Ramtin Naimi

VCs know who you are.

You have a reputation.

There's companies that people associate with you.

There's skill sets that you have that people associate with you.

And people who have personal brands at venture capital firms tend to be able to compete for competitive financing rounds.

And if you look at every venture capital firm,

Excluding those top three, and even in those top three, this tends to be true more often than not for the most competitive deals.

When those firms are competing for a hyper-competitive financing, it tends to be the same one, two, or three partners who tends to do most of the selling and closing for those deals to bring those deals home.

And very few venture capital firms have more than one, two, and at the most three individuals that can independently go out and source and compete in closed financings and the most competitive deals, which is why venture is hard to scale as an asset class, which is why a lot of LPs look at these large platform funds and say, if I could just invest in these four GPs, that'd be way more appealing than investing in 16 of them and having to have exposure to the other 12 when I really just want exposure to these four.

Again, it's like the art thing with the paintings where you got to buy the.

You got to support the program.

I do think there are certain individuals that you meet that tend to be charismatic, trustworthy, have good judgment, and will have an ability that given enough time and opportunity, they can build a very good reputation, a personal brand for themselves as well.

Do you think this whole ecosystem is in a healthy place?

Yes and no.

People argue that these AI companies are raising at astronomically high valuations.

And I actually don't know if that's true.

And I don't think anybody will know if it's true for another three or four years.

Because while the multiples seem insane, the companies are also growing at unprecedented rates.

historically, you could look at a SaaS company and say, well, if it's growing 3x, 4x year over year, and you could project a 5x over the next two years, you can justify paying this price today.

With AI companies, it's this company grew 20x year over year last year.