The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 47 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rob Go: Endowments Are Often the First LPs to Flee in Downturns
“You know, there was a time when folks used to say that, like, endowments and foundations are the most robust long-term partners that exist on the planet. It is just not true. I've heard so many cases where markets turn, things change, and the first ones to lea…”
Rob Go: Funds 2 and 3 Struggle to Convert Fund-of-Funds LPs
“Weirdly, when you're in the middle, you're neither new, nor are you so well known that you have, like, a great brand. Fund to funds are not as good. So what I found is that, like, funds, you know, Three-ish, two to three, it's actually harder to get a new fund…”
Rob Go Predicts Multistage VC Funds Will Eventually Abandon Seed Investing
“I don't think that it will persist because at some point the multistage funds will say, hey, it's not really worth, worth our time and effort to invest at this stage. And, you know, they'll, they'll turn their attention to later stage rounds where you write bi…”
Rob Go: Best Seed Opportunities Are Non-AI Companies and Non-Pedigreed Founders
“I think there's actually a lot of opportunity out there for non-consensus thinking. I think there are a lot of companies that aren't getting very much love because they're not AI. The teams aren't fancy founders that came from well-known companies that are jus…”
Rob Go: Late-Stage VC Investors Will Suffer Badly in Market Correction
“I think there are a lot of later stage investors that are gonna get their hands slapped pretty badly as you know, the value, the late stage valuations that work Get worked out in this market.”
NextView Passed on DraftKings Due to Misjudging Market Size
“I knew he was special, and he walked into our offices to pitch DraftKings along with two other extraordinary co-founders, and we passed, not because of, like, regulation, but because we misunderstood the market size.”
Rob Go: Energy and Hustle Give Young VCs a Competitive Advantage
“But I really believe venture is a young person's game. Like the amount we were talking about this before you started recording, right? Like the amount of like energy and hustle that you're able to deploy as a young person is truly a competitive advantage.”
NextView Ranks Portfolios Quarterly to Prevent Hype-Driven Follow-On Decisions
“We basically do a ranking of the portfolio every quarter from a perspective of where we want to deploy or follow on capital. And we do that because we want to make the decision apart from a financing opportunity, right? Because what ends up happening is when s…”
Rob Go: Single Mega-Funds Create Worse Alignment Than Separate Opportunity Funds
“I think the third is like, there's an alternative, which is we just raise a bigger fund overall. But I think everybody kind of loses in that case, right? Because, you know, it's hard to deploy that much money. The fees effectively are higher if you don't do, b…”
Rob Go: Unequal VC Partnerships Lead to Mid-Fund Renegotiations
“We felt like if it wasn't equal, there'd be too much of an incentive to renegotiate depending on like how things are going in the fund.”
Rob Go: Emerging VCs Should Refuse Anchor LP Requests for Special Economics
“I wouldn't do it. I think it's a sign of strength not to take that deal. It's not very typical in venture, I would say. I, I've heard it's more common in private equity or hedge funds. And so if you're talking to an LP that's very used to anchoring hedge funds…”
Rob Go: Scarcity Mindset Hindered Boston Venture Market Compared to West Coast
“Part of why the Boston venture market at the time was not thriving the way the west coast market was is there's a little bit of a scarcity mindset here, a little bit more of a protective attitude towards everything”
Rob Go: Ideal Portfolio Construction Is Theoretically 100% in One Winner
“The best portfolio construction in the world is to invest in one company and put all your money into the first round and be right. And every derivative from that basically is allowing for uncertainty and risk.”
Rob Go: A Base of Small LP Checks Creates an Anti-Fragile Fund
“I generally am a believer in like building an anti-fragile LP LP base. And so in a weird way, like, even though I said earlier, I really, you know, I don't mind concentration. I also don't mind a lot of small checks if you can handle it from a timing standpoin…”
NextView Backed Hit Firm Attentive via an Uncapped Convertible Note
“One of our biggest hits is attentive. And we invested in an uncapped note and that changed my mind because we never would have done it before.”
Rob Go: Mega-funds struggle with $1M seed deal math
“When a business is looking to raise, you know, a million dollars or even less, it becomes very difficult for you know, a multi-hundred million dollar, you know, nearly billion dollar fund make the math and the time investment work for that kind of a company.”
Rob Go: Seed rounds have replaced traditional Series A financing
“Over the last six years, what we've seen is that, you know, seed investing has really essentially become the new, you know, series A round of financing for the companies.”
Go: Raising excessive money pre-PMF hurts focus and breeds overhead
“There seems like there's no downside to raising more money, but there actually is. And the downside is actually around a lack of focus scrappiness And over investment in overhead before there's really the sort of core machinery to support it.”
Go: Raising large seed rounds pre-PMF shows no obvious outperformance
“There isn't a really obvious trend that companies that raise a lot of money pre-product market fit end up doing much better than the ones that don't.”
Go: Evangelical Christianity Is Very Unusual in the Tech Industry
“I'm kind of in a habit of, like, this is very out of vogue, but, like, I'm a, you know, evangelical Christian guy which is very unusual in the tech scene.”
Rob Go: LPs Spend 90% of Time on Decks and Track Records
“But like, really, I think most LPs, they spend like 90% of the time on the deck. And the track record, and that's all there is.”
NextView Launched via Minimum Viable First Close Before Institutional LPs
“You basically find the people who are willing to say yes and just trust you. You try to tally up as much as possible, preferably enough to do a minimum viable first close, close that capital, get into business, and allow yourself time to be able to cultivate t…”
Rob Go: Avoid Letting a Single LP Constitute 50% of a Fund
“I think 50% is kind of extreme. I think it's probably unusual that an LP would be willing to do that without some special controls or economics that I would recommend probably steering away from for the most part.”
Rob Go: Individual LP Champions Matter More Than Institutional Brand
“I actually think it's, what's more important is the individual who's there. You want somebody who is empowered, not at the very end of their career, because there's a risk that they're going to leave, and then you're going to be adopted by somebody else. And s…”
NextView Lost an Influential Institutional LP at the Last Minute
“We had a pretty influential institution drop us in our third fund. And they did it the ninth hour.”
Rob Go: Timing Is the Single Biggest Factor in LP Commitments
“The number one factor in, in whether an LP says yes or no is just timing, right?”
Rob Go: Emerging VCs Shouldn't Force Meetings With Uninterested LPs
“You want to scrape and fight really hard to get great introductions, but if somebody doesn't want to take a meeting, like, there's no, there's not that much value in, like, forcing it.”
NextView Intentionally Uses Incomplete Data Rooms to Test LP Engagement
“We have since changed that where we do have a data room, but the data room is a preliminary data room and it is intentionally incomplete. And the reason it's intentionally incomplete is I want to see an LP. If we offer the data room, I want to know they looked…”
Rob Go's Fundraising Rule: Follow Up Twice, Then Stop Proactive Outreach
“I have a basic belief that it never hurts to ask twice, but I never ask three times, right? So if there's an email that doesn't get responded to, I don't feel bad about asking again. After two, after I'm ignored twice, that's okay. I just move on.”
Rob Go: Pension Funds and Large LPs Avoid Fund 1 and 2
“There are some groups that are very, very large LPs, and they just want stability, right? They will never invest in a fund one or a fund two, but they love the idea of investing in fund three, four, five or plus, or more with a team that's been together for a …”
Rob Go: Accessing Top Companies Outweighs Strict Deal Terms in VC
“In a power law business, you just want to get into the best companies.”
Go: Growing VC Fund Sizes Create Disconnect With Low-Cost Software Startups
“The cost of starting software businesses had come way down. And the best venture funds had accumulated larger and larger amounts of capital, and so there's this natural disconnect with founders.”
Rob Go: Seed investors guide startups to product-market fit
“The job of a seed investor is to invest in a company before product market fit, and try to take the company to the other side of product market fit and into sort of early validation and early growth.”
Go: Pre-PMF software startups should raise 18 months of runway
“I would generally advise for 18 months. I think the lever is less sort of the time, and it's more the headcount.”
Go: 30% dilution pre-PMF hurts founder leverage in future rounds
“Like selling a third of your company before product market fits seems pretty painful. Versus trying to sell, you know, 15, 20% of the company for less money, but getting you to a point where you have a lot more leverage the next time you have to go to raise, r…”
Rob Go: Pre-Seed Funds Now Serve Original Purpose of Seed Investors
“I just think that you know, they're kind of doing what seed investors were kind of meant to do when this whole thing started.”
Go: VC reputation is defined by rejected or failing founders
“The most important aspect is, you know, what do other founders say about you? And not just what do other founders in your portfolio that are the best performing founders, right? Because like every company that's doing great, the, their investors spend a lot of…”
Go: Plus-size apparel is a huge opportunity with broken existing options
“And I think they're going after a huge market opportunity with a market segment that is severely disenfranchised where the existing modes of buying apparel is really, really broken.”
NextView Ventures Operates $135M Seed Fund and $65M Opportunity Fund
“We're currently investing out of our fifth fund. In fact, we have two. We have a seed fund, and we have a opportunity fund. The seed fund is a hundred and thirty-five million. The opportunity fund is sixty-five million.”
NextView Ventures Writes $1M to $3M Checks in Seed Rounds
“We try to write checks between a million to three million dollars into pre-seed and seed rounds.”
NextView LPs Committed to Seed and Opportunity Funds at 2:1 Ratio
“All of our LPs were basically investing two to one from the seed fund to the opportunity fund.”
NextView Signals Fund Timelines to LPs 18 to 24 Months Ahead
“Typically a year, you know, if I think about like our timing, if we're looking to do a first close in say Q one of a given year, we are probably giving pretty clear indication of where our timeframe is at least like 18, if not 24 months before that.”
NextView Fund V Was Easiest Raise Due to Strong DPI
“The last fund was the easiest to raise. So that was the fifth fund. ... Yeah. Yeah. It was a DPI story.”