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< Back maniacal urgency February 2026 in other words, “super speedy quick” It’s not my natural rhythm to move fast. I’ve always been more methodical, concentrated on outcomes and behaviors rather than the ‘move fast and break things’ ethos of tech. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about venture is how it forces urgency. Everything is fast, and those who move quickly win. For example, founders often ask at the end of a call what the timeline looks like for a decision. It depends on a range of factors, but for us usually averages around three weeks. The incentive is compression in response. Faster responses mean better odds, especially when we’re competing for allocation in a round that’s moving fast. Speed, in a way, denotes seriousness. This holds true for many things. A quick text back from a friend, response time on an email, and the time it takes for a server to greet your table after sitting down. The necessity of the maniacal urgency has burned out any laziness in me. It’s made me brutally honest about what’s realistic to accomplish within a given timeframe and how to maintain quality along the way. Spend more time thinking, writing, and talking to founders; waste less time elsewhere. Previous Next

< Back 2026 themes January 2026 ME 2.0, essentially working?, manufacturing cool, IRL FR, and power density In May, I found myself wanting a place to stick my thoughts. I wasn’t particularly interested in the public forums of Twitter/X or LinkedIn, and while I do a lot of long-form writing, not every idea is ready for that format. I decided to create “chewing on,” a running blog you can read here , which I update periodically with reflections, observations, and opinions. (It is much, much less polished than the below.) Throughout this year, I pulled ideas from chewing on, along with a few others, and shaped them into the themes below. These are the areas where I’ll be spending time in 2026: ME 2.0 Where once our memories lived in scattered notes, photo rolls, and half-recalled ChatGPT threads, personal intelligence systems now promise something more ambitious: continuity. Not just storage, but understanding. Context layered over time, what I’ve read, chosen, forgotten, or avoided, forming a living map of preference and experience. As models move from reactive assistants to ambient companions, the burden of articulation begins to fall away. No more precise prompting. No more explaining what I need, again and again. Instead, systems already know, anticipating intent through accumulated history, emotional signals, and behavioral patterns. A memory becomes less archival and more interpretive. But this raises a deeper question about the authorship of the self. If an external system remembers more faithfully than I do, tracking motivations, inconsistencies, and growth, where does “my” memory end and delegated cognition begin? Does ME 2.0 sharpen identity by reflecting it to us, or subtly rewrite it by deciding what is worth remembering at all? synthesizing the decentralized ( klienklienklien ) essentially working? As AI absorbs more task-level knowledge work, productivity increasingly favors the curious over the credentialed. In this new frame, essential work looks less like execution and more like orchestration. The most valuable operators will sit above swarms of agentic workflows, designing, delegating, and supervising chains of autonomous systems spanning research, operations, and decision-making. Work becomes the management of intent, not the completion of tasks. As agentic tools continue to proliferate across verticals, a second-order layer inevitably emerges: systems to coordinate the systems . Platforms that aggregate, govern, and scale agents–deciding which models act, when they act, and how their outputs compound. Control shifts from individual tools to operating layers. But what becomes of the balance of labor & leverage? When “doing the work” means directing intelligence rather than supplying it, who remains essential, and by what measure? Does productivity accrue to those who command the agents, or to those who design the rules by which they operate? manufacturing cool Can cool be manufactured, or only discovered? For decades, products earned cultural relevance through proximity: who used them, where they appeared, and how slowly they spread. Today, distribution itself has become a creative act. Narrative, placement, and algorithmic amplification now shape what enters the zeitgeist just as much as the product does. As audiences fragment and attention becomes programmable, “cool” is becoming manufacturable. Startups no longer rely on organic adoption alone; they can refine distribution with the same rigor once reserved for product design: aesthetic coherence, influencer adjacency, and cultural timing are levers. This reframes GTM as a form of cultural production (i.e., consumers' cultural diets ). Rather than building for users and hoping for resonance, companies can script relevance, testing, and iterating on taste at scale . Cool becomes less about authenticity in the abstract and more about believability within a specific cultural moment. copy + paste ( charli's substack ) IRL FR There’s a renewed seriousness to the connections, communities, and conversations happening in real life. After years of over-indexing in digital interactions, the marginal utility of online communities is flattening. What’s emerging is demand for IRL FR (in real life, for real). The long tail of Covid-era isolation still lingers, and we know how to connect digitally, but we’re less practiced at reentering community. People want to show up, but there’s a lack of infrastructure to make it easy. This creates space for platforms that don’t compete with IRL interaction, but enable it, tools that aggregate intent, reduce social friction, and make IRL legible and repeatable. The next layer of platforms will scaffold IRL connections. They may sit at the coordination layer owning discovery, scheduling, and identity across offline experiences or at the brand layer, where IRL presence compounds loyalty and LTV. power density As generative AI scales, intelligence is no longer abstract; it is physical. Models, like humans, demand electricity, water, cooling, and land. What once felt like an infinite expansion of software is increasingly constrained by grids, substations, and energy contracts. This has shifted the advantage away from algorithms alone and toward infrastructure fluency. The race to build larger models quietly becomes a race to secure power, driving new data center clusters, stressing local grids, and reshaping how and where intelligence is produced. In response, the stack had begun to adapt. Purpose-built accelerators promise more intelligence per watt. Workloads have been moved across time zones to follow renewable supply. Other projects, like behind-the-meter capacity, private microgrids, and eventually small-scale nuclear, could reshape what “cloud” even means. But how do these tradeoffs resolve? Do we optimize for efficiency, locality, or control? Does access to energy become the true limiter of who gets to build, deploy, and scale the next generation of AI? hungry hungry hippos circa 2025 ( kai williams ) ___ If you are a) building in any of the areas or b) just want to talk about any of these themes, drop me a line at maria[at]redbud[dot]vc Previous Next

< Back my tech stack March 2024 the tools I use every day and the ways I use them. About a year ago, when I began transitioning into full-time employment and venture, I realized I had a steep learning curve ahead of me with adopting new tech workflows. I quickly discovered that Google Docs and Gmail weren’t going to cut it, nor did I really know where to start when it came to tech. :( Working at a small firm means I've had the opportunity to build my own “tech stack.” Over the past few months, I took some of the firm-wide software and added a few of my own tools to build a tech stack that houses all of my work and, frankly, my life. :) These tools allow me to clearly communicate, align priorities, execute, and stay organized. Below is the current lineup/roster of tools that I use every single day and my current favorite use cases and features. Hopefully, you find something that you’ll enjoy. Notion https://www.notion.so/product • $0-$15 per user per month Notion is the most used (and favorite) tool in my tech stack. It is where the big things/initiatives/projects live at work, and it serves as the hub of my personal life as well. Below are 2 of my favorite ways I use Notion. Work: Weekly Standup Agendas Every week, I have a standup with one of the GPs at the fund I work at. It is my responsibility to run through what happened the previous week and share current priorities. Below is a snapshot of the notion view Work: Personal CRM Part of being a VC is meeting a lot of other VCs, and it’s always hard to keep track of who invests in what. I love to meet new people, and my favorite investors always Are hyper-focused on sending deals that meet my firm's thesis Remember something about me/that I enjoy :) I’m getting better at this (still a work in progress), but tracking all the little details in Notion has helped me be more intentional about meetings and deal sharing. Superhuman https://superhuman.com/ • $30 per user per month If you’re not using Superhuman, you should be. Prior to Superhuman, I felt like emails were always getting “lost in the sauce,” and I was always frantically missing something. Since using Superhuman, I haven’t missed an email; it’s cut down my time in my inbox by 75%, and I am able to triage my inbox in the most efficient manner. My favorite features of Superhuman are split inboxes , keyboard shortcuts , snippets , and read statuses . Notion Calendar (frm. Cron) https://www.notion.so/product/calendar • $0 with Notion subscription Calendar management is still a work in progress for me, but Notion Calendar has been an absolute lifesaver. I used to be a die-hard calendly user but had a hard time blocking calls. I found I was wasting a TON of time in random 30 breaks between calls. I use Notion Calendar to send personalized meeting times in time blocks where I am open/want to take calls. It has helped me stack my calls better, avoid calendly reverse engineering/rebooking, and make the most of my daytime. Flow Club https://www.flow.club/ • 7-day free trial, then $33.33/month billed annually or $40/month Flow Club is expensive, but the results/productivity are worth every penny. Flow Club facilitates virtual co-working sessions where you can drop in and get things done! I usually do 1–2 flows per day so that I have dedicated time to work on the tasks that have no end or stuff I've been actively avoiding. It’s great to have small and welcoming groups of accountability partners. Previous Next

< Back 2nd-hand insights October 2025 passed along learnings are like hand-me-down clothes One of the first lessons in venture “pattern matching” is to back founders with domain expertise. These are people who have lived, breathed, and worked in the problem space they are building in. A former HR leader at Facebook building a payroll tool, for example, starts with a sharper reference point than if I started cooking up the next Rippling competitor. That said, great companies are often built by outsiders. With AI lowering the cost of building, the goalposts have moved. I’d argue there’s little lasting “moat” in tech today (more on that another time). What matters is speed and distribution, and this domain knowledge functions like seeing the puzzle before everyone else. You move faster from A to B because you already know which pieces click. spencer bledsoe from survivor , who memorized most likely puzzles prior to his season. he solved this one in 15 seconds. When founders build in an unfamiliar space, they often try to close the gap with “second-hand insights”: advice and patterns borrowed from people who’ve been in the industry. Helpful, yes, but second-hand insights are like hand-me-down clothes: a step behind the trends and a bit ill-fitted. Seond-hand insights carry the original owner’s context and what worked under one set of constraints, incentives, and market timing may not "size" to the present. Relying solely on second-hand insights keeps founders working at a constant disadvantage. You’re waiting to learn the hard way or chasing someone else’s lessons. There’s already enough learning the hard way in startups. The thoughts of others (advisors, investors, etc.) can’t substitute for the founder’s own lived context; without it, those insights don’t compound. he was an advisor with more equity than the CTO for "insights" This is why, as VCs, we hesitate to back teams without a unique angle or background, not because those without the domain experience can’t win, but because at the pre-seed stage, proprietary insight is usually what creates founder conviction. And founder conviction is what creates our conviction that the company could derive a billion-dollar outcome. 1st Hand Insights: “At X, I saw/learned X, that influenced X, which I am now building with X” Second-order effects: Clear articulation around early vision & product “I want to move from X GTM to X GTM just like I did at my previous company/employer.” Second-order effects: Speed to market, robust pipeline of prospects or pilot customers “What most don’t understand is X, because I know this, I am able to do X thing 10x better than X.” Second-order effects: Speed of iteration, revenue ramping post launch 2nd Hand Insights: “Our advisor shared that X was their experience, and so we are trying/doing/experimenting with X.” Second-order effects: Slow speed to launch, multiple versions of product (V1,V2,V3) “The sales cycle is long in X, so we are doing X, because it is how X person did it at X.” Second-order effects: Quick no’s from prospects, prolonged sales or implementation cycles, customer feedback that the problem isn’t “urgent” enough to solve for at this time. “X industry has been historically slow to adopt X, because X” ( when broad, non-specific** ) Second-order effects: Lose to the incumbent or new solutions, slow growth, no customer network effects All of the above is not new – but the gap is widening. I’m watching it in real time. The world is stochastic, and it's better to have your own framework to build on than wait for someone to share theirs. Previous Next

< Back best of 2025 December 2025 the readings & writings Growing up, the monthly arrival of the print version of Time Magazine was always something I looked forward to. Checking the mail and seeing that iconic red border, Time was a consistent part of my young adult reading. It sparked my love for print media, and I believe it is what made me obsessed with the concept of a "best list." I especially looked forward to the “special editions,” like Time 's Person of the Year (now a piece of American iconography), Invention of the Year, and Photo of the Year. I’ll share more reflections on 2025 soon, but I wanted to start with the readings (essays and books) that stood out most. This list captures my personal bests from throughout the year. What I love about revisiting the work that carried the most weight, sparked the most joy, or taught me something lasting is how it reinforces the pursuit of knowledge as a very human act. It keeps my curiosity in motion and compounds in ways that are hard to predict, but easy to feel. So without further ado...the bests readings and writings throughout the year. Essays American Vulcan by Jeremy Stern A portrait of one of the most quietly polarizing figures in tech & defense, Palmer Lucky. I think it’s easy to write off those who operate best on the fringes of a spectrum, and Palmer seems to only operate on the fringes. Stern details Palmer's life in distinct sections, from a homeschooled tinkerer to the founder of Oculus to the founder of Anduril, the largest manufacturer of autonomous systems for security & defense. It’s a rare snapshot into the fringes on which Palmer operates: work, life, family, media, and politics. “I’m maybe not the crusader for truth that people imagine. I am a crusader for vengeance. And if my vengeance can best be served by covering up the crimes of those who have wronged me, then I’ll probably do that. ” “Remember that I’m not a journalist,” he continued. “I don’t have to be objective. I don’t have to be neutral. I can be a propagandist. ” Curious Times by Aravind Srinivas Ages are defined by work, but what happens in the AI age, where knowledge work is slowly being eradicated? Srinivas poses this question that many of us are asking in different ways and answers it quite optimistically: learning will replace knowledge as our dominant economic output. The ability to pose the best questions, learn, and move quickly will be the human elements that define the AI age. Imo, the future belongs to the curious. :) “ Each time the dominant form of work has changed, prosperity has followed those who re-skilled and adapted. Success went to societies that prioritized immediate learning for affected workers and systems of education for their upcoming generations.” Successful People by Sam Altman A small post from Altman’s blog written over 13 years ago. I believe it’s a small window into Altman’s mindset as he builds OpenAI. “…the most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion.” The Art of Understanding What's Going On by Tina He Tina He from Pace Capital is a cut above the rest, and her blog, Fake Pixels, is one of my favorites in the industry. We like to think we understand incentives, truths, and behavior, yet we’re often chasing narratives (especially in AI companies) rather than mechanics. A really refreshing read and clear breakdown of how to actually understand a company by examining its underlying incentives, not the story it wants to tell. “Spotting the gap between surface narratives and hidden incentives helps clarify how these cycles play out and reveals the second- and third-order effects that are often overlooked when abstracting "AI" as a universal fix.” Books The Young VC’s Handbook compiled by Sakib Jamil If you’re a jr. investor and we’ve chatted in the last year, odds are I’ve shown you my battered/well-loved copy of the Young VC’s Handbook. It's the only book that gives you actual tactical advice on how to do your job as an investor, and I reference it incredibly often. Thinking in Bets by Anne Duke A rec from Robbie at mtf . I was initially worried I was about to get knee-deep in some game theory, but what I got was an easy-to-digest guide to choices, biases, echo chambers, continuums, etc. I read this right after learning I’d passed on a deal that later had a16z lead a subsequent round, and I wish I’d read it sooner. I don’t know if that would have changed the outcome, but I do know my decision-making frameworks are a bit stronger now, thanks to Anne. 1491 by Charles C. Mann A pre-Columbian history of the Americas that I breezed through in a week. Mann challenges long-held assumptions, biases, and “facts” about the Americas, drawing on modern anthropological discoveries to dismantle much of the conventional narrative. The book is broken up into three parts: population, culture, and environment. Because this period is often glossed over (or entirely skipped) in K–12 American history curriculum, most of it was new to me and sent me down some good rabbit holes. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin I think a Creative Act has been at the top of countless best-seller lists and everyone’s recommendations since its release in 2023. I’m always drawn to books written by people at the very top of their craft, and Rick Rubin unquestionably qualifies. The book is a quiet, grounding reminder that creativity isn’t a credential or a talent, it’s a way of paying attention to what's around you. You don’t need to be a creative to be creative. Previous Next

< Back rejection January 2024 i’ve spent a fair amount of my life as a young person facing rejection. I’ve spent a fair amount of my life as a young person facing rejection. As a child getting cut from sports teams, as a teen not making it into elite colleges, and as a young adult facing brutal internship/job passes, I am no stranger to the painful ache that rejection causes. I have a deep understanding of some of the long-standing effects tough rejections can have, and it’s hard not to recall times when I showed up at my best and met with what I deemed to be the “worst.” The complex and burdensome emotions that rejection can illicit are something that I spur in founders every day. I spend a large portion of my time as an investor rejecting founders, and being so familiar with the feelings myself, it is a dichotomy I’m learning to be comfortable with. I sit across the table from founders each day who have put EVERYTHING into their businesses, and 99% I follow up with an email on my firm passing on investment. There are a few reasons in particular why I wanted to write about rejection as my first “soapbox.” #1 I want founders to know that no matter how quickly calls go — I can feel the emotion, time, energy, and capital that they have put into their business and that even though I say no often, I don’t say it lightly. #2 VCs themselves are a business, and that’s not talked about enough. We care about founders, and we deeply want them to succeed, but ultimately, our duty is to our investors called LP’s whom we seek to drive returns for (more on this in the future). No’s are said for a variety of reasons, and most of the time, No’s can be traced back to more arbitrary reasons and things that founders can’t control, such as portfolio construction, biases towards certain industries/verticals, conviction/market trends, other deal flow in the pipeline, etc. Each “No” is rooted in a complex and sometimes uncontrollable combination of events and circumstances, but that doesn’t make them hurt any less. I’ve thought a lot about how I can be more comfortable dishing out multiple rejections on a daily basis. I’ve found that transparency drives clear expectations, and intentionality helps reason with difficult emotions. I’ve learned to start each intro call by sharing a clear background on Redbud ; I leave time for founders to ask me any questions they may have about our process; if there is a perceived conflict of interest, I mention it immediately. My favorite question I’ve started asking is for founders to share thier favorite articles, white papers, or case studies with me. It has allowed me to do a quick dive into their industry, gather my thoughts, and communicate them to my GP clearly. Information drives reasoning. In the midst of my most poignant rejections, I’ve always asked myself, “why?”. Now, I deliver the clearest and most concise ”why” I can to founders in each rejection post intro or second call. Ultimately, rejection is an inherent part of raising capital, and while it may never be easy, my goal is to handle it with respect and empathy. I’m striving to create a culture where the pain of rejection isn’t lessened, but the clarity behind it is increased. I’m starting to view rejection as an opportunity for evolution — both for myself and the entrepreneurs I interact with. It’s a chance to mutually refine our approaches, learn from setbacks, and foster resilience. Something that not many other events/emotions have the opportunity to illicit. Previous Next

< Back chobani on my jeans August 2025 becoming my cultural diet and what it means for founders Nothing screams chronically online more than walking into a grocery store, rubbing Chobani yogurt all over a stiff pair of jeans, filming it, and then posting it on TikTok. why? All because the lyrics in the song “Jeans by 2hollis” sound like he sings “put chobani on my jeans” instead of “put your body on my jeans” – viscerally different situations. Jeans became the song that framed my July photo dump on Instagram as a nod to the fact that I have seen this trend, find it funny, and ultimately, it’s become a part of who I am (in, albeit, some weird way). did this increase sales of chobani or annoyance of grocery store employees? I’ve been thinking about this a lot – how the content we consume every day becomes who we are. Humor, conversational references, restaurant choices, politics, etc. are all profoundly influenced by the content we consume and how long we let it marinate in our brains and bodies. As the internet and its culture have intertwined with our lives, it has changed how I think, act, and operate, as I believe to be true for most consumers. I think Lisa Kholostenko says it best, “consumption isn’t just passive enjoyment—it’s dynamic, it answers back.” It introduces the concept of a “Cultural Diet” that the content you consume becomes a part of you. It can lend itself to an era of your life, a fleeting Instagram photo dump, a phrase you repeat to your friends, or it can transcend chapters, inform your politics, and trickle into the core of your personality. No bigger indicator that more people are becoming a steady reflection of their cultural diets than the dialogue around taste. “Taste” — who has it and who doesn’t — is all VCs, founders, tech people, and performative matcha labubu keychain hipsters want to talk about. As defined by Emma Lou Cogan, Taste is “the byproduct of our worldview, the measure of our exposure to varied newness, & the invisible thread that ties together our emotional, psychological, and cultural instincts.” the tastemaker c.2025 I believe that taste is what evolves from your cultural diet. People focus on manufacturing taste via the content they consume. Except there is no filter for consumption. There is no way to limit the content you read, watch, and react to every day. You can curate your feeds to what you perceive to be high quality, unsubscribe from newsletters, mute accounts, and follow only those you know, but the flood never really stops. Algorithms surface “related” posts, friends forward viral clips, group chats ping with whatever celebrity look-alike contest is happening at your local park this week, and billboards replay the same slogans as you commute. In an ecosystem where the internet and reality are divulging more and more, content behaves like background radiation: it seeps through every filter, ensuring that the endless stream of headlines, hot-takes, and ads still becomes part of your cultural diet whether you consciously invite it to be or not. eating good Vice versa, if you’re always feeding yourself content that feels good, is comfortable, and is familiar, it’s like only eating Big Macs; you feel wonderful when eating it, but slow, sluggish, and left behind in the tides of conversation when those who have tried salads, soups, and sandwiches come around and reference another world of taste. You are what you eat. This leaves a question for founders building their companies today: how do you become a part of people’s cultural diets? It’s a more fun way of saying distribution matters. How you distribute (feed) your product into your consumer's cultural diet (the content they consume) determines how quickly you can move. Distribution is becoming increasingly paramount as certain product features, data, and previously “moats” are becoming commoditized. The company that most rapidly incorporates itself into its customers’ cultural diet, so convincingly that consumers experience the product as an extension of their own identity, unlocks a flywheel in which every operational building block (distribution, retention, pricing power, and brand equity) compounds at an accelerated rate. It happened with Lovable (0 to 2.3M users in 8 months) by making “vibe coding” part of the engineering zeitgeist. Rhode (0 to $1B acquisition by e.l.f in 3 years) by bringing a high-fashion lens to affordable beauty. Ramp (0 to $22.5B valuation in 6 years) by embracing the “underdog” narrative online and making something people hate (expense reporting) actually enjoyable. normalize slapping timothee on a billboard with a logo Each company’s story is now inescapable. Scroll a feed, open an email, cue up a podcast, each touchpoint repeats who they are, what they build, and why it matters. The product becomes a piece of their unique customers' unique diets. Ultimately, distribution is not only a question of reach; it is a matter of incorporation. When a product, message, or idea slips unnoticed into the daily cadence of alerts, shortcuts, and inside jokes, it migrates from the marketplace into the cognitive architecture of our brains and ultimately influences who we are. The push-notification that triggers a reflexive glance, the reference that needs no explanation in conversation, these are signals that a product has been metabolised, not just adopted. In that sense, market penetration is inseparable from identity formation: what saturates our attention steadily rewires our assumptions about efficiency, status, and even community. That realisation imposes a dual responsibility. For founders, the task is to design a product capable of that tenancy. For the rest of us, the question is curatorial: which inputs do we allow to occupy our limited cognitive real estate, and to what end? ___ Building to become apart of your consumers cultural diet? Drop me a line maria@redbud [dot] vc Previous Next

< Back y2 June 2025 “self”, obsessive thinking, punching upwards, and not getting lost in the sauce Today marks two years at Redbud VC . Whenever a big “milestone” or marker rolls around, I catch myself feeling both nostalgic and reflective. It’s so easy to get lost in the day-to-day of the calendar; there’s not much time for quiet thinking on patterns, behaviors, and decisions. That said, I have been deliberating on what I want to share here, and I decided, in lieu of being tactical, I’m going to be a bit more spontaneous. My candid thoughts on a few themes across my 24-month tenure as an investor below. ___ “Self” I think Emily Herrera, former VC @ Slow & Night, said it best : “You made it - which means you’re starting to think long-term about What you like Who you like Who you are” This is the perfect summation of what it means to have worked in VC for two years. It is frankly exactly where I stand today. I spend a significant portion of my time thinking about those three things, and oftentimes, it feels like they’re always changing. As you start to build a circle of competence in an area, you inevitably become increasingly jaded about the value or outcome of a particular industry or trend. Candidly, it’s weird to be expected to be a pseudo “expert” on 10 million technologies at once. Like I’m supposed to know about “application layer AI, trends in food for consumers, emerging SaaS categories, defense contracts, etc.” I think that's why Emily’s three categories are so important – they allow you to narrow your aperture for opportunities. It takes a bit of the industry-imposed pressure off. While I’m still working on answering the above, one thing I have figured out is how to ask the easy questions. I think that good founders can smell BS a mile away, they know if the VC they are talking to gets their business or not. I want founders to know right off the bat if I understand. I often ask “easy questions” (i.e., explicitly asking “how does this work?”) and repeat information/process as I understand it for founders to correct my understanding of their companies. The questioning, coupled with the regurgitation of information, helps me not only understand the company and founder sitting right in front of me, but I believe it will help me answer Emily’s questions above. ** (Will check back to see if this is really how it goes down next year) Obsessive thinking In my opinion, the best and worst thing about being an investor is that you are always thinking. I feel always on, in a way. I like to spend my weekends taking long walks on the lakefront in Chicago. As I was walking early last week, I saw a sad little Lime scooter that had been tossed into the lake. I counted 3 Lyft bikes and 2 Lime scooters during my walk. All I could think about was how the company deals with damaged or unusable bikes/scooters: “It’s not super scalable to try to send a technician out to see what's wrong with them.” “This has to be written off.” “What percentage of inventory is written off like this?” “I wonder if anyone is building a better fleet management system for these bikes?” “Is that market even big enough, though?” Yep, always on. The great part about this is that venture rewards unfiltered curiosity. The not-so-great part is when you’re Googling what startup makes the QR code checkout system on your restaurant table, and your friends are discussing weekend plans without you. Punching upwards I love being overlooked. It’s a quintessential part of my intrinsic motivation. I’ve spent my entire life being overlooked and proving out. It would be radically uncomfortable (in a bad way) for me to be in 1st place from the start. I prefer to work to win. For two reasons: There’s no pressure when you are the underdog. You’re not expected to be great. The wonderful part is that you get to work hard, hustle, and ultimately, if you're competitive, you win. No one gave it to you, and it wasn’t expected. Winning when standing at a “disadvantage” sets a precedent that you have the grit and determination necessary to win in any environment. When you’re junior on a team or at a small firm, you need to produce. It’s all hands on deck to do a bit of everything. Where you spend your time is critical. I realized this as I spent a better part of Year 1 getting bogged down in non-high-value tasks and the day-to-day. I’ve found the best ways to produce for your firm and your portfolio companies are: Sourcing a new company for the firm to invest in Making customer, investor, or talent intros for your portfolio companies Diversifying your firm's network of investors, founders, and LPs spoiler: all this takes is hustle and a bit of shamelessness At Redbud, sourcing a customer for a portfolio company is an equal win to sourcing a company for the firm to invest in. It’s easy to sell why a founder should take your money when you have examples of real value you’ve been able to add (i.e. customers). Lost in the sauce There’s a lot of noise in venture and startups. People are constantly sharing what they’re doing, how they’re working, and what they’re working on. (Ironically, as I do here) There’s always pressure to be doing something, which, when everyone is always talking, creates noise. If you’re not careful, you can get lost in the sauce . As I see it, the sauce is the lethal combination of natural noise, a myriad of weekly events, your day-to-day calendar, firm expectations, pressure of never missing an opportunity, the list goes on…see how easy it is to get lost. It’s essential to limit the amount of sauce you are in at any given time. I do this in 3 ways: Staying focused – remembering that my job is essentially the three bullets on producing above Being honest – combating the constant culture of flexing with kindness, honesty, and vulnerability, where I can Having a community – a handful of investors that I share my failures and successes with, and text multiple times a week ___ It’s been a wonderful 2 years at Redbud. To the companies in our portfolio that I’ve had the chance to be an early believer in or finder of – thank you for your trust, connection, and conviction that our small/early check would make a meaningful difference on your cap table. To all the founders I’ve spoken with across time zones, stages, and industries this year, thank you for your vulnerability, openness, and courage in building something new. To Brett and Willy, thank you for taking a chance on me. Previous Next

< Back pre-traction April 2025 thoughts on legitimate ways to display traction early Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what traction really means at the pre-seed stage, particularly before a fully built product, paying customers, or hints of revenue. This stage is incredibly nebulous. As a founder, how do you de-risk your idea in a way that creates conviction, not just for yourself, but in the eyes of investors? It’s a tricky balance. Founders want to raise capital off the strength of their background, a 10-slide deck, and maybe an MVP. But the reality is, real traction is leverage. If you have people paying for what you’re building, even in small amounts, the path to closing a round gets dramatically easier. Still, I think there are legitimate and strategic ways to display traction that don’t rely on traditional revenue. These “pre-traction” signals can tell a compelling story about market demand and founder execution, even before a wire hits the bank. At Redbud, we back a handful of pre-seed companies each year. Almost all of them have something built (i.e., some version of an early product) and often, a few design partners or test users. But 90% of the time, there’s no meaningful revenue. Maybe a couple hundred dollars in MRR. And yet, when a company is compelling at this stage, it can come down to a strong pre-traction narrative. To me, pre-traction means early, often scrappy signals that people are willing to pay for what you’re building or at least are highly interested. If you’re launching a consumer product, maybe it’s a waitlist of 10,000 people. If you’re building a B2B SaaS tool, maybe it’s a warm pipeline of three or four design partners who’ve agreed to test and eventually buy the product. When I evaluate companies like this, I’m constantly asking: how long will it take before these early users convert into paying customers? If a founder has thought through that timeline and is willing to hold themselves accountable to it, that’s a massive indicator of clarity and conviction. It gives investors something tangible to pull on, but more importantly, it shows the founder is operating with honest constraints and urgency. Sometimes, pre-traction is rooted in lived experience or a unique domain insight. A founder might say, “I know product managers will buy this tomorrow, because at my last company, we spent $25K a year trying to solve this exact problem.” That’s not a paying customer, but it is a signal. It reflects a deep understanding of the pain and a credible path to solving it. There’s nothing more compelling than a founder who says, “I know this is real. I know people want it.” And then backs that up with a waitlist, a pipeline, or even a series of customer conversations proving demand is bubbling beneath the surface. The best founders don’t just hope people will buy; they have early evidence that someone is already leaning in somewhere. Ultimately, pre-traction is about accelerating the speed of iteration. If a founder understands how they’ll acquire users, when they’ll start paying, and where the early friction lies, they can build faster, learn faster, and adjust quickly when things don’t go as planned. The advice to “build and ship quickly” is universal for a reason. But if you’re raising capital while doing that, think deeply about how you communicate the friction you’re feeling, the conversations you’re having, and the early signs that what you’re building matters. Previous Next

< Back chewing on May 2025 a running list of random things, trends and notes some of the ideas/insights i'm currently chewing on **work in progress 5/25 superior product wins in the late stage - distribution wins at all stages (esp. early) distribution is only becoming more and more paramount as software sunsets and AI becomes more commoditized (i.e. AI voice products, AI travel planners etc.) distribution will most likely win here as we move closer to AGI - what will the human experience/purpose be? 6/25 we are moving towards a fully agentic world, there is no stopping it. i don't think the next generation of $B companies will be agent service providers it will be the raw materials + manufacturing + build ecosystem that powers them. i believe there will be a regression towards "traditional" businesses with agents fixing issues that have previously inhibited these businesses from reaching scale or being too capital intensive. how do i get conviction in a company that may be completely replaced by AI? 7/25 original ideas (i.e. creativity) are more powerful than ever ideas used to be cheap not anymore can "cool" be manufactured? what does it look like to be an "essential worker" in the age of AI? 8/25 the 2nd order effects of more and more agentic AI tools hitting the market will be a 2nd wave of tools to help people manage, deploy, and scale the agentic tools from the first wave working on a hypothesis for wave #3 is it possible for a software to bring us back to being human? or is that just too ironic? 9/25 why does everything need protein in it? net new (no rev, no product) > company that has been alive 8+ months with no breakout momentum ^^ this phenomena is new for me only types of deals getting done are "net-new" or expensive + hype seed-ish co's last 2 investments were one of each 10/25 in may the bar was crazy high to be a vc-backed funded at the early stages, rn it's a founders market -- feels like these cycles are tightening and compounding. doesn't feel corrective at all just inflated, but i guess it always feels this way? building in areas where you have operated is paramount, empathy isn't enough. getting second hand insights from advisors, peers, investors, etc. is like getting hand me down clothes -- late to the trends and they never quite fit right are there any truly new thoughts or ideas anymore? i think there is an argument that this is only getting worse as ai responses are all derived from a prompt will all content, media, product, ideas, etc. just eventually become a cheap derivative of something prior? i believe "ai slop" is the early innings of this. 11/25 no thoughts just mexico travel :) 12/25 some 2026 predicitions/thoughts the Series A crunch from 2024 will have permanently reshaped Seed financing: extreme valuation dispersion, hyper-competitive rounds, as investors push to hit ownership targets earlier and earlier with the public markets performance increasingly propped up by a small concentration of AI-native companies, the AI bubble pop is coming openAI’s cash burn, coupled with spending commitments they may not be able to fund, mirrors the behavior of late-stage Enron and will result in a similar outcome nvidia will see a "crash" like Cisco in the 00’s (GPUs is to LLMs as Hardware is to the Internet). Cisco was the hardware powering the age of the internet, similar to Nvidia today. i'm not saying the company is going to blow up, okay, but I'm saying there will be a reckoning in the public markets of some kind (**working on something longer form here) 01/26 global oil sales are denominated in dollars, obviously the US is worried about that changing... the petrodollar keeps demand for USD high (some infiation of value here) Rn capital is currently being funneled into US financial and tech assets rather than physical production. As domestic growth becomes increasingly concentrated in AI, headline GDP is stabilized without rebuilding physical systems, leaving commodities and infrastructure underpriced until failure or geopolitics force a sudden repricing. (a.k.a recession) i’m not an economist, and candidly, I didn't do particualrly well in my 300-level econ courses (srry Dr. Thompson), but I’ve been thinking a lot about how AI is beginning to reshape geopolitics and the way nations prioritize assets and maintaining power ** last updated 01/02 Previous Next

< Back the prepared mind November 2024 thoughts on generalist v.s. specialist investing Over the last decade, a majority of Venture Capital firms have chosen to define their identities through focused investment theses. As a result, two patterns have emerged: some firms have adopted a generalist approach, spreading investments across sectors, while others have doubled down on specific industries, seeking an edge in areas of deep expertise. So, which is better? The following essay dives into generalist and specialist strategies through an examination of their advantages, disadvantages, and adaptability across different market conditions and investment stages. The Case for the Generalist There are a variety of distinct advantages to being a generalist investor. These advantages can be synthesized into three categories: flexibility, broad knowledge, and access to outliers. Flexibility in investing is one of the most important advantages a generalist investor has over a specialist. Industries, themes, and trends are constantly changing and incredibly unpredictable. By being unconstrained in the industries, verticals, etc., where you can invest as a generalist, you are better suited to invest in the areas where opportunity is emerging. As Will Robins put it in his essay Why generalist investors will always win , “The eternal relevance of generalism in venture comes down to two simple and easy-to-prove facts: (1) Revolutionary tech companies are thematically unpredictable, and (2) transcendent founder talent is still needed even in the most fruitful spaces.” Generalist investors are also more immune to the ebbs and flows of different market conditions. For example, in a high interest-rate environment, a generalist may stay clear of industries negatively impacted or double down on a founder they believe can weather the storm. Specialist investors are often constrained to invest in their chosen vertical regardless of market conditions. A specialist’s capital deployment strategies are limited in flexibility, making it more challenging to adapt to market cycles. The advantages of being a generalist investor extend beyond their innate flexibility and into the scope of their knowledge. Being a generalist does not equate to being a lazy or uninformed thinker; it’s the opposite. Generalists have a broad knowledge source to pull from and can often pull together disparate themes and trends into unique insights because of their exposure to such a breadth of industries. In other words, generalist investors usually know little about a lot. It makes them uniquely positioned to deploy capital in areas where they can see opportunities, patterns, and use cases as they emerge across industries. Navigating uncertain times is generally more challenging for a specialist who draws from a narrow but deep knowledge pool. The final point of advantage for a generalist is access to outliers. The pool of investable opportunities is much more extensive for a generalist investor than a specialist. With fewer constraints, generalists have a larger pool of selection that, in theory, increases their probability of picking a winner. Specialists are expected to hit the same amount of bullseyes on a much smaller target. The Case for the Specialist Specialist investors move quickly; they know what they want and where areas of opportunity lie, bringing radical efficiency to their deal flow. A vital advantage of the specialists is their knowledge. Many specialists have spent years operating within their specified investment verticals. Conviction is high within these selected industries, and they quickly make investment decisions. A specialist knows previous market trends and cycles and who has “been there, done that.” The narrow but profound knowledge a specialist has unlocks the ability of the investor to ask the right questions and be efficient in their dealmaking process. A generalist often cannot get “in the weeds” as quickly as a specialist, leaving them reviewing deals slower in unfamiliar markets and relying on outsider insights. Outside of industry/vertical knowledge, specialist networks provide a considerable advantage to their portfolio companies. The concentrated networks allow specialists to give their founders highly relevant resources, filtered insights, and arguably the best intros to early customers, hires, or other investors. Compared to a generalist, who may be able to offer a portfolio company similar resources, but the network/connection may be different from what the founder wanted. In their specified industry, specialists have a clear case for why they deserve allocations on a founder's cap table. Specialists can point to a clear knowledge base, network, and examples of where they’ve added sector-specific value to their previously invested companies. Examples can be the difference between getting allocation in a round or not; without curated offerings, a founder may choose to add a specialist fund to their cap table over a generalist if there are no specialists in the round. The Superior Strategy Specialist investors have superior access to curated deal flow, a shorter decision timeline, and more targeted networks. It seems logical that they would outperform the generalists equipped with broader but less specialized networks and knowledge. Statistically, though, that is not the case. In 2022, PitchBook analyzed the performance of 451 VC funds across the US with vintages from 1995 to 2015 and found no significant performance differences between generalist and specialist funds after accounting for general market and industry performance. The coefficients (betas) for targeted and specialist funds reflected expected differences in average IRR relative to the generalist baseline. Still, neither significantly differed from zero, indicating performance across fund types once market conditions and fund size were considered. The report concluded that LPs "should be skeptical of any claims that industry specialization leads to superior performance.” While Pitchbook’s findings showed no significant difference in performance between specialist and generalist funds, other studies have gotten more granular on how the specific advantages of each strategy play out. Economists Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, and Josh Lerner analyzed the performance of over 800 venture capital firms and more than 3,500 individual venture capitalists by examining the IPO and acquisition success rates of over 11,000 portfolio companies between 1975 and 2003. Their findings revealed a strong correlation between specialization and success. Specialist firms outperformed their generalist counterparts, mainly when individual venture capitalists specialize in a single industry. Generalist firms, conversely, showed poorer performance in cross-industry capital allocation and were less effective in selecting profitable investments within sectors. However, generalist firms performed equally as well as their hyper-specialized counterparts when individual investors within the generalist firm were specialists. In other words, the hyper-specialists win in equal proportion to generalist firms with partners who have some specialized perspectives. This is why Tier 1 funds have remained generalists over time. Even as fund sizes have ballooned, these firms recognized that staying generalist thematically while building small, focused teams of specialized investors could continue to drive outlier returns at any stage. Accel coined this trend as the “Prepared mind” approach, an investment method inspired by the Louis Pasteur quote, “ chance only favors the prepared mind.” Accel emphasizes proactive exploration and thorough industry research, enabling the partners at the firm to identify and dig into specific categories, tap into network insights, and track emerging trends to spot potential leaders. By the time Accel invests, the team has developed a firm conviction and alignment with the entrepreneurs, replicating a specialist fund's speed, network, and confidence without becoming one. Does Stage Matter? In 2011, Economists Sharon Matusik and Markus Fitza conducted an in-depth analysis of the performance effects of diversification in VC, focusing on 4,583 VC firms and nearly 7,500 VC firm-year observations. The researchers used data from 1960 to 2000 to examine how diversification (defined as the depth of knowledge within the firm) impacts VC performance, particularly in uncertain environments. The findings revealed a U-shaped relationship between diversification and performance. VC firms achieved higher success rates with either low or high levels of diversification, while moderate levels of diversification resulted in poorer performance. This means a super-specialized specialist performed equally as well as a generalist firm composed of investors with diversified knowledge, and those in the middle performed the worst. Matusik and Fitza also found that flexibility is crucial for both specialist and generalist funds, particularly regarding early-stage investments. High portfolio diversification in early-stage investing generated the highest IPO success rate at over 40%, with more flexibility in the early stages and more success than their less adaptable counterparts. In early-stage investments, high diversification (i.e., being more generalist) proved advantageous, allowing firms to adapt to market cycles. For late-stage investments, the impact of diversification on performance was less significant. They also found that firms co-invested with other VCs could achieve similar performance outcomes without needing high diversification, as co-investors contributed additional industry knowledge. Performance results can be manufactured by partnering with a mix of specialist and generalist investors. For this reason, founders are often encouraged to diversify their cap tables to include a mix of generalist investors, who bring wide networks and broad industry knowledge, alongside specialist investors, who offer targeted insights and valuable, niche-specific connections. Why We Choose the Generalist Path At Redbud VC, we have seen the advantages of a generalist approach flourish at the earliest stages. By choosing to be a generalist, we’re keeping our eyes open for the best talent, building solutions wherever they might emerge, whether in fintech, proptech, sustainability, or an area not yet fully defined. It’s not just about being flexible; it’s about having the curiosity and humility to say that the next billion-dollar company might come from a place we hadn’t anticipated. The advantages of being a generalist at the early stages are abundantly clear. The ability for us to have exposure to a comprehensive set of founders building in diverse industries helps increase the chances we invest in a generational company. As a small fund, we leverage the networks and expertise of each of our team members to help us replicate some of the advantages that a specialist firm has. Where we can’t, we help our portfolio companies source funds that can be the specialists on their cap tables. Given our ability to be adaptable as generalists, our team explores different industries or verticals where we want to find opportunities to build or deploy capital. For example, digging into challenges community banks face led to our investment in Braid’s Pre-Seed Round , and investigating sleepy areas in prop-tech led us to incubate Village. As we work towards building a VC brand from Middle America, Redbud is adopting our approach to investing with a prepared mind, equipping us to recognize and support outlier founders in whatever they are building. Previous Next

maria heyen's writings, readings, and thoughts on vc welcome. welcome to the website here are my sticky notes, bookmarks, readings and writings, basically a collection of trends, behaviors, ways of thought, and actions that I have that I want to track/think about over time. somethings I write about: identity investing influence somethings I read about: thinking fast cultural curiosity discipline + process