one of the most valuable and easiest content formats for VCs to produce: when you're considering investing in a startup, you already spend a ton of time researching the market, talking to industry experts, understanding the competition, and figuring out where the real opportunities are by the end, you have a pretty solid understanding of the space. you know the biggest problems, how people are solving them, what's changing, and where the market might be heading then you make a decision: invest or pass and that's what makes the research especially interesting. you've done enough work to make an actual investment decision, so there's real conviction behind your conclusions so why not turn that research into content? basically, an anonymized investment memo without the numbers, focused on the market and product category rather than a specific startup. if you passed on the deal, you could also share more specific feedback privately with the founders, including the reasons behind your decision it's valuable for everyone: - founders, especially those just entering the space, get a much better understanding of the market - other investors can use it to get up to speed and know what questions to ask when a similar startup approaches them - agencies and service providers can better understand the industry's challenges and tailor their offerings to potential clients you're already doing the hard part. might as well turn it into something useful for others

the most active crypto investors who are early on Cosign: cosign.co/lists/paulklayvc/w… lmk who I'm missing!

top 6 mistakes founders make when dealing with VCs (all based on real cases) 1. conflicts of interest even if VCs tell you it doesn't matter and they'll support all their portfolio companies equally, conflicts of interest can get complicated very quickly just look at the public dispute involving Factory AI's @matanSF and @vkhosla investors often have access to your roadmap, customer data, financials, and internal discussions. when the same investor backs your closest competitor, it's reasonable to question how that information is handled before accepting an investment, find out which other companies the fund has backed in your space and whether they plan to invest in direct competitors if there's an overlap, make sure the information-sharing boundaries are clear and reflected in your agreements, especially if the investor wants a board or observer seat 2. investor rights you don't fully understand I've seen founders spend weeks negotiating valuations while paying surprisingly little attention to the investor rights agreement the dispute involving @isaiah_p_taylor and @mashadrokova is a good example of how complicated pro-rata rights and waivers can become the parties disagree about what happened, but it raises an important issue: some rights can be temporarily waived and later restored, while others can be amended with approval from a majority of investors, depending on the agreement that means an investor's rights can sometimes change without their individual consent it's worth going through these scenarios with your lawyer before closing. understand which rights can be amended, who has the authority to do it, and how those changes could affect future rounds 3. giving third parties access to your cap table your cap table contains some of the most sensitive information about your company, including ownership, investment history, and shareholder details @karrisaarinen discovered that @cartainc's secondaries team had contacted Linear shareholders about buying their shares without the company's authorization Carta said an employee had violated internal procedures and subsequently exited the secondaries business @ItzSuds later raised a related concern about how much control companies actually have over their data on Carta both are worth keeping in mind when choosing any platform that handles sensitive company information I'd pay particular attention to how the company uses shareholder data, which teams have access to it, whether that information can be used for other commercial purposes, and how easily you can export it if you decide to leave 4. losing control of your own company owning the largest individual stake in a company doesn't necessarily mean you control it Benchmark was an early investor in Uber, and @bgurley sat on its board for years. after he stepped off, Benchmark's relationship with @travisk escalated into a legal dispute over board seats and governance whatever your opinion of that conflict, it's a good example of how much influence investors can have through board structures the important thing to understand is who can appoint and remove directors, what decisions require board approval, and which decisions can be made without the founder's support also consider how that structure might change after another two or three funding rounds a board arrangement that seems perfectly reasonable at seed can become a serious problem later 5. liquidation preferences and who actually gets paid in an exit @naval co-founded Epinions, which raised $45M from VCs. when DealTime acquired the company, more than 6 million common shares were valued at zero, while preferred investors received equity in the combined company Shopping com, the combined company, went public in 2004 and was worth around $750M by the end of its first day of trading. Naval and other former founders sued, alleging they'd been misled about Epinions' real value the lesson is pretty simple: your ownership percentage means very little if you don't understand who gets paid first and how your shares are valued in an exit before raising, model what happens if your company sells below its last valuation, especially after multiple funding rounds with different liquidation preferences sometimes a lower valuation with cleaner terms is a much better deal 6. terms that give investors all the upside and leave founders with the risk @JosephJacks_ recently shared allegations about a fund offering terms that included a 5x return requirement, full anti-dilution protection plus additional equity, and the right to remove founders if the 5x wasn't achieved within three years I haven't independently verified those terms, but the combination illustrates something founders should be very careful about investors already receive certain protections through preferred shares and investment agreements when those protections become excessive, you can end up in a situation where the investor has significantly reduced their downside while retaining most of the upside and if the agreement also gives them the ability to remove you from the company, the consequences can extend far beyond dilution worth understanding how these provisions work together, rather than evaluating each one separately one more thing I'd strongly recommend is doing reference calls with founders whose companies didn't work out it's relatively easy to find founders who speak highly of their investors when everything is going well the more interesting questions are about what happens when a company misses targets, struggles to raise its next round, or has to shut down how did the investor behave? did they continue supporting the founder? how did they handle difficult decisions? those conversations can tell you much more about the people you're about to spend the next 5-10 years working with

the whole idea behind late-stage investing is that it's supposed to be less risky but what's interesting is that this is becoming less and less true in today's market businesses and business models used to be much more stable if a company had $5M in revenue and 40% margins, you could reasonably expect those numbers to stay relatively stable. they weren't going to change dramatically in a matter of days now that can happen all the time margins can change overnight, customers can quickly switch to a better solution, and an entire business model can become much less attractive in a very short period of time and there's another thing I think a lot of people are overlooking we're now entering a world of trillion-dollar companies but the number of investors who can actually participate in rounds at those valuations is much smaller think about it if you invest at seed and want to exit at Series B, there are plenty of funds that can participate in that round and potentially buy your stake but if you invest at a valuation of several hundred billion dollars and the company eventually reaches $1T, who are you going to sell to? there are very few investors capable of writing checks that large at that point, an IPO might be your only realistic exit opportunity, and the company might have plenty of reasons to stay private so you could end up taking on significant risk at a late stage, while also having far fewer options to exit which makes the traditional idea that later-stage investing is automatically safer a lot less obvious than it used to be

find the right decision-maker, figure out what they actually want, and get a message worth replying to you can now add this to your AI agent with one command here’s how it turned one sentence about a startup into an entire pipeline of potential partners: “I run a B2C meditation app. help me find partners who already have my audience.” it asked 4 quick questions: - what do your best users use it for? - how big are you? - what can you offer? - which market are you targeting? answers: - falling asleep - under 10k users - rev share - global english first, it told me who not to target: sleep podcasts and sleep-story creators they solve the same problem as the app, so they’re basically competitors, not partners instead, it pointed at mattress and sleep-accessory brands why? their customers already return products because “it didn’t help me sleep” that’s a problem these companies already lose money on so instead of: “want to cross-promote?” the pitch becomes: “put a card in the box, your buyers get a free month, you get a share of every subscription, and your refund rate drops” then it found who actually owns this decision the affiliate manager listed on the company’s own affiliate page wrote the first email and built a two-week outreach plan all from one sentence I open-sourced the skill, so you can run the same process for your own business send this to Claude Code, Codex, or any other agent with terminal access: run npx skills add paulklayvc/skills --skill decision-maker-outreach and set it up for this agent

if you are looking for a job, here are some really cool people actively hiring but read the article first! - @dylan522p (2 roles in Chicago at SemiAnalysis) - @rtwlz (4 interns at Core Automation to run real businesses with agents, applications close Oct 6) - @RuneKvist (just closed a $40M Series A at AIUC, hiring across pretty much every role in SF) - @CarinaLHong (20+ roles at Axiom, looking for people way smarter than her who will push her thinking) - @bharadwhat (looking for technical generalists under 25 at Social Capital) - @cupertinohoops (Watney closed $80M on Thursday, 25 roles open in SF) - @samuelxzhang (hiring across PM, design, SEO, community, and sales. “reply/dm w ur best work”)

if you’re raising for a crypto project, these are active investors worth talking to: - @ellazhang516 (YZi Labs, 30 deals in the last 6 months, more than any other fund, also runs the EASY Residency for founders) - @HoolieG, @jonathankingvc (Coinbase Ventures, 29 deals, second most active) - @eddylazzarin (a16z crypto, $2.2B Fund V in May, 17 deals) - @rainandcoffee (Maven 11, tier 2, 9 deals, Europe) - @HadickM, @hosseeb (Dragonfly, $650M Fund IV in February, oversubscribed) - @matthuang (Paradigm, $1.2B fourth fund in July) - @katie_haun (Haun Ventures, $1B across two funds in May) - @jessewldn (Variant, $222M for Variant Fund IV) - @KyleSamani (Multicoin) - @CarlKVogel, @mdudas (6MV) - @collectorofgems, @RealMissAI (MH Ventures, 149 deals) - @dara_venture (deploying out of a first close while still raising) - @reganbozman (Lattice, $200–500K first checks, raising Fund III) - @QwQiao (Alliance, the accelerator, $250K standard check) - @rleshner (Robot Ventures, $100–500K, also runs Superstate) - @ZeMariaMacedo (Delphi co-founder) - @dcfgod, @balajis, @cory, @LucaNetz, @santiagoroel (active angels) who am i missing?

3 high school debate teammates became the youngest self-made billionaires in the world - Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha - captains of the speech and debate team - graduated in 2021 2021–2023 - Hiremath goes to Harvard - Foody and Midha go to Georgetown - keep building together the whole time 2023 - idea comes from a hackathon in São Paulo - Foody decides to leave during sophomore year - all 3 eventually drop out - move to San Francisco Foody on leaving college: “i knew i wanted to drop out before finals. i just didn’t go to finals” first version of Mercor - manually match Indian engineers with US startups - first customer pays $500/week for one developer - engineer keeps ~70% - Mercor keeps the rest 9 months later - $1M run rate 2024 - raise $30M - Peter Thiel invests - Jack Dorsey invests - all 3 become Thiel Fellows February 2025 - $100M Series B - $2B valuation - all 3 are 21 October 2025 - $350M Series C - led by Felicis - $10B valuation - 5x valuation increase in 8 months platform grows - 30,000+ experts - $1.5M paid out every day - $85+/hour average November 2025 - Forbes names them the youngest self-made billionaires ever recorded - all 3 are 22 2026 - $614M gross revenue in H1 - 70%+ more than all of 2025 - 500+ employees July 2026 - revenue run rate crosses $2B - doubles in 4 months - acquires Deeptune the same day - term sheet on the table at $20B - TIME100 AI Foody today, 23 - says he hasn’t taken a day off in 3 years - “we are creating the largest new job category in history” 3 years from skipping college finals to a $2B revenue run rate

if you're under 25 and building, save this list investors and programs built specifically for young founders - @kevinhartz (a* capital, went from 5% to nearly 20% of the fund into teenage founders) - @William_Blake, @DStrachman (1517 fund, thesis is dropouts and renegade scientists) - @thielfellowship (pays you to skip college, 2026 class announced in april) - @cory, @zfellows ($10k and a week in sf, high schoolers and college students both get in) - @apartovi (neo, ~30 college students a year, $20k each) - @asharoraa (angel, calls herself the go-to investor for teenage founders) - @Joshuabrowder (browder capital, started donotpay at 18, hosts student builder nights in sf) - @DormRoomFund (student founders only, they were in cursor early) yc, founders fund, pear, 20vc and menlo also consistently back young founders who am i missing?

if you don’t have a few exits, a PhD, millions of followers or a great network, you still have a moat: shipping fast, consistently, for a long time that alone will beat most of the moats above if you’re really that ambitious and want your startup to succeed, start with weekly updates. work nonstop and keep finding a way to make it work @pareen built an awesome place for this with @deltav_xyz, but the place doesn’t really matter ship an update every week and you’ll be surprised how fast your results start to change