Startup Strategy: Building for Universal Business Needs @patk is the founder and CEO of @proof , a transaction security platform that helps businesses verify identities and prevent fraud in digital transactions. 🎧 Show Notes: https://t.co/3wrHTOxy58

🎧 New Pod: @patk, CEO of @proof 💡 Tested demand before writing code 🤯 Spent years questioning the idea 🚨 Learned spikes don’t equal traction 🎙️ Hosted by @omerkhan 👉 https://t.co/3wrHTOxy58

I fear to know how much of my life has been spent finding transparent background customer logos for slides.

A guy can dream….

Second, you should be able to make fundraising easier for the founder over time. If you drink the kool aid early and you have the ability to help the founder power through lilly pads in the growth and strategy over time, you're immensely valuable. Having LPs + SPVs behind you is

Largely missed was @pmarca's recent interview where he said "your VC should give you leverage" and an unfair advantage, which I deeply believe to be true.

I still think the way to win in venture is to first be someone that founders want to work with, increasingly because of some expertise, experience, or access.

The winning funds pick large markets and are equal partners in driving companies to scale. They have completely different views of acceptable CAC and payback periods to drive scale as fast as possible vs their competitors who are wildly more conservative.

Separately, I am personally seeing a ton of funds who do not understand life cycle investing. The few winning funds absolutely understand that capital can be a strategy, but most VCs are too timid or thought they could cut check 1 and check 2 would be obvious.

At the same time, the fund can be comfortable in the bet because known talent can be plugged in. Likely even allowing them to bet on a co. where the metrics aren't quite right, but the channel is well known and the talent is on the bench

The same is true of teams. These scale VCs have networks of people who can come in and scale almost any motion or strategy. So an early founder isn't just taking more dollars from one of these firms, they're getting access to proven talent that can drive the program.

Underlying all of this is that GTM has fundamentally changed. What was once a craft is now a science and it is easier to identify companies with unit economics, CAC, etc that can be hyper scaled through well known channels

https://t.co/UKfCX9iW8N

. @robgo I fiinally got around to reading your post A Crisis Moment in Seed VC. A few thoughts.

The deeper question - if AI takes the jobs and ppl have infinite time, do we devolve into chaos or do we build the Starship Enterprise. I’m on team 2. Y’all can trade monkey coin all you want.

Book title idea: “From Jiro to Zero - How a world obsessed with mastery decided people need none.” I am very concerned about AI’s impact on young people. And what that means for the future.

Excellent marketing for @anduriltech

Checks out

I think about this a lot, but I’ve met many of the business leaders most often descried as “an ass” and they simply aren’t. Especially to their core team. Sure, exceptions exist, but you likely aren’t Elon, your team will quit, and you should choose your idols wisely. High