ian
@IanRountree
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I believe individuals can change the world and started @cantos to enable them.
San Francisco, CA
Joined March 2009
We invest in 2 archetypes at @cantos: 1. Full-stack deep tech selling an end product or even commodity, _not_ tech. 2. Weird n-of-1 never seen anything like it before. Selling tech to incumbents... PASS Commercializing science... PASS Nth co doing the current thing... PASS
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Meet the man who fish-pilled @grant__gregory and me and thereby played a key role in Grant joining @cantos...
My first interview with Saif Khawaja @khawajasn, Cofounder & CEO at Shinkei @ShinkeiSystems. Shinkei is building fish harvesting robots with the goal of reshoring America's seafood supply chain while radically improving the quality & shelf life of the fish we consume. Their
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Narrative violation: One of our favorite portco CEOs is 72
Imagine being a millennial running a startup
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From sea to plains, from peaks to shore, The ghosts of elections knock once more. In ballots and rolls their shadows crawl, We’re boldly asking—who counted them all? In Palm Beach they trick, in Cali they scheme, In Colorado’s heights, they haunt the dream. Ohio’s ghosts
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Just cackled in a coffee shop
"Good morning human. Your sleep score last night was only a 73. You should take it easy today."
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Credit to @ameekapadia for spotting mold awareness before the kink in the curve.
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Update: I got a phony groni and an app. I think I passed because he asked to invest.
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Quick I need help… I have a 4pm LP meeting at a fancy place in Meatpacking, What do I order?? It’s too late for coffee but too early for drinks(?) and I’m not hungry. The Californian mind cannot comprehend!
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The single best thing you can do early in your career is pick your mentors wisely.
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The more vc consolidates into fewer companies / funds the more valuable independent conviction becomes, especially at later stages since that’s where consolidation really takes over. It’s easy to be “non-consensus” at Seed; there is no consensus. Doing it at A/B/C is rare.
Venture $$ deployed are up, but # of deals are decreasing since Q1 2024: - The "it's easier to raise than find a job" myth is empirically wrong. - More consensus VC capital - Thus, it's only "easy" to raise the closer your startup is to consensus Not good for VC/startups imo
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REAL. This drives me freakin’ nuts.
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Why we backed Bedrock Energy. Unlocking geothermal heating & cooling for commercial buildings.
bedrockenergy.com
HVAC has beaten out semiconductors, computers/servers, and data centers as the biggest winner of net-new hardware spending since 2022.
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Our best investments were: 1. Normally priced pre-seed ➡️ expensive seed 2. Normal seed ➡️ “cheap” A & B 3. Very expensive Series A 4. Normal PS ➡️ pricey seed 5. Normal seed ➡️ normal A 6. Normal PS ➡️ normal seed 7. Cheap PS ➡️ normal seed 8. Normal Seed ➡️ cheap A
I was at the LP conference this week, and one of the most common questions I got was whether you as a seed fund manager should be investing in some of the hotter, more expensive seed rounds. This is an incredibly challenging question to answer because venture is a game of
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And the follow-up, which is unfortunately a lot harder: How do you express that belief in an investment? 🤔
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What's your highest confidence belief about the future? Mine is that a much higher % of cars will be electric. (It's 8% today.)
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Golden Dome will neutralize ICBMs. Only way to deliver nukes will be slowly via subs. A better world, I think.
Today, we unveil Project Shadow — Apex's on-orbit Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) technology demonstration, launching NET June 2026. At Apex, we often launch self-funded missions to advance our technology and demonstrate our capabilities in space. Over 1.5 years ago, we launched
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Should’ve seen this coming tbh but didn’t have it on my 2025 bingo card. (Disclosure: @cantos was a pre-seed investor in Atom.)
omg "Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing Firms" "Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of agreements to get funding earmarked for promising technology
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Once we've closed our new fund (soon 🫢) I want to do a webinar with other GPs to share lessons learned and share notes on a list of 300+ LPs. Who's interested?
docs.google.com
Upcoming GP-only webinar on the state of raising a venture fund, esp. in hard-tech. Ian to share lessons learned and go over a list of 300+ LPs.
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