velocity

Author

Jorian Hoover
December 09, 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.

Today’s newsletter will cover my take on why you should build an AI-native startup in an outdated industry, the latest funding rounds Tier 1 VCs led last week, my recommended VC essays & podcast episodes, and a deep dive on the importance of velocity in startup fundraising.

Thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe 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 sign up here.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take: build an AI-native startup in an outdated industry

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead last week (Nov 29-Dec 5, 2025)

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

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: velocity matters

1. Jorian’s 1min take: build an AI-native startup in an outdated industry

Three years into the post-ChatGPT AI wave, there’s a new type of startup emerging that’s receiving venture capital.

And that’s an AI-native startup who’s competing head-to-head with incumbents in outdated industries.

In 2023 & 2024, I saw a lot of AI startups trying to sell into outdated industries. Some of these have done exceptionally well — such as Harvey & Legora, which have effectively sold into the legal space.

But many AI startups who tried to sell into industries such as construction have fallen flat. They’ve found that incumbents in these outdated industries aren’t actually willing to bring on AI in a meaningful way.

And so in 2025, I’ve been seeing a lot more founders who say “screw it, I’m just going to compete head-to-head with these incumbents and be AI-native.” For example, in the below weekly deal announcements, you’ll see Unlimited Industries raised a $12M Seed from a16z & CIV. They’re building an AI-native, vertically integrated engineering & construction company.

The idea is to take more of the economics and compete directly with incumbents, leveraging AI to build a better product and maintain a significantly better margin structure.

So if you’re thinking of building an AI startup, maybe go and compete with the outdated industry you’re interested in rather than selling to them.

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

  • Podcast: “An Emergency Interview with Michael Nathanson About Netflix’s Acquisition of Warner Bros.” (link) by Ben Thompson of Stratechery. Everyone’s abuzz about the pending Netflix acquisition of Warner Bros. and the counter-bid from Paramount. Who better to listen talk about this than Ben Thompson and Michael Nathanson of Moffett Nathanson.

  • Podcast “Inside General Catalyst’s $1.5B AI Roll-Up Machine” (link) by Molly O’Shea of Sourcery. Roll-ups have become a significant part of AI value creation in the past couple years. It was really interesting to learn more about how a top VC, General Catalyst, is leaning into this strategy and doing their own AI roll-ups.

  • Newsletter “There are two kinds of pivots and they are very different” (link) by Yoni Rechtman of Slow Ventures. Yoni makes an argument that not all pivots are good, and that “in general, we don’t support people trying stuff just to try it when the original idea has clearly failed.” I’m not sure I fully agree, but I enjoyed reading his take which goes again Silicon Valley wisdom.

  • Newsletter “For top VCs, early-stage strategy has evolved” (link) by Pitchbook. In this newsletter, Pitchbook shared some great data around the growing % of dollars that multi-stage firms are taking at the pre-seed & seed stages, and also the % of deals going to AI startups. Turns out it’s a great fundraising market for some, not so great for others.

  • Newsletter “The Quiet Death of VC-Founder Alignment” (link) by Euclid Ventures. Although they’re a naturally biased writer (Euclid is an early-stage firm), Euclid presented a thorough and compelling argument that with growing AUMs of firms investing early-stage, there’s a growing misalignment between founders and VCs. Worth a read if you’re fundraising or investing at the early stages.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: velocity matters

Velocity matters tremendously when fundraising for your startup.

If you’re going to speak with 40+ VCs during your fundraise, it’s much better to squeeze those initial meetings into a one or two week period, rather than spacing them out over multiple months.

Spacing out your VC meetings too far apart is a bad idea for a few reasons:

  1. It prolongs the time you have to spend fundraising — instead of building & selling your product

  2. Your VC timelines will be out-of-sync. It’s now unlikely VC firms will offer you term sheets at the same time.

  3. It’ll be harder to be in full “fundraising mode” and focus exclusively on your story for investors

  4. You won’t feel as much momentum or confidence in your fundraising process

Far too often, I come across well-connected founders who are moseying their way through scoring VC meetings.

Squeeze VC meetings into a short window

Here’s what to do instead:

If you are able to score a few dozen (or more) VC meetings, then your best bet is to condense them into a short one or two week window.

Why?

Because this creates the most momentum for your fundraise. You’ll now be in control of your fundraising schedule, and can align timelines so you (hopefully) receive term sheets around the same time.

It’s not only the aligned timelines which will lead to more term sheets, but also the fact that you will now FEEL the momentum, and be in full-on fundraising model. I’ve found that founders who condense their kickoff meetings with VCs have a higher success rate at receiving term sheets than founders who don’t.

And receiving multiple term sheets is a huge deal. As discussed a couple newsletters ago, it significantly improves your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). This makes it easier to not only negotiate a more founder-friendly term sheet, but also to land a VC you really trust.

Common pitfalls with condensing VC meetings

Squeezing all your VC meetings into a short window is not without its pitfalls, though.

Here are a few of the pitfalls I see most often:

  1. The most egregious pitfall is to kick off a high-velocity process without having your materials ready. This is asking for trouble and can seriously hurt your chances if VCs ask you for something in a data room which you have not created.

  2. Not practicing in front of real VCs. Look, if you’re going to meet with 40+ VCs in a condensed period, then you better be ready for showtime. Practice by bringing forward a few VC conversations and seeing how those go. If after those conversations you feel ready, then unleash the big wave.

  3. Lining up your intros to VCs poorly. Landing 40+ VC meetings in a short window is a bit of an art in terms of gathering warm intros simultaneously. If you just ask 100 people for warm intros to VCs, those intros will come in all over the place in terms of timing.

  4. Not speaking with enough lead VCs. You may have gotten 40 meetings with VCs, but if the vast majority are follow-on investors, that does not bode well to actually getting a term sheet. You have to make sure a very high percentage (if not all) of your initial meetings are with VCs who can lead.

If you can avoid these pitfalls, then you’re on your way to running a high-velocity fundraise with dozens of VC meetings packed into a short window.

You’ve got this, founders.

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