Ramtin Naimi

And then they ask all of their investors to go through that list and say, please mark whether or not you have a relationship with one of these venture capital firms, how senior your relationship is, and how close you are with that individual.

And then the founder will go through that list at the end and ask nine of his investors for intros to 30 different venture capitalists, and they'll kick off their process.

The reason I thought that was bad was there's too many people involved in the fundraising process.

and there's too many potentially misaligned incentives.

This potential investor might have a really close relationship with this VC.

They might be trying to do their buddy a favor by helping him win a deal.

Too many people work at these venture capital firms, and that's too many young people telling their friends about who this fund is talking to, who's passing, who's not passing, what the valuations are coming in.

And

VCs are just trying to gather information as much as they possibly can.

And when you choke off that information, then they're forced to really just do their own work and truly build conviction in a company.

And they tend to work faster this way.

After I closed my fund, as I mentioned, all the LPs we had, it became pretty apparent to me that I became the person in Silicon Valley that had direct line to the most senior GPs at every single one of these venture capital firms.

So in the early days, I got some of my founders to trust me and I'd say, listen, let's not bring anybody else in the fundraising process.

I will be the sole node.

I'll help you with the deck.

I'll help you with the data room.

Let's do a few mock pitches with people on my team.

I will make introductions to every single top GP that's the relevant partner at every single one of these venture capital firms for your company.

We'll line up all of these meetings over a three-day window next week.

And at the end of every single day, I will check in with all of them and I will get feedback and I'll find out what's resonating, what's not resonating and who's truly interested versus who's not interested.