Together with
Good morning 👋
And happy hump day.
We started this business five years, and at the time, most of our audience were junior investors (analysts, associates, principals, etc.). Fast forward to today, and the careers of that same group of people look very different.
Many of them have stayed in the game, worked their way up through promotions, and made it to partner.
Others have spun out and started their own funds.
Others have started companies.
And others have joined portfolio companies to work on the operating side.
Many of these people used to view “breaking into venture” as the end goal, but all of them have now realized that was only the beginning.
The current fundraising environment and lack of liquidity is forcing more investors to rethink their career choices again.
These are our thoughts and what we’re hearing from our audience …
TOP
More VCs are taking career pivots
More and more junior investors have started to see the writing on the wall: there are better places to make money right now.
As the liquidity drought continues, promotions are taking longer, compensation rates are flatlining, and firms are even deflating titles.
From our conversations, there are really four main paths we’re seeing for these people who want to try something different:
Starting a company: It’s never been a better time to start a company, and some investors want to get in on this from the other side of the table.
Joining a company: VCs have the benefit of knowing what portfolio companies are trending in the right direction, and some of them are joining the breakouts (usually in some form of business development / sales / partnerships role).
Lateral move to safer shops: Joining a CVC or family office is much less risky (only one LP to worry about + usually investing off balance sheet), but most of these groups are also not hiring.
Spinning out to start their own fund: Principal and partner-level folks are seeing the most opportunity spinning out, betting on themselves, and owning the GP. Speaking from experience, the fundraising market is brutal, but some are still getting to first close.
Together with Delve
SOC 2 that doesn’t suck
There’s a dozen compliance platforms out there - but they don’t understand YOU (at least not like Delve does).
Most give you a checklist and some APIs. All of them will upsell you on every service under the sun. None of them understand what you actually need - helping you get your enterprise deal done.
Delve gets you fully compliant with SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR — in 15 hours or less. And their security experts will get on the Zoom call and help you close your deals. We’re not just a software platform - we’re a partner with a promise.
Need proof?
Lovable: Got SOC 2 in 20 hours
11x: Saved 143 hours and unlocked $2.3M ARR
Bland AI: Got SOC 2 and unlocked $500k ARR in 7 days
Pick the right compliance partner from the start ...
(Plus, they’ll ship you Airpods Pro on us when you get fully-compliant :)
TWEET
LINKS
📈 Patterns Across 5 Years of YC Investing: Tomasz Tunguz charts the patterns and finds the significant growth isn’t in speculative tech, but pragmatically in essential tools for manufacturing, security, and B2B
👨💻 Fully Remote Startups are on the Decline: Dylan Hughes of Market Insights @ Sequoia shares the data of a sharp drop in fully remote private companies driven by tax complexity, more localized talent, security/IP risks, and pressure from investors
% How Much of Your Company Should You Expect to Sell in Each Round?: The Head of Insights @ Carta, posted a chart that show what the market is today
🥣 Too Hungry To Eat: Mostly Metrics shares the 3 most common bandwidth constraints at fast growing companies
🔬 Can You Be a Good Micromanager?: First Round Review put together a tactical guide on when to wade into the minutia, and how to step back to empower your team
HEADLINES
SEC opens the VC door a bit more for retail investors (Pitchbook)
After a string of successes, early-stage fund Felicis raises fresh $900M (TechCrunch)
Zombie fund era is pushing more VCs to take a career pivot (Pitchbook)
Lessons From Building A $190 Million AI Venture Studio That Works (Fortune)
COMMUNITY
“The only membership that pays for itself” 🤝
Here’s a list of things tier-one investors have access to:
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
Usually that takes 5 years minimum (at least for us), but usually it takes even longer.
That’s why we built this - to speed up the onramp for private investors serious about giving themselves an advantage in the venture game.
2,500 other investors from places like Bessemer, Insight, Accel, and Founders Fund already use it, and we think you should too.
MEMOS
Outtake: Thoughtful cyber agents to secure high-profile people
HumanLayer: Human-in-the-loop agents
Chima: Interoperability for AI agents
Superpower: The all-in-one subscription for preventative healthcare
Documenso: The DocuSign killer
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
(Founder @ Confluence.VC | GP @ Outlaw)
