Michael Skok

Most founders treat warm intros like a nice-to-have. They think if the deck is strong enough, the right investor will notice. They’re wrong. Investors don’t have a filtering problem. They have a trust problem. Every week, they see hundreds of decks. Some great. Many decent. A few even brilliant. But that’s not the bar. The real question isn’t “Is this startup promising?” It’s “Do I trust this founder enough to take the call, stake my reputation, and possibly invest?” That’s what a warm intro solves. It reduces the trust gap. When a credible founder, respected operator, or trusted LP vouches for you, you’re no longer a stranger in someone’s inbox—you’re a filtered signal from someone they already believe in. • Without that credibility transfer, the burden of proof falls entirely on your deck. And no matter how strong it is, most investors won’t roll the dice if no one is standing behind it. But here’s the part most people miss: You don’t get warm intros. You earn them-long before you need them. Because warm intros aren’t just about access. They’re about shared experience, long-game relationships, and quiet reputational equity. The founders who raise well are the ones who tend the garden: They help others before asking for help. They’re kind when no one’s watching. They make time for feedback, referrals, second looks. They show up generously—and consistently. Fundraising isn’t a visibility game. It’s a credibility game. And credibility isn’t built in the room. It’s built over time. This post is a primer on that blind spot: What warm intros actually signal to investors. Why founder-to-founder intros beat cold outreach every time. How to turn a “no” into long-term trust. Why using brokers or “fundraising middlemen” almost always backfires. How to build a reputation that makes capital feel like a shared bet—not a leap of faith. If you want to raise smarter-and faster-understand this: Warm intros aren’t about playing favorites. They’re about reducing friction in a world where trust is scarce and time is shorter. And the best time to start building trust? Before you need it. #startups #fundraising #venturecapital #warmintros #founderlife #networking #trustdriven

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Growth and profitability are not opposing forces. If anything, they're sequential. Once your unit economics work - every additional customer can spread fixed costs thinner, every transaction can make ops more efficient, and every bit of volume can give you better terms with suppliers. Solving for fundamentals will ensure growth makes you profitable, and doesn't become the thing that keeps you from it. Shreyans wrote a great piece on it, link in comments.

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PitchBook's quarterly Venture Monitor report shows a market that is beginning to move again, but unevenly. These are discussions we have with customers every day and we have seen these trends play out across the market. But the numbers certainly speak for themselves. In 2025, AI accounted for about 65% of total deal value and nearly 40% of deal count, driving a highly concentrated environment where 50% of deal value went to just half of 1% of deals. Deal activity increased across every stage, with early-stage and first financings nearing 2021 highs, even as fundraising and liquidity remain constrained. It seems that opportunity is returning, but selectivity and differentiation matter more than ever. As always, we strive to ensure we are helping our clients across the private capital market ecosystem navigate the current environment. http://spr.ly/6045CFwD5

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Boards are supposed to help founders. Over the past 19 years, I've watched many trap them instead. As companies scale, many boards turn from insight to oversight and stop doing what founders actually need: Help making big, hard decisions. Early boards tend to be small, the board members are close to the business and highly invested in it. They argue from first principles. They help founders think. Later-stage boards often look more impressive on paper - they have more independent directors, committees and process. Somewhere along the way, collective problem solving gets replaced with oversight. The board shifts from helping the CEO make better decisions to monitoring decisions that have already been made. Strategy discussions get safer, real debate gets rarer and meetings become more about risk management than judgment. This usually coincides with the introduction of more professional board members. For better or worse, they often optimize for governance, optics, and liability management. That’s their job. But it’s not always what the company needs in moments of real uncertainty. Then, CEOs stop using them as thought partners. That’s a problem. So what should founders do? A few principles that help: • Keep the board as small as you can for as long as you can • Add directors for new insight they bring, not what boxes they check • Treat board seats like senior hires, not trophies • Design meetings for debate rather than reporting • Be explicit about when you want input vs approval Good boards should improve decision-making. If your board isn’t making you think harder, it’s probably not doing its job.

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Excellent articulation by our partner Deepak Kumar on the 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤. This framework not only helps us evaluate where solutions create defensible value, but also serves as a practical playbook for founders to scale with durability and competitive edge. A must-read for entrepreneurs navigating their growth journey. 👍 Cornerstone Ventures

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More great insights from Montauk Capital and Evan Caron on the extraordinary risks, and opportunities, at the intersection of energy and the real estate industry.

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As a board advisor, I’ve seen this pattern play out all too often: small to mid-sized technology businesses getting into real trouble not because of a bad product or a broken market, but because the executive team underestimates the importance of effective board communication and board relationship management. A business model pivot is one of the most critical and fragile periods in a company's life. Even in such high-stakes situations, I have witnessed executive teams mismanaging their board relationships, with expensive consequences for financial and human capital. I saw a profitable, cash-flow-positive SaaS business try to move from B2C to B2B, having already: • redirected resources • shifted management attention • started execution …all before the board had been properly engaged and crucially without a business plan. The initiative was blocked. Trust and goodwill were burned. The executive team had to go back to the drawing board, develop a detailed business plan, and restart discussions from scratch. Exactly what should have happened before resources were redeployed. Eventually, the board approved to give the executive team a 12 months window with a defined budget, setting expectations around traction and evidence. A year later, the B2B experiment had failed, the core business had suffered from loss of focus, and the executive team changed. Ironically, a renewed focus on the core business, with fresh leadership and discipline, put the company back on a growth path. Three lessons stand out: 1.             Boards don’t like surprises, trust is built through early engagement 2.             Pivots need real business plans, not conviction alone 3.             Focus is a strategic weapon, especially in scale-ups Boards are not there to block ambition. They’re there to protect the long-term health of the business. Executive teams that treat the board as a thinking partner, not an approval hurdle, make better decisions and move faster in the long run. More details about this topic in the article below https://lnkd.in/ep2MDvM9

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AI is changing the structure of most companies we see. Lots more coming from us on how startups can build faster, leaner teams -- and where we see all of this going. Great piece from Pete Flint to kick it off: https://lnkd.in/dcUebcJj

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The gap between SBIR and venture funding is the narrowest it's been in 44 years. Reauthorization created a new award tier up to $30M. 0% equity. Requires a prior Phase II award + a 1:1 match (private capital or non-SBIR government funding) + a federal customer signaling intent. Closer to a co-investment round than a grant. Founders winning these in 2028-2029 are entering the Phase I pipeline right now. I sat through the AFWERX webinar last week (my first one) and was honestly surprised by how much airtime the new authority got. AFWERX is DoD-side, but the rule applies cross-agency: HHS, DOE, NSF, NASA, & DoD all qualify. Most folks analyzing it are focused on Phase II winners. The more useful question for early-stage founders: what does this mean if you're at Phase I, or thinking about SBIR for the first time? Here's a representative stack at NSF: Phase I ($305K) → Phase II (~$1.25M) → Strategic Breakthrough Award (up to $30M with matched capital). SBIR does evaluate both technical merit and commercial potential, but the new authority pushes harder on outside-capital validation and customer intent than any prior SBIR vehicle. The math compounds for early-stage founders. At seed, $305K saves ~2-6 points of cap table depending on round size. Stack Phase II at Series A and a Strategic Breakthrough at Series B, and the cumulative savings can run into double-digit points by exit. My take: set up Phase I now, alongside (or before) your next venture round, so you have the $30M option later.

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What is a "buyer-builder"? It's the founder archetype we back at Daring Ventures. Buyer-builders have lived experience and domain expertise on the industries they are building in. They've felt the friction and know which problems to address and who to build for. They don't need to do customer discovery because they've experienced it first-hand. Outsiders spend years and millions figuring out what buyer-builders already know. We started The Builders Series to profile the ones doing it right. This edition: Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan of ServiceTitan. Ara and Vahe did not need to be told that contractors were underserved. They grew up watching it. Their fathers, competent skilled operators, losing hours every week to paper invoices, missed calls, and work that software should have absorbed years earlier. Full piece on Forward This 👇

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"My favorite CEO comes in, and the first ten minutes of the meeting is actually psychotherapy." We are excited to welcome Paul Martino, Managing Partner at Bullpen Capital, for Episode 2 of Charting the Course. A nine-time founder and veteran investor, Paul brings a unique perspective on the "post-seed" gap—backing founders who build in categories and geographies that others often ignore. To Paul, being misunderstood isn't an obstacle; it's often an early signal of opportunity. Full episode drops this Friday - follow to be notified. #ChartingTheCourse #VC #Startups

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Thrilled to share the launch of Criticality, a $65M fund built to back founders solving hard, high-leverage problems at the intersection of technical complexity and real-world urgency. Criticality builds on the foundation we’ve laid at Antler - applying our conviction-driven approach to companies at Seed & Series A. The fund is sector-flexible but applies a deep tech lens to each opportunity, targeting non-obvious, high-leverage problems from the earliest stages of company formation. Grateful to the New Mexico State Investment Council for their support in anchoring Criticality. More to come soon from Cash Allred & I.

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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For all founders, especially tech founders, here are a few key insights on how to elevate your pitch. Definitely worth a read and some thought... Treeo VC https://lnkd.in/emM8RK_4

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Here's a transition we see go sideways all the time: successful services business. Revenue, team, domain expertise. The next step feels obvious -- start building ventures on that foundation. In theory, elegant. In practice, one of the hardest transitions in the studio world. The core problem is that costs and benefits land in the same place. The services team builds client work (pays bills now) and internal ventures (might pay in three years). When an outside investor looks at this, the question is immediate: how do I know the best people are on my ventures and not client projects? That's not a trust problem. It's an incentive alignment problem. 📉 We've seen the same diagnosis play out repeatedly. Venture builders and service providers share the same entity, the same P&L, the same team allocation. Ventures always lose this configuration because revenue-generating work always wins the resource fight. Cleanest solution: distinct entities, distinct teams, distinct reporting. Services business funds operations. Studio entity houses ventures. Shared thesis, separate P&L. If full separation isn't possible yet, raise per venture through SPVs. Build proof points one at a time. 🎯 Here's the takeaway -- the earn-to-own path is valid. But the operators who succeed plan for structural separation from day one. They don't assume services and studio can coexist in one body indefinitely. The ones who wait to separate usually never do. ⚡

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Another missive from Chuck Cotter and Daniel Faierman. Thanks guys for continuing to help to ecosystem. If you've not seen their posts, peek at https://lnkd.in/gPiu9Z4z. Topics include: · CPG Co-Manufacturing Contracts · Early Stage VC Terms to Rarely Accept · More Dividends (and Dividend Recaps?) · 5 Raises, 5 Takeaways · A Founder's Guide to Secondaries · Standing Out Pre-Traction · The State of VC · Corporate Governance 101 · Anti-Dilution Provisions · Primer on QSBS · 4 Fund Raising DON'Ts · Liquidation Preferences · Understanding SAFEs · Understanding Convertible Notes · Understanding Prorata Rights · Founders & Athletes · Employee Stock Options Demystified · The Art of Start-Up Valuation · What Is A Term Sheet Anyway? Check it out ...

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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