New @ThePeelPod with @chudson Charles started @PrecursorVC in 2015 to help create pre-seed as a category. We talk about how pre-seed investing has never been harder, why sitting out of bubbles can be more dangerous than joining, how Principals at Precursor get real money to make their own bets, + urgency and “the last $250k effect”. Full episode here + links below 0:00 Is Pre-Seed dead? 4:15 Do round names matter anymore? 12:27 Multi-stage signaling risk doesn’t exist 16:42 Smart LP’s love multi-stage funds 22:03 Is the traditional Seed model broken? 26:31 Velocity of capital deployment drives all incentives 30:30 How to compete with megafunds at early stage 34:24 Megafunds have Seed funds in a vice-grip 38:34 “The best Series A’s are all expensive" 39:33 Are we doing 2021 all over again? 41:53 It’s safer to participate in bubbles than sit out 47:35 Price you pay is everything 50:22 The system incentivizes an addiction to consensus 55:22 High valuation + high CapEx grows AUM 59:56 How Precursor actually invests today 1:01:32 Precursor’s Principal investor program 1:05:56 Deciding when to selling your winners 1:10:53 Raising as a pre-consensus founder 1:12:39 What Charles looks for in founders 1:17:20 What it’s actually like to start a fund 1:20:56 Misconceptions of first-time fund managers 1:26:22 300+ LP meetings to raise Precursor Fund 1 1:29:24 The single change to the pitch that raised his fund 1:31:54 Precursor’s evolution over time 1:34:57 The second desert of venture capital 1:37:34 The last $250k effect

this is the most insane account on TikTok

Smoothest shot I’ve ever seen

This guy literally built the best feature Apple ever made

Shaq’s proudest moment is absolutely iconic

LinkedIn gonna be crazy when they find out about DeepSeek next week

Male friendship is just sending tweets to each other for years until one of you dies

This realtor does “speed tour” videos and its probably the best thing you’ll watch today

This may go down as one of the most significant moments in the history of Twitter

LinkedIn gonna be crazy when they find out ChatGPT can do images next week

This realtor home tour goes so hard

VCs adding value to portfolio companies

woah @georainbolt is so good he can do it blindfolded

Always crazy to me that Japan's GDP has basically not grown for 30 years

LinkedIn is gonna melt when they hear about Soham Parekh next week

Tim Apple after convincing 82% of Americans to spend five paychecks on a pair of ski goggles nitter.app/ZerooGrav/status/59145…

The European mind cannot comprehend this

just found the consultant who did McKinsey's $4 million NYC garbage can study

if your banker looks like this, your deposits are safe

this has got to be the best feature apple has ever made

if Warren Buffett had invested his entire net worth in bitcoin in 2009, he‘d be worth $719 trillion today

This is the only job safe from AI

VCs leaving AI back to crypto nitter.app/fartconthird/status/17…

the only thing that can save Meta now is an Indian CEO

This is the baddest video on the internet

Remote worker visiting HQ for the first time in four years nitter.app/flushingitpod/status/1…

Des Moines, Iowa after the tariffs go into effect

And so by combining GPT-3, GPT-4, and GPT-4o, you can actually get all the capabilities of GPT-11

why did today feel so familiar?

if I ever get cancelled I just hope it’s on Business Insider so no one can read it

Battle Bots is the best sport, change my mind

Very unlikely to make it to 40 before getting one-shotted by ayahuasca

AI hardware founders getting ready to review a freemium wallpaper app

Government employees after the DOGE sends them to the private sector

Venture capitalists getting ready to scroll Twitter for five hours then go skiing

At 35: - I was not a VC - Eating Chipotle once a month At 45: - I'm a VC - Eating Chipotle three times a day Lesson: - Never stop working towards your dreams.

This is the only job that’s safe from AI

Just met with the head of the port workers union at his home office

my job is now 100% automated

BREAKING: IBM reportedly paying employees to leave and take jobs at Meta to improve the prestige of their AI program

Have a buddy who spent the first half of 2023 buying thousands of .ai domains for the largest companies in the world: Walmart.ai Lockheed.ai Geico.ai Glencore.ai Aramco.ai Gotten 7-figure offers on most of them, still holding. Sitting on a bigger payday than Accenture charging JP Morgan $28 million for an AI internal support ticketing system that doesn't work yet. A good reminder that you can just do things.

Apple: “we’re starting a bank” Microsoft: “we’re building our own chips” Google: “we’re re-architecting our entire business around AI” Facebook:

If an engineer shows up to the interview like this you hire them on the spot

if you had $86,400 in your bank account and someone stole $10 😤 would you be upset and throw the remaining $86,390 away? 🤔 No we have 86,400 seconds each day ⏳ don’t let 10 seconds of negativity ruin your day 🙌 🙌

web3 VCs showing LPs all the use cases for their new Q2 investments

never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or a web3 founder how many users their product has

are we just forgetting Zuck went all in on the metaverse in October of 2021?

“that company failed? just delete the logo from our website”

VCs realizing 12 of their portfolio companies have founders named Soham Parekh

Zoom generated $252 million in free cash flow on revenue of $328 million in Q1, or a 77% free cash flow margin. Not a typo. Insane.

this escalated quickly

someone with 32 followers and an AOL email address just convinced two billionaires to fight in a cage match

Me watching where they go next

When someone is having a stroke, they lose 2 million brain cells a minute. This means that if a stroke lasts for more than 3 minutes, they’re at risk of starting a podcast.

First time I’m seeing this view of one of the most insane comebacks in sports history. 2022 Kentucky Derby. Going into the last turn, Rich Strike was in 18th place (out of 20). He had 80-1 odds, the 2nd lowest of any winner in history. He wasn’t even supposed to race that day. Another horse was scratched last minute, and his owner got him registered 30 seconds before the deadline. Proceeded to pull off one of the greatest moments in sports history.

When Ronald McDonald lost his circus job in 1929, all the top VC’s (Sequoia, Benchmark, WeWork Ventures, Chamath) passed on his new “fast food” restaurant By 2020, his company was worth $169 billion and Ronald was the 6th richest person in the world Never give up on your dreams

This guy is the next Warren Buffett

My lawyer just googled “what is the difference between pre and post money” right in front of me. I’m going to prison.

CEO of Google taking product feedback from John Collison, host of the Cheeky Pint podcast

Dogecoin is now more valuable than 94% of companies in the S&P 500

launching a new vc firm called 007 ventures: 0 due diligence 0 value add 7 deals per week

I can’t believe this website is still free

The latest Google Maps update is 🔥🔥

In a rare interview, actor Chris Diamantopoulos who played Russ Hanneman on HBO's Silicon Valley series, revealed that he's become a billionaire buying stakes in AI companies. "I took the money I earned in 2021 from web3 startups booking me on Cameo to announce their $65m Series As, and plowed it all into OpenAI SPVs. I even own a giant slug of Anthropic. I just buy whatever AI company my broker tells me." Unbelievable.

In Google’s early days, founders Sergei and Brian manually provided the links for each search query. They wrote down the most popular links on paper and alternated shifts so the other could sleep. Today, Google‘s the most valuable company in the world Do things that don’t scale

If you’re in your early 20s, buy the dip Go into debt if you have to

Incredible pace of innovation coming from the banana space

"IBM is a reliable blue chip stock and Watson is a clear leader in the AI race"

Crazy that Yahoo could have bought Google for $1m (now worth $1.7t), FB for $1b ($941b), and used to own almost half of Alibaba ($574b).

the two biggest financial mistakes of my life: not buying Bitcoin in 2010 buying Bitcoin in 2021

CEO of a $3.8 trillion dollar company is posting like a course seller to promote his company. It's 2025. Nothing is cringe. No one is judging you. Just ship the tweet.

Zuck is the 👑 of leveraging his network for help building his business: Winklevoss Twins - Head of Ideas Evan Spiegel - Head Designer Sam Altman - Head Recruiter 🐐 🐐 🐐

CEO promising CTO who has impossible new to build it features

That’s just me after I get Chipotle

Twitter has 400 million users. But 99% are not worth following. Here are 4 millions accounts you should follow (and why): 1/4,000,001 🧵 👇

I’ve eaten Chinese takeout every day for the past two weeks. Here are 14 lessons I’ve learned: 1/15 👇 🪡 🧵

men will pay $32 for a burrito on uber eats instead of learning how to cook

BREAKING: Former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron has joined a16z

We just hired a Gen-Z VC candidate with zero experience. Here’s why: They showed up 10 minutes early to the 1st interview. By the 2nd, they sourced their 1st investment. On their 1st day, they secured us an allocation. In their 1st week, the company exited for $1 billion.

prepping for the great lock-in

I can’t believe this plan didn’t work

Meta just announced its doing a $40 billion stock buyback. With that $40 billion, it could have acquired Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest, and given $1 million to every American and still have money left over. Really makes you think.

When the Stripe brothers founded their company in 1985, they focused on men’s fashion. Realizing the TAM was small and they owned no striped clothes themselves, they got into payments in 2003 after Elon Musk tweeted asking how to accept Tesla orders online. Never stop iterating

Gen Z VC with two newsletters and a podcast, GP with no social media and 26 IPOs

This video has a million views on TikTok. Feels like we’re at a cultural tipping point pushing back on the dating apps (it’s been brewing years). They’re historically hard businesses to make work, but I think the next big player in the space will be started soon.

Insane chart. Meta up 8x in the last 20 months.

chipotle with this guy

announcing TikTok startup pitch: duet this video pitching your startup 👉 vm.tiktok.com/ZMJaYvkxb/

Announcing @BananaCap_ Fund 1! 🍌🧢 is an internet-first, sector and geography agnostic tech investment firm investing from pre-seed to pre-IPO. Fund 1 initial check sizes are $25k-$300k. Thank you to all the founders and LP's that made this possible! turner.substack.com/p/launch…

56 year old publicly traded SaaS CEOs realizing they gotta start making brainrot TikTok’s to acquire customers

getting an email from a European in August

I'm waiting until next week

this JPEG of a tulip is selling for $3.2 million

meanwhile on linkedin stories

BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg is rumored to be personally recruiting Soham Parekh for six separate roles on Meta's Superintelligence Team

Elon is Twitter’s top creator and owns 9.2% of the company Living the web3 dream in web2

The last thing you see before Zuck steals your last AI researcher

Americans making lunch after tariffs go into effect

The last four years, explained