vanilla

don't do it

Author

Jorian Hoover
March 10, 2026

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.

What a crazy past week in AI land with Pentagon, Anthropic, & OpenAI. Hey, one positive for Anthropic might be that they’ve jumped to #1 in the app store, and with all this drama they’re finally becoming a household name. Gorilla marketing at its finest?

For today’s newsletter, I’ll discuss the modality winners in AI, review the latest fundraising rounds Tier 1 VCs led last week, share my recommended VC newsletters/podcasts, and give a deep dive on why you should avoid being vanilla when fundraising.

Last, thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 1.8K+ startup founders and operators/investors from OpenAI, Anthropic, a16z, Lightspeed, etc. If you think someone else might like this newsletter, they can sign up here.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take: modality winners in AI

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead last week (Feb 28 - Mar 6, 2026)

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

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: avoid vanilla

1. Jorian’s 1min take: modality winners in AI

I recently listened to an interview with Bryan Kim, Partner at a16z, where he discussed how he won the ElevenLabs Series A in 2023 (he booked a transatlantic flight 90min before takeoff), and shared his views on why he invested. And of course, a16z has doubled down several times in ElevenLabs, which recently announced a $500M Series D at an $11B valuation.

One hypothesis Bryan Kim shared (at 48sec in) was that each modality in AI might have a different winner — in order of complexity: audio, image, video, 3D, avatar, world — rather than an OpenAI or Anthropic winning at everything. He had met 10 companies back in 2023 in the audio space but ElevenLabs stood out.

What I find interesting here is we have started to see winners emerge across different modalities, rather than one winner across all categories. One of the most common questions VCs love to ask founders is “what if OpenAI or Anthropic copies this?”

There are examples where they do copy and that startup goes to zero (for example, many PDF / PowerPoint AI companies no longer exist), but as Bryan Kim posited, there have been several winners across modalities. In my view, the pie is way too large for any one company to win at everything.

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

  • Newsletter: “Sam Altman’s Endgame” (link) by Yoni Rechtman, Partner at Slow Ventures. Yoni posits that OpenAI’s endgame is to become a Government-Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) given the dollars involved. I’m not sure I fully agree with him, but it’s worth a read as always.

  • Newsletter: “The ‘VC Returns Suck’ Narrative (And How We All Spin The Data)” (link) by Micah Rosenbloom, Partner at Founder Collective. Over the past year, I’ve seen so many disagreements across X, LinkedIn, and group chats over VC returns and if they’re healthy or not. Micah breaks these disagreements down in his most recent newsletter.

  • Newsletter: “The ‘Death Valley’ of Building in AI” (link) by Ryan Shannon, Partner at Radical Ventures. Ryan lays out his argument that success in building with AI will be on a barbell — either be a luminary (technological differentiation) or be a sprinter (shipping velocity & last-mile delivery), and you can win, otherwise you’re in the “death valley”. I’ve believed something similar-ish for a while, so I recommend his newsletter.

  • Podcast: “An Interview with Bill Gurley About Runnin’ Down a Dream” (link - subscription required) with Ben Thompson, founder of Stratechery and Bill Gurley, former Partner at Benchmark. I’ll let you in on a secret — I haven’t yet listened to this podcast (I’m about to hit play on it as I run over to the gym) — but I’m recommending it strongly anyways. These are two of my favorite commentators and I’m very excited to read Bill Gurley’s new book about runnin’ down a dream.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: avoid vanilla

As I’m writing this, I’m sipping on a vanilla protein shake.

But when it comes to fundraising, you want to avoid vanilla.

Founders often come across as vanilla when fundraising for solid reasons. They want to appear “venture-backable” and so they try to fit in with the crowd. Updating their deck to appear like other VC-backed startups and aligning to the in-vouge narrative of today.

But this vanilla approach often backfires.

Are you vanilla?

What are some telltale signs that your fundraise has gone vanilla?

  1. if it’s not immediately clear why you and your team are best poised to win this opportunity

  2. if you’re focusing on metrics too much at an early stage, and not enough on story

  3. if it sounds like you’re trying to accomplish everything, rather than focus on one area

  4. if you haven’t painted a compelling vision of what the future looks like with your startup winning

  5. if most VCs are ghosting you or responding with courtesy rejections before even meeting you

  6. …and so on

VCs are looking for outliers

Good VCs cannot and should not invest in vanilla startups. If they do, they’re unlikely to pick a winning horse that become a unicorn, or even better, a decacorn.

The problem is that there are thousands of vanilla startups, and it’s almost impossible to separate them. The average VC sees hundreds if not thousands of pitches each year. And unfortunately they cannot meet with every startup they come across.

And so they choose the startups that are most likely to become outliers. The ones that avoid being vanilla.

How you can avoid being vanilla

I’m not suggesting you hide away from the basic fundamentals of your startup. Be proud of sharing your ARR, your momentum, your hiring plans, and so on. But unless you’re seeing some kind of crazy momentum (i.e. $3M ARR in a few months since starting), it’s unlikely numbers alone are likely to sway VCs.

So you need a spikey story. One that creates a reaction from VCs. I would RATHER some VCs hate your pitch, but the rest are genuinely interested, than a vanilla pitch getting polite nods.

Some examples of what can make your story spikey:

  • bringing to light the specific experience that makes you & your co-founders poised to solve this problem

  • demonstrating a deep sense of customer love that gets beyond your surface-level ARR numbers

  • sharing a unique POV of how the future will pan out that makes your startup worth billions

  • creating a pitch deck that isn’t cookie cutter and doesn’t follow a zillion templates you found online

The choice is yours

So, do you want to be vanilla, or avoid being vanilla?

The choice is yours, founders — I hope you make a wise one ;)

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