Nirav Tolia

Interviewing Silicon Valley’s brightest at The Montgomery Summit 🤩 Emily Yuan, cofounder of Corgi — $108M+ raised from Y Combinator Kindred Ventures Contrary + more Wardah Inam, founder of OVERJET — $130M+ raised from March Capital General Catalyst Insight Partners + more Claudia Laurie & Madison McIlwain founders of The Room Podcast — Claudia previously raised $5M for her startup Prive and Madison is a former VC and current angel investor Carly Roddy — Co-head of VC Coverage at J.P. Morgan Alex Chung — former VC investor Chai Ventures turned operator at Goodword Amy Moussavi— former VC investor Anthos Capital turned angel investor and advisor at Malo Partners 

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Eclipse is proud to be leading Jetson's $50M Series A, partnering with Stephen Lake, Aaron Grant and Matthew Bailey, to deliver the electric home of the future. Jetson is on a mission to power the entire home more efficiently, affordably, and cleanly by reinventing the products and process by which energy infrastructure is installed, financed, serviced, and managed. Starting with heat pumps (the core energy-consuming infrastructure of the home that accounts for $300B in annual consumer spend), Jetson is building a vertically integrated, software-driven home energy ecosystem. This approach is a complete departure from the fragmented, largely manual home energy industry that exists today. Jetson isn't just delivering the economic and environmental benefits of electricity; it's transforming the customer experience. They believe every homeowner deserves an Apple-level experience for critical home infrastructure service, from quote, to install, to operations — and with up to 50% lower cost. A little more than a year after launching, the company is already in more than 1,000 homes across the U.S. and Canada. This is after a breakout 2025 with over 10x growth and a 75 Net-Promoter-Score. Beyond the incredible execution and massive opportunity, Jetson hits home personally for me, for 3 big reasons. First, as a fellow University of Waterloo 🇨🇦 Engineer, I’ve seen Stephen, Aaron, and Matthew execute on trailblazing full-stack products for over a decade. They’re an immensely talented, focused, and grounded team who has irreplaceable chemistry and taste. Second, from my time founding Kojo and investing in the built environment, I've seen firsthand that the existing value chain of installers, suppliers and manufacturers can only gain so much efficiency with new tech. The Jetson team is working from first-principles and owning everything from the hardware, firmware, consumer facing software, all the way to the crews, trucks and warehouse operations. This end-to-end control allows them to deliver a best-in-class product experience, while also shortening the value chain and passing significant cost savings to the customers. Finally, in addition to this great team and opportunity, we’re investing alongside some of our favorite people. Alex Kolicich (8VC), Eric Meyer, Caroline C. (Activate Capital), Mike McCauley (Garage Capital), Mike Winterfield (Active Impact Investments) and Garry Tan. Read all about the investment here: https://lnkd.in/g4MZJS5j Read Sean Silcoff's coverage in the Globe and Mail: https://lnkd.in/gmGzPx54 Jiten Behl, Michael Laser, Charly M., Lior Susan, Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Greg Reichow, Seth Winterroth, Kaitlyn Glancy, Greg Lyon, Angela Hayward, Laura Spaventa Lewis, Heather Mack, Mary Wells

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Advice from Luke Carroll for VC's raising their first fund. I’ve been thinking a lot about how CIOs and fund selectors like Luke Carroll at Reference Capital look at emerging managers and what that means for those of you raising Fund I. A few takeaways that really stuck with me: 1️⃣ Venture is a power law, not a participation trophy 2️⃣ “Access” is your actual product Capital is abundant; differentiated access is not. A first-time fund has to prove: Why the right founders will choose you over established brands What proprietary communities, ecosystems, or networks you sit in How your career to date translates into non-commoditized deal flow and insight If an LP can’t clearly see your access edge in the first 5 minutes, they’ll mentally file you under “nice, but interchangeable.” 3️⃣ Be honest about marks and “zombie risk” We’re coming out of a cycle where a lot of portfolios are still marked to the 2021–2022 world. CIOs are looking straight through shiny TVPI to ask: Which companies have raised recently at real, external prices? Where are you still relying on old marks? How will you avoid building a tail of zombie positions that never raise again and never get written down? For Fund I, that means leading with realized outcomes and externally priced rounds wherever possible – and being transparent about where risk lives. 4️⃣ LPs crave simplicity, not clever structures Family offices and private clients in particular are gravitating to vehicles and relationships that are “bankable and operationally simple.” For emerging managers, that’s a strong argument for: Keeping fund structures and terms straightforward Making capital calls, reporting, and communications highly predictable Reducing friction rather than showing off how innovative your docs can be Your operational experience is part of your edge. 5️⃣ Your fund is a solution, not a story CIOs don’t buy “great funds,” they solve portfolio problems. The question on their side of the table is: What specific gap in geography, stage, theme, or risk profile does this fund fill for us? How does this manager’s sizing, reserves, and pacing plug into our broader private markets plan? If your deck doesn’t answer that explicitly, you’re asking the LP to do your job. 6️⃣ The questions a CIO would actually ask you From the LP side, the conversation quickly becomes: What is the one thing that makes this fund truly non-commoditized? Who are the 10–15 founders or co-investors that would call you first, and why? If you never raised Fund II, what about this vehicle would still make it a win for your LPs? As a first-time manager, internalizing this LP lens is uncomfortable but powerful. It forces you to sharpen your thesis, right-size your fund, and be radically clear about what makes you worth the illiquidity, complexity, and time. If you’re raising or thinking about a Fund I, what’s the clearest articulation of your edge that would stand up in front of a CIO like Luke Carroll?

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Qsbs just got better 🤠 Summary of new rules: ✅ Company asset qualification moves from $50m to $75m (more employees and investors will qualify)! ✅ Qualified shareholders can now get up to $15m (previously $10m) in tax free gains! ✅ Instead of needing to wait the full 5 years to qualify, now you can get 50% exclusion at 3 years and 75% at 4 years! These changes don’t just reward founders and investors - they recycle capital back into the ecosystem. More startups get funded. More ideas get built. The whole engine runs faster.

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SF VC Takeaway #2: Pricing expectations, performance bars, and what’s actually getting funded. One theme that came up repeatedly in SF was how far pricing expectations and performance bars have shifted, even compared to just a few years ago. A few things investors kept anchoring to: 1️⃣ Median Series A valuations are higher than their 2021 peaks, but fewer of them are getting done. 2️⃣ Capital is being concentrated into fewer and fewer companies (and lots of capital!) 3️⃣ “Good” progress is no longer enough and the bar for standout performance has moved in an AI-native world So what does “top performance” mean right now? One investor told me that top quartile seed companies in their portfolio are going from $0 to $2M in ARR in <12 months. Outside of pure traction numbers, a few other themes that came up to describe "top performance": 📈 Explosive early revenue ramps (or a very credible path to them) 📊 Strong velocity and momentum for 2 quarters in a row, even if the baseline is small. 🚀 Clear signals of category leadership, not just product-market fit. Sometimes shown by either domain expertise, speed of product optimization, or by lack of competition in the category. This creates a counterintuitive dynamic where it can be easier to fund a company with strong pedigrees in a hot space and no traction yet than a company that went from 0 to $1M ARR at what used to be considered a rapid pace. Pricing today is driven by trajectories, not moments in time. We used to say investors invest in lines not points; I think that's more true than ever now because crossing certain milestones doesn't carry as much influence as it once did. Finally, investors still say that valuation matters, but many of them are acting differently. Pace and belief in category-defining companies really sets the price; while slower growth gets scrutinized rather than discounted. One silver lining in the camp of durable growth: Series A rounds are happening so fast that many companies don’t yet have meaningful history of retention data. Large bets are being made on velocity before the durability is proven. Several investors told me the same thing: we may soon swing back to a market where retention, not growth, becomes the defining metric. Let's hope so. I'll share my third SF VC takeaway tomorrow!

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The latest Studio Stack newsletter dropped on Friday — and in it, I unpack why community is the most underutilized competitive advantage in most organizations but ESPECIALLY in the Venture Studio sphere. 💡 87% of leaders say community is critical to their company’s mission 📈 79% report it’s directly impacting business results Yet most studios still treat it like a side project. In the article, I break down what actually works in 2025: → Build where people already “play” → Force connection (because they won’t do it themselves) → Curate, don’t just collect 'If you’re serious about standing out in a sea of 1,000+ studios, this one’s for you. 📰 Read the full issue — packed with new frameworks, launches, jobs, and insights from Studio builders and thought leaders across the world. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZ2AtsDy

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Frasca Executive Dispatch — Macro + Policy I've watched three platform shifts up close. Every one of them had a moment where the regulatory infrastructure flipped from obstacle to accelerant. We are in that moment right now for digital assets, on both sides of the Atlantic. 1. GENIUS Act meets its first deadline. The FDIC approved rulemaking on April 7 to implement the prudential framework for stablecoin issuers. Supervisory agencies must publish final rules by July 18. Stablecoin market cap has crossed $317 billion. The plumbing is being installed. 2. The Fed published its stablecoin stability assessment. The April 8 FEDS Note analyzed financial stability implications of stablecoins at scale. Meanwhile, Mastercard is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure. Coinbase has integrated with Citi and American Express. Traditional rails are not competing with digital assets. They are merging with them. 3. MiCA's July deadline approaches. Every crypto-asset service provider in the EU must achieve full MiCA compliance by July 1. Over 30% of EU institutional investors have already increased digital asset exposure. The DAC8 tax reporting framework went live January 1. Europe is building the institutional on-ramp while the US finalizes the stablecoin guardrails. What this rhymes with: 1996. The Telecommunications Act didn't kill the internet. It created the legal certainty that let capital flood in. July 2026 is shaping up as that inflection for digital assets. Second-order effect: Firms without licenses will lose access to institutional capital. Firms with them will set the terms. For institutions: The question is no longer whether to allocate. It is which regulated infrastructure to allocate through. Regulation is a feature, not a bug. — Rob Frasca | COSIMO Digital | Capital markets, rebuilt on-chain, amplified by AI #DigitalAssets #Tokenization #RWA

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🎧 "𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽..." – a refreshingly honest take on the tension between substance and hype from Nathan Baschez, CEO of Lex and long-time writer on technology and business. Too many entrepreneurs second-guess themselves because a space feels “too crowded” or “too trendy.” But as Nathan points out: 🔹 Just b/c trend-chasers show up doesn’t mean the opportunity isn’t real. 🔹 Substance & hype often coexist. Don’t let hype be a false negative. 🔹 If you genuinely see something meaningful, don’t let anxiety or the fear of cliché stop you. This moment in tech is noisy. But it's no doubt an incredible time to found a company if you see the right opportunity. As an investor in Vertical AI, industrial tech, and healthtech at The Council, I've found that the founders who have walked in their customers' shoes are best equipped to find those real signals. Get the full episode for Nathan’s take on spotting real trends early, managing the founder mindset, and what he’s learned going from first hire at Substack to CEO of Lex. 👇 Link is in the comments #founders #AIstartup #venturecapital #FirstBuilders #entrepreneurship

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Fullstack startups are the latest craze: Marc Andreessen talked about this phenomenon on Jack Altman's latest podcast Today Browserbase launched Director.ai for consumers to automate the web This follows Vercel launching @v0 for consumers to build sites and apps Both of these companies are infrastructure (picks and shovels) providers that have now moved "up the stack" to launch consumer applications on top of their infra This is the latest in vogue playbook following: Compound startups (multi-product - i.e. Rippling) Layer cake vertical startups (SaaS+Payments+Lending - i.e. ServiceTitan) Links in comments: Jack altman Marc podcast Director.ai launch video Paul Klein IV, Guillermo Rauch, CRV

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Tokenisation is disrupting TradFi by making assets more liquid, accessible, and efficient — but its applications go beyond finance. In my latest piece for Forbes, I explore how tokenisation could be used to drive social impact. For instance, blockchain could serve as an enabler for peace credits, a novel mechanism that I've been developing with Professor Timothy Fort, to foster peace and abate emissions by curbing the explosion of munitions. Beyond this, I talk about what I look for in successful projects. Credits to Tommie Ethington for editing and Ahmed Sohaib Tahir for additional research.

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We were recording a podcast episode last week and the question came up: why do studios actually fail? I expected the conversation to land on bad venture selection. That's what most people point to. But three quieter patterns kept surfacing — and they're the ones that actually kill studios. Sequencing failure. Doing the right things in the wrong order. Raising before you have a track record. Hiring a full team before validating a single venture. Everything looks productive — you're shipping, hiring, raising. But the order is wrong, and the compounding works against you instead of for you. Incentive misalignment. The studio operator wants equity upside. The institutional sponsor wants de-risked innovation. The founder wants autonomy. None of those are wrong. They're just different objective functions in the same room. The misalignment doesn't surface in year one. It surfaces the first time someone has to make a hard call — and the people in the room realize they want different outcomes. The governance gap. Studios start lean, which is smart. Then they stay lean on governance, which is fatal. No kill criteria. No stage gates. No framework for when to double down or shut down. Death by accumulated decisions that nobody had the structure to stop. What stuck with me after that conversation: all three of these are invisible from the inside. Bad company selection is loud. These are silent. And by the time you feel them, they've been compounding for months.

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You can have groundbreaking science, elegant engineering, and even early customer interest. But without this one thing, you don't have an investable business. After two decades running IP strategy projects and now leading UC Berkeley's Deep Tech Innovation Lab while building the Berkeley Gateway Accelerator, I've watched countless brilliant technologies die in the valley between breakthrough and business. The problem isn't what most technical founders think it is. It's not about having better tech. It's not about getting more funding. It's not even about finding product-market fit. The fatal flaw shows up much earlier—and it's almost always the same mistake. In my latest piece, I answer questions from a Taiwanese entrepreneur about what really separates deep tech ventures that scale from those that stall. Including one provocative suggestion for Asian ecosystems that has nothing to do with technology. Read the full conversation, linked below. #DeepTech #Innovation #Startups #IntellectualProperty #VentureCapital

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I've been crunching the Seattle-area startup funding numbers from the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report on venture deal activity (with help from Claude and fact-checking from Gemini). Here's what the historical trends look like for the Seattle region. The big trend nationally and locally: bigger checks are going to fewer companies. Seattle ranked 7th in the U.S. by capital invested but 10th by deal count in Q1 — the lowest number of deals since mid-2020. AI and space companies dominated the top rounds. More on GeekWire: https://lnkd.in/ggpBspvP

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The Brex / Capital One $5.15Bn acquisition is a huge deal and should be celebrated. How did they do it? I've studied their culture by interviewing Henrique Dubugras (Co-founder), Michael B. Tannenbaum (ex-CFO, Employee #1), and Art L. (CBO, Employee #50). These are 10 important lessons I learned from them. Henrique and Pedro built Brex as teenagers from a house in SF to a generational fintech in 9 years. From a startup card to $100B+ in TPV. Along the way, they created a culture that has already spun out dozens of founders who have raised over $800M+. Here's what I learned on our Fintech Leaders episodes: 1. Your first 10 leadership hires matter more than your first 10 employees. Those leaders create processes and structures that outlast them. Some of Brex's first 10 employees didn't become managers, but the leaders they hired early shaped the culture. 2. Great founders get lucky with great mentors. Henrique's first investor was a payments founder who taught him the entire industry before he really understood it. The right early backer can accelerate your learning curve dramatically. 3. Build everything in-house. A major competitive advantage came from building all their software from scratch. Brex built their own issuer processor because Marqeta and Stripe Issuing were not mature when they launched. That proprietary infrastructure enabled deeper integrations than competitors could ever achieve. 4. Your best culture exists in the edges, not the nodes. Henrique used to think companies were 100% about the people. Now he believes the real value is in the processes, systems, and structures people create. Great companies can survive personnel changes because excellence lives in the connections between people. 5. If you have five priorities, you have zero. Every employee and team has a single OKR. The discipline of extreme focus brought them back to hyper growth after a period of growing pains. 6. Move at an unnaturally fast rate. When someone says they will revert next week, ask why not tomorrow. Analysis paralysis kills momentum. Brex leaders operate with urgency that feels uncomfortable to most people. 7. Listen to your customers. Brex built partnerships with Navan and Zip because 87 customers asked about Navan integration in six months. The biggest strategic moves came directly from customer requests. 8. Land and expand is crucial in enterprise. Large customers do not deploy new vendors to everyone at once. They want to try you in one use-case first. Brex restructured sales comp with longer hold periods so reps would land small and expand later. 9. Promoting from within creates loyalty. Behind every internal promotion, a manager is taking a risk on you. The easiest path is always hiring someone who has done the job before. Backing internal talent is harder but builds something lasting. 10. Dream big is not a cliche. Their audacious goal-setting culture produced a generational company in 9 years. Bravo! Link in comments ⤵️

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Happy Friday! We’re streaming Fondo START the weekly show for AI founders Here’s today’s line-up: – Tim Glaser on growing PostHog from a Hacker News MVP into an open-source product and data toolkit used by 190k teams (Co-CEO & Founder, PostHog) – Oliviero Pinotti on building AI Employees for Enterprise (Co-Founder, Tensol (YC W26)) – Priya Khandelwal on doing things that don’t scale, at scale (CEO & Founder, Nixo (YC S25)) – Pamir Ehsas on building AI-led legal services for tech companies (CEO & Founder, Arcline (YC W26)) – Jad Bousselham on using satellite imagery and weather data to create a persistent, time-anchored record of what happens on every acre. (Co-Founder, Verdex (YC W26)) – Georgia Witchel on making infrastructure for advanced human testing and simulation (CEO and founder, Mantis Biotech) Big thank you Fondo, Rho, PostHog, Corgi, Numeral, Mastra, Eragon, Comp AI, Napa, and viewers like you Let’s go!!

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Very happy to share that we are leading Pursuit's Series A. Mike Vichich and Brandon Max are exceptional leaders. I met Mike in December 2024 and was immediately struck by his focus on building in government, one of the most important and under-innovated sectors. Big vision, strong execution, and optimism. At the time, I was between roles and doing some angel investing. That conversation made it clear I wanted to work more closely with founders like him. A year later, I get to do exactly that. Leading this round is a full-circle moment. If you're building in GovTech please consider taking a look at their fantastic product. And reach out to us at Builders VC as we love the market!

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Excerpted From the Stanford Closer Look Series paper titled: "THE CEO SCORECARD: HOW DIRECTORS SELECT A CEO WHEN THEY HAVE REAL SKIN IN THE GAME" "In this Closer Look, we consider the perspective of ValueAct Capital, an institutional investor with extensive, direct experience serving on the boards of directors of portfolio companies during multiple succession events. Through an analysis of these events, ValueAct has identified common deficiencies, including the manner in which required skills are identified and framed and the process by which they are evaluated. "ValueAct has also observed that many companies do not use rigorous scorecards built on quantitative metrics to guide the CEO evaluation process. Instead, the qualifications for a replacement CEO are often expressed as a list of vague qualities or adjectives, such as “leadership,” “vision,” “customer-centricity,” “communication skills,” “operational excellence,” and others. "Why are scorecards not more rigorous? Part of the problem lies with the board. All too often, board members lack a clear consensus around a company’s strategy and priorities and struggle to define the company’s future success in terms of specific outcomes. Without consensus, it is not possible to develop a rigorous and objective scorecard by which to evaluate potential internal and external candidates." Think about what ValueAct is saying. Boards (not sometimes but all too often) have difficulty defining the future success of a company in specific outcomes. This is obviously a huge problem in regard to defining what is needed in a new CEO in terms of experience, skills and track record. But it is also a huge problem in regard to: 1. Holding management accountable for results. If there is no consensus on outcomes, how can there be clarity in regard to what is expected of management? 2. If the board has a lack of consensus or clarity in regard to what the value creation drivers are how can there be any assurance that the board is doing its job well in allocating capital and driving operating performance and longer-term shareholder value? Said another way, how can shareholders have any degree of comfort that the board is focused on the development of the full potential of the company? Without major value creation initiatives with measurable results there cannot have been a deep dive diligence process designed to identify the full potential of the company. If such a process is absent, then there must also be the absence of a value maximization governing objective. And if that is absent, what is the role of the board? #valuemaximization #corporategovernance #boardofdirectors #governance #shareholdervalue

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Today, we backed founders building in industries most people overlook because they use them every day. Restaurants. Nightlife. Food delivery. Huge markets, broken systems. One team is helping restaurants grow without giving away margins to marketplaces. Another is rebuilding nightlife distribution through community and events. Another is creating the infrastructure layer for India’s home kitchen economy. All three already have real traction behind them. That’s usually the signal we pay attention to most. If you’re building something ambitious with momentum already happening… 👇 Comment below and we’ll DM you how to apply #Startups #VentureCapital #FoodTech #RestaurantTech #AI #CPG #ConsumerTech #FounderLed

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Proud to be part of Flick’s $6M seed round, giving filmmakers a new creative workflow for the AI era. Worth watching: https://flick.art/showroom Huge congrats to Ray Wang, Zoey Zhang — and great to be in this round alongside GV (Google Ventures), Y Combinator, Lightspeed, Pioneer Fund, True Ventures and many others. Round announcement: https://lnkd.in/gSYpCU3C

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