Which emerging VCs have the strongest early-stage picking alpha?
Standard emerging manager evaluation still leans heavily on qualitative signals – GP background, thesis articulation, founder references. All useful, but by the time TVPI and DPI tell you something meaningful, you're usually already in or already too late.
So I experimented with a quantitative framework to answer a core LP allocator question: which small, early-stage fund managers consistently back seed-stage companies that go on to raise exceptional Series A rounds – before those outcomes are visible to the broader market?
I started with @harmonic_ai Scout (my fav research tool!) and checked every company globally that raised a first pre-seed or seed round between 2022–2026 (Post-ZIRP). The funnel looks like this:
1/ 55,491 companies raised a pre-seed or seed round – the full opportunity set
2/ 4,368 (7.9%) went on to raise a Series A – the base rate, roughly 1 in 13
3/ 764 (1.4%) qualified as Tier 1 Breakouts – above-median Series A for their vintage year, with at least one top-tier institutional VC (from a defined set of 38 firms: @a16z, @sequoia, @lightspeedvp, @IndexVentures, and peers)
For each of those 1,604 companies, I traced back to every investor who backed them at pre-seed or seed — before the outcome was visible. 4,176 unique investors across the breakout set.
Then I computed a simple ratio for each: breakout companies backed at seed divided by total seed investments in the period. I'm calling this the "Tier 1 Concentration Rate".
After filtering out mega-platforms, accelerators, CVCs, and angels and requiring a minimum of 10 seed deals – 20 emerging managers (sub-$250M AUM) surfaced with notably high concentration rates.
A few things stood out:
1/ Several micro-funds under $100M were placing 25–35% of their seed bets into companies that later raised from @Sequoia, @a16z, @lightspeedvp – consistently, not as one-off flukes.
2/ Participant concentration and lead concentration are different signals. Participant = network and access. Lead = independent conviction before consensus forms. For LP diligence, these deserve to be evaluated separately.
3/ The data has real limitations: ~12% of breakout companies had no named seed investor in the database, we can't cleanly separate Fund I from Fund III for a given manager, and small sample sizes mean some high concentration rates likely reflect luck rather than repeatable skill.
But the core idea holds. "Tier 1 Concentration Rate" is an early, measurable signal of picking ability – observable years before fund-level metrics tell you anything.
For LP allocators evaluating Fund I–III managers, that timing gap is the whole problem. This is one attempt to close it.
What’s your take on this experiment?
I got into hacking when I was in high school.
It was mostly curiosity - understanding how systems are designed, how they’re implemented, what their limitations are, and how to break them. Then, I started working as a pentester. It was both a challenge and a joy (plus I was getting paid for it!).
That same curiosity still drives the best pentesters and hackers in the world.
They’re incredibly rare - part scientist, part artist - and their craft keeps the digital world honest, finding what’s broken before attackers do.
But mastery doesn’t scale. Software today changes by the hour. AI now writes and ships code faster than any human team can test it.
That’s why we built @Tenzai_Labs , an AI based hacker for the right side.
Our platform uses autonomous, agentic AI to continuously hack, test, exploit, and help fix vulnerabilities across enterprise software, at the speed of AI.
Together with my long-time friends and colleagues, plus a bunch of new brilliant minds, we're tackling this head on. There's no bigger privilege than working alongside people with such talent, grit, and determination. Going after such a world-changing problem was an opportunity I just could not resist.
So, here I am, back in the startup grind again 🙂
Read our manifesto here - https://t.co/QI4e4NC0XK
מתן אנגרסט שרק חזר מהשבי לפני יומיים ביקש להגיע להלוויה של מפקדו סרן דניאל פרץ ז״ל שגופתו הושבה מעזה. מתן מבקש מאביו של דניאל דורון להספיד את דניאל בספונטניות ומחזק את כל עם ישראל
6 דקות חובה
מתן אנגרסט שרק חזר מהשבי לפני יומיים ביקש להגיע להלוויה של מפקדו סרן דניאל פרץ ז״ל שגופתו הושבה מעזה. מתן מבקש מאביו של דניאל דורון להספיד את דניאל בספונטניות ומחזק את כל עם ישראל
6 דקות חובה
Hostage survivor Matan Angrest, in his first message from the helicopter en route to the hospital, thanked the IDF soldiers who fought beside him on October 7 and fell in battle. He also wrote “Am Yisrael Chai”
שנתיים.
היום הנורא בו אויבנו המפלצות טבחו, שרפו, אנסו וחטפו את בנינו ובנותינו, רק כי אנחנו יהודים.
היום הנורא בו מערכות המדינה, הצבא, הממשלה, כל מי שסמכנו עליהם, קרסו ונעלמו.
היום הנורא בו למדנו, שוב, שכאשר אנחנו מפולגים ונלחמים זה בזה, אויבנו מנצלים זאת על מנת להשמידנו.
היום הנורא בו אלפי גיבורים, חברי כיתות כוננות, אזרחים, חיילים, שוטרים, בלמו בגופם פלישה של אלפי המרצחים ללב ארצנו, וגילינו את גבורת דור האריות.
את פצעי היום הנורא נישא איתנו לאורך כל ימי חיינו.
הציווי שלנו הוא לזכור, ללמוד, לתקן, לקחת אחריות על המדינה, להפוך אותה לחזקה ולמופלאה, ולהיות ראויים לקורבן הנופלים.
סא"ל מיל' ע', קיבוצניק מהצפון וחבר יקר, הוביל את המטוסים הראשונים שנכנסו לעומק איראן.
סיפרו לי שהתדריך שלו לפני הטיסה הגורלית היה מיוחד.
התכתבנו קצת וביקשתי ממנו לפרסם את מה שהוא שלח למשפחתו עם תחילת הפסקת האש.
הוא אישר והוסיף:
"בבקשה בבקשה בלי פוליטיקה.
היו איתי במבנה קיבוצניקים, מתנחלים, מושבניקים ועירוניים. כמו שאתה מכיר כל כך טוב, ארץ ישראל היפה.
למרות הפחד והחששות, מסתכלים ימינה ושמאלה ומסתערים ביחד על האויב.
רגעים היסטוריים, תחושה מיוחדת".
והנה הדברים שכתב למשפחתו:
יהיה עוד המון זמן לספר חוויות, לצחוק ולבכות.. אבל חיכיתי שבועיים כדי לשתף.
במטס הפתיחה נבחרתי להוביל ערכה של עשרות מטוסים, היינו הראשונים להיכנס לעומק איראן, אני הייתי במטוס הראשון של המבנה הראשון וככה גם קיבלתי את המשימה המסוכנת ביותר.
במשך הימים שלפני לא היה לי את האומץ לכתוב מכתב פרידה, לא יודע למה, משהו בתוכי לא הרשה לעצמי להתעסק בזה ולדעת שאני אעשה הכל בכדי להשלים את המשימה ולחזור בשלום.
האתגר הכי גדול שהיה לי הוא לתת ביטחון ורוגע למבנה שעמדתי בראשו. בסוף התדריך בחרתי להקריא לחבורה המופלאה שאיתי כמה מילים משיר שאני מאד אוהב.
את הפתק הזה שמרתי בכיס כל המלחמה והבטחתי לעצמי שבמקום מכתב פרידה אשלח לכם את הפתק והשיר שאחזור בריא ושלם.
תודה לאל שחזרנו בשלום!
A lot of people have asked me if I will get involved in the NYC mayor race by supporting a candidate that can defeat Zohran Mamdani. TBH, I’m torn and undecided. Like every other city run by democrats, NYC is a broken kleptocracy. Taxes are astronomical and services are pathetic to nonexistent. Anarchy and socialism are the next logical steps in this story arc. It's what the people of NYC have been asking for for years and it looks like it's what they are about to get. Trying to fight against this tide seems like throwing good money after bad.
It appears things will have to get worse in NYC before they get better. The Zoomers and Millennials need a refresher on the outcome of Marxism and socialism. They are too young to remember the crack and crime epidemic and murder sprees of the late 80's and early 90's. The squeegee men, graffiti, mugging, lawlessness, chaos, and pandemonium. Streets that were too unsafe to walk alone at night or even during the day. Getting mugged on the way to and from school was not just a rite of passage, it was an inevitability.
The Wall Streeters, financiers, and hedge funders have been too busy working on their fishponds and climbing the rungs of polite society to remember to protect the system that allowed them to achieve their success in the first place and allowed New York City to once become the greatest city in the world. Not ruffling feathers was more important than questioning the ideological insanity being taught in the private schools and universities that they sent their kids to. All that mattered was fitting in and getting invited to the right dinner parties.
Now their kids are indoctrinated NPCs, always protesting and supporting the current thing. Like their parents, they too want to fit in. To do so, they unironically exchange bromides and platitudes on the benefits of socialism over rosé brunches in the West Village. Because their friends hate America and capitalism, they do too. It never dawns on them that their lifestyle and studio apartment that their parents subsidize are all made possible because of capitalism.
This delusional thinking was ingrained in them at an early age by institutions that were captured by insane ideology and left unchecked by their grossly negligent parents. Instead of providing their children with immunity from stupid and provably bad ideas that have only led to misery and death throughout history, these parents shrugged it off as kids will be kids.
Now these kids are adults who can vote, but are totally unequipped to do so. In many ways it’s not their fault. From their parents, they learned some combination of magical thinking, preference falsification, and an inability to stand up for anything greater than themselves. As a result, they never learned how to think critically or independently. They never learned the value of Western civilization so they don't understand why, or know how, to fight for it.
Sometimes the only way to learn something is to learn it the hard way. Sometimes the only way to learn the value of what you have is to lose it. If that’s the case, Marxism and socialism might just be what the doctor ordered.
Israel's people, you are made of something unshakable, something eternal, crafted in the fires of resilience and the heavens above. While Hamas terrorists dragged your women and children into the shadows of Gaza’s tunnels, you stand unyielding, willing to exchange the very monsters who committed genocide for the lives of your brave, innocent souls. It’s a choice only the strong can make, a testament to the heart and humanity that defines you.
No one could endure a second with Hamas, the cowardly Muslim Brotherhood agents of destruction who burn the elderly, ravage the innocent, and poison every hope for peace. #Gaza must never again fall into the hands of such darkness.
Every freed hostage is a light of freedom breaking through despair. But let history be your guide: trusting the Palestinian Islamist terror machine is a mistake that must never be repeated.
The cheers in Gaza’s streets, the flags of Hamas waving in celebration, are not just acts of hatred but symbols of a culture rooted in antisemitism. Like Germany’s denazification, their education, media, and society need an overhaul, or October 7th will repeat itself.
But here’s the truth: no matter the storm, you rise. You endure. You survive. Because that’s who you are, unbreakable, unstoppable, unforgotten.