Episode summary
Why Size Is Breaking the Venture Capital Model
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Glenn Solomon
Summary
Glenn Solomon argues that venture capital has become a barbell market: roughly $350 billion went into venture rounds in 2025, but about $250 billion of that flowed into rounds over $100 million, while Notable Capital stays focused on seed through Series A. He says that discipline lets the firm compete against larger platforms by concentrating on the portion of the market where focus, speed, and founder access matter most.
He says Notable’s edge comes from being intentionally unscalable. The firm is a 42-person team making only 8 to 10 new investments a year, with a model built around being the first call for founders and delivering coordinated support from both investment and platform teams. Solomon says that approach supports consistent top-quartile to top-decile performance, even if it does not always produce the single best fund in the industry.
A major part of the conversation centers on AI, especially Anthropic. Solomon frames AI not as a software story but as a labor-market story, arguing that the biggest opportunities are in multi-trillion-dollar labor categories like coding, finance, legal, healthcare, and accounting. He says the “software apocalypse” is overstated because durable software businesses still have distribution, data, and know-how advantages, and he views AGI as a phase rather than a binary event.
Key takeaways
- Glenn Solomon says most venture dollars are flowing into mega-rounds, which is why Notable Capital stays focused on seed, Series A, and Series B.
- Solomon says Notable’s small number of investments and large platform team are designed to make the firm the founder’s first call.
- Solomon argues that AI is attacking labor budgets, not just software budgets, which makes the opportunity much larger than traditional software markets.
- Solomon says software franchises with strong distribution and proprietary data can still defend value even as AI lowers the cost of building the bits.
- Solomon expects AGI to be a gradual phase, not a single moment, and says investors should look for durable opportunities across multiple sectors.
Notable quotes
“250 billion of that 350 went into rounds that were over a hundred million in size”
“we're really focused on investing in seed series A series B”
“We want each founder to feel like they're our only founder”
“size is the enemy of return”
“these are not traditional software markets. These are labor markets”
How the episode opens
You compete against the Sequoas and Andreas of the world with a $650 million fund. How do you differentiate?
There's a chart I saw recently, an SVB chart that I thought helped crystallize for me how we're competing and differentiating with with the Giants. Um there's actually 350 billion that went into venture rounds in 2025. uh an incredible number, astounding number, but 250 billion of that 350 went into rounds that were over a hundred million in size with the majority of that 250 going into rounds that were over a half trillion in size.
These are mega rounds and they're really what we used to consider IPOs. Um companies are staying private longer. They're accessing the private market preipo capital in size.
So if you're a large platform fund and you can deploy enormous checks uh into late stage high growth companies, that's very interesting. The other hundred billion of that 350 billion is invested in rounds sized under 100 million and notable we're really focused on investing in seed series A series B. So really the the bottom half let's say of of the 100 million type round size and below.
These are early stage companies. We're investing early average valuations probably plusUS 80 to 150 in in in valuation. So much different complexion than these mega rounds and it's the only thing we do.
We certainly compete in these early stage rounds with larger funds uh for early stage investments, but our win rate in these fun in these types of rounds is very very high and I really think that's because of our focus
Right now is a very hot M&A market as well as an IPO market. Does that change how you go about investing? — We really try to stay disciplined and ensure that we invest over a two and a half to three year period in each fund.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- venture capital fund size
- seed and series a investing
- mega-rounds
- ai software disruption
- anthropic enterprise positioning
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Notable Capital
- GGV Capital
- Anthropic
- AlphaSense
Watch the episode
Watch “Why Size Is Breaking the Venture Capital Model” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Peter Thiel's 27-Year Partner on the AI Bubble, the Venture Capital Crisis, and the PayPal Mafia -
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Federated Hermes CEO on $400 Billion in Cash, the Private Markets Boom, and AI
How I Invest With David Weisburd, this episode and its artwork belong to David Weisburd. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
