Episode summary
Why the Best Venture Capital Funds Stay Small
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · 43 min · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Elizabeth Weil
Summary
Elizabeth Weil argues that venture capital works best as a network business, not a scale business. She says Scribble Ventures was built to be a right-sized, collaborative fund focused on pre-seed and seed investing, launched in 2020 during the pandemic and raised entirely over Zoom. She says that choice, plus consistency, helped the firm raise an oversubscribed fund and that Scribble One has returned 75% of the fund and is marked over 5x.
Weil ties that approach to a broader thesis that relationships compound in venture. She says founders, LPs, and co-investors all make the firm more valuable over time, and that being authentic helps those relationships last across a 10-year fund life. She also says smaller funds can outperform because they stay focused on the top 1% of founders, avoid sharp-elbowed behavior, and can be more helpful on the cap table.
On investing, Weil says Scribble backs both seed-stage companies and breakout rounds, typically writing $750K to $1.5 million checks in core pre-seed and seed, and $1 to $3 million in breakout deals. She says the firm underwrites for 100x upside in core deals and at least 10x in breakout deals, while rejecting rigid ownership targets when those targets would push the firm away from the best opportunities.
Key takeaways
- Weil says venture capital is a network-effects business because better relationships improve sourcing, diligence, decision-making, and future deal flow.
- Scribble Ventures was founded in 2020, raised its first $50 million entirely over Zoom, and Weil says Scribble One has returned 75% of the fund and is marked over 5x.
- Weil says smaller funds have an edge because they can stay collaborative, maintain founder trust, and avoid the pressure to act like an asset manager.
- She says Scribble does not require a fixed ownership target and would rather back the best founders than force a 15% position.
- Weil says the firm’s core checks are typically $750K to $1.5 million, while breakout checks are usually $1 million to $3 million.
Notable quotes
“I would actually have to rewind to when I founded Scribble Ventures, which was at the very start of the pandemic in 2020”
“we actually put together what we call the Scribble Network and that's a group made up of executives, operators, founders”
“The game of venture is to see great opportunities, to pick them, to diligence them, and then to win them”
“I think one thing I can be very judgmental personally and behind the scenes as soon as I meet a founder”
“I believe that there's a canonical great founder”
How the episode opens
So, you recently raised an overs subscribe fund which in 2026 is not easy. How did you accomplish that?
Uh, great question. I would actually have to rewind to when I founded Scribble Ventures, which was at the very start of the pandemic in 2020, and everybody asked, "Why does the world need another venture firm? And I knew I had felt like there was a hole in the market for a right-sized fund focused on preede and seed primarily to invest in the world's best companies and the world's best founders and doing that in a collaborative way.
And I felt like at that point in time so many funds had become sharp elbowed. So really what it became was just consistency. I saw that we were starting a global pandemic.
Everyone thought it was the dumbest time to start a fund. But there was this huge inflection point going on and I felt like that was the best advantage to invest in companies when you're having a step change and there's a world phenomenon that we'll never see again. So, Scribble was born 2020 summer of the pandemic fund raise entirely over Zoom.
I raised a $50 million fund one. It was hard work. I walked a lot of miles talking to LPs on the phone, never once meeting in person, and we are off to the races.
Currently, Scribble One returned 75% of the fund. So, there's real DPI for our earliest LPS and supporters. It's marked over a 5x.
So, we're doing extremely well.
And before we started recording, I was telling you that podcasting is this network effect game where the guests drive more listeners and the listeners drive better guests and you have this self-reinforcing loop. You said venture capital is the same.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- venture capital fund sizing
- network effects in vc
- founder-centric investing
- lp fundraising
- portfolio construction
Companies and tickers mentioned
- COIN
- Scribble Ventures
- SpaceX
- Slack
- Coinbase
- Whatnot
- Gusto
- Grab
- Calm
- Envoy
- Hipcamp
- Daily.co
- Andreessen Horowitz
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
Watch the episode
Watch “Why the Best Venture Capital Funds Stay Small” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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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.
