Ramtin Naimi

And we'll keep the process going.

We'll keep it tight.

We'll keep it efficient and we won't have any information leaks.

And then we'll try to get you the best deal possible.

But ultimately, what the best deal possible is what I ultimately try to do is get as much leverage for my founders as possible.

Leverage comes in the form of term sheets.

The more term sheets they have, the more negotiating power they have.

Everybody wants negotiating power and making a good deal for themselves and for their company and for their existing shareholders.

When you don't have leverage, you will sell 25% of your company at Series A to whoever gives you the term sheet you want to work with.

When you do have leverage, you can get that down dramatically.

What I thought could be the number one value additive thing that I could do for my companies is make sure that by the time they exit, they own more of their company than they would have had I not been on the cap table.

Now we have data that not only do we have the highest graduation rate from seed to series A, we also have the highest decile of average valuation of series A and the lowest average dilution in the series A. We can basically make your company have way better access to lower cost capital in the future from the highest quality partners.

I had one of my founders do a reference with another founder saying that the likelihood that you own 10% more of your company at exit is 10x higher with abstract on your cap table than not.

Because if I can save you 5% at the A and 3% at the B and 2% at the C, these things tend to add up nicely.

If you end up exiting your company for $2 billion and you can end up with an extra $200 million in your pocket, I can't personally think of a single value add that a venture capital brings to the table that translates to more than an extra $200 million in your pocket.

I think I've been doing it for long enough that I have very trusted parties.

They'll just tell you.

At every venture capital firm, they'll just tell me.

But how did that start?

In the early days, it was really just a lot of, who is this kid?