Semil Shah
Founding General Partner, Haystack. On 1 show, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderoperator@semil ↗LinkedIn ↗semilshah.com ↗
He founded early-stage venture capital firm Haystack in 2013, expanding it to hundreds of millions in assets under management across multiple funds. A frequent Forbes Midas Seed List honoree, he is known for early-stage investments in companies such as DoorDash, Figma, Instacart, HashiCorp, and Carta.
1shows
4appearances
82statements
9resolved
4supported
3contradicted
44%fully supported
33said about them ↓ Everything Semil Shah said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Shah: Seed valuations do not matter to multi-stage mega-funds
“The pricing, when you just have three people and they've got a prototype doesn't really matter right now. So if they want four on 20 or four on 25 or four on 30, it just doesn't matter. We can deal with that later.”
Shah: Future Haystack funds will remain capped under $100 million
“Our next funds, by the way, will modestly grow, but I still think, you know, for what we do, it's gotta be under a hundred million dollars.”
Shah: Forcing Haystack to lead every deal lowers portfolio quality
“If we tried to lead everything, we would lower the I think the quality of the portfolio that we're in.”
Shah: Scaling seed funds to $100M+ breaks collaborative syndicate dynamics
“If I had a hundred, fifty million dollar fund, that whole collaboration layer of how we work would change, which would then set off a chain reaction of how the deal flow would change and how we would have to operate with the companies would change.”
Shah: Raising institutional capital requires organic industry chatter and name-checking
“I think that like, if you're not getting name checked by institutional LPs and other people aren't talking about what you're doing, it's almost impossible to raise institutional capital, whether it's a three million dollar check or thirty million dollar check …”
Shah: Union Square Ventures is the best pound-for-pound VC fund
“I just, I follow a lot of honestly what USV does of like try to learn. I think they're the best pound for pound fund in the world both operationally and in every way.”
Shah: I blocked two LPs from re-investing in future Haystack funds
“I've blocked two LPs from investing in, in future funds.”
Shah: LPs' biggest mistake was permitting fund size escalation and blind pools
“I think on the LP side, the sin was going along with fund size escalation and allowing and enabling those firms to allocate within those funds. So I believe like In having separate vehicles for separate separate activities, because that's the best governor. An…”
Shah: Only 50 to 75 VC funds globally can effectively guide IPOs
“I think that there are a set of funds, maybe like 50 to 75 VC funds that in partnership with other funds and entrepreneurs know how to guide a company towards a big outcome or a public offering.”
Shah: Multiple startups hold $50M+ cash without product-market fit
“There's probably multiple, multiple companies with like over fifty million dollars of cash with no product market fit.”
Shah: Peak 3x venture funds should realistically be written down to 1.5x
“And we would say, oh, you have a three X fund, Samil, what is it now? I'd probably say it's one and a half X fund. You know, I don't think that that's out of bounds.”
Shah: Top tech alumni founders are bypassing seed funds for multi-stage firms
“This group of people right now, they're voting with their feet, and they're bypassing seed.”
Shah: Sequoia or Lightspeed seed funding does not guarantee follow-on rounds
“It sort of like a false narrative that like, if you take a seed from a Sequoia or you take a seed from a Lightspeed, they're just going to continue to do your next rounds.”
Shah: Multi-stage VCs require 10% seed ownership to justify partner time
“What I do think is that it's tough for one of these larger VC firms to warrant a partner's time and brand experience extension to a seed round unless they own about 10% as an option, because what you're saying then is like, I'm going to hold 10% in pro rata, a…”
Shah: Seed VCs should outsource Series A and B follow-on decisions
“If your competency is seeded, And then you follow on an A or B. You don't really have the competency as a manager to assess whether that's a good A deal, whether that's a good B deal. So part of what you need to do as a manager is outsource that decision to th…”
Shah: Platform maturity made consumer startups capital inefficient post-2016
“And so my intuition was a platform maturity of the iPhones, of the app store on iOS, of Facebook, of Google, of Snap and Pinterest kind of hit a ceiling where I felt the cost of acquiring these customers in the LTV, according to it, would make the businesses v…”
Shah: Early venture outcomes are random, making price discipline critical
“When we all invest so early, the outcomes are completely random, they're completely unknown, and so we have to kind of take a cohort basis. And what you have now is especially in the Bay Area, such a free flow of capital and a loosening of norms around how fun…”
Seed LP proxies may not correlate with actual fund returns
“The problem with all that that we're going to go through probably in the next three or four years is those may not be correlated with results.”
LPs mistakenly apply traditional VC reserve models to seed funds
“I think the majority of LPs have taken the history of how VCs, institutional VCs, A, B, and C reserve and bolted that on to seed, whereas I think seed is a completely different asset class.”
Early-stage VCs should maximize upfront ownership instead of heavy reserves
“I think early stage investors have to do the same thing. I think a few can and will be really good at investing in a lot of things and then pouncing on the things that are working, but most people won't have enough bandwidth to manage that.”
Startups will not see capital-fueled immense growth for three years
“And I think we've exited this period where companies are kind of on steroids with capital and growing at immense rates. That's just not going to happen in the next three years again.”
Shah dislikes legal AI, but invested in Ironclad for Jason Boehmig
“I actually hate the space that he's in. He's kind of in the legal kind of AI space. I don't like that market, but Jason is so compelling that it's just a pleasure to work with someone like him.”
Semil Shah: Attracting Follow-On Capital Is an Investor's Top Priority
“Probably the most important thing any investor can do is attract follow-on capital for their investments.”
The other half of the tape: Semil Shah's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 33 times in 17 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 22Barry Eggers 4Katie Stanton 2Jason Lemkin 2Adam Besvinick 2Mike Mignano 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 33
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2022 6 mentions in 1 episode
2020 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: The Implications of a Biden vs a Trump Administration on Venture and Startups, How The Rise of Rolling Funds, SPACs and Solo Capitalists Will Impact Venture & What We Can Do To Swing the Race Pendulum in VC with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Ligh
- 20VC: Moxxie Ventures' Katie Stanton on What It Takes To Raise A First Time Fund As A Solo GP, The Entrance of Multi-Stage Funds Into Seed Rounds and The Inverse Relationship of Those That Fund Diverse Managers and Those That Say They Do
- 20VC: Lessons from 150 Angel Investments into the likes of Carta, Gusto, Airtable and Superhuman, Creating Algorithms and Models For Investing At Seed & Why Younger Investors Have An Advantage When It Comes To Finding Deals Early with Jude Gomila, Angel I
- 20VC: Hopin, The Breakout Startup of 2020 on Scaling from 10 to 230 People and $174M in Funding in just 13 Months, The 3 Phases of Startup Scaling, How To Lead Remote Teams Effectively, The Future of Events Post-COVID and more
- 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: How To Drop The BS and Relationship Build With Investors, What Investors Can vs Cannot Help Your Company With & Why When There Is Doubt There Is No Doubt In Hiring
- 20VC: Carta Founder Henry Ward on Why The Best Companies Are Not Product Led But Distribution Led, 3 Requirements Needed For A New Market/Investment To Be Exciting and Why Small Markets Are So Attractive
- 20VC: The Framework LPs Use To Assess Emerging Managers, What Concerns and Excites LPs in Potential Opportunities & The Current State of Seed Today with Hunter Somerville, Partner @ Greenspring Associates
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
- 20VC: The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside John Doerr, How To Optimize The Speed of Investment Decision-Making & Why Saying No Graciously Is The Most Important Thing with Shabih Rizvi, Founding Partner @ Gradient Ventures
- 20VC: Why Founding Your First Company Is Like Learning Through A Thousand Paper Cuts, The 3 Core Phases to Product Adoption and Why Valuation Obsession Must Change In The Valley with Armon Dadgar, Founder & CTO @ Hashicorp
- 20VC: Why This Is Just The Start for Consumer Mobile, 3 Lessons China Taught About How To Invest Better In The US & How To Think About The Opportunity Cost of Capital Deployment with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Semil's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founding General Partner, Haystack | 4 | 82 | 44% 4/9 | full record on 20VC → |