From Thesis to First Check A Venture Fluent Lightning Lesson

Welcome everybody to, uh, the very first, uh, lightning lesson of this newest season of Venture Fluent, which is my online cohort-based venture capital course. Uh, today's lesson is From Thesis to First Check in 1 Hour. It's, uh, great to see many familiar faces. come back, including some former students who are in the Zoom with us. But welcome to all of you who are new and who haven't been in my classroom before. I'm Jorge Torres. This is basically my resume on one slide, but what you need to know is that I am a long time, almost a decade in after a career in venture capital and law, teaching venture capital as the sole thing that I do. And I created Venture Fluent, my online course, based on all the teaching I've done at places like Yale and more recently Cornell Tech. And the material you'll learn today actually comes from one of the modules of Venture Fluent. I hope you'll stay for the whole day today, or excuse me, the whole hour. We're not doing the whole day, don't worry. This wasn't a bait and switch, but if you can't stay, I want to make sure you benefit from a discount that I'm offering just to those of you who are joining us live or watching the replay. $250 off the full list price if you use this code. The offer expires in about 3 weeks on September 14th, 2026. You can scan that to enroll and make use of the offer with this code. All right, enough commercial. Let's talk about what we're actually going to do today, and I'm going to try to get it in 45 minutes or less, and I will stay to the full hour. So until 1:00 PM here on the East Coast of the US, the full hour. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to tell you what an investment thesis is. I owe you At least that much based on the title of this lightning lesson. And then as we do in all of my lessons, uh, all of my teaching, we're going to put what we learn into practice. I'm gonna show you live how to actually create or prototype a VC investment thesis using a framework I created just for learners like you who want to go from where you are today to an actual executable venture capital investment thesis. Along the way, I've invited 2 friends who have already been doing this work, have prepared in advance to share with you the investment thesis, VC investment thesis that they have prototyped themselves using that framework. And then I'm going to give you an opportunity. So don't leave, stay so that you can actually rapidly in 2 minutes, believe it or not, Using that framework, build your own investment thesis. And then finally, I'll give you my best advice at the end of my prepared material on what you can do to go from the one-line thesis to actually your first check or next check if you have already started investing in startup companies. And then, as I said, whatever time is left up until 1:00 PM ET, I will stay to answer all of your questions. All right, so let's get into it. So many people you will meet, many investors and angels, they invest on instinct, on gut, and there is a role for gut. But my claim to you today is that you should start, especially if you are learning about early-stage investing as an angel or would-be venture capital investor, or early in your career as an institutional VC, is that you should start with an investment thesis. Don't take it from me. Take it from Fred Wilson, who in a 2022 post on his famous blog ABC observed that year the fastest venture market that he had seen in his 35 years, over 3 decades of venture capital investing. And it was a time when he was fielding founders, were getting a lot of inbound interest from VCs. So usually VCs, as you may know, are pitching tons of VCs and they'll take whatever money they can get. In February 2022, and a couple of months before that for sure, the negotiating dynamic was inverted. And so what it meant for the VCs is that you had to make a decision really quickly, at a blistering pace. So this comes from a post Fred made where perhaps in a week you would need to decide to do a deal or pass on the deal. And he said in that environment, it helped to have a thesis. So don't take it from me. A venture capital investment thesis is having one and being thesis-oriented is not the only way to make money. There are many different ways to make money in venture capital, but this is one, I believe, tried and true way to be successful, or at least to give yourself an advantage, a compounding advantage. That accrues to your benefit over time. So enough of that. What is an investment thesis? And I'll define it for you. So a venture capital investment thesis is a succinct expression of an investor's criteria. And this is the important part. It's based on a reasoned view of the world that guides how they allocate capital. And as I said before, there is a role for gut instinct. You can't reduce uncertainty completely, but at least if you are thesis-driven, you are basing how you spend your money and just as importantly, your time based on your point of view, your reasoned point of view on the market. So going back to Fred Wilson's firm, Fred Wilson is one of the co-founders, original co-founders and original GPs, general partners of Union Square Ventures in New York. And what this slide shows is the evolution over many years, well over a decade, of their thesis. USV being one of the firms that is most famously guided by a thesis. We won't have time today to dig into the how and why their thesis evolved over time, but I put it up to make the point that if you are thesis-driven, You are constantly engaged in refining what it is you are looking for and how you're spending your time. So famously, famous of course, because USV, Union Square Ventures, is one of the most profitable for their stakeholders, most profitable venture capital funds of all time. When they were building their track record of investing in Web 2.0 companies, their thesis was large networks of engaged users Differentiated through user experience, defensible through network effects. And that thesis was broad enough to encapsulate companies and investments that they made, early-stage investments that paid off handsomely for the firm, in companies as different as Etsy, Twitter, and Zynga, right? And so one of the things to keep in mind, to take away from today, is that you want your thesis to be broad enough Broad enough to encompass a range of different companies that you might invest in, right? But narrow enough that it describes with enough specificity for the world to know what it is you're investing in. And again, we don't have time to go into their 2.0 or 3-point thesis. You'll get the replay and you can go back and dig in for yourself. And during the full course, we do do that, that tear down and deep dive. But I put— give you the slide to make the point that this is a commitment that you're making to evolve your thesis and your thinking as you go along. Stated another way, perhaps a more succinct way, is that a thesis here is a testable belief about where the next outliers come from. What are outliers? They are the extremely rare, enduring, and highly valuable businesses that if you are able to invest in them when they are young companies, are going to generate very, very large financial returns. They are extremely rare, but your thesis is really about how you see the world and how you are able to capture in all your activities, either as an angel, a VC investor, or if you're investing in innovation in another context, how you're able to capture Enough of those outliers to generate the types of returns that you believe are important. So part 2. So now that you know what it is, let's talk about how you get there. And I'll say before I go further, prototyping's a very deliberate word choice on my point, on my, on my part. If you've been listening, you understand why, because this is a process of putting out there something that is intentionally designed to improve and evolve over time. So all we're doing with this framework today is prototyping something that you can take and then go execute on. Everyone with me? Thumbs up. Awesome. I see you. Fantastic. All right, so I created just for you, just for people who are learning venture capital, I created for you the MUST framework for creating your investment thesis, your VC investment Not because you must use it, not because you must be thesis-driven. As I said before, lots of different ways to make money in VC. God bless America, right? But because if you are starting from first principles and you want to turn your beliefs into an executable thesis, this is a great framework to use to rapidly make that move from first principles to Something you can use, and must is called must because each letter stands for something that needs to be all the ingredients that need to be in a venture capital investment thesis. And here they are: markets, users or customers, right? Or consumers, science and technology and talent. M U S T. Now. Each, as you'll notice, each of these elements has its associated question designed to get those first principles or your ideas out of your head and onto paper. For markets, it's where do you see business model innovation or exponential growth taking off, right? For users, it's what are the emerging consumer behaviors that are going to get really big? Small now, maybe even weird now, right? But going to get really big. I remember, because I'm old enough, when Twitter was a small company, right? When it was maybe worth tens of millions of dollars, not long before it sold for billions of dollars, that people thought the idea that you would tweet out, oh, I don't know, the famous example is what you had for lunch today. They thought that was weird. Yes, there were a small group of passionate people who were tweeting all day, and back in the Olden days, there was no interface. You would actually just text your tweet. I don't know if you remember that and want to out yourself, go ahead, raise your hand. But in those days, people thought it was weird, but the VC investors, Union Square Ventures among them, noticed that as a behavior that had meaningful prospects for growth. And if it got really big, the company could be really valuable. And that story played out well for them. So users is asking the— you and Musk is asking you to look for those emerging behaviors that might be small and weird now, but that could get really big. S, science and technology, is pretty self-explanatory. What's happening in the lab, the garage, the dorm that has the potential to be radically disruptive, right? AI. Generative AI. It could be the discovery, as there was for the first time, of a viral vaccination that decreases the likelihood of melanoma recurrence. That's a recent example of radically disruptive technology that most recently has not come to market yet, but has been approved by the FDA. Things like that. And then finally, talent, super important. What do you believe about people? And in this case, those people are high potential entrepreneurs you want to bet. Oftentimes, this is the hardest for people just starting out to answer. And I tell you, well, you can answer this because I don't think any of you in your careers, angel investors, innovation investors, or VCs wants to be defrauded of your money. So maybe table stakes, the bare minimum is you look for people who are high integrity and trustworthy, right? So alone answering these 4 questions, you don't have a thesis. You have to put them together, right? And so here are the questions. And on this slide, what I've given you is the first element, markets, and a potential answer around healthcare IT. So for example, where do you see business model innovation or exponential growth taking off? You might say health spend keeps shifting towards prevention. Subscription hardware is turning one-time gadgets into recurring revenue, and the margin lives in the software layer where wrong signals become guidance. And here's the takeaway. The consumer health category keeps compounding underneath it all, right? There's a market for consumer health that is growing and not just growing linearly, but compounding, right? Growing exponentially. Users. People, here's the behavior. Ready? And at one point, even though today it may seem routine, at one point this was weird. People check a health score before they check email. Sleep, recovery, and metabolic numbers drive their daily decisions. And the scores become social. They share those scores with people in the same way that they used to share their step counts. Science and technology. You can observe, for example, that miniaturized sensors coupled with machine learning now pull critically relevant signals from everyday objects such as ring straps, patches, et cetera. Battery and form factor advances put what used to require a lab visit Inside the things people already wear, right? I'm not— this is an observation that I'm sure resonates with each of you. You probably have on you one of these devices. And then finally, talent, super important, right? What do we observe about the people who are working in these spaces who we think can deliver the outlier companies? Well, they're hardware-fluent people who can ship consumer-grade product and command medical credibility. They have vision. They can envision devices as health and wellness platforms, and they can sell trust as much as product. Now, again, disparate answers to specific questions does not make a thesis. And in fact, right, you have to, as part of using this framework, and we don't have all the time to do it, so I'm just describing a process you could do when you have this material. at home is encapsulating, right, the answers into a bunch of statements that you then put together, right, into one pithy, concise statement. And you might achieve something like this. Here is an investment thesis, a venture capital investment thesis based on everything we've just been talking about. We back hardware fluent teams Using continuous biosensing to serve people who manage their health before the doctor visit in a market where consumers are increasingly willing to pay for prevention. Already, already, if you've been paying attention, you can probably think of a couple of companies that fall into the scope of what this thesis covers. Or as we say in the business of venture capital, companies that are on thesis. So if you're an entrepreneur out there and you've gotten the feedback that we love you, you know, from VCs, we love you, thank you for pitching, but you're not on thesis or you're off thesis, this is what they're talking about, right? But a good venture capital thesis is broad enough to include a number of companies. And here are 5, some of which you may have heard of, like Oura, Whoop, and maybe even Eight Sleep. Some that might be new to you, like Levels or Function Health, that are all within the scope of this thing, this venture capital investment thesis. And so you can see now the evolution. You go from first principles using a framework, which are answers to various questions around markets, users or consumers, science and technology, and talent or the entrepreneurs to a bunch of connected but disaggregated answers. And in time, the goal is to put it all together, to come up with a thesis statement that you then can use to go out there and project onto the world, looking for companies that you might want to invest in. Easier said than done. And I will say whether they use my framework or their own process, Venture capital investors, working venture capital investors, especially the ones who have generated the best returns for their stakeholders, spend years perfecting the statement to the point where they can get it this concise, right? So I don't want to sell you the idea that you can do this overnight, but here is what I am telling you is that if you've been stuck, if you didn't know where to get started, Using this framework and engaging in this process is a real great way to go from first principles to something that you can use to jumpstart your investing practice. And ultimately, if you've never invested in a company, write your first check. So now I want to showcase 2 folks, 2 friends who actually have been doing this work. The first here is Andy Jimenez. And Andy, I want you to unmute your mic while we talk, or while I introduce you. Andy's not only a friend, but he is a recent grad from the City University of New York, Baruch College of Business. He just completed the degree requirements and got his degree in finance. He's entered— let's hear it for Andy. Some claps for Andy. Thank you. Congratulations, Andy. Andy now is, as a new grad, Is entering the workforce full-time and is a student of VC. I say that with a capital S and a lowercase, which is to say he is someone who's really curious and acts on that curiosity by taking in and learning lots of different things because at some point, not yet, he's going to develop capacity. Capacity for what? To angel invest at some point, right? And he has He has bought my claim, which is that it helps to have done the homework of developing your point of view before the deal shows up. And that's what you're looking at is the latest and greatest from his desk using the MUST framework, the MUST framework to develop his investment thesis. Welcome, Andy.

Thank you. Hi, everyone.

All right, Andy, why don't you tell us, and it could be as simple, Andy, you could just read your thesis off the page, or if you have a more encapsulated version, lay it on us. What was your venture capital investment thesis?

Yeah, so I ended up writing that I invest in early-stage founders building trusted AI-native products that help people and financial professionals make better decisions about saving, investing, planning, and building wealth. I wrote that I'm particularly interested in products that move users from financial information to appropriate action. From information, personalized guidance, decision support, and permission execution. And then I wrote that I back founders with deep financial services knowledge, strong technical ability, and the integrity required to work with people's money and financial data. I love it.

Not only, not just because you're my friend, because I can already tell this is doing a lot of work to put the world on notice, particularly entrepreneurs who might be building in the the space you're defining, right? And as a result, they may be like, I need to meet this guy, Andy, who's investing in these things. So how do I know that? Well, I know that because I know that the MUST elements, M-U-S-T, I can see already map onto this investment thesis. So Andy, walk us through markets, users/customers, science, tech, and talent. How do the 4 elements map back onto the thesis you just laid upon us. Yeah.

So for markets, what I, when I did my research, I see that people want to make better financial decisions in terms of investing, planning, and building wealth, and also financial professionals. For users, what I see is that people are normally going online to get their kind of like financial planning, In terms of building wealth, they're using things like Reddit, TikTok. For science and tech, I saw that people are normally going to AI now. They're using Claude, ChatGPT to give themselves actionable plans in terms of that. And then for talent, I would say I normally want to back someone who has some sort of financial knowledge and a strong technical ability, but also when you're using people's data and you're also managing people's money, I do hold people to a high integrity.

So yeah. Yeah, that's me. You know, what resonated with me as a VC investor is when you were talking about the use of Claude to get financial advice, because I love when incumbents get disrupted, right? I love when Netflix comes along and disrupts the bejesus out of Blockbuster, right? Because that is where the returns are generated. So that's a story that's resonating with me. Great work. Can you tell us about an on-thesis company that might be within the scope of this thesis, perhaps one we haven't heard about before?

Yeah, so there's this one company that I thought really fit well with my investment thesis, and it's a company called Fyze. What they essentially do is that they help financial advisors use AI to help build portfolios. So it kind of removes that, like that backend work of like taking a lot of time to take a lot of information. What the company essentially does is that they just use the client's information and they help create like these actionable plans for financial advisors and wealth managers in terms of their clients.

Fantastic. Great. You know, and here's the thing, I want to learn more, right? If I'm a fintech investor, if I have common cause with you, Andy, In terms of what you've articulated gets you excited, right? I want to learn more, especially if I'm an angel. I want to start doing deals with you. That's the power of putting, of being thoughtful about putting your thesis together, putting it out there in the world because it draws your people who are in your tribe, co-investors, and most importantly, potential founders reach out to you instead of you always having to do the hard work of finding them. Thank you, Andy. Let's get a round of applause for Andy. Awesome. Great job. All right. Next slide, Bill, is going to come from my friend, Reshma Pensay. And in all transparency, Reshma is also a college classmate. So we've known each other long before either of us, either of us have worked in venture capital. So Reshma is a longtime venture capitalist who's super interesting to me, not just because she's my friend, but because she looks at returns from multiple lenses, at least 2. One, financial returns lens, but also an impact lens. She is what we call in the business a double bottom line investor. She cares about generating financial returns and also impact. And now she is thinking about starting a new fund, a new firm. Um, a new practice, and she has been doing the work, applying the MUST framework to developing a VC investment prototype. And so let's, let's hear it. So welcome, Rashmi. Can you hear and see us?

Yes. Hi.

Okay.

Can you hear me? Okay.

We can hear you just fine. If you need to turn off your camera, um, that's fine. We've got a picture of you up on the screen. Whatever works best for you. So again, lay it on us. What is your thesis? Even if you just want to read it off the screen or encapsulate it in a more refined version, it's up to you.

Yeah. So basically the thesis is backing systems thinkers who can work across sectors and silos using AI, software, and innovative business models to help businesses and customers adapt to economic and social changes caused by an aging population.

Fantastic. All right, so now I'm thinking, again, it resonates. I can think about this intersection of, at least this intersection of tech and these demographic changes, economic and social, aging. How often have we been hearing about the impact the aging of Western societies is going to have in the future? And here we encounter someone who is finding opportunities to partner with entrepreneurs who see that same change and are building businesses, right? So already I can see that the must elements map back to your thesis. So Reshma, do you want to walk us through briefly on how each of the elements, markets, users, science and tech, and talent maps onto your thesis?

Sure. So for markets, obviously we all hear about it all the time that the country is aging, you know, in, and normally when, you know, investment firms, people call that the silver economy, which is just largely about catering to this older market of consumers. But I think it spills over into other aspects of the population as well, including their middle-aged adult children, including younger folks. You know, Andy, if you think about financial health, Retirement planning is important to everybody. So there's a lot of scope across population segments and then also sectors. It can include financial. A lot of it's going to be healthcare and workforce related as well. I'm really focused on what's causing economic shocks to older adults, and that cuts across a few industries.

Great. Yeah, great way to put it together. Likewise, as I asked Andy, can you tell us about on-thesis company perhaps that we haven't heard of that falls within the scope of what your thesis covers?

Yeah. So, and I'll caveat this by just saying this is an introductory view. I would still need to research it further, but there's a company called RevivingMind. It's YC-backed and they are an in-network telehealth provider. helping coordinate care for Medicare and Medicare Advantage population with chronic illness and loneliness. So that would be, you know, there's healthcare's very siloed. This is a company that's trying to kind of coordinate that from a holistic point of view and intervene so that folks don't end up in the hospital when that could be avoided.

Great. And so, and I will let the audience know that this was just one company In your work that you found, I think you found no fewer than 5 in the prep for this session. You shared with me at least 5 companies, right? We only have time to talk about one, but all of you in the audience can envision that you could actually get together with friends and like talk about multiple companies. And in time, you might be investing together in them. I want to ask you one last question, Reshma, that I actually forgot. to ask Andy, and this is super important, what comes next in this work? What do you think is the next step for you personally?

Yeah, so for me personally, I'm thinking about a fund. I'm also thinking about working as an operator, advising startup founders as a fractional COO or strategy officer. And this framework will work, you know, either way. The key thing that really, I think, for The systems thinker's aspect of my thesis is just that, you know, if you're solving a big problem that goes beyond just what your company's doing, then you're actually gonna have impacts regardless. There's been a sort of ebb and flow as far as like what they call impact investing, but I think that, you know, any good scalable business is going to have an impact. It's just about, is it impacting beyond your customers to like a broader impact on the society? Great.

So maybe the next step is, you know, actually taking this after you've done, as you mentioned, the research you want to do. That's actually the near-term next step, right? Is maybe putting this in front of a couple of potential stakeholders, limited partners, potential limited partners who might want to partner with you in bringing this fund into existence. And I also want to share one of the things that Reshma and I did in preparation is that we put her work through our favorite LLM, which came back after a couple of prompts that we engineered with this version of her thesis, which is a little different in key ways. It's a little less personal, but I mention it. I mention it. Because I think using an LLM, your favorite AI in this process is a great use of AI, right? So this is not a class where you're like earning credit and like your work has to be strictly your own. You can engage thoughtfully LLMs to refine your thinking. And so it helps me make the point that even if your partner your thought partner on all of this is your favorite LLM, you should be getting feedback and making it better. So round of applause again for Reshmi and Andy for courageously putting out half-formed ideas into this group of people who have joined us live and who will be watching the replay. And now you all get to do it. Okay. And so here is the framework again. If we had more time, you would spend maybe a couple of days in between sessions, in between classes, grappling with your answers to each of the questions that are associated with each of the elements of the MUST framework, doing the hard work, perhaps aided by a friend or your favorite LLM, to stitch all the answers together to come up with one pithy statement or one succinct prototype of your thesis, right? But what I've done for you, since we have limited time, is I created a Mad Lib. I think everyone knows what a Mad Lib is, right? And it's a sentence where you fill in certain blanks. And in my construction here, what I've done, what I've done is basically taken the beginnings, the skeleton, the spine, if you will, Of a VC investment thesis and ask you to fill in the blanks. And each blank, as you can see, corresponds to one of the elements of the MUST framework. So we're going to do that now for 2 minutes. I want you to take 2 minutes. I'll tell you when to start. I want you to write your thesis, and then I want you To have courage to drop it into the chat, right? Because even if you never get feedback on it, you can say you put it out there into the world and you never know who's going to see it. And the other thing I want you to do, this is very much an exercise of silencing the voices in your head that are telling you your ideas are no good. Often the barrier to getting started are the voices in our head. That really downgrade our ideas. Prototyping anything, right? If those of you who have prototyped like anything in your life, understand that you have to put the half-baked, the half-formed ideas out there. So hopefully that gives you courage to not only engage in this, but to do it somewhat publicly. So I'm going to keep time and I'll tell you when we start. I want you to take 2 minutes, 2 minutes to fill in the blanks and rapidly prototype your VC investment thesis. Is everyone ready? Can I see by show of hands or waves? All right. Ready? Go. And I'll let you know when you have a minute left. Take one more minute. Again, the idea is to not to make yours as pretty as Andy's or Rashmi's. But to use this opportunity to put something together that you might share in the chat courageously. And if you're done, it's not a race, but if you want to be the first and you're done, go ahead and put yours in the chat. Okay. And as you wrap up, I just want to say, uh, welcome back, former students. Um, Olu, Brian, who else? Who else am I missing? Brianna, Andy. It's great when former students come back to my classroom. I'm a big supporter of getting all the reps in. And the Profile and Venture Capital Courage Awards go to Veronica and Kush. I'll read some of these. We back strategic founders using physical tech to solve dirty problems for industrial. I love it. If you haven't, If you haven't caught on yet, part of this exercise, folks, is marketing, right? It's telling the marketplace a story that engages entrepreneurs and co-investors and other potential stakeholders to partner with you in a very noisy world. And dirty physical tech, or dirty problems for industrial, that sounds like a great, great phrase that you could build a whole brand around. Kush, We back early-stage founders using new delivery models in medtech to serve chronic disease patients in emerging markets. Wonderful. Olu, always participating. We back multidisciplinary founders using multimodal AI and intelligent hardware to serve consumers seeking more ambient, intuitive, and context-aware experiences. Wow, dude, that's great. I don't know if you had your favorite LLM open or you've like You know, reach the singularity and you have it already like in there, but that I've never seen anything that's so impressive. I love it. Marcos, we back deep tech founders who identify and mitigate the failure modes in modern AI systems. Sounds like you, brother. That's like, that speaks to Marcos. And I want to make a point. Sometimes you go through this whole process, not just this abbreviated Mad Lib versions, but you go through the whole process. And you come up with a very narrow description of a thing, right? Very narrow prototype. Often that is useful information. And what it tells you is that you maybe shouldn't be investing in other people's companies, but you should start this company, the one you just described. And I, and I bring that up not because Marcos has a too narrow thesis, but because I know him well and that really speaks to him. And does something that I like as well, which is plays to the strengths, the lived experience that you bring to the table. I want to just thank Alicia and Tristan, Olu again, and Vince. I don't have time to read through all of them, but thank you for being courageous and putting your work into the chat and sharing it publicly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bri. Great job. All right. So what's next? Here's what's next. First is a question. So as you did this work, which letter or letters do you have the strongest and the weakest view of, right? I'm sure as you went through all this work, you weren't, you didn't have as much conviction about markets as maybe you had about technology or vice versa. So what I want you to do, and this is, this is You won't do this now because unfortunately we don't have time, but what I want you to do at home is make note of the strongest and weakest parts of your thesis prototype. Why? You'll see now as I talk about the 3 next steps that you can take to go from where you sit today with the thesis you're sitting in now to your first check. First of all, say it. And those of you who shared, right, in the chat, You already did this step. Tell your friends, tell your favorite LLM, listen, right? When we do this in class, I explicitly tell students, no talking, just listening after you've stated it. And then use what you hear to evolve based on your feedback, on their feedback, right? Test it, collect it, collect evidence for and against. Now, it may be obvious to you that where you are weakest, so when you answer the question, which of these dimensions of your investment thesis do you feel like, I'm not so sure about, it may seem obvious, like if I collect more evidence, I can firm that up. And that's correct. What may be non-obvious is that you should engage in the same process for the elements where you feel the strongest. Why? Why? It's because in venture capital, mistakes are often rooted on strongly held beliefs by investors that are impervious to contrary evidence, right? So you want to be the sort of person to be successful in VC who has strongly held, excuse me, strong opinions that are sort of weakly held, which is to say, Even for your strongest views, when you encounter new information, you're able to evolve it. You're able to change your view. So as a next step, collect evidence for and against and update the same way Union Square Ventures did as markets and technologies and entrepreneurs and consumer behavior evolved over the decade plus since the thesis 1.0 that I showed you. Finally execute it. And I will say the single best way to execute the thesis, to like find out if it actually works, is to make an investment, to actually write a check into a company. Not all of us, not all of us have the capacity to do that yet, but that's okay because my claim to you is that you should prepare to do it before the first deal shows up. And So one way to execute it is to start writing in public and see who shows up. They may not show up with a deal, or they may show up for a deal and ask you for help. Look at my pitch deck. Based on your thesis, you seem to be a domain expert in the very industry I am building in, and I don't care if you don't have a checkbook. What I care about is your feedback and your context. And that's how you go from being an advisor to a company to potentially an owner of the company's equity when you have the money to invest. So do some public writing. Pick your social channel of choice, your payment social channel, see who shows up. And over time, what you will see is that you will find a community, people in your tribe who share beliefs, and not only share beliefs easily, but also challenge your beliefs, and who maybe can look at deals together and find opportunities to partner. Because that's what success ultimately in this space hinges on, is the trust that develops over time by working together. And working together doesn't have to only be investing in each other's company. That's an important point that I want to make. So those are my, that's my best advice on how to go from what you learned today to your next step, which ultimately will lead to your first or next check. So as I mentioned, we go much deeper into all of this, which came from Module 2. This material today comes from our second module of Venture Fluent, my online cohort-based venture capital course. Going deep means going not only from thesis, but sourcing companies, evaluating them, and writing a memo that you can use to justify the investment to yourself and to the people who are partnering with you. Before you forget, if you've forgotten, just for coming today or watching the replay, I am happy to extend a discount, $250 off the list price using this code, EARLY26LL, which expires in about 3 weeks on September 14th. 2026. You can scan that QR code to enroll or go to getventurefluent.com. And if you like what you saw today, I'm giving another free lightning lesson, another free one of these, on September 23rd. I'm going to be joining— joined by my friend Jacob Mullins, who's a VC, a longtime VC in Silicon Valley. Uh, who has recently created GP-GPT. You heard that right. That is ChatGPT for VCs. He's gonna do a live demo and help us understand how VCs are using AI to make the call these days on top of a lot of people's minds. So if you like today's lesson, please join us on the 23rd of September. You can scan the QR code to go register. Thank you for joining. We have about 14 minutes. I'm happy to stay on, answer all of your questions, and I hope to see you on Wednesday, September 23rd at our next lightning lesson, if not in the classroom for Venture Fluent this fall. Thank you for staying. And you can put questions in the chat. And Andy, in fact, is going to play the role of course assistant and help me find some of the best questions. So I am yours. For any question on any aspect of what you heard today, any aspect of VC, the course, um, for the next, uh, 13 or so minutes. Thank you for joining. For those of you who have that far, any questions? And you can put them in the chat or you can raise your hand and I'll call on you so you can, um, unmute yourself, which I believe you should be able to do. Was I that complete and thorough? There are no questions?

No.

I couldn't possibly have been that complete and thorough. I think everyone's waiting to see if they have questions. Let me ask you a question since I forgot to ask you, Andy. What do you, you know, as I mentioned, you're a new grad who is doing the work before the deal shows up. You have aspirations to angel invest. What's your next step with your thesis?

Probably, um, well, I have like a little Substack, so probably like post that, but also reach out.

Wait, what's the name of your Substack so we can all subscribe and follow?

It's called Notes from the Corner.

Notes from the Corner. Um, I'll ask you to put that in the chat later so everyone can follow Andy. So, so it sounds like you have bought into the idea of doing some public writing around your Thank you. Tell us more about that.

Yeah, just probably just, um, post it online, like on X, um, just see what people are thinking about it. I feel like, um, I don't— one thing about my thesis I'll say that I don't have too much experience on is the talent, because I just haven't got the reps in, in terms of seeing a lot of entrepreneurs in that space and what really differentiates Yeah. Type of entrepreneurs I'd want to work with. Um, so I'll definitely start posting things online, but also reaching out to firms here in New York who are investing in those spaces and reaching out like, hey, like my name is Andy. I recently wrote this thesis, um, something along those lines and try to see if I can get some feedback from them.

There's so much in that answer I want to unpack. It's almost as if like we prepared for this, but we did it, not this piece anyway. So, 2 things. Thank you for being honest and vulnerable and admitting that which element you feel like the least sure about, that's the talent piece. And I'm grateful that you said that because it gives me a chance to share a belief of mine and you could take it as advice. You didn't ask for advice, but a belief. One belief I have is that whether it comes to hiring, if you're an operator, or whether you're an investor trying to think about talent and talent, like what does high potential entrepreneur look like, right? The people who can create these outlier outcomes, you have to really see that up close, And upfront in order to be able to hire A talent or invest in A talent, right? So there's an old saying like, A players recognize A players. And that is so true in this business because in the same way that the outlier companies are rare by definition, so are the people who can create them and scale, right? And so that's great, right? And it might mean along the way, someone like Andy, before making his first check, part of his homework is working at a venture-backed startup that's doing real well so he can see what A talent looks like, right? In a rapidly exponentially scaling venture. The other thing I like about that answer is what you're going to do next, right? You're going to reach out to other VCs and say, hello, I exist. And, you know, I'm not going to seek 20 minutes of your time, VC, to ask you, tell me, like, what's a typical day like for you? Like, no one wants to talk about their typical day to you, but what they do want to talk about are your big ideas, right? Your take on the market, and even more importantly, can you show me a deal, right? So maybe you can show somebody Revise who hasn't seen it yet. In the course of reaching out to them to get feedback on your thesis, right? That's so, that's part, that's another next step. And I should update the deck to include that, actually reaching out to people who share common cause, if not common thought, to give you feedback, right? And now that's a person who you've connected to. And I, and I'm saying this because I know Andy well. Andy has made it a habit of doing this type of outreach. And I think it has really redounded to his benefit and has really grown in his knowledge and understanding of venture capital by doing that. So thank you, Andy, for putting that forward. I see some questions from Alicia and then Vince. So Alicia says, oh no, Alicia says, thank you very much. I really had no thesis, but was curious. So she made one up. Great. That's what we were here to do today. And my dear friend Vince says, does the thesis work in reverse? Can a company use it to strengthen their position before approaching VCs? The answer is yes. So here's the thing, founders will often, when they're pitching or just talking about their business, they will say, here is our thesis for this business. And it will look very much like Like sort of a claim about markets, users, technology, and people, right? Like, 'cause they're in the business of hiring teams who can actually deliver on their vision, right? That's a big job of being a CEO or leadership in a startup. The thing of it, it's a lot messier because there's so much that needs to be figured out. by a company that I think the venture capital investor doesn't have to figure out, right? So the venture capital's business model, for example, is pretty set. There are variations within a theme, but the core DNA of a venture capital firm or fund from a business model perspective hasn't changed much, hasn't evolved much in 50 years. And You know, people lament that and we can have a debate on how it's going to change in the next 10, but it hasn't changed that much. When you're a founder, basically everything you do every day is a belief about markets, users, technology, and people. And so I would say that, you know, this framework, there are better frameworks for entrepreneurs to use, but Where entrepreneurs can get a lot out of this exercise is by being able to reverse engineer not their own thesis, but a VC's thesis, right? So now what I've given folks today and those who are watching at home is a frame you can use to tear down somebody else's thesis. So I can take the MUX framework and I can put, try to map it against somebody else's thesis to see, well, first of all, does it make sense, right? Is this someone who's just putting marketing copy out into the world or someone who is really thoughtful, right? Because that speaks, I think, somewhat to what it's going to be like to be a partner with them if you're a founder. The other thing you can do, and I think this is more practical, You can basically rule out whether this firm is a firm you should pitch or not. Because frankly, one of the worst ways to go about fundraising for a new venture is to try to boil the ocean, right? And just spray and pray, pick your metaphor. Like, you know, we're going to blast or try to meet for, you know, hundreds of people and then see what sticks. Like, that's one of the worst ways to do it. It's also not a good idea to like say, we're gonna try to raise from these 3 people and then see if we can broaden it out. What you're trying to do very much is find this Goldilocks, this sweet spot, like as we've been talking about, of people who, if we were talking about this as a sales process, which it is, people who are firms that are qualified leads for you, right? Who have Maybe not a sure thing, nothing's a sure thing, but have a decent chance of resonating with the market opportunity you're bringing to them in your pitch. And Vince, that's where this framework is particularly well suited for entrepreneurs who may be looking to engage and partner with VCs. Thanks for that question. We've got time maybe for one more question, friends and associates. Put in the chat or just raise your hand. Tomer, go ahead, go for it. Tomer from the beautiful campus of Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

The background drop. Uh, hi Jorge. Hi Andy. Good to see you guys. Uh, thanks for the, um, the talk and I love the, the, the MUST framework. Um, I wanted to ask something kind of adjacent. What's the next favorite framework that you like? Maybe give us something for the, you know, taste of the course of what's coming up next.

Yes. Well, funny, people are going to think we implanted that one. I think you know the answer. And those who've been in my classroom will remember the product market matrix that comes out of Cornell Tech, which was used to teach. I think it was part of the product studio where I'm now a new visiting faculty. It was adapted in an article by 2 venture capital investors at a firm called 645 Ventures, Namdi Okike and Aaron Holiday. adapted to explain to the world, but I think most importantly to entrepreneurs, where VCs can generate their highest returns. We don't have time to go into it, but as Tomer knows, since I presented this framework to the program participants at the Runway Startup Program at Cornell Tech, and if you've studied VC with me, you've seen it. But what it does is help entrepreneurs understand where on the spectrum of product innovation and the spectrum of consumer behavior you need to be in order to be inside of a VC's sweet spot. And so I will commend you to the article, just Google The circle of competence and the VC investment triangle. Circle of competence and VC investment triangle. If you Google those words, you will find the 2018, I believe it's 2018, article by Aaron Holiday and Namdi Okeke. One of the best frameworks I think that has been put out for helping entrepreneurs understand what VCs look for that I've seen, and it's which I use it in my teaching. So that's the answer. Tomer, a little ad for Cornell Tech, but it really is. Those of you who, like Dean Vince, who've seen my teaching for a long time, know that I've used that framework since the beginning and really, really do think it helps students of VC learn the craft as well as entrepreneurs. All right, we are at time. I want to thank all the diehards, all 10 of you? Wow. For joining, the friends that I knew before and I had before today, and the new ones that I've made in this lightning lesson. I hope to see you at a future event. And thanks again, Reshma and Andy, for carving out time to be our guest speakers and for doing the advanced work that it took. Thank you all. I'm going to be signing off now, but hope to see you in real space or in fake space sometime soon. Bye-bye now.