My Seed Stage Investing Interests and Focus – Founders that can sell (technology as a garnish), Wealthtech, The Degenerate Economy, The Luxury Economy and Marketing Is The New Engineering

Good morning…

Last week I wrote about the state of seed investing and venture capital and summarized my thoughts with this…

One of the ‘giants’ I respect a lot is Josh Wolfe at Lux Capital who just raised a whopping $1.5 billion to attack these categories above. His takes on the barbell of venture are aligned with mine.

I do not have an edge in this land of giants (capital) and hard technology problems. I don’t live in Silicon valley, no longer frequent San Francisco or the valley, or network with these people. I would be suspicious if the best space, chip, biotech or energy founders were pitching me. That said, we know many great investors at funds across the globe that do share opportunities with us because they know how we think and invest.

I am as curious as the most curious people in Silicon Valley but can’t compete day to day in most of the ‘hot’ categories. I don’t like the prices, I don’t like the cap tables and for the most part I don’t like the players.

I have been rethinking my own strategy and writing about how this would all play out since 2019 when every Venture Capital firm aimed to be the next Softbank.

I like to use sports analogies as I think about how there are many ways to win as seed investors in this land of giants. ‘Moneyball‘ and ‘small ball’ come to mind.

Great outcomes come from great founders building great products and great teams for large markets, but the cap table and the math (like capital needed to get to escape velocity) matter, probably more than ever in a land of giants and a meddling government.

In the business of seed investing, the 100-500 bagger cures all. But as network effects get harder, cost of customer acquisition get higher and AI eats software, what worked in 2012 will not work in 2026. It has been my hard job the last six years to explain to founders that pitch me how I/we at Social Levereage as investors and founders ourselves see this new world.

I would not keep investing if I did not believe there would be a continued abundance of business creation and founders that wanted to fix a nagging problem in their markets and area of domain expertise.

Our limited partners know how we think or we would not have a business, but for everyone else here is how I am thinking…

Price matters. This is likely the most controversial take I could have as a seed investor. In an era of ZIRP (2010-2020), open networks and network effects, nothing mattered less. In this era I prefer all the optionality for founders and investors that comes with prices that make sense. Momentum is precious and the high priced seed rounds just create too much momentum pressure early for my style.

Humans still matter and ‘technology as a garnish’. Josh Brown has a great piece about the wealthtech, financial advisor sector that is a must read. In 2013, when we invested in Robinhood, every venture capitalist was chasing technology first asset gathering products over humans and transactions based products/platforms. Transactions mattered! Now that the degenerate economy is upon us, transactions continued to expand exponentially while at the same time getting commoditized, humans, hand holding, and education matter more than ever. No matter, I continue to see venture capitalists fund the myth of technology based asset gathering. It of course could work, but I am skeptical of the cap tables of these companies and the idea of ‘venture’ returns.

I am a personal seed investor in a boring, conservatively valued and now large financial advisory firm out of Chicago called Rothschild. It helps to have a lab for all the wealthtech founders and products in our network.

The Wealthtech Space is Exploding. Print money or die has its side effects. While the world argues about inflation, prices, affordability, wealth taxes and the wealth gaps, the wealthy need to be served and they are not as price sensitive. I like this take from my pal, great investor (and LP) Chris Camillo regarding the idea that two classes are forming which fits perfectly into my degenerate economy thesis…

Luxury services/products – see Wealthtech above. Freemium is for an era of the past. Walmart, Amazon, Temu win the masses so find companies and products that focus on the highest margin customers. Our SPV (series A) investment in Dorsia is an example.

Marketing is the new engineering. This means a lot of things. For one, I believe the creator economy has been led off cliffs and into dead ends because of the large social networks. If you do not own the email address and/or phone number of your fans and customers you are walking dead. The Wall Street Journal says the year 2025 was the year of the newsletter (if you are paywalled use archive.ph and drop link in that) and highlighted our fund 4 portfolio company Beehiiv. Email as a form of communicating with and marketing to your fans and customers will continues to grow in importance.

One big question as the large networks clamp down on the reach of users while AI SLOP and algorithm based feeds proliferate… is a creator economy apocalypse upon us?

NO.

But its is a perfect hype title and a major discussion point for the major problem – now at Defcon 4 – as founders/creators realize that the cost of acquiring a customer is rising and their social feed is not the right way to reach their customers.

Now more than ever, founders and creators need to be able to grow their users, fans and customers creatively and inexpensively and be less reliant on social networks.

Have a great Sunday and please hit me up if you are a founder focused on our areas of interest.