$81/month - that’s the median AI spend per employee at venture-backed companies, according to @tryramp’s AI Index. That’s at least 10x everyone else! When you spend every day surrounded by founders building with AI, it’s easy to assume the rest of the economy spends the way their companies do. Ramp’s data says otherwise. Of course, PE-backed and traditional companies are moving too. Their spend more than 2x’d over the past year. But they’re starting from a few dollars a month, about the price of a large cup of coffee. Those of us in venture work inside a bubble of early adopters. For anyone selling into the token path, that’s good news: most of the market hasn’t started spending in earnest.

Invest in founders with a level of ambition that makes you uncomfortable. I’ve sat at the table with a number of entrepreneurs who are raising seemingly back-to-back mega rounds every 3 months in the last year. I’m an extraordinarily aggressive risk-taker, but in all these meetings I’ve felt physically uncomfortable. To the point when I noticed I was gripping the chair in a meeting with a founder. This is what it takes to win big and be truly venture-backable today.

The #1 thing founders get wrong about fundraising is underestimating the importance of who makes the intro. For many VCs, the source is 50%+ of the decision-making. Spend way more time than you think you should figuring this part out.

Best fundraising signal for emerging GPs is whether an LP asks for a second meeting. A first meeting tells you very little. Many of us meet with everyone out of fear of missing something. But when I’m truly leaning in, I’ll ask for the second meeting before the GP even follows up.

calling it rn: I think Instagram is going to pop off as a distribution channel for VC in 2027. Been seeing some of the biggest VCs on Twitter committing more heavily to their presence there over the last few months.

Nichole Wischoff (@NWischoff) moved out of San Francisco because work was taking over her life. As a venture capitalist, Nichole found herself constantly surrounded by networking events, meetings, and distractions. Moving her family back to Nashville helped her separate her career from her personal life. Nichole on why she left San Francisco: “An important lesson I've learned is that it's really important, at least for me, to have like almost two personalities or like just the separation of church and state.” “When you're in SF and in the mix and like living in the city, everything you do is one-dimensional.” “I was so sucked in and I think distracted by like every event, everything.” Nichole Wischoff: Why Silicon Valley Is Bad for Early-Stage Investors via Trailblazers Podcast