Launching a $60M fund seems hard enough, but that may be the easy part #underpressure with Mandy Wen

"VC's are just like Startups raising from LPs, except they have no product" A few weeks ago I sat down with Mandy Wen who just raised a $60M fund and she told me what it's really like fundraising and how much harder VC's have it than founders. She is a former Partner at GSR Ventures. She led early investment in unicorns and 30 $100M companies in both US and Asia markets with successful exits. Portfolio include DeepMap (acq by Nvidia), Phigent (acq by NavInfo), Flexiv Robotics, Lovart, ShadowBot RPA, Infinite Uptime, Blacklake, Creati.ai and more

Next week we will have Kate McAndrew and Tyler Mincey, GP's at @_baukunst with us for Under Pressure luma.com/founders-0a9g

Tech Media is boring 🥱 with Under Pressure, I'm asking the real questions people want to know and having fun while doing it. (While stressing my guests out) next one is next week luma.com/founders-0a9g @founders_cafe

Last week I watched a company demo an agent that could control your computer - genuinely powerful. The problem: UI was a sexualized anime girlfriend. I sat there thinking: why? Tech people are building the future, but they're also defining the aesthetics of it. And most of them shouldn't be. (Sorry) All I heard at that event was metrics. Faster. Cheaper. More tokens. Look, it can generate dance videos now. Okay, but what does that actually unlock? What becomes possible that wasn't before? I remember when I first used Framer and realized I could build a website without code. When Spline let me embed 3D in the browser. When I made my first voice agent with Vapi. Those moments felt like magic because someone approached the tech from a creative lens. They weren't selling specs. They werent abusing your brain chemistry. They were showing you what you could make. Now? It's just performance for the sake of performance. People used to get hyped about the iPhone. The MacBook. Not because of gigahertz or RAM. Because of what it felt like to use them. Somewhere along the way we stopped asking what this tech should mean and started just asking what it can do. Creatives are watching from the sidelines while the aesthetic of the future gets decided by people optimizing for metrics. Maybe that's the wake-up call. We should roll up our sleeves. Stop watching. Build something that actually means something instead of just adding to the pile of AI slop. Because if we don't define what it's like, someone else will. And based on what I saw last week, I really don't want that.

Such a nice message ♥️

I wonder what the turn out would be for SF? Might do this @founders_cafe. Would people come?

Is it bad if I send a @meetgranola link when I get home and my partner asks how my day was?

The companies that understand this will build the next century

Someone should build a tool that tracks your design influence online and can license it out. Atleast stop AI from copying creativity

Hosted an OpenClaw Show and Tell at @founders_cafe @flotemer is building a mobile interface app for interacting with a personal assistant. Would you use this? What would you add?

Creatives are sleeping on VC. I was at a talk yesterday at @founders_cafe with Mandy Wen - ex-PM who started her own fund. She didn't have a finance degree. She had curiosity. That was the whole point. You don't build the company. You back the builders. You develop a thesis. You bet on what's next before anyone else sees it. Sound familiar? I DJ. I curate music. Curating companies isn't that different - you're still reading signals early and building a vibe around a conviction. The part nobody says out loud: most of the money piles into the top 10 startups. VCs struggle to deploy outside consensus bets too. It's not a solved game. Which means there's room for people who think differently. Creatives, designers, people with taste - not as a full-time lane necessarily. But as a lane. More of us should be in the room. thx for hosting @V4Victoria__ @AngelList

Tomorrow We'll have Mandy Wen - Managing Partner of Xirius Ventures, an early-stage investor focused on AI-native applications and robotics on Under Pressure. Her Previous Investments include DeepMap, Phigent, Flexiv Robotics, Lovart and more RSVP here luma.com/jwdl3ko6

ChatGPT & Claude should add a “one-time answer” mode - ask a single question, get the response, and it doesn’t clutter your chat history.

In a place full of technologist, be an artist.