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Good morning 👋

And welcome back to another week of trying to make money typing on a computer.

We’ve talked in the past about the trend of companies staying private longer.

Today we’re breaking down a post from Josh Kopelman on how that trend changes fund math.

Spoiler: it’s not good.

Here’s the breakdown …

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Today’s highlights

  • Extended fund timelines

  • How VCs come up with their theses

  • Intel reverses course

TOP
"how fast you win" vs. "how much you win"

Josh Kopelman (First Round) has been one of the sharpest venture investors over the past few decades, and he has seen multiple boom and bust periods.

Ignoring the booms and busts, one of the more interesting things happening today is that companies are staying private longer. This is happening for a number of reasons, but the second-order effects are interesting to think through for venture funds.

10-year funds make sense, but 15-year funds do not, and Josh breaks down the math in this thread.

We have written in the past about our thoughts on how this change plays out:

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HEADLINES

  • Cerberus raised nearly $75M for its inaugural VC fund’s first close (Pitchbook)

  • Intel reverses course, opts not to spin out Intel Capital (TechCrunch)

  • Fintech Isn’t Just Back, It’s Being Rearchitected For AI (Crunchbase)

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LINKS

🛃 Obsessing Over Onboarding for 10+ Years—The Architect of Superhuman’s Onboarding Shares His Playbook: Superhuman’s Gaurav Vohra, startup advisor and growth leader, gives a detailed look at how he built and scaled their unique approach to onboarding

🤖 All The Things People Use AI For in 2025: This analysis for Harvard Business Review uses insights from thousands of forum posts

📋 Six AIs—One Prompt—Who Nailed It?: Data-Driven VC reviews the performance of 6 AIs to generate investment memos for an early-stage company

👂 He Spent $40k Building Features No One Wanted—What Every Founder Can Learn: Listen early, build slow and validate constantly

💲 Secondaries 🤝 Seed Funds: The need for secondaries and why “build and hold” is being replaced by “buy and maybe sell”

Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.

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- Clay
(Founder @ Confluence.VC | GP @ Outlaw)

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