Valentin Perez

I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement Vertical AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably and unlock generational returns. Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

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The Chainsmokers just raised their third venture fund, this time with $100 million behind it. This isn’t a side hustle. It’s one of the most quietly successful celebrity VC stories out there. Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, aka The Chainsmokers, broke out in the music world with hits like Closer and Don’t Let Me Down. At their peak in 2016, they were the highest-paid DJs in the world, pulling in $38M a year. Instead of just buying luxury cars or real estate, they started angel investing. Small checks. Mostly into tech startups. But they didn’t want to stop there. In 2020, they launched Mantis VC, their first venture fund with $35M under management. They brought in major names early: Mark Cuban, Keith Rabois, Ron Conway as LPs. All backing two musicians with no traditional finance background. But the duo proved they could deliver real value. They deployed the first fund quickly and followed up with Fund II: $80M. Now, in 2025, they’ve just closed Fund III at $100M, bringing their total assets under management to over $215M. So what makes The Chainsmokers credible in venture? They understand how to leverage attention and convert it into access, growth, and long-term advantage for their portfolio companies. Taggart has said their mission is to fund startups that resonate with their audience and then use their platform to actually help those companies win. That means: - Promoting portfolio brands to millions of fans - Opening doors to other celebrities, influencers, and tech leaders - Creating unfair distribution and credibility for early-stage startups They’ve also partnered with seasoned investors and operators behind the scenes. This isn’t just famous faces picking stocks. It’s a real firm, with real backing, and real returns. And they’re not alone. We’ve seen celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Serena Williams, and Leonardo DiCaprio step into venture capital with success. This is the new model. Start with trust, community, and relevance. Layer in strategic capital, real operational help, and access. Build a fund that gives startups something they actually need: distribution. At HotStart VC, we’ve been building around this shift for years. We believe the next generation of iconic companies will be launched with creators and funded by them. This latest move from The Chainsmokers just adds another data point to that thesis. They're not just building a music empire. They're building a venture one too.

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Many YC founders go to Demo Day expecting to fill their round and get back to work. But then reality hits: Lots of them don't raise a dollar. You just don't hear about these stories. You only hear about the successes. YC partners are clear about this: "Don't think that just because you're YC, you'll lift a finger and raise your round." The badge gets you in the room. But you're still competing against 50-100 other startups for maybe 5-10 investment spots per fund. If I were to do YC again, here’s how I’d approach it: Use the $500K to create a 3-year runway and build something people want with a team of 2 in total. I won’t show up to demo day. Just focus on building. I’d forget about: Growth targets. Fundraising decks. Creating a one-liner. 100% focus on profitability. That's how you become default alive and don’t need to beg for money.

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Vibe coding products like v0 (Vercel) / Bolt / Lovable have created ~$100M ARR in 6 months. Prediction: this will grow to $1B in the next year for this suite of tools. There are two market dynamics happening simultaneously giving us a glimpse into the future: 1) Consumer phenomenon: vibe coding is trending on TikTok, and a brand new market of creators is emerging. This is akin to the number of microsoft excel users around the world, but way cooler. You can produce a site or app in seconds with no need to write code. 2) Future of enterprise software: with the ability to seamlessly prompt a user interface, enterprise platforms like Salesforce and ServiceNow will see their rigid UIs open up and be personalized for each users own preferences. My bet is 30%+ of UI of each of these will be user generated.

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YC’s request for startups told us something: AI is coming for healthcare’s $1 trillion admin problem… The U.S. spends over $4T a year on healthcare. Roughly $1 trillion of that is just… admin. Forms. PDFs. Fax machines. Manual data entry. Still. YC is basically waving a giant flag: “There’s a trillion-dollar startup here if someone just automates this mess.” And the timing couldn’t be better: - LLMs can now extract data from chaotic formats - Agents can move info across systems - Human-in-the-loop? Optional. What this means: - You don’t need to disrupt doctors… you need to eliminate the clipboard, read the illegible handwritten notes, digitize the physical folders - Your AI agent doesn’t need to be sexy. It just needs to be an assistant to back-office staff - If you understand HIPAA and workflows, you’ve already got an edge Healthcare is full of friction. Your job? Reduce it. Automatically.

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2009: The financial crisis had crushed fundraising. Barely any new capital went into venture funds. Yet the vintages from those years went on to deliver some of the strongest returns in history. Fast forward to today (2024/2025): Venture capital fundraising is at its lowest point in more than a decade. What does that mean? - ⁠Less money will be available to startups over the next years - The bar for raising capital goes up again: quality matters - ⁠Entry valuations will reset to saner levels --> Funds raised now are likely to outperform, just as history shows The paradox of venture: the best time to commit capital is exactly when most people hesitate. Investors (Limited Partners) should lean in now, not when the next boom makes it easy.

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I recently chatted w/Clay Norris about building VC funds. We talked about everything from misconceptions about starting a fund to being transparent with founders. My fave part was our exchange on the underappreciated role of luck. You can read the interview at: https://lnkd.in/edWfktGG

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Two trends in fundraising that I’m seeing on a daily basis: 1/ The "we'll monetize later" era for infrastructure startups is dead "We'll figure out revenue once we have users" / "we're focused on adoption first"/ "monetization comes later" This worked in 2021. It doesn't work now. Today’s market won’t reward research organizations or companies that believe in perfection over getting it in users' hands. If you don't have a clear path to revenue… you won't get funded. period. VCs aren't writing checks hoping you'll figure it out later. 2/ "Vibe ARR" is everywhere Remember Jasper? hyper growth, but the model companies ate them alive. We're seeing this again. Companies growing really quickly on point-in-time technology that isn't defensible These companies look amazing on paper. Growth charts going up and to the right. But if you think models are getting better and becoming platform companies, many solutions become obsolete. 

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Excited for the next post in our "Navigating Diligence" Series. Last year, we create a post around understanding market sizing from a VC/fundraising perspective and received positive feedback from founders in and out of our network. We decided to update this and include some templates to be helpful to founders. Link in comments. Market Sizing in 30 Minutes We take the outputs from the prior Exercise 2: Customer Segmentation and plug them into a simple, bottoms-up “mad-libs” for TAM: "To get to $100M in gross profit per year, we need X customers paying us $Y per year, where X represents this K% of the market of prospective customers. There are a total of (X / K%) such customers in the US. The primary characteristics when doing a segmentation of customers are A, B, C. Our paying customers have the following characteristics A, B, C." We also cover - Why market sizing matters to investors - Why all revenue is not equal (gross profit > topline) - Common mistakes and quick fixes Bonus: We’re sharing our simple Market Sizing Template used by hundreds of startups from pre-seed to pre-IPO. Read the full post here 👇

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Most VCs take weeks to decide. FJ Labs takes two calls. 1,000+ investments. $500M under management. 200 startups evaluated every week. Jeff Weinstein, Partner at FJ Labs, walked me through how they built a system that moves fast without losing discipline. Pattern recognition at scale. Conviction over consensus. Global deal flow with local depth. We talked about what separates fundable companies from noise: -Why the right market matters more than the perfect pitch -How capital efficiency became the new moat -Why marketplace businesses still work in an AI world -What founders must prove before investors commit The conversation cuts through venture's usual inefficiencies. No fluff. Just how early-stage investing actually works when you strip out the theater. For founders raising capital or operators building in competitive markets, this one's worth your time. Link in comments.

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YC has done a good job supporting ambitious deeptech projects. Seeds sowed over many years are starting to sprout in meaningful ways. Biggest support to founders (esp those building in the physical world) isn’t money - it’s the right advice, network, and peer support.

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