1/ Thrilled to unveil NextView Ventures' fresh new look! It’s more than a facelift—it represents how far we’ve come while staying true to our mission of backing seed stage founders as high conviction, hands-on investors:

For 40 years the file browser hasn’t changed. Today, we’re launching with $8 million in seed funding to rebuild the file browser into something more intelligent, searchable, and delightful. The world is in the middle of a data explosion. We’re generating and using more files

I wrote more about why we’re so excited at @NextViewVC:

For Gen AI–native creators and knowledge workers, Poly feels like the future of interacting with your own content... faster, more intuitive, and actually delightful.

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By layering AI directly into the file browsing experience, Poly lets users: 🔎 Search across all formats 📝 Summarize content instantly 🏷️ Auto-tag & organize ⚡ Act on files to create new outputs All from one intelligent interface.

At @NextViewVC , we invest in truly product-centric companies transforming the Everyday Economy, like @browsercompany and @withbeside. Poly fits squarely in that lineage.

We all use a file browser every day… and yet almost no one likes it. Poly is changing that by rebuilding the experience from the ground up.

After two years in stealth, Poly, founded by @Denizen_Kane, is emerging publicly with a beautifully reimagined take on one of computing’s most overlooked but pervasive tools: the file browser.

Excited to finally share more about one of our portfolio companies: @polydotapp ( https://t.co/vEmFKklF6u) — an intelligent cloud file browser redefining how we navigate computing in the generative age.

Every great story has an Arc. Thrilled to see @NextViewVC's portfolio company @browsercompany's next chapter is with @Atlassian. https://t.co/V3RHD11Ddp

Thrilled to see my partner @melodykoh expand her role as Partner & CPO at @NextViewVC to lead our AI + data efforts—supercharging how we support founders. 🚀

Last week, my partner @robgo at @nextviewvc explained why seed VC is in crisis. This week, he explores what comes next. No silver bullets—but a clear framework for firm adaptation and optimism in the AI Supercycle.

I see four forces that are creating a serious threat to the seed VC model: 1. Industry maturation eroding profits for sub-scale players 2. The nearly unstoppable forces of YC and the megafunds 3. Power-law thinking becoming consensus 4. The AI platform shift

Seed venture capital is at an inflection point—one that demands clear-eyed reflection and an honest assessment of the forces reshaping our industry. My partner @robgo has articulated this moment of existential questioning with unusual clarity.

My full thoughts on the topic are in a post here:

The point is not to ask, “What’s the most seed capital I can raise?” but rather, “What’s the most amount of seed capital I can raise without increasing difficulty?”

That point of diminishing returns is NOT actually the magic number you want to raise. Instead, your magic fundraising number is the one which corresponds to approximately 80% of effort devoted to reach that highest point.

At some point, an entrepreneur begins to exhaust her network and the incremental hours devoted to fundraising will begin to yield less capital raised than the previous. There begins to be diminishing returns to devoting more time to fundraising:

Spreading your network broader to pitch more potential investors will inevitably result in more capital being available:

But soon, for any successful fundraising effort, the more effort you put into fundraising, the more results it will yield, in meetings and eventually in capital:

At first, fundraising goes slowly (…until it goes fast), as it takes a while to set the direction for prospects and to work through the kinks in the story and pitch. Those first few days and maybe weeks won’t yield much capital if any at all: