Managing Partner, @EverywhereVC investing in pre-seed founders building the future of money, health and work 🚀
Here, There, Everywhere
Joined December 2009
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So, I wrote a book! It's basically a love letter to everyone brave enough to buck convention and start something hard. Pre-sales open today for friends, founders and trolls alike!♥️
ALT Venture Everywhere now available on Amazon!
This next wave of AI startups will inevitably lead to the next batch of grifts. Already hearing about founders deceiving investors using lots of fancy automations to sound credible and ace DD. Wild times!
Met several founders and a few investors who moved to SF last year only to move back to NYC this year. The intensity doesn’t work for everyone.
We’ve pre seeded 250 companies. I can count on one hand how many had any revenue before we invested. True pre seed investors are out there, just not very many of us!
I’m convinced all VCs are lying when they say they fund “early stage startups”
By early they mean $1M ARR
Try getting a consumer AI series A done right now without absolutely perfect margins / metrics. VCs have forgotten that series A is still early stage and founders are figuring stuff out 😾
Today on TWiST, we're joined by @jefielding, Co-Founder & GP of @EverywhereVC. Before venture, she was a 2x founder and a trained lawyer. She then spent 7.5 years at Techstars leading investments into companies now worth $10B+ combined.
She just published a book, Venture Everywhere, on what it takes to build outside Silicon Valley. Come learn from the best today at 12pm central!
Is early stage venture even about funding product focused companies anymore or just throwing cash at all the research labs spinning out of the top universities?
Well known tech publisher includes our VC firm in some top company list. We reshare the article on LI and promptly receive a notice that we are violating their IP and we can license for $7k. Totally mental model!
This week I’ve been asked to:
-Sign an NDA to see a pitch deck
-Pay a higher price on a Safe than if I had invested last week
-Waive my pro rata to make room for a multi stage fund.
Nah…
Agents will solve for this once every VC optimizes for GEO. By my count, most are not. Get your FAQs and ghost pages up so agents can read them VC friends.
Saw a seed VC post their actual 2025 backing criteria publicly this week: 18 pre-seed checks, 14 pre-revenue, 10 first-time relationships, 10 rounds they led, median check $500-750K, median valuation $7.5-10M, all highly technical teams, all US-based or actively relocating.
That's not a vibe. That's a targeting brief, sitting in public view.
If you're blasting 200 investors with the same deck, you're ignoring data like this that would take 10 minutes to read and could double your reply odds. Read the fund's actual portfolio and stated criteria before you email them.
Same point I made last week on cold email reply rates: targeted outreach beats volume outreach by 3-5x. Specificity is the whole game -- for the investor's criteria AND for your ask.
Customer told one of our portfolio company founders… ‘we like you specifically because your product doesn’t use AI’. Don’t hear that everyday but probably a popular sentiment behind closed doors in certain regulated / sensitive areas.
Investing in data centers in space seemed crazy until NY just banned all new AI data centers. Nowhere left to go except Florida and space! 🚀
Heard about a venture fund where one of the General Partners stopped investing completely to focus on building internal AI tools. Strong belief that the way VCs source, diligence and support founders will be upended. Seems a tad extreme but I also like it.
Just this week, two different founders in my portfolio had PJs sent for them by VCs. Founders love it but it’s kinda weird.
I can look at any VCs website and be able to tell how much of a pain in the ass they will be to deal with. It’s a strange superpower, but a useful one.
Tech Week, like it or hate it. The history is that NYC couldn’t get its act together before @a16z stepped in to run it. Many tried over many years and no one could agree. I’m not super pro centralization in general but I give them big props on this one 🙌🏼
A founder nails early traction, customers are happy, metrics look solid. Then a new AI capability drops, a competitor reprices to zero or the use case gets absorbed into a platform. Finding durable product / market fit is harder than ever right now.
Founders - being cash efficient is good, hoarding cash is not. If you can go faster and you have the cash and clear direction, then go. Hire, spend a little, grow. This sitting on cash thing has gone too far and I’m seeing it more and more.
Not sure why the AI narrative has focused on productivity instead of how AI tools give super powers to non technical people so they can build things. Feels like AI needs a major rebrand.