📶 AI makes it easier for VC matchmaking

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Good morning 👋

And Happy Friday.

I’ve learned that pretty much 99% of VCs fall within one of the following buckets:

1. Networker: Somebody who knows everybody and can source interesting deals consistently

2. Analyst: Somebody that does all of the investment dirty work to justify putting dollars to work in those deals

3. Operator: Somebody who can add hands-on support to portfolio companies after the check

AI tools have made it easier for each of these personas to do their jobs, but now networkers are getting creative with how they can use their network to play matchmaker.

Side note: Too many VCs try to be #1; not enough capable enough to be #2 or #3, but that’s a separate topic.

Let’s get into today’s piece.

TL;DR:

• 📰 News

• 🔗 Links

• 🐥 Tweet

• 💰 Funds

• 📶 Recs

• 🗳 Poll

HEADLINES
Adding value gets easier 🤝

• Venture Capitalists Are Playing Matchmaker in the Age of AI (WSJ)

• India’s unicorns come under pressure as VC deal flow contracts (Pitchbook)

• Insight Partners Acquires Recorded Future for $780 Million (PR Newswire)

• The Unicorn Board Adds 8 New Companies, With One Newly Minted Entry Valued At $16B (Crunchbase)

• Most-Active US Investors In August: Alumni Ventures Tops The List In Slow Month (Crunchbase)

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LINKS

⌛️ Time Management Techniques That Actually Work: Lenny shares 7 more tactics for making the most of your precious time

🪜 Claude—Everything You Can Build with Claude Artifacts: A step by step guide to creating apps, webpages, flow-charts, and more

🥚 The Egg Theory, Applied: Digital Natives discusses the user psychology of AI agents and how more hand-holding allows for the semblance of control

🎙️ How to Discover What You have to Say by B.F. Skinner: Skinner, renowned for his work in behaviorism and operant conditioning, suggests that, much like an artist, specific techniques can uncover you thoughts and bring them to life

😔 The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail: CB Insights compiled their list of startup failure postmortems after analyzing over 110 failures

🧭 Confluence.VC Navigator: Our internal navigator tool to help readers find what they’re looking for

TWEET

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FUNDS

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POLL

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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 the OpenAI mafia the new PayPal mafia?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes - OpenAI talent is in a league of its own (16)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No - there are other companies (Stripe, Snowflake, etc.) that still hold the crown (13)

29 Votes