Good morning 👋
USV announced a new fund earlier this week.
We’re breaking down the news and why we love USV in today’s piece.
Let’s get into it.
P.S. 👉 My friends are launching a women’s health company on Product Hunt today.
Go and upvote, send a screenshot, and I’ll send you something free in return.
Today’s highlights
USV doubles down on what’s working
What is real venture alignment
Boom breaks the sound barrier
Pelion becomes Utah’s largest venture firm
TOP
New funds for USV 💰
USV announced their newest core fund earlier this week.
Given that they are the top-performing venture firm over the past decade and a half, you would think people would be all over this news.
Side note - somehow USV’s newsletter only has 700 subscribers. Big alpha opportunity to follow and learn how they are thinking about the world.
Here’s why USV’s model works:
Small funds. Not playing the AUM game; running the same capital deployment strategy over and over again.
Thesis driven. Strong opinions on where the world is going and not deviating away from those.
High conviction. Not optimizing for shots on goal. Looking for less shots on the right goal.
Low velocity. Much higher bar for getting new opportunities to a “yes”.
Looking for the categories undergoing the most radical change and the approaches that allow outsiders to not just inch them along but completely transform them. Often these are the ones that seem weirdest, quirkiest, and most unusual.
Focused on being long term and dedicated partners to a small number of teams creating projects and businesses that are aligned with our thesis. Becoming an extension of the team > being another name on the cap table.
Commit once and then partner with the companies throughout their lifetimes. Focused on playing long-term games with the right people and their businesses.
Run a collaborative partnership model for decision making and believe each of us should be knowledgeable about and ready to jump in with any company across our portfolio. No tiered internal hierarchy that leads to stalemates.
Read more:
COMMUNITY
The OS for private investors 🕹
Good venture investors need to have:
Good background knowledge and an understanding of how venture dynamics work
A source of good deal flow so that you see founders first
An elite investor network that you can share notes, deals, and other information with
Mental frameworks to understand company building, scale, and what makes a good vs. great investment
Connections to other high-quality people that become future co-workers or portfolio company employees
That’s why we built this.
2,500 other investors from places like Bessemer, Insight, Accel, and Founders Fund already use it, and we think you should too.
LINKS
🧠 Librarian by USV: The second brain at USV that helps you navigate all of their team’s thoughts throughout the years
⚠️ You Don’t Have to be a Manager: Argument made there are different paths to take if you’re not cut out to manage
📍 Tips for Negotiating Non Pricing Terms: Mostly Metrics offers 8 non pricing levers to pull during software negotiations
👷♂️ From College App to $500 Million Transactions—How Andrew Gazdecki is building Acquire.com: The story of how Andrew created a platform that would streamline the acquisition process for small business owners and help buyers find legitimate opportunities faster
🏃 Outrunning Your Overhead: Every business owner has quick rules of thumb to figure out when they go from being in the red to black
🎙️ The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast: Listen to all 6 high quality episodes
TWEET
HEADLINES
Crosscut Ventures co-founder Brewer to depart firm (VCJ)
Pelion Raises $500m For Utah’s Largest Fund (Bloomberg)
As Boom breaks the sound barrier, founder Blake Scholl says supersonic travel is around the corner (TechCrunch)
DeepSeek could upend the funding math for AI apps (Pitchbook)
New York’s pension fund goes all-in on co-investments (Pitchbook)
OpenAI Revenue Surged From $200-a-Month ChatGPT Subscriptions (The Information)
MEME
Sponsor Confluence.VC Weekly
Reach the smartest people in VC, tech, + finance 📥
Primary placement (6 placements): Put your company at the top of these emails along with an elevator pitch, image, and CTA
Primary placement (20 placements): The same as above for a lower bundled price per placement
Secondary placement (6 placements): Classified ads that are tucked away in other parts of the newsletter
Tear down: A full dedicated newsletter breakdown on your business
(Media kit available upon request)
RECS
Ultimate Venture Capital Resource Library: The VC playbook used by thousands of junior investors
POLL
What is the right portfolio construction approach for most seed funds?
Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.
Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.
- Clay
RESULTS
Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:
Are you using your own custom GPTs to perform at least 25% of your job responsibilities?
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes - absolutely ✅
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No - but I desperately need to 😥
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No - and I won't any time soon 🙅♂️
