Build a VC dam?

Author

Jorian Hoover
November 17, 2025

Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach and have worked with 50+ founders who’ve raised over $190M.

Every week, I share what elite VCs (a16z / Sequoia / USV / Founders Fund / etc.) invested in, and the strategies for how top founders are raising from them. Plus, I’ll share my two cents on the VC landscape and my favorite VC essays/podcasts for you to check out.

And thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe—I’m immensely grateful for this community of 1.7K+ startup founders and operators/investors from OpenAI, Anthropic, a16z, Lightspeed, etc.

If you think someone else might like this newsletter, they can signup here. And if you have any feedback on today’s edition, please do reply to this email. I read and respond to every message that comes through.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take on the latest in VC: “Are Seed-stage VCs getting squeezed?”

  2. What funding rounds did a16z, Sequoia, USV, and other Tier 1 VCs lead last week? (Nov 8-14, 2025)?

  3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: Build a VC dam

1. Jorian’s 1min take on the latest in VC: “Are Seed-stage VCs getting squeezed?”

Earlier this week I listened to Rob Go’s (Partner at NextView) podcast appearance on Venture Unlocked, titled “Unpacking ‘A Crisis Moment in Seed’”. It cemented an idea that's been brewing: seed-stage investing has gotten squeezed.

If you zoom back to the early/mid 2010s, seed investing was in its heyday.

At that time, the Sequoias and Benchmarks of the world focused on the Series A & B stages. This created a gap at the Seed stage. Luckily, Seed-stage funds such as Floodgate and Uncork were ready to fill this gap.

And if you were a top 10% founder, the Seed stage path was straightforward. You'd likely raise $2-5M in Seed funding at a reasonable valuation from a Seed-focused VC. At the time, this was not only your best option, but likely your only option.

Most seed-focused VCs made a killing during this period.

First, they weren't competing with THAT many other VCs focused on Seed. Second, as I mentioned, top founders pretty much had to go with these Seed-stage funds. And third, these VCs had caught a more-than-a-decade long bull run of software companies.

Since the mid 2010s, these Seed-focused VCs have gotten squeezed from three vectors. From above, below, and within.

Let's start with from above. Series A and multi-stage funds began smartening to the idea you could make a killing at Seed. And they started offering top founders mouth-watering deals. Instead of $4M on $20M, they were now getting offered $10M on $50M. If you were a top founder, which deal would you take?

Seed funds were also getting squeezed from below. Y Combinator started becoming such an obvious choice for many top founders. These founders were happy to take Y Combinator's no-questions-asked $500K deal. That money went a long way as building a startup became cheaper with the cloud and SaaS, and now AI. And so these startups often didn't need the Seed-focused VCs after leaving YC.

Last, Seed funds have gotten squeezed from within. Whereas Seed investing used to be a specialty craft, that's no longer true. Well over 100 Seed focused funds have emerged in the past 10-15 years. All trying to replicate the success the OG Seed-stage funds had. And so for those bullseye $4M on $20M Seed deals that remain, there's now A LOT more competition.

Seed investors have gotten squeezed. For every Seed VC with good returns the past few years, there are four others with poor returns. If this AI wave crashes we may see more opportunity to win amongst Seed-focused VCs. But until then, they're getting squeezed harder than the last few drops of Heinz.

What do you think? Do you believe Seed investors are getting squeezed these days? Email me by replying to this newsletter and let’s start a conversation.

3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  • Podcast: Venture Unlocked with Samir Kanji - “Unpacking ‘A Crisis Moment in Seed’” (Spotify link; Apple Podcasts link)

    • This was the aforementioned podcast in my 1min take on Seed-stage VCs getting squeezed. Highly recommend a listen. Samir Kanji interviews Rob Go, partner at NextView, for his thoughts on Seed-stage VCs getting squeezed.

  • Podcast: Origins with Beezer Clarkson & Nick Chirls - “Internet Capital Markets with Kyle Samini” (Spotify link; Apple Podcasts link; YouTube link)

    • It’s been a while since I’ve dug deeper into web3 investing, and Origins with Beezer Clarkson & Nick Chirls is always an insightful listen. They brought on Kyle Samini, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital.

  • Podcast: 20VC with Harry Stebbings - “Benchmark’s Newest General Partner Ev Randle on Why Margins Matter Less in AI” (Spotify link; Apple Podcasts link; YouTube link)

    • Benchmark has a new partner in Ev Randle and he shared his thoughts on multi-stage funds, AI, and more on Harry Stebbings’ pod.

    Essay: “The Cult of the Co-Founder” by Sam Lessin (link)

    • Sam Lessin (Partner at Slow Ventures) dropped a doozy with his honest thoughts on the co-founder “requirement” of many VCs (and often Y Combinator) being more performative than helpful.

  • Newsletter: “Unpicking OpenAI’s real revenues” by Azeem Azhar (link)

    • There was leaked information in some payments between OpenAI and Microsoft, and Azeem Azhar did a great job of breaking down various scenarios on what OpenAI’s real revenues could be.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: Build a VC dam

I titled today's newsletter "build a VC dam?" because it's focused on my favorite strategy for lining up intros to VCs: the dam method.

At the highest levels of fundraising, founders jam 40+ VC meetings into a short two week kickoff. Heck, I've even seen some founders jam in 80+ meetings.

But too often I speak with top founders who had strong networks and tried this approach... and failed to land dozens of meetings in a short window.

Why didn't these founders land enough VC meetings in a short window?

There are usually two root causes:

  1. The founder scores dozens of intros to VCs, but these intros get scattered across a two month period. They've lost the potential momentum of jamming all these VC meetings in a short window.

  2. The founder asks for ~100 intros to VCs, but only a small percentage of these asks turn into VC meetings. They haven't landed enough meetings to create momentum in the first place.

The dam strategy helps to solve both of these issues.

The theory behind the VC intro dam strategy

The theory behind this strategy is that we want to ensure a couple things:

First, we want to control (as much as possible) that the VC meetings land in a very short window. This creates momentum, allowing you to play VCs against each other.

Second, we want to ensure that when connectors reach out to VCs, it's a strong connection. This increases the conversion rate from # of intro asks to # of VC meetings.

The dam strategy of VC intros allows us to build up high-quality intros to VCs. And then to only "release the dam" once we have enough intros ready to unleash.

(As a side note: there is no way to guarantee that all your VC intro asks turn into VC meetings. There will always be some drop-off; for example, 100 intro asks may turn into 60 meetings. But we are trying to avoid that drop-off being too large, or the drop-off occurring over too long of a period.)

How to enact a dam strategy for your VC intros

I've written in the past about needing a large enough VC list to work through during a fundraise. Many founders make the mistake of fundraising with a VC list only 30 deep, when in reality you want 100+.

Once you have a robust VC list (and a built-out network!), you want to get started with intro mapping. You'll do this through both a tops-down and bottoms-up approach.

  • Tops-down: Leverage LinkedIn and tools like NFX Signal to find who can connect you to each VC on your list. Keep working through the list until you find someone excited to connect you to that VC. And they should know the VC well, too.

  • Bottoms-up: It's impossible to map out every potential VC who could invest in you. So you should also ask your network which VC firms they recommend you talk with. Founders often get dozens of extra VC intros this way.

*Wait* It will be tempting to ask your connections to send off these intros ASAP. Do not do this.

Instead, use the VC intro dam strategy. Tell both your tops-down and bottoms-up connectors the following: "Thank you so much for offering that intro. I'm going to launch my fundraise soon; can I keep you updated weekly and then ask you to make that intro when I'm ready?"

Why this works is you can build up the ~100 intros you're looking for, and only unleash the intros once you're ready. Of course you need to keep your connectors warm and not keep them holding for several months. But this strategy allows you to only kickoff when you're ready to unleash your intros.

Once you've reached your target number of intro offers, unleash them. You should en-masse tell your connectors to fire off their intro requests. And make life easy for them by offering to send them a simple forwardable email.

Usually this approach works like magic, opening a floodgate to a sea of VC meetings in a short meeting.

One downside with this approach? You have to be a bit flexible on your kickoff timeline. For example, if you're set on kicking off VC meetings on January 12th, that might not work under this approach. What if it's January 9th and you only have 15 intro requests secured?

But here's what I tell founders I work with. I would much, MUCH rather you have your dam built up of 100 intro requests and delay your kickoff by 1+ weeks. Afterall, that fundraising kickoff is only an internal deadline. No VC will ever know you shifted it.

This VC dam strategy is a bit of a different approach and is not for everyone, but if done right, it can work like magic.

What do you think about the dam strategy for VC intros? Reply to this email, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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I’ve helped 50+ founders run high-quality fundraises and raise over $190M. Check out jorianhoover.com to read founder testimonials and learn more about my approach.