Invest in Lines, Not Dots
Suster's most famous mental model: every founder-investor interaction is a dot, and investors gain conviction from the line those dots draw over time. Argues founders should meet investors months before raising and show progress against stated plans.
Dear White Venture Capitalists: If you're reading this, it's (almost!) too late.
The viral 2015 essay, written while Hamilton was broke and pitching her fund, calling out venture's failure to fund underrepresented founders. It directly led to her first LP check and the founding of Backstage Capital.
Debt is Coming
Danco argues that recurring-revenue businesses funding predictable growth with dilutive equity is a historical accident, and predicts the rise of revenue-based and debt financing for startups. Sparked a wide industry debate.
The Anti-Portfolio: Honoring the companies we missed
Bessemer's famous public list of the legendary companies it passed on, with self-deprecating explanations ('friend rented her garage to Google's founders; David asked how he could leave the house without going near it').
Ban Warm Introductions!
Johnson's much-debated argument that the warm-intro requirement is not just exclusionary but bad investing: it selects for network proximity over merit, and firms serious about returns should build open top-of-funnel instead.
The Equity Equation
The 1/(1-n) rule: give up n% of your company only when the trade makes the remaining stake worth more than the whole was before. Applies the same math to investors, hires, and co-founders.
Black Swan Farming
Graham explains power-law returns from the investor side: the best ideas look like bad ideas, YC's returns come from a handful of companies, and even professionals can't reliably pick winners at the time of investment.
How I Raised My $11.5M VC Fund
Yin documents raising Hustle Fund I with funnel numbers: hundreds of LP conversations, conversion rates, and tactics. Fundraising for a fund mirrors a startup raise, and she shows the whole pipeline including the rejections.
Overdosing on VC: Lessons from 71 IPOs
A seed VC analyzes 71 tech IPOs and finds no correlation between capital raised and outcome quality: the most efficient companies returned more per dollar than the most funded. Argues overcapitalization is a drug with real side effects.
Financing Options for Startups (MBA Mondays)
The index post for Wilson's MBA Mondays series covering every startup financing option: friends and family, angels, convertible debt, venture debt, preferred rounds, and when each fits.
How Much Funding Is Too Little? Too Much?
Part of Andreessen's legendary 2007 startup guide, written as a founder before a16z existed: how to size a raise against milestones and market windows, the pathologies of too little money and the subtler pathologies of too much.
Is It Fair To Tell Founders 'Just Execute And You'll Be Fine' When We Know It's Not A Level Playing Field?
A sitting VC interrogates his own industry's meritocracy narrative: standard fundraising advice assumes network access and pattern-matching benefits that underrepresented founders don't get, and he discusses what honest advice looks like instead.
The growing dissonance between two business models (SaaS and VC)
A SaaS-focused VC admits the venture model's power-law needs are increasingly mismatched with how most healthy SaaS companies actually grow, and explores what that means for founders choosing capital.