Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Evans: Startups outside OpenAI cannot skip sequential revenue growth stages

David Evans · Harnessing AI through Seed-Stage Investments: Insights from David Evans of Sentiero Ventures · Jun 2, 2025 · at 11:24

David Evans, Managing Partner at Sentiero Ventures, discusses how his background as an entrepreneur informs how he evaluates early-stage software companies.

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“You go from zero to a million to 5,000,005 million to ten million dollars, but you don't sort of skip steps in the middle. And there's this common misconception in venture capital that you somehow just wake up one day and you're a hundred million dollars a year company. While that does happen, you do have your edge cases like open AI of the thousands of companies that are successfully venture funded every year, they follow that one foot in front of the other process.”

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