Here’s the biggest thing we’ve learned about access in early-stage investing: if you don’t have it, you don’t have anything.

We believe that 99% of “proprietary deal flow” is a myth, and unless you are Sequoia, you have to create unique ways to see the best founders early.

Here’s how I’ve built access for myself and for the fund …

The inbound system: trust > transactions

As a solo GP, the biggest constraint for the fund is how I spend my time.

Every pre-seed / seed investor is trying to solve for coverage but trying to see every deal is a huge time constraint.

That is not the game I am playing; I would rather play positive-sum games with a small amount of other GPs who I trust and can see myself co-investing with for the next decade.

To do that, I worked backwards, and engineered a sourcing funnel that brings these founders to us from sources we trust before they break out.

• The top is our public content designed to pull those people into our orbit and start the conversation.
• The middle is a trusted network of investors who spend their time in search for the same kinds of companies.
• The bottom of our funnel is a high-conviction check into a founder we can’t wait to work with.

Unlike many other others trying to solve the coverage problem of pre-seed investing, we have a funnel that allows for our coverage to compound.

In the end, this creates information arbitrage and leaves us with a highly-vetted number of companies to talk to every month.

• Every founder intro through this system is already qualified.
• Every GP we speak with brings a filtered surface area of their best deals.
• Every touchpoint reduces friction between discovery and conviction.

And when a breakout company is making the rounds, we’re already on the list because the people around the table already know how we think.