Co-Founder & Partner @NextViewVC Seed Investor: @attentivemobile @TripleLiftHQ @thredUP @ParsecTeam AI is disrupting VC: carriedawayvc.substack.com
New York / Boston
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The first stock I ever bought was a chain of giant sneaker superstores called Just For Feet. And I lost every dollar.
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The first stock I ever bought was a chain of sneaker superstores called Just For Feet. I lost every dollar.
It taught me the difference between a view and an edge, and that difference is about to decide which VC firms survive AI.
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In venture I do have an edge, built over 20 years. What keeps me up now: does it survive the AI age?
The models are a commodity, rented by everyone from the same few labs. Your competitor is calling the identical one. So where does an edge even live?
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Where the model can't reach: the hypothesis no one else is testing, and the record of every call you've made and scored.
You rent the model. You own the judgment.
The intelligence is for rent. The insight is not.
My latest Carried Away post:
carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
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David @ NextView retweeted
Exciting news! Today we're announcing our investment in @fambotAI, an AI chief of staff for parents, alongside our friends at @_baukunst 🤖💜
More on the round, the company, and the problem they're solving below 🧵👇
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Every AI tool being sold into venture right now is a running coach.
A sharper plan for an athlete whose ceiling is fixed. The plan around the engine gets sharper. Yet the same old VC engine stays exactly what it was.
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I've run the same half marathon repeatedly for a decade, chasing a time I've never been able to hit. Two seasons of AI coaching wrote genuinely better plans than I ever did. I still didn't beat my old number. The constraint was never the plan. It was me!
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That's the trap inside "AI makes our partners more productive." The gains are real, yet incremental, because the athlete was always the ceiling.
Running is a domain where the human is genuinely the point. Venture only assumes it is.
carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
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AI is forcing every venture firm to do what Radiohead did in 1999: put down the instrument that made them famous.
Same musicians. New instruments. Most of the industry is getting it wrong.
Made with AI
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The musician is durable. The instrument is disposable.
The musicianship is the judgment, the eye for a company worth backing. The instrument is whatever you do all day to apply it.
The easy AI firm keeps playing guitar and adds a synth in the back. It loses.
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The VC firms that come through this AI disruption won't be the ones that hire AI specialists to play alongside the partners. They'll be the ones where the partners put the guitar down.
Full Carried Away blog post:
carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
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1/ Every AI move in venture is another layer on the old structure: a tool feeding the same funnel, a model pre-screening what associates screened.
The buried premise is that partner judgment was scarce. That's what AI ends. The test: does the rationing structure survive it?
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2/ Don't automate the firm you have. Build the one you'd build today from scratch.
Then walk your judgment and your brand onto open ground, and leave the old firm standing as the museum.
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3/ Two new Carried Away posts, out today.
Part I, A Museum of Itself: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
Part II, Outside the Walls: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
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The best read on where AI in venture actually stands. Its most honest finding: what holds firms back isn't the tools they lack, it's the partner time to make a tool their own.
That's the part you can't buy.
My new blog post, Some Assembly Required: carriedawayvc.substack.com/p…
The 2026 Data Driven VC Landscape Report is here, the most comprehensive look yet at how leading VC firms use AI and automation to compete.
345 firms mapped, up almost 50% from last year. Top 100 Thought Leaders ranked.
Thank you to our partners @ExaAILabs, @foresight_data, @harmonic_ai, and @vestberry, to our 60,000+ community, and to everyone who submitted nominations and survey responses.
Download the report in the comments and see where you stand as a Data Driven VC. ⬇️
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Every venture firm keeps a private list of the great companies it passed on.
The more painful list is the one no one keeps: the ones it never saw at all.
The first was written by judgment. The second by the calendar.
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Venture could always buy coverage. Associates, accelerators, scout networks. But every one is a lossy copy of partner judgment.
What AI changes is the copy: codified judgment duplicates at constant fidelity.
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