Insights

Things we have been wrong about, and what we learned.

We publish when we have something specific to say. Roughly one piece a month, no newsletter cadence to feed.

The pre-seed market has quietly become a seed market

Median pre-seed rounds in our pipeline are now 2.4x larger than they were in 2021, and founders are being asked for the traction that used to justify a Series A. We looked at 480 rounds to work out what actually changed — and why the extra capital is buying less runway, not more.

The short version: expectations inflated faster than cheque sizes did, and the gap is being paid for in founder equity.

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Griddle raises a $14M Series A

Led by Northwind Capital, with participation from 99SA. Griddle now forecasts load for eleven European distribution utilities.

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Evaluate the eval, not the demo

How we run technical diligence on applied AI companies: what a credible evaluation harness looks like, and the four ways teams accidentally fool themselves with benchmarks.

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Why we passed on eleven climate deals last quarter

Anonymised, aggregated reasons — mostly unit economics that only worked with a subsidy that expires in 2029.

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The first ten enterprise contracts

A practical guide from Tomas Brennan on pricing, pilots, procurement and the security questionnaire that will eat your quarter.

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Chartwise expands to twenty-two hospital systems

Eighteen months after our pre-seed cheque, and still with a team of nineteen people.

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What a good data room contains

Eleven documents, no more. Anything beyond this list has never once changed our decision.

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Regulated buyers are a moat, not a delay

Adaeze Nwosu on why an eighteen-month compliance cycle is the best defensibility a seed-stage company can buy.

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The Ninety-Nine

One email a month: what we published, what we funded, and one thing we changed our mind about. No event invitations, no market commentary recycled from someone else's chart.

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