Ramtin Naimi

He was a partner at Core Innovation Capital.

Within a few months of being at Core, it became pretty obvious to me that FinTech Series A impact-ish investing wasn't what I wanted to spend my career doing, even though I have a ton of respect for Ariane and the mission that that firm is on.

And they've actually done phenomenally well with returns.

They actually let the seed round the ripple.

I ultimately wanted to figure out how to become a generalist seed stage investor.

And the reason I focused on seed stage was because that was the only place where I thought I could access enough capital to the point where I mattered.

Any later stage, there's no amount of capital that I thought I could access that would actually make me relevant conversation in those places.

So that's why seed was the obvious starting point for me.

And then I needed to find a way to build a track record that didn't involve working at a firm for a decade until I got serious check writing ability or raising my own fund because who would give me a fund at that point in life?

And that's when I learned about AngelList.

What's behind the name Abstract?

A couple of things.

One, the definition of abstract is existing in concept, but not reality.

And that's pretty synonymous with seed stage companies.

And two, I wanted the name to show up places quickly.

I remember back then I spent all my days on Crunchbase and Crunchbase had things alphabetically listed.

And I realized if my firm started with an A, it would be at the top of the list on everything.

So I wanted a firm that started with A. And then I wanted a word that was easy to remember, didn't sound like any other venture capital firm.

And then I came up with the word abstract.

Then I found the definition for abstract.