A newsletter about venture capital, tech, economics and more
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Our latest episode is with Helen Min, founder of Articulate , the $10 million pre-seed fund she launched this year and runs solo, and venture partner at True Ventures. Helen has spent twenty years in San Francisco, most of it as an operator rather than an investor. She was an early product marketer at Facebook, ran marketing and communications at Plaid through the years it positioned itself as the…
For decades, venture capital was associated with creative destruction. Recently, it has drifted toward risk-averse incrementalism, serving the incumbents it used to disrupt.
A few weeks ago I jumped on a call with Alex Miller, co-founder of Chaotic Capital , the early-stage fund he runs with Julie Fredrickson. Their thesis is that the world is too chaotic to predict, so the only thing worth betting on is a founder’s ability to adapt to it. Alex came to venture from outside the industry. Concert producer, conference producer for Jason Calacanis, eight and a half years…
Private markets are evolving; the dominance of the ten-year fund is making way for capital deployed by more flexible discretionary vehicles with better terms.
Cyan Banister on why the biggest wins come from the most unusual places.
Venture capitalists tend to understand success through the pursuit of scale, and yet scale is more likely to create failure than to enable success.
Enrico Mellis spent a year at the startup that became Foodora, nearly five at Project A, and four and a half more at Lakestar. In November 2025 he launched Animal: no fund, no management fee, just his own check going in first on every deal, with a small group of angels invited in behind him. Here’s what stuck with me: Venture is really three jobs wearing one trenchcoat: sourcing, selecting and…
Private equity was forced to get fit after the Global Financial Crisis. Venture capital's megafunds would benefit from a similar intervention.
Venture capital has roots in financing exploration, and in many ways that's what the industry still does today — the horizons are just less literal.
A few weeks ago I sat down with Sarah Drinkwater, founder of Common Magic. Sarah came to venture from the outside. Journalist, club night runner, vintage clothing shop owner, operator, angel. Her journey looks nothing like a straight line. As you often find, that’s kind of the point. Her fund, Common Magic , backs products with community at their core, building on her experience creating products…
An aging, chubbing man embarks on a half marathon while contemplating AI, consciousness and human solidarity
What venture capital should look like in the age of LLMs
Adam Besvinick of Looking Glass Capital has been investing at pre-seed for over a decade — solo, and on his own terms. In this episode, he joins Dan to talk about cold-emailing his way into a role at Lowercase Capital, what he learned from Chris Sacca that still guides him today, and what marks don't tell you about the companies that matter most. The Odin Times A newsletter about venture capital,…
The path to scaling venture capital must avoid propping up a larger number of marginal companies and feeding fee extraction.
The mismatch of an unscalable industry built on an incentive to scale.
Noubar Afeyan has devoted his career to proving innovation can be systematic, and the volume of successful exits from Flagship Pioneering appears to prove his point.
Odin’s research lead Dan Gray takes the conversation online to meet emerging managers and solo GPs from around the world, unpacking their investing journey and thesis. In this episode, Dan sits down with Arian Ghashghai, who founded Earthling VC in 2023 to back weird, fringe, early-stage companies across future computing, robotics, AR/VR, AI, bio, and more. They discuss the challenges of raising…
The challenge of backing emerging managers in venture capital, and the many parallels with early-stage investing
Why cold inbound is an overlooked source of alpha, and a research-backed framework to get the most out of it.
Breaking down recent research on venture capital fund horizons, and the implications for small and emerging managers.
