📶 Maya Bakhai (GP @ Spice Capital) on true signal, seed fund portfolio construction, and the opportunity for being non-consensus

How much of venture is purely signal-driven rather than focused on actual ideas and execution.

Maya was pitched a startup that was essentially a copycat of another well-known company, and when she questioned it, the response was, "Sequoia backed them, and the founders are ex-Meta." That moment crystallized how much weight branding and social proof carry in VC.

Even with a high-profile name like KD behind a fund, getting meaningful allocation in hot deals was difficult unless they came in early with conviction or offered something truly unique.

No single "aha" moment—just a gradual realization that the market was ignoring great founders because of industry groupthink.

Maya kept meeting exceptional founders whose companies weren’t fitting into whatever was the hot category at the time. Seeing that mispricing, she started angel investing, running SPVs, and eventually building Spice.

Spice follows a high-volume, low-follow-on approach to create more shots on goal.

Fund I had 50 positions, and Fund II will have at least 40, with 5% ownership targets.

Maya cites data showing that one in 40 startups reaches unicorn status, and she isn’t trying to out-pick the market—she's playing the odds. Rather than tying up capital in follow-ons, she uses SPVs to double down when needed.

She actively targets categories other VCs avoid due to "scar tissue"—markets where past failures have scared off investors.

For example, creator economy and ad tech were both considered dead categories when she invested in companies like beehiiv and others. But if smart founders keep trying to solve a problem, it likely means the opportunity still exists—it’s just a timing issue.

For Maya, brand is less relevant at pre-seed because founders aren’t optimizing for investor brand—they just need someone to believe in them first.

Unlike later-stage investors who need to stand out in competitive rounds, she doesn’t have to "win" deals at this stage—she’s writing the first check. That said, her fund’s brand is naturally influenced by her wide-ranging interests at the intersection of tech, culture, and media—which shows up in everything from deal flow to the fund's website, which she jokingly says "looks more like an art portfolio than a VC firm."

Not trusting her instincts enough.

In Fund I, she was overly cautious about capital calls, hesitating to deploy capital aggressively, even when she had conviction. She was always worried LPs would second-guess her decisions, but in retrospect, she believes she should have gone even harder on the bets she believed in.

She pushes back against the idea that certain VC money will "change your trajectory."

Founders often over-optimize for specific firms, believing that top-tier investors will directly lead to success. But Maya argues that a dollar is a dollar—the real game is execution, not who your investor is.

LP groupthink.

She initially thought VC groupthink was bad—until she saw how much worse it is at the LP level. Institutional investors fund what they already know (usually highly credentialed Silicon Valley spinouts), which then fund more of the same kinds of companies, leading to a cycle of sameness. That playbook worked for the last 20 years but is running out of steam, creating a huge opportunity for outsiders.

Sarah Drinkwater (Common Magic) and Zoe Weinberg (ex/ante).

Both focus on first-check investing with real conviction and have built strong reputations for backing founders that others overlook.