- No GPs Allowed
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- No GPs Allowed ⚡ #2
btw Eid Mubarak ✨🧿 to all who are celebrating today (like me)
if you’re a VC based in Boston, Philly, or Miami: reply to this email! I’ll be spending more time in each of those cities and would love to connect.
I’ll be in SF the week of April 29th - May 1st as well!
VC News
Black-swan consumer social retention charts = a once in a decade phenomenon according to Nikita Bier. What do you think of this retention? For context the app has 2 million downloads and 700k DAUs!
Autism Impact Fund closes $60M first fund
Q1, U.S. VC funds raised only $9.3 billion. At this pace, VC fundraising will end 2024 at just above $37 billion, the lowest capital raised since 2013 and a 54% decline from last year.
Inc. released their list of 2024’s Most Intriguing Women Entrepreneurs that grew their collective 2023 revenue to more than $8.86 billion and raised $6.2 billion in funding to date.
Venture deal volume in the U.S. slumped to its lowest level since 2017 in the first quarter. The value of those deals totaled $36.6 billion, down 62% from a peak of $97.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Grocery giants, including Tesco and Wollworths, are teaming up to launch a $125 million VC fund to accelerate retail innovation.
The Cloud is Broken
If you’re in the startup world there’s a good chance you’ve heard a handful of nightmare AWS stories.
From unexpected charges to an overall bad user experience, the cloud, to put it kindly, is pretty broken. That’s why Antimetal was invented.
Antimetal is a complete command and control system for AWS – savings, visibility, and infrastructure guardrails, all in one automated platform.
The best part? It’s completely free to get started.
See why thousands of companies like Politico and OpenStore use Antimetal to streamline and automate their cloud. Check it out!
VC Theses
who: Jared Hecht
why (in his own words): “in 2009 i joined @tumblr as its sixth employee and left after a year to start @GroupMe. since post-groupme i've been pretty disenchanted with the state of social. until now. what's happening w consumer apps onchain is epic, fun, exciting, and filled w possibility and wonder.”
who: Rex Woodbury
why: Rex positions virtual reality (to a degree our URL social lives) as a “dupe” of our IRL/true reality. The breakdown here is fascinating, especially with the rise of AI companionship startups. Impeccably written as usual.
who: Andy Weissman (USV)
why: this is an investment thesis from over a decade ago but I love how you can trace this thesis in USV’s investments following this piece
Investor Feature: Layla Alexander
How did you break into VC? My VC journey began when I interned with a venture-backed company while in college. I learned a ton that summer but realized that I found the work of supporting founders and evaluating business models more exciting, and decided to join CORE at Columbia. I got to immerse myself in the NYC startup ecosystem, meet incredible founders and investors, and develop my own (nascent) investment theses. From there I interned with amazing investors like the Harlem Capital team, and ultimately had a great network of mentors in place when I decided to leave my role in Real Estate PE to do VC full-time.
Why did you want to become a VC? In a past life I was a brand / marketing / graphic design nerd and thought I would become a creative director, so my first internship in college was with the digital marketing team of a luxury fashion retail company. I worked on amazing brand strategy projects with the team but by the end of the summer I was more intrigued by the company's recent Series F and the growth opportunities that this funding had unlocked for the business. As I've grown into my role as a Seed investor I now see the throughline between these two careers — there's something really exciting about watching an idea or project go from 0 to 100, from starting with a few slides or bullet points to building a business that has real world impact. Working with a founder on their entrepreneurial journey doesn't feel too different from working with a creative team on a photoshoot, magazine layout, or other creative project :)
What’s your investment philosophy in 5 words? Scalable, defensible, research-backed solutions.
Strangest place you’ve met a founder? Brooklyn Nets game (shoutout Zehra!)
#1 tip for folks trying to break into VC? Echoing Bryce here from last week: broaden your network + don't be afraid of cold outreach — VC is a relationship business spanning finance, strategy, entrepreneurship, platform, and more, and you never know who may be able to help you get your foot in the door.
#1 tip for new VCs? Extrapolate more. Try and identify throughlines and causal relationships across consumer and business behavior. For instance, the cost of a bachelor's degree has soared over the past 30 years, significantly outpacing growth in wages. What does this mean for the future of education and edtech possibilities? Evaluate the trends you're seeing and get into the habit of making educated predictions and pulling quantitative and qualitative data from unlikely places.
Investor you admire most? Hard to pick just one but a team that I find really exciting is a16z's Cultural Leadership Fund. They're connecting Black cultural leaders across music, sports, entertainment, and more — think Shonda Rhimes, Kevin Durant, and The Weeknd — with tech investment opportunities, and simultaneously growing a pipeline to engage more Black talent in tech roles.
Break into VC: Jobs
Full-time Investor
Venture Guides is hiring an investment associate. Apply here!
Capital Factory is hiring an associate. Apply here (Dallas) and here (Austin).
What If Ventures is hiring an investment associate. Apply here (DM him)!
Flourish Ventures is hiring an investment associate. Apply here!
Full-time Platform
Draper University is hiring for multiple platform roles. Apply below!
Cowboy Ventures is hiring a Chief of Staff. Apply here!
Techstars is hiring a Program Associate. Apply here!
Internship
Kapor Capital is hiring a summer associate. Apply here!
Bankless Ventures is hiring an intern to start April-July. Apply here!
Expanding Capital is hiring an intern. Apply here!
VC $$$
This part of No GPs Allowed will feature an anonymous investor’s compensation package along with years of experience and title. You can drop your salary details here (anonymously) to be shared in future editions. VC compensation is an exceptionally opaque part of the “breaking into VC” process.
Events (for VCs)
No GPs Allowed SF edition hosted by: Zehra, Michelle, Kenan (Headline + Deel)
Consumer Founders & Investors Dinner hosted by: Zehra & Amber
