The State of Seed and Venture Capital ...Cash Cannons, AI Slop and High Valuations

Good morning…

I have been writing lot about the markets and Stocktwits and my predictions the last month so I thought it would be good to get my thoughts down about the venture markets.

At Social Leverage we just raised and closed our 5th venture/seed fund. We have a one off venture fund of funds that we also manage and raised back in 2022.

We raised our first Social Leverage fund back in 2013.

The seed/venture industry has changed so much since I started writing personal angel checks regularly back in 2006.

There was no Twitter, no Y Combinator, no A16z, no AngelList, no Carta, no Bitcoin, no Shopify, no Open AI or Gemini, no AWS, no sports betting, no prediction markets, no Space X, no iPhone.

I was writing $25,000 seed checks at $1 million pre money valuation.

The seed round of $UBER ( ▼ 2.23% ) on AngelList was at a $4 million valuation.

In 2011, Bitcoin was $2 dollars.

I remember writing the $100,000 Robinhood seed check in 2013 thinking $10 million cap was expensive.

In hindsight you had to be a terrible picker if you have not been incredibly successful as an investor if you stumbled into venture/seed investing like I did in 2006 as web 2.0 began. That includes the horrific GFC of 2008.

I would never have predicted any of this as I started down the internet entrepreneurial path in 2006 starting Wallstrip (acquired by CBS), Social Leverage and Stocktwits.

The reason we have so many charlatans on Twitter today is they confuse brains and skill with the greatest bull market of all time.

God bless them all and buyer beware as this bull market continues.

Today, A16z announced a $15 billion raise and the White House and Qatar are their co-investor (joking not joking). They allocated a staggering 18 percent of all venture capital in 2025. The Unicorn Squid (A16z) is the new Vampire Squid (Goldman Sachs) have merged around the White House…

Y Combinator is funding hundreds of startups a year at a $30 to $40 million valuation. Not for me.

The game/business has changed.

As a consumer, I am excited about the future that all this capital should bring. Venture capitalists funding, chips, space, nuclear, solar, batteries, biotech/drugs, is going to lead to some amazing breakthroughs and useful products. This boom/bubble has created the liquidity necessary for the next wave of innovation to take place. You can hate the players and hate the game, but remain optimistic.

I believe small firms like Social Leverage (sub $100 million funds) that allocate $1 million at the seed stage seed can still thrive, but you have to understand the markets around you and the field position.

I will dive deeper into my areas of interest and focus at the seed stage tomorrow.

Have a great day.