Inside Primary VC: $1.65B AUM for seed investing

Wow.

Well, 12 years is a real run as a startup founder.

I'm sure you developed a lot of empathy for the founder journey that you probably carry with you still to this day.

I guess, how did that inform how you approach incubation and I guess later, Primary? But we can start with the incubations.

Yeah.

I, I would say, you know, on the, on the empathy side of the founders, um, [lip smack] I came to the conclusion after my 12-year run that, uh, I looked back and said, "You know, were my VCs really that helpful?" Um, and I would say, beyond the capital, no.

Um, in a lot of ways, yeah, there was some also some, like, shady maneuvering where they were trying to, like, you know, get one up on me or whatever.

Um, and I remember, like, Bob was, like, much more of my mentor coach, and as well as, like, he always looked what-- He always, like, when he saw bad behavior, he called it out.

So, you know, I won't name the name of the investors.

They're still around, but they were...

Yeah, they agreed on a deal, um, and then at the last minute, changed, tried to change the terms on me, uh, and it was all done intentionally.

Now, I found that out later, and I remember when I told Bob this, he was like, he was like, "Screw that.

I'll do the deal." Um, uh, 'cause he just thought it was just, just such a poor approach.

Um, um, and so I just learned from Bob of like, wow, you bet on people, you have this deep empathy, and you're trying to really help them in the journey.

Um, and when I talked to other founder friends, I, I was like, this behavior is not unique to me.

Like, it was, it was common.

Um, and maybe not that bad a behavior, but at least on the notion of like, are you trying to be more helpful? And if you're more helpful, do you really, uh, I think it meant better under-- you better understand the business, you get better aligned to the founder.

Um, and I think that's what the journey should be like.

Um, and I thought about it from an investor of like, if I'm, if I'm more helpful- You know, I'm a big believer as a former founder operator, devil's in the details.

Like, the more you operationally get involved and know the ground truth, the better the investor you'll be.

And then over time, if you build a reputation of being really helpful, you get even better deals with the best founders.

So I think it guided me onto the approach of, you know, when it came to investing and incubating that that was gonna be my North Star.

How do you be the, the founder's first call? And a lot of VCs say that, but I'm, I'm talking about, like, how do you get operationally and strategically involved enough where you get to the ground truth, they can be a real thought partner, and you can actually really help, um, uh, and not just like, you know, throw advice over a wall and hope that it's right.

Um, and so that led me to this, you know, process of, all right, I wanna do early stage investing.

I wanna incubate.