Read if you want an investment from us or invest with us.
I soft launched our Fund I @GainVentures. The first question from potential limited partners (LP's) and targets was how do you make investment decisions? Smart question!
LP's want to know how do I stand out, startups want to know how to receive investments from our Fund I.
Simple answer would be - we invest in our startup pitch competition winners. That's good for startups - the path for them is clear:
submit your pitch: https://bit.ly/gainpitch
purchase a ticket to upcoming pitch competition: https://lu.ma/gain
prepare for the pitch, arrive on time, and perform better than 7-8 other projects
if you win collect your prize, provide info for the investment memo
get vetted by investment committee, receive investment
if else repeat 6 months later
For LP's that's not enough, they want thesis, conviction, alpha explanation, something how I come up with the idea that this particular startup would be a hit.
I have a triangulation method based on the information from academia, investors, and startups:
I follow a number of professor to understand what's going to happen in the future. I wish I had taken this principle much more serious in the past. For example, Anders Tallberg a professor at @Hanken_fi taught us in 2006 about bitcoin, agentic AI, all the tech that is hyping right now. Now I am attending annually @initc3org and @DAatDuke to keep up.
I look at what other VC's are doing: we have a bot in our @telegram channel with daily news about fundraising -https://bit.ly/web3deals. Part of this process is also integrated in our pitch competitions - VC's vote for contestants and give insights on which projects they would vet.
Startup founders pitching ideas show me their characters (we are monitoring some founders from 2021). I could tell who is likely to succeed based on their character, meeting 1,000 - 3,000 founders per year since 2020 I have enough of a dataset to trust my internal feeling.
To summarize: what would be hot I take from Academia, what others thinking is hot I get from VC's, who is worth pursuing the idea I get from meeting founders.
It is a robust system? Of course, that's why family offices, fund of funds, and high net worth individuals should give us their money.
Is there an exception from the rules? Yes, there are might be 3! number of exception. I am going to demonstrate you an exception from principle #3 - @antix_in.
The decision process:
From @camharvey's lectures I got a simple formula that resonates with everyone Web3= Web2 + DeFi. Simple and comprehensive. What does it mean? It means if you take our DeFi component in the form of Decentralized Identity (DID) you'll have an internet full of bots. I am betting against this future because I believe in positive impact of human interaction on society. I get connected deeply with this topic. Principle #1 in tact.
Other VC's are investing in DID, DeFi, AI, so I understand it's a hot topic.
A founder didn't pitch at our pitch competition, but attended one of our investor soirees where I saw him interacting with other investors. I saw @cyganovroman in the action, and I can tell for a founder that had previous successful exits and raised 8m+ for the current startup he had zero arrogance, maximum charisma, and constant request for feedback.
So I knew it's the future, VC's are excited about the space, but the founder didn't win our pitch competition, he was introduced by my network.
Now couple of months later, @antix_in is already performing better than ChatGPT model 5. @Ai_or_Not is detecting a version of me by chat GPT as likely AI generated, and likely real generated by @antix_in and @cyganovroman.
Future is already here. Follow @antix_in and join the beta waitlist today → https://aige.in.
Applying AI from @ChatGPTapp and @antix_in to my photo from LinkedIn and verifying results with www.aiornot.com @Ai_or_Not
Our next conference is TGEsummit.com - a no panels conference to prepare founders for TGE on 9/15 in NYC at Cornell Tech.
CU soon,
Sergey