People, Not Pixels: The Real VC Punk Rock 🌟

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Ah, the glittering mirage of web3 and AI! How easily one is seduced by the baubles of the tech bazaar-the next-gen stack, the token du jour, the LLM benchmarks that promise salvation. Founders, poor souls, clutch these trinkets like talismans, as though a clever framework might bridge every chasm. But let us, dear reader, pierce the illusion: the true alchemy in startups lies not in the code, but in the flesh-and-blood wizards who wield it. 🧙‍♂️✨

  • People, not tech, drive innovation – Technology is but a trowel; the cathedral is built by the mason’s hand. True breakthroughs spring from the founder’s mind, not the machine’s hum. 🛠️🧠
  • VC is about transformation – The finest investors do not “pick” startups like one plucks a daisy; they midwife founders, hastening their evolution faster than their tribulations. 🌱🔥
  • Data is table stakes – Metrics, dashboards, market sizing-all commoditized drivel. What matters? Grit, emotion, and the unquantifiable spark of character. 📊❌
  • Founders aren’t machines – Resilience is not a line of code; it’s the emotional range, the flexibility, the audacity to shatter old molds and forge new ones. 🤖❌🎭
  • The punk side of VC – True venture capital is anarchy in a suit: breaking rules, safeguarding founder freedom, and betting on those who dare to reshape reality. 🤘💥

The myth, oh so quaint, is that technology drives innovation. The reality, my dear, is that technology is but a snapshot-a frozen tableau of code and infrastructure. Teams, however, are a living, breathing tempest. Products pivot, markets correct, strategies shift-not because a line of code awoke from its slumber, but because a human being dared to think differently, to work differently, to dream differently. This, my friends, is the essence of VC, stripped of its pretensions. 🌪️💡

When a founder evolves, the company follows like a loyal hound. When the founding team grows-not in headcount, but in capacity-products sharpen, markets yawn open, and strategy takes on a new, dazzling shape. 🦴✨

Thus, my focus as an investor is not on tracking protocols or memorizing LLM benchmarks. Such pursuits are for the dilettantes, the commoditized souls. No, I seek the unmeasurable: the quality of human transformation within the founding team. For it is there, in the crucible of growth, that everything else is forged. 🔍🧪

Technology is fast, yes. But people? People are faster-when they are truly seen, challenged, and supported. The investor’s role is not to “pick” a startup like a ripe fruit; it is to cultivate the founder, to hold a mirror to their blind spots, and to provide the room-and the pressure-to grow. For it is in the rough, brutal, challenging, and rewarding reality that compounding happens. That is where the magic of innovation is born. 🌱💎

The punk side of venture capital

My view on VC, you ask? It’s punk, darling. Not the leather-jacketed, guitar-smashing kind (though, perhaps, a touch of that too). No, it’s punk as an attitude-a middle finger to the boundaries, the rules, the false idols of “how it’s done.” It’s about defending the freedom to create without permission, to build without apology. 🤘🔥

Most VC playbooks are as predictable as a soap opera: track metrics, find traction, chase momentum. Dashboards, KPIs, due diligence checklists-useful, no doubt, but as exciting as a tax return. Numbers, my dear, have been automated. Data rooms gleam, market sizing is a formula, and even a half-decent intern can wield AI tools like a pro. 📉🤖

What hasn’t been automated? Human emotions. The grit of a founder staring down the abyss. The electric moment when a team locks into flow and ships something against all odds. The stubborn refusal to quit when logic screams, “Abandon ship!” You can’t reduce that to a spreadsheet. You can’t replace it with a prompt. You can’t learn it from a textbook. You must live it. You must feel it. And feeling, my dear, is the essence of being. 📈❤️

Thus, I view VC through the prism of emotions, stories, and action. Not because I’m anti-data, but because data is table stakes. It’s the human layer that remains scarce, decisive, and utterly irresistible. A founder’s story-the way they tell it, the way they live it-is not mere marketing. It’s the blueprint of how their company navigates chaos. People drive innovation. People change the world. People create new realities. Technology? It’s just the paintbrush. 🖌️🌍

Founders are not machines

Ah, the founder-that mythical creature, oft portrayed as a relentless productivity engine: sleep less, execute more, optimize always. But startups, my dear, are not built by machines. They are built by human beings-messy, contradictory, fear-ridden, and occasionally brilliant. 🤖❌🎨

The most resilient founders I’ve encountered are not the ones who “out-grind” the competition. They are the ones who expand their emotional and strategic range. They can be stubborn and flexible in the same week. They can take a gut punch from the market, process it, and pivot with conviction. They can hold a vision so tightly that they pull others into it-and yet change the plan without losing the dream. Flexibility and adaptation? They spring from the transformation of thoughts, ideas, and emotions. 🧩🔄

If you see founders as fixed, you’ve missed the point entirely. If you invest in people as they are instead of who they can become, you’re buying a depreciating asset. Take, for instance, my decision to back Antix.in, a tech company crafting hyper-realistic AI digital humans for web3 and the metaverse. The founder, Roman Cyganov, didn’t win our pitch competition. But he stood out in an unexpected way-not through slides or metrics, but through how he carried himself at an investor gathering: zero arrogance, maximum charisma, and a relentless openness to feedback. I detailed the decision-making process here. 🌟🤝

Having witnessed thousands of founders since 2020, I’ve learned to trust that kind of character signal more than a deck. That single interaction revealed more about his future potential than any tokenomics chart ever could. And it’s why I believe people, not technology, are the true drivers of startups. 💼🔮

Consequently, the most powerful lever in early-stage investing is helping founders grow faster than their challenges. This is not a line item in the budget. It’s relationship work. It’s trust. It’s mentorship. The real work of venture capital isn’t answering questions-it’s helping people find answers by themselves. 🤝🌱

The freedom to build (and destroy)

A people-centric approach to VC isn’t about “being nice” or scheduling more founder therapy sessions. It’s about granting and protecting the founder’s freedom to build the thing only they can build-and sometimes, to burn down what they’ve built in order to make something better. 🔥🛠️

Disruption, oh how it’s romanticized in tech! But in reality, most of it is internal. The founders who make it are the ones willing to destroy their own norms, their own assumptions, their own safe models, again and again. It’s punk in the purest sense: if the rules don’t serve you, throw them out and make your own! 🤘🔄

That’s the kind of founder I back-the one who isn’t afraid to break what they’ve just built, and who knows that destruction can be a form of care. Sometimes, it’s even essential for survival. But to know that, they must test their products against the real world, through pain and pressure, through joy and insights, through life itself. 🌪️❤️

Technology is the medium, people are the source

In web3 and AI, technology changes at a velocity that can make one’s head spin. Protocols rise and fall in months. Models get outdated in weeks. But the founders who last, the ones who lead category-defining companies, are not the ones who just “keep up.” They are the ones who transform in sync with-or faster than-the world around them. They are the ones who transform the world. 🌍🚀

If we want to talk about leverage in startups, let’s stop pretending it lives in the codebase. It lives in the humans who can evolve, adapt, transform, and lead. The rest-the pivots, the product-market fits, the exits-flows from that. 💻❌🧠

I don’t invest in technology. I invest in people who can shape the world. 🌟🌍

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2025-08-26 18:01