Haystack: New Funds, New Era
Team Haystack
Aashay's Newsletter
I'm a Partner at a VC fund called Haystack. These are my thoughts on startup building, the venture capital industry, and areas of opportunity.
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Latest episodes
The Story Behind Haystack's Investment in Blockit
Today, the team at Blockit launches publicly and announces their $5M seed financing, led by Pat Grady at Sequoia.
12 predictions for 2026
Maybe it’s a little early for 2026 predictions and maybe these scream ‘perma-bull’ but I wanted to have some fun with tech and macro predictions for the coming year.
The Story Behind Haystack's Investment in Type Five
In the late fall of 2024, our friend Kevin Mahaffey sent us some background information on a team he had backed – founders working on what was described as an “operating system for home building.” The company was Type Five. Even as a seed stage company, they had already built several customized, backyard ADUs (accessory dwelling units) and homes in the East Bay in Northern California.
Full stack startups, revisited
About a decade ago, Chris Dixon and Balaji Srinivasan popularized the idea of “full stack startups.” The premise was that as software moved from an independent sector to natively integrated in the entire economy, the best opportunities were to build end-to-end experiences and bypass incumbents.
The Story Behind Haystack's Investment in Bench IQ
In the late summer of 2023, our friends at Lazer Technologies (thank you Zain and Arif!) messaged us about meeting their friend Jimoh Ovbiagele. Jimoh had previously been a co-founder & CTO of a legal research company called ROSS Intelligence, had an interlude at Coinbase, and was starting his next thing –
Haystack VII
Announcing our newest fund and some team updates
Minimum Viable Raise
I was recently with a friend who has been a seed investor for the good part of the last decade.
The Story Behind Haystack's Investment in Haus
Since 2010 or so, e-commerce companies, retailers, brands, and other consumer-facing properties had a clear understanding of how they grew their businesses on digital channels like Google and Facebook.
Tools & Platforms in 2023
What building blocks are entrepreneurs picking up these days?
The Story Behind Haystack’s Investment in Finley
In college, I used to get coffee with a local investor named Tom Rutledge. Tom has a rich background in capital markets and credit origination, and he taught me a lot. Back then, he used to tell me about a thesis that was circulating in his head — as software ate the world and entered more capital intensive or asset heavy industries, tech companies of all sorts would need a debt and capital…
The liquidation preference
Why should I care?
4 questions on AI
Hopefully I can breathe some life back into this newsletter.
Dealing with a hangover
We have unicorns. We have other various animal-themed nomenclature for high growth businesses.
Refocusing
There is a company in the Haystack portfolio that raised a seed round at the tail end of last year.
Software Startup Heuristics
What are the common models for company creation in the enterprise?
Gyrations
Making sense of the market in early 2022
Shopping Spree
In the coming months and years, I suspect we will see increased M&A activity move through the technology industry.
The round on the cover
I was talking about recent seed rounds with a friend the other day, discussing how they seemed to be inflating in size, with many creeping up to $10M of initial capital in.
Areas of Interest, March 2021
I used to write more posts or essays covering ideas, trends, and themes that were compelling to me in the moment.