Taking It Slow
Joining the partnership to back founders and ideas from illegible to undeniable
When I was talking to Will about joining Slow as a principal in 2022, the expectation was for me to spend a couple years at the firm and then leave to do my own fund. I’d get better, do some deals, support the team, and leave. Everyone wins, no hard calls.
In an interview Kevin asked me “where do you see yourself in five years” and I answered “not at Slow!”
Three things happened since then:
The venture environment changed radically (AI, hyperscale capital, etc.). The type of seed investing that will succeed over the next cycle is demonstrably different than what succeeded over the last cycle. The market has become more obviously bifurcated into legible and illegible risk/ideas/companies/founders and Slow has been quick to orient itself around that worldview: going to the edge to back true venture opportunities and spikey founders with risk capital.
Working with the fantastic people at the firm made it clear just how much I don’t know. My rate of learning, improvement, challenge, has stayed high at Slow and there’s still so much more for me to do and learn here. After 3+ years, the work is still fun and the slope is still high.
It turns out we actually really like each other! I managed to not mess up the great thing Slow had going. Chemistry is hard to come by and too important to waste.
On all counts it’d be a shame to leave too soon so I’m really excited to share that I’m signing up to stay on as a Partner at Slow.
With a small team (now 5 partners) we can work with a ton of trust and freedom. There is no investment committee, veto power, or requirement for internal consensus. That structure encourages us to pursue our most ambitious ideas and has been an awesome sandbox to play in but means that adding people is hard. I’m grateful for the trust and the vote of confidence to be included for more than just a layover.
We’ve always kept our fund size constrained and team size small, believing that it keeps us aligned with our founders and LPs. We’re chasing the 20, not the 2.
Much love to the Slow team for continuing to bet on/with me. And many thanks to the incredible founders (too many to name!) who choose to work with us, to our limited partners (not allowed to name!) for their unwavering support, and to my mentors (Taylor Greene, Laura Thompson, Justin Overdorff, Hunter Walk) for their counsel and perspective.
We’ve entered a wild time to build a company and the future for early stage startups/investing is brighter and weirder than ever. Founders can go faster, at bigger opportunities, with fewer constraints, and more options for how to grow and finance their ambitions. As capital and compute inflect to infinity, vision and execution are the rate limiters to seize the mandate of heaven.
But pushing to the starting line and getting ready for scale is more fraught with mixed signals and false starts in a market/macro full of sound and fury. Founders need an honest broker, thought partner, and capital provider to bet early with them and risk looking stupid together. There are enough people chasing obviously good ideas and not enough with the patience to see them there. That’s our job.
And so the work continues and not much changes. I’m leading our efforts in NY and investing across the country as we partner with great founders pursuing weird takes on the most important stories in the biggest markets. I’ll always look for the earliest rounds of companies where a bit of money can help transform an ineligible idea into an undeniable story.
Big things take time. And now I have more time to see things through at Slow.
Read More
The post from the firm on (shockingly) keeping me around.
What I’m investing in/how I’m investing right now (my buy box)
Prior notes on the optionality mind virus (from 2025) and against optionality (from 2021). I wrote the most recent version of this upon deciding to stay at Slow and the original version upon deciding to leave my last firm. The takeaway of course is that there is huge value in longevity, commitment, and compounding, even/especially in the face of uncertainty. 2025 has been a year of commitment.
Congrats Yoni!
Congratulations!