Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc

Backing great companies when they’re tiny.
Cofounded Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company.
Seed investor @n8n_io @Wayve_ai @Synthesia_io @Payhawk, +200

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@danielfogg @genmon Excuse my continental self.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

World model? How about world modulator.
@danielfogg and @genmon are cooking.
Apparently… coffee?

[Daniel Fogg @danielfogg]

What if you could change device behaviour, just by talking to it?

Create an app. Change it. Edit it. Add personal context. Then completely reinvent what the device is for.

WORKS is our limited release of the first ever Promptable Products - physical devices inhabited by AI agents that understand what you want and do what you mean.

WORKS launch in November 2026.

This is a demo (using a ESP32 device from @M5Stack) showing one possible experience you can create.

We’re building @inanimate_tech in public.

Jump in, it's gonna be weird.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@daveyheuser Simple, doors or curtains in front of that nook, and shelving inside. It will be serene in no time, and you can use the backdrop for a few gems.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@tomazstolfa @dens I was literally going to send you this.
Thanks @dens for letting us see 4SQ up close.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@dragosilinca The good thing about VC advice is that you can recycle it at increasing frequency.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

It's even worse than this: Expectations grow non-linearly.
A monster raise means shortcutting a round. That means you need to achieve a lot more, AND you need to be right more, while you are cutting experimentation time.
And no, more money doesn't mean more experiments. It just means more expensive experiments.

[Krishna Mehra @kpowerinfinity]

I've watched a few really good founders raise big seed rounds this year, then struggle to raise their A, even as the business kept making progress. The seed valuation had set a bar they weren't ready to clear yet. And with everyone excited about the term sheet, it was easy to put off what they'd need to show at the next round.

One of them had about as strong a resume as you'll see in AI, and a team to match. Sub-$1M ARR would have been a fine A story at a normal seed price. At theirs it wasn't.

(For what it's worth, I write both seed and A checks, so I sit on both sides of this.)

The top of the seed market is a bit wild right now. Carta's 95th percentile seed valuation was about $72M in Q2 last year. This Q2 it was $200M. Meanwhile the share of seed companies that get to a Series A within two years has roughly halved since 2018.

During a raise almost all the attention goes to how much and at what valuation. The question I wish more founders asked is whether the company is actually set up to hit the growth the next round will expect.

If you're planning on a 2-3x step-up at the A, here's what that means. A $25M post means pitching a $50-75M A, which a company with real traction can get to. A $100M post means $200-300M, and at that price the A partner is comparing you to the handful of companies growing faster than almost anyone.

The bar right now is brutal. In the A conversations I'm in, a $15M seed (usually a $75-100M post today) means $2M+ ARR, growing 5-6x over the last year, with a believable path to another 5x.

None of this means raise less. Before you sign, work backward: what will we need to show at the A, and does this money and ~24 months get us there? If it does and the terms are good, take it.

If the honest answer is "only if everything goes right", that's worth knowing now rather than in month 20.

A big seed buys you runway and a higher bar. Most founders only count the runway.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

I just searched X for Daytona because Ivan said he’ll post. Here it is. Thanks for watching.

LFG @ivanburazin and team!!

[Ivan Burazin @ivanburazin]

We just raised a $60M Series B at a $1B valuation to build @daytonaio into the Agent Cloud.

@FirstMarkCap led the round, with all key existing investors and angels doubling down.

We're also thrilled to welcome the founders of some generational companies aboard, including @patrickc (Stripe), @tobi (Shopify), @AravSrinivas (Perplexity), @BrendanFoody (Mercor), @oliveur (Datadog), @adamdangelo (Quora) and @ericsyuan (Zoom)

We're a 35-person team. But that's about to change; we're hiring across the board, and we'd love for you to join us.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@patchwanders Theoretically obvious, practically impossible.

You make hard choices out of necessity, not choice.

Also, people who give you lots of money want you to spend it.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

I would like to move to a bigger house, but I also love my 12 minute commute. Maybe losing my arm for a few weeks bc of the shoulder op will tell me more about happiness.

[Adam Singer @AdamSinger]

Reminder not having a long commute is one of the biggest life upgrades. You never normalize against this, like you would a very good or very bad event (the commuting paradox, described in the Scandinavian Journal of Economics). Moving closer to work or going remote is worth it

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@enricomellis Gonna have to play it with a left hand Wii stick tho.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

I have a shoulder operation in a few weeks, 4+ weeks with a brace afterwards.
What are the tricks to not go mad/be in pain/etc?

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@azeem Clearly an exponential view on the issue.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@nazdnr Not sure if I can be so self-challenging, but that is a great framing.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@joemelko Ah man - that's my jam. I am definitely taking it very very carefully... not going to do this again.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@vuknikolic Thankfully the tech is going to help me a bunch!

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@sumukhsridhara Yeah I got a wedge already, that seems to be non negotiable! Also, working hard on automatic dictation flows as much as possible in advance.

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@arush Snowboarding...

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@ncsh THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

[Philipp Moehring - tiny.vc @pmoe]

@pjozefak Have both labrum and SLAP tear, did the gentle approach for months already…

[Joe Hudson @FU_joehudson]

Most people believe confidence comes from being really good at what they do or never messing up. But unshakable confidence comes from knowing your worth isn’t tied to performance.

It’s the difference between “I’m valuable because I’m useful” and