O'Driscoll: Mega-funds overpay at seed to purchase Series B options
Rory O'Driscoll · OpenAI Restructuring: Who Wins and Who Loses & Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 30, 2025 · at 19:30
Rory O'Driscoll explains how multi-billion dollar mega-funds maintain a structural advantage over smaller seed funds.
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“The first is they can literally decide they're not pricing this round, they're buying an option on the next round. If Harry's trying to make his money on seed, and they're simply trying to set themselves to make the money on the B, they can, by definition, pay a higher price, because any option always trades higher than the intrinsic value of the asset in question by virtue of the time value. So they can pay, quote unquote, a stupid price, right? Because they have a different model.”
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