppl launch small funds hoping to catch one extreme power-law winner that returns the whole vehicle.

3/ Third, AI applications. Infrastructure is already over-capitalized. The next wave of competition is at the application layer, and historically that's where small funds have the edge – low CAPEX requirements mean you don't need A16Z to write the first check. Emerging managers can actually compete for the best application-layer deals in a way they couldn't during the infrastructure wave.

All three of these create pretty strong momentum and a lot of managers are reading the same signals.

At the same time I actually don’t think there are necessarily “more” good funds than before. @PitchBook is probably directionally right that EM fundraising overall is still weak and fewer managers are successfully raising.

The bigger change imo is LP behavior. There are still tons of managers trying to raise (arguably not that different from 2020), but LPs became way more concentrated:

- fewer checks
- higher conviction
- more scrutiny
- stronger preference for perceived outliers

Especially professional allocators (FoFs, FOs) who increasingly behave like the venture market itself – concentrating capital into the few managers they think can become future franchise firms.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

Been using @EspaLabs daily.

Every morning: “Who am I meeting + why?” ~60 sec later: a clean brief pulled from my email + calendar.

Congrats @DeonNicholas + team on the funding

[Deon Nicholas @dojideon]

Today I'm launching @EspaLabs, the AI executive assistant for everyone.

Honest explanation for why: I still forget to follow up on my own emails 😅.

[Michelle Lim @michlimlim]

Did 15 customer visits in 3 days in NYC. One office visit teaches you what 50 Zooms can't. Founders, book the flight.

[Healy Jones @HealyHoops]

@catherinehyeo Awesome!