Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork (@footworkvc)
San Francisco Bay Area
Joined March 2009
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Announcing our new firm and first fund: Footwork (@footworkvc). nbt.substack.com/p/footwork
We've made 24 investments in 5.5 years since starting @footworkvc. In almost every case we led the Seed or the Series A. Not one of these is an "option bet" - every one of them matters to us (ask the founders), and has the potential to return a multiple of the fund if it works.
Every seed investment is an option bet.
“You have to think about the venture portfolio as a bunch of options. Each seed investment is an option bet.
You are buying an option to see if it is an outlier, and you want to have enough of those to make sure you have an outlier.
When there is true quantitative evidence that it is going to be an outlier, then you position size up.” @venkyganesan
How do seed funds play in a world where mega funds are totally price insensitive and “option bets” is the mindset for seed checks @infoarbitrage @chudson @hunterwalk @honam @dunkhippo33 @jasonlk
Nikhil Basu Trivedi retweeted
🚀 Bring a team of AI agents into Slack in just a few clicks.
@getskydive agents pick up tickets, clear support queues, and triage inboxes, right in your flow of work.
Learn more: sforce.co/4dnATTv
This is a "must watch."
Several fascinating points that take you inside what's happening in AI, and VC funding AI.
The most astonishing for me = the company building partner valuation vs. the capital partner valuation.
Data points from 7 investments:
Sequoia (company building partner) average valuation = $110M valuation
Capital partner valuation = $3.4B valuation, 1 month later
🤯
The @BostonCollege Investment Committee (an LP and my beloved alma mater) asked for a few thoughts on what's happening in AI. I recorded a test run yesterday morning and then shared it with my partners, who encouraged me to share it more broadly... so here you go!
This is not a sales pitch, it's just a reflection on what we're seeing. And it wasn't intended to be shared, so please pardon the rough edges.
loom.com/share/c016702964a04…
Confido is to CPG as Harvey / Legora are to Legal, Rogo is to Finance, etc. The AI OS for an enormous vertical with so many manual workflows that can finally be automated. Justin and Kara are also building a special culture in NYC. $55M Series B led by @insightpartners to take it to the next level. Proud for us at @footworkvc to be their Series A lead.
Confido (@confidotech) is building the AI workforce for consumer brands, automating everything from accounting to sales and demand planning. They work with brands like Olipop and Dude Wipes, as well as divisions of Mars and Unilever, and recently raised a $55 million Series B led by Insight.
In this episode of Founder Firesides, Confido co-founders Justin Hunter and Kara Holinski join @sdianahu to share how they found a huge opportunity in an industry still running on spreadsheets and manual processes, and why selling the work rather than the software helped them win large enterprise customers.
00:04 — What Confido Does
01:16 — A Year of Pivoting
03:14 — Finding a Painful Problem in CPG
04:16 — Selling the Work, Not the Software
07:13 — The Future of Confido
For me, Sir Michael Moritz will always be the 🐐. Patrick was able to extract in this interview the mentality that makes him such an outlier. But I’ve also been lucky to see a softer side to Mike - one that delights in small moments of joy. For example, when he walked my younger daughter around an art exhibit, picking her up to view the pieces (and even letting her grab one of them 🙈). He is truly one of a kind.
My conversation with Michael Moritz, one of the great venture investors of the last 40 years.
Michael joined Sequoia in 1986 and co-led the firm with Doug Leone (@dougleone) from 1995 to 2012. His investments include Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and Stripe.
His new book, Ausländer, traces his parents' escape from Nazi Germany and helps explain his lifelong interest in what shapes exceptional people.
We discuss:
- The infamous Steve Jobs profile
- Why Don Valentine hired him
- The question he finds most revealing when interviewing people
- Monomania and the cost of greatness
- Why he has never felt good at anything
- Writing, journalism and AI
- What he learned about himself writing Ausländer
I'd recommend watching this one if you can. Michael was incredibly thoughtful and reflective throughout, particularly when talking about his parents, childhood, and the more difficult parts of his personal story.
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:53 Family History & Identity
7:03 Survival & Outsider Instinct
18:53 Studying Exceptional People
33:50 Self-Doubt & Success
41:17 Steve Jobs & Obsession
52:50 Joining Sequoia
1:03:22 Leadership & Alex Ferguson
1:08:25 Elon Musk & AI
1:17:12 Becoming Who You Are
The default fundable bar in 2026, which in turn is driving the most consensus-driven VC market of all time
Nikhil Basu Trivedi retweeted
We are announcing Net30 - an applied AI summit on the future of finance in the age of automation.
You will see what's working right now at the frontier of applied AI, hear from finance leaders on the evolution of the strategic finance role and meet peers deploying agents in production.
October 21st // New York, hosted by @usemonk at The Times Center
Request an invite in comments
I wonder if one of the implications of this will be a set of companies that decide to go public sooner. Because the public markets are more open to them than the private one.
