Ramtin Naimi

You know more about this category than I do.

Why don't you take a meeting with them?

And if you like it, let's find a way to work on it together.

You take your 15, I'll take my five.

And I did that about 20 times perfectly.

And what I mean by perfectly is 20 for 20.

They got their 15.

I got my five.

I got a tier one co-lead.

My LPs were happy.

The strategy was working.

And then I started to get like a little annoyed.

I felt like I was doing most of the legwork and getting this 5% tax.

I wanted to find a way to start getting more ownership in these deals while still being collaborative.

Because I still had no name at this point in Silicon Valley and arguable whether I have much of a name today, but back then, definitely nothing.

What I wanted to figure out is the founders that I wanted to work with wanted those firms on the cap table.

So there was no world in which I was saying, it's me or Andreessen, who are you going to go with?

Because I was going to lose that 10 times out of 10.

But what I started understanding was that I could lead these financings and breed the multi-stage firms in as a co-lead.

And when I led, I still left enough room for a co-lead, but I really started to stress test how far can I push a multi-stage firm down on ownership before they ultimately walk on a deal, but are still happy about it.