Brayton Williams ⏻

Co-Founder of @BoostVC ⏻: Lead Pre-Seed rounds for Deep Tech (bio, space, crypto, AI, robots, Sci-Fi).

Advisor @Etherscan. BOD @moltbook @unstoppableweb.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

If you want to give humans superpowers, this is the team to join.

[Isaak @isaakfreeman]

We built the lab that's able to go from AI-led drug design to data in 24h.

GPT-8 won't be bottlenecked by intelligence. It needs a biological compute layer.

This is Capable. We're turning AI capabilities into human capabilities--starting with short-sleeper peptides.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@ajhodls No adjustments. Raw SAFE #’s.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

Our median Pre-Seed post money valuations (Based on ~25–40 investments each year.):

2022: $7m
2023: $5.5m
2024: $6.5m
2025: $5m
2026: $8m

I've had a lot of people ask what we're seeing in 2026, so I figured I'd share our data.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@AdamDraper @credistick 🪄🧙‍♂️

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@patmatthews Always think 20% of the fund is more opportunistic.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@Trace_Cohen $500k-$2m

Sometimes we are only check. Sometimes we participate in a round. Sometimes we lead a round. Pretty flexible.

Also many deals get done with us writing a check and then subsequent SAFEs close on progressively higher prices.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@andrewparker Definitely something we go back and forth on.

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@andrewparker As long as we are in a winner. And that winner is really big, I don't think it matters.

Outcome size seems to be outpacing the entry price rise.

But also, I would definitely love 20% more of our winners 😀

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@credistick Few noticeable trends in last 2 years:

Bio ↑
Energy ↑
Crypto ↓
AI ↓

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@davidfeiock Median check size: $500k each year

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@sethbannon Insanely epic!

Just told a new LP yesterday you were a fund I would recommend 🚀

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

Seeing more and more divergence between Twitter/X sentiment and customer sentiment.

Sometimes that's because founders are optimizing for fundraising and not customers.

And yes...it clearly works on us VCs 💸

[Patrick Walton @mpatrickwalton]

https://t.co/CTATg1p4wV

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

Inspiring read of the future by @ScottNolan of @foundersfund.

"Life in 250 years will be practically incomprehensible from today’s perspective. Sci-fi does the best job imagining, but even sci-fi failed to anticipate the world we now live in."

+ a @RadiantNuclear shoutout!

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

America's Next 250 by @ScottNolan

https://t.co/E1A1nH9Kgr

[Radiant @RadiantNuclear]

Over 100 pounds of medium enriched uranium arrived for our first reactor!

Our partner, @StandardNuclear manufactured this new fuel in America, and at a pace accelerated with direct @ENERGY support.

This is the only microreactor tuned TRISO particle fuel.

Radiant designed it with our customers in mind, to reduce cost of manufacture and to improve transportability!

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

In Q2, @BoostVC invested in 18 new Deep Tech companies 💰

5 of those we were the FIRST VC who said YES 🥇

Looking for more Deep Tech founders in Q3 looking for their first YES 🚀

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

https://t.co/QYU7uHDbrJ

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

Mega @rileymeik fan!

Easy to get excited about the vision for @americanhousing (@BoostVC co).

They are hiring 👇

[Chris Powers @fortworthchris]

Today I sit down with Riley Meik (@rileymeik), co-founder and CEO of @americanhousing, a company building factory-made row homes for the kind of city lots we've stopped building on.

For 70 years we got great at putting single-family homes on the outskirts and basically quit building family-sized housing in the places people actually want to live.

Riley's bet is that you fix that the way you'd fix any hard manufacturing problem: own the whole stack, design every part from first principles, and build the home in a factory.

His first prototype went from manufactured to installed to finished in 13 weeks, and the goal from here is a home that costs 30 to 50% less than local construction.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:22) The Housing Crisis Is a Production Problem
(04:33) Why America Stopped Building Family Housing in Cities
(09:50) The First Company and Why Selling to Home Builders Doesn't Work
(14:58) First Principles Engineering: What Does a Wall Actually Need to Do?
(21:39) Getting Code-Certified for a Building System That Doesn't Exist Yet
(27:57) One Miracle at a Time
(31:47) Three Entities, One Mission: How AHC's Capital Stack Works
(37:52) 18 Months of R&D: Panel Install Time Dropped 70%
(44:22) The Two-Week Build Goal
(47:03) Eichler Homes and Designing for Young Families
(52:24) Beautiful Housing Gets Approved: Design as Regulatory Strategy
(1:00:08) Gigafactory Over Mobile Micro-Factory
(1:04:40) Margin Targets, Market Selection, and the Coastal City Thesis
(1:11:39) Earning the Right to Automate and Hiring for the Housing Crisis

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

Cantos has been an incredible partner to founders for the last decade. Well deserved new $70m fund to build an epic future 🚀

@BoostVC loves working with @IanRountree @ameekapadia @grant__gregory and team! 🫶

[Cantos @cantos]

We have two exciting announcements today as Cantos turns 10…

First, we closed our new fund earlier this year. Canto IV is a $70M fund purpose-built to lead pre-seed and seed rounds. We oversubscribed, wanting to keep it right-sized for being a founder's most aligned first partner.

Second, we launched our new look with help from our friends at @asimov_co! Cantos is so-named as an ode to epic poems, where grand stories are written in "cantos" rather than chapters. We view founders as the protagonists of today's epics and seek to back those whose deeds become the stuff of legend. Our new website is a testament to the scale of their ambitions, with visions from a future they will have shaped.

Resonat in Æternum 🖋️

[Brayton Williams ⏻ @BraytonKey]

@IanRountree LFG! Love working with you and the @cantos team 🫶