Ed Sim
Founder & Managing Partner, boldstart ventures. On 1 show, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderauthor@edsim ↗LinkedIn ↗boldstart.vc ↗
Ed Sim specializes in inception- and seed-stage investments in enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, SaaS, and AI, having backed companies such as Snyk, Protect AI, Kustomer, Clay, and Superhuman at formation. He previously co-founded Dawntreader Ventures and publishes the newsletter What's in AI/Infra/VC.
1shows
3appearances
88statements
24resolved
11supported
3contradicted
46%fully supported
23said about them ↓ Everything Ed Sim said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Sim: 2024 IPOs require cashflow breakeven, 30% growth, and Rule of 40
“If you're gonna go public, I think you've gotta be cashflow breakeven. I think you have to have, you know, 30% plus growth, which is probably what high growth is right now. You've gotta be moving towards a rule of 40 or 50 with slanted more towards growth than…”
Sim: 2024 is the year zero-interest-rate startups face severe market fallout
“This is the year that the shit's hitting the fan because, you know, you can only extend runway so much and it doesn't mean much if you're not growing.”
Sim: There is a massive valuation bubble in inception-stage startup rounds
“I think there's a massive bubble with what I call inception stage.”
Sim: Meta's acquisition of Kustomer would not be approved by regulators today
“Fuck no. No way. And by the way, it had nothing to do with anything other than they hated Zuckerberg, right?”
Sim: 25% of tech company revenue previously came from selling to startups
“Probably 25% of all this revenue from all these tech companies was selling to other startups. That shit vaporized, dude.”
Sim: The 2024 venture capital vintage will produce incredible returns in five years
“But the firms that are making capital calls in 20, 24, putting dollars to work. I think this is going to be an amazing vintage because people are valuation adjusted. I think founders have the religion of the ones starting from now. And I think this is going to…”
Sim: Great opportunities persist for investing in Israeli security and infrastructure startups
“I think that as people back away from Israel, cause they fearful of kind of what's happening there, I'm still seeing amazing teams there. And I think there'll be great opportunities to keep putting dollars to work in security and infrastructure deals in Israel…”
Ed Sim: Billion-dollar multi-stage VC funds stopped growth investing in 2022
“The spigot dried out last year, all the big multi-stage firms with a billion dollar plus funds stopped investing in growth.”
Sim: Boldstart pushes down seed round sizes to test founders
“I'll lead you around now if you want three, but not at six. So they come back to us, you know, a few days later and like, you know what? How about four? And the reason I do that Harry is because I want to test them. I want to test them to make sure that they a…”
Sim: Optimal Modern Seed Venture Funds Must Be $150M to $250M
“I think a fund size between one 52 50 for doing this in a highly concentrated position with ownership and doing it in a way that allows you to write bigger checks after the discovery round to help a classic round, you know, raise a little more of an extension …”
Sim: Seed and pre-seed investors take less risk over time
“And then the pre-seed category was created because seed, seed investors weren't taking as much risk. And now the pre-seed investors aren't taking as much risk, which is why I'm saying let's do inception investing.”
Sim: Boldstart will never fund AI startups spending mostly on Nvidia
“You will never find both start, for example, finding companies where, you know, they're raising 20 or thirty million dollars, and two thirds of that money goes to NVIDIA.”
Ed Sim: AI is transformational but making money will be extremely hard
“I think this whole AI thing, frankly, I think AI is the most transformational thing that we've, that we're ever going to see in a long time. However, I still think it's really fucking hard to make money there.”
Ed Sim: Boldstart will not fund AI seed rounds at $100M post-money
“Chasing anything with a dot AI in their domain or an AI thing, I think is insane. However, I do think there's some opportunities there, but I'm not going to be funding these things at a hundred posts.”
Ed Sim: AI hype mirrors dot-com bubble and $100M seed portfolios will fail
“I just think that this is just like I saw in the internet bubble. Everything had a .com on it back in it, because I saw that. I lived through that shit. And we're gonna see the same thing. There are gonna be some massive companies built, no doubt, but it's not…”
Ed Sim: Growth funds returning 1x on peak deals will outperform peers
“So I guess what I'm trying to say is I think those growth kind of funds that put the money at the peak I think the ones that deliver one X or slightly above will probably do very well. We'll be above, you know, cause there'll be a lot of ones that are underwat…”
Ed Sim: Venture money chasing LLMs will be vaporized
“Let's just say the money chasing all these LLMs, there'll be a lot of money vaporized for sure.”
Ed Sim: $30M to $50M inception rounds are bonkers and irrational
“I mean, as I said, I'm looking at the inception rounds, right? I laid out a framework from zero to zero to six, zero to eight, zero to 10. But you know, you're getting 30, 40, fifty million dollar, you know, inception rounds done. And I think it's just bonkers…”
Ed Sim: High-growth tech companies will never see 35x-40x multiples again
“So do I think we're going to move back to one of 35 to 40 for companies greater, going greater than 40%? Never again.”
Sim: The era of late-stage tech startups growing 100% YoY is over
“The years of companies at the later stages going 100% year over year are over.”
Sim: Seed valuations were the only startup stage to increase since 2021
“There's data from Carta that shows you that if you look at priced rounds from Q one of 20, 21 compared to, let's say Q four of last year, the only round that increased in valuation Was the seed round”
Sim: Loom sold for under $1B after a $1.5B peak 2021 valuation
“At the end of last year, I'm not in the room with Loom, but that last round valuation was at 1.5 billion dollars, right? That was led in 20, 21, and they sold for nine 99 or something, nine 50, right?”
Sim: Palo Alto Networks paid $200M to $400M for startups with $2M ARR
“Look at all the stuff that Palo Alto bought. A lot of those companies had two to three million dollars of AR getting sold for two, three, four hundred million dollars, right?”
The other half of the tape: Ed Sim's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 23 times in 11 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 16Rahul Vohra 3Guy Podjarny 2Hussein Kanji 1Adam Besvinick 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 23
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 3 mentions in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Superhuman's Rahul Vohra on How To Measure Product Market Fit, How To Construct A Process To Increase It & How To Implement A Strong Feedback and Reporting Cycle To Sustain It
- 20VC: Inside The Mind of A Leading LP: How LPs Evaluate New Fund Managers on Everything from First Meeting to Portfolio Construction To Fees and Carry with Lisa Edgar, Managing Director @ Top Tier Capital Partners
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2016 2 mentions in 1 episode
2015 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
- 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures
- 20 VC FF 025: Crowdfunding Gimlet Media and Why The Nature Of Startup Equity Is Changing with Erin Glenn, CEO @ Betaworks' backed, Quire
- every mention in 2015, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ed's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, boldstart ventures | 3 | 88 | 46% 11/24 | full record on 20VC → |