Who is Nnamdi?

(a) self-taught programmer
(b) economics nerd
(c) venture capital investor
(d) all of the above

Where I've been:

Who I've backed:

... and more!

Seed Valuations Aren’t Valuations

Seed Valuations Aren’t Valuations

It’s not obvious what drives them

AI Benchmarking Is Broken

AI Benchmarking Is Broken

We should take AI models seriously, which means taking their evaluation seriously

The Venture Activity Index – Q4 2023

The Venture Activity Index – Q4 2023

Capital deployment remains depressed, sitting about 50% below trend

The Series A Bust

The Series A Bust

Investors have lost faith in Series A as a sign of product-market fit. In other words, they expect more but believe less.

How Redpanda is Taking Data Streaming Mainstream

How Redpanda is Taking Data Streaming Mainstream

Monitoring that even (Franz) Kafka would approve of

The Venture Activity Index

The Venture Activity Index

Measuring the state of the venture "business cycle"

The Shadow Price of Venture Capital

The Shadow Price of Venture Capital

Valuations are 60% too high relative to the volume of venture funding

Don't Discount Interest Rates

Don't Discount Interest Rates

It's Jay Powell's world. We're just living in it.

We Don't Have Nearly Enough Startups

We Don't Have Nearly Enough Startups

Where did the explosive growth in venture activity come from?

Old Valuations Die Hard

Old Valuations Die Hard

Private valuations substantially lag public tech valuations

It's Valuations (Almost) All the Way Down

It's Valuations (Almost) All the Way Down

Venture funding hasn't grown as much as you think

Beats and Misses Are Forever

Beats and Misses Are Forever

Revenue surprises permanently shift the trajectory of SaaS companies

Layoffs Don't Tell the Whole Story

Layoffs Don't Tell the Whole Story

Hiring freezes matter more than layoffs

COVID Hurt Most Software Companies

COVID Hurt Most Software Companies

COVID put software companies on a permanently lower growth trajectory.

The Dark Matter of Software Valuations

The Dark Matter of Software Valuations

Exploring the vast "dark matter" of the software universe

Series A Rounds Are a Math Test

Series A Rounds Are a Math Test

Low monetization requires extraordinary traction, and vice versa.

Funding Simply Shifts the Bottleneck

Funding Simply Shifts the Bottleneck

A frothy funding environment means more competition for talent. Funding gets easier; hiring gets harder.

Breaking Apart the Rule of 40

Breaking Apart the Rule of 40

Rules are meant to be broken, and the Rule of 40 is no exception

Schrodinger's Balance Sheet: When Equity Becomes a Liability

Schrodinger's Balance Sheet: When Equity Becomes a Liability

Preferred equity exists in a constant state of quantum superposition. It's neither equity nor debt, until it is.

Introducing a New and Improved SaaS Metric: Weighted ACV

Introducing a New and Improved SaaS Metric: Weighted ACV

ACV isn't as useful a concept as people think. We need a different SaaS monetization metric.

Companies Rarely Grow Into Their Valuations

Companies Rarely Grow Into Their Valuations

Companies don't catch up to their valuations; their valuations catch up to them.

WebAssembly-ing the Pieces: Vectorized’s Data Policy Engine

WebAssembly-ing the Pieces: Vectorized’s Data Policy Engine

Rather than ship data to code, which is expensive and latency-prone, why not ship code to the data?

You Can't Eat Relative Growth

You Can't Eat Relative Growth

In startup land, we talk way too much about relative growth. We'd do better to ground our thinking in absolute growth.

Do Wealthy Investors Have an Edge?

Do Wealthy Investors Have an Edge?

The super-rich earn more on their investments than the rest of us. Something nefarious, or something else?

PhDs Aren't Starting Companies Like They Used To

PhDs Aren't Starting Companies Like They Used To

The burden of scientific knowledge and managerial complexity is crushing our best and brightest.