Amir Kabir, Founder and Managing Partner at Overlook Ventures, discusses his journey from entrepreneur to venture capitalist and explains why he founded Overlook Ventures to invest at the earliest stages of company building. He shares his investment philosophy around founder quality, intellectual honesty, unique market insight, and the emerging opportunity around AI, autonomy, and risk infrastructure. Throughout the conversation, Amir offers practical advice for founders on validating problems, building venture-scale businesses, and standing out in an increasingly crowded AI landscape.
Amir Kabir, Founder and Managing Partner at Overlook Ventures, discusses his journey from entrepreneur to venture capitalist and explains why he founded Overlook Ventures to invest at the earliest stages of company building. He shares his investment philosophy around founder quality, intellectual honesty, unique market insight, and the emerging opportunity around AI, autonomy, and risk infrastructure. Throughout the conversation, Amir offers practical advice for founders on validating problems, building venture-scale businesses, and standing out in an increasingly crowded AI landscape.
[02:15] How Amir's journey from entrepreneur to venture capitalist shaped the investment philosophy behind Overlook Ventures.
[07:10] AI, autonomy, and the "infrastructure of risk" represent the next frontier for startup innovation.
[14:50] Why founders should focus on solving real problems and developing unique insights instead of building products in search of a market.
[20:50] How Amir evaluates founders by uncovering the unique knowledge and conviction that drive them to solve a particular problem.
[27:55] The most common reasons Amir says "no" to startups, and why intellectual honesty often beats polished answers.
[30:45] Venture capital is shifting toward specialized funds. What does that mean for founders raising capital today?
The nonprofit organization Amir is passionate about: Presidential Leadership Scholars
Amir Kabir is the Founder and Managing Partner of Overlook Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing at the inception, pre-seed, and seed stages. Previously, he helped build Munich Re Ventures and has spent years investing across insurance technology, financial services, AI, and risk infrastructure. Today, he focuses on companies building the next generation of AI safety, governance, autonomy, and regulated-market infrastructure.
Overlook Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Amir Kabir that invests at the inception, pre-seed, and seed stages. The firm focuses on what Amir describes as the "infrastructure of risk"—backing founders building across AI, autonomy, cybersecurity, insurance, financial services, and regulated markets. Overlook partners with entrepreneurs developing the technologies that make AI systems more trustworthy, secure, and accountable, while helping modernize how risk is measured, managed, and transferred. The firm typically invests early and supports founders with strategic guidance, customer introductions, and deep industry expertise.
Portfolio companies include: Strala, Crabi, Soteris, Soma, Prediction Guard, Mesh, Pax Markets, Asymmetric Security, Eloquent AI, Seedless, Flyra, and IronGrid.
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[00:00:00] Amir Kabir: I love when founders actually tell me, "I don't know, but I'll figure it out." I was like, "Okay, cool. That is great." Instead of, like, telling me, like, the glorious story is I think the better answer would be like, "Look, I have not maybe thought about this, right? That's actually a good question. Let me get back to you on that."
[00:00:23] Gopi Rangan: You are listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur - a podcast for founders with ambitious ideas. Venture capital investors and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful, and authentic stories to help you realize your vision. Welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Gopi Rangan. My guest today is Amir Kabir. Amir is a very seasoned venture capital investor.
[00:00:56] He's the founding and managing partner [00:01:00] at Overlook Ventures. At Overlook, he invests in the infrastructure of risk. What does that mean? What kind of companies does he get excited about? And how is AI changing the way he looks at startups these days? We're gonna talk about all of those things. Amir, welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
[00:01:21] Amir Kabir: Thank you, Gopi. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:23] Gopi Rangan: Let's start with you. You are originally from Iran. You grew up in Germany, and now you live in Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Can you walk us through that journey?
[00:01:36] Amir Kabir: Yeah, sure. So I was born in Iran, and my parents immigrated to Germany when I was a toddler. So I grew up in Germany. Very fortunate to be in that position my parents gave me and my brother. And I spent most of my life, all my life in Germany, actually being curious about the world, to be honest.
[00:01:55] Coming from a very academic family background, my mom is [00:02:00] a teacher, my brother runs a hospital as a surgeon. My dad got his PhD in math. So very academic background. I was not so much fascinated by academics, more so much about what you can do and what you can build. So I started, very early on building things.
[00:02:15] I think the earliest was I was fascinated by Legos. I think that's one thing I still remember. I vividly played and built stuff. That building translated into the love for tech and computers. I built my own computer when I was a teenager. That again translated into the love of building businesses.
[00:02:36] So I started businesses in Germany. And then eventually, coming from an Iranian household, you have to have an educational background if you want it or not. So I did computer science, business as an undergrad, and went on and worked for a startup in Germany, which is an unusual combination when you think about the timeline back in the days startups and Germany, [00:03:00] and it's not really the two things that come to mind.
[00:03:03] But I was just, again, curious about new things and what people were doing. We were building enterprise software back in the days on premise. There was no cloud and AI, all the good stuff we have today. The company's product that we built was enterprise communication management, something that is just given today when you think about CRM and everything that comes with that.
[00:03:26] The company eventually was acquired by Actuate here in San Mateo, which was a great outcome for a small software shop out of a small town in Germany. And I was always fascinated by the US, I think, and knew about Silicon Valley, knew about tech, obviously lived through, like, the dot-com in Germany.
[00:03:48] My brother was the first one who actually came to the US, but he returned back to Germany and my goal was always like, how can I make it out here? And yeah, believe it or not, like a little bit over 10 years ago, [00:04:00] I basically sold parts of my assets, irrational to most back in the days what I was doing, and was like, "I'm gonna move to the US and try to figure out, first, if this American dream is true, but second, how can I get into tech?"
[00:04:16] And I fundamentally believed that I can build something meaningful from scratch. And so that's the journey to today. And I landed in DC. I was there for two years and you know, moved over here to San Francisco, and I've been here since and live in Soma here right now. So that's a short kind of overview about like the last couple of decades of my life.
[00:04:38] There's much, much more to it, but yeah, that's how we got here.
[00:04:42] Gopi Rangan: So early in your life, you tasted entrepreneurship, you built businesses. But over the years, you've moved into the investment side. You were a partner at Munich Re, and you made early investments in Insurtech even before that trend became very popular.
[00:04:58] And now you are-
[00:04:59] Amir Kabir: [00:05:00] Mm-hmm ...
[00:05:00] Gopi Rangan: the founder of a new venture capital firm. Why is venture capital interesting to you?
[00:05:05] Amir Kabir: Great question, and I get that a lot actually from many people of like, "Hey, why don't you just build something?" Right? And the answer I'm giving those people is that there is nothing burning in my mind that I have any unique insights into that I want to build right now, right?
[00:05:22] However, the venture side gives me the opportunity to be curious about the world and meet the best people who actually have unique insights in what they're, what-- into what they're building, and hopefully and eventually be a partner with them on that journey and, bring in my kind of thought process into the building journey, bring my network into that building journey.
[00:05:44] And it's just amazing to see what I can do with multiple investments or startups rather than just focused on building something just because I believe there might be an opportunity. And I think [00:06:00] maybe that's a transition to like how I think about startups, venture, and founders.
[00:06:04] When you look at people I've invested in to date and the founders, it always goes back to like, who are you? Why are you doing this? Why do you wake up in the morning to solve this problem? And then obviously, what are unique insights you might have that will help you hopefully succeed, right?
[00:06:21] And so as much as I was a founder and operator and builder before, there is nothing right now that is so burning to me that I have to solve it. And so that the venture journey gives me an opportunity just to work with multiple amazing founders and then help them on their journey.
[00:06:38] Gopi Rangan: Yeah. As a VC, we get to work with so many different types of founders, different ideas, different personalities, different markets.
[00:06:45] Yes. It's always very exciting. What is Overlook Ventures and how is the firm different from other VC firms?
[00:06:53] Amir Kabir: Great question. So I always, again, being a builder and operator, you always [00:07:00] wanted to build something. And maybe going back to your first question, I think this is the fund that I wanted to have all the time or believed is the best approach to investing when I was with other firms.
[00:07:13] And so that's actually what I'm building today. Overlook Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund, and I know early stage these days means, I think, everything and anything. So that's why maybe we say super early stage, which means inception, pre-seed, and seed.
[00:07:30] And that means anything from one founder these days that has an idea and is just amazing and knows something that others don't, to maybe multiple founders and having some sort of a prototype and are trying to go from there. It's most likely pre-product and pre-revenue. Maybe they have some sort of an MVP, maybe they have some sort of a pilot.
[00:07:55] But fundamentally, I honestly don't really care that much about revenue [00:08:00] because it's just a distraction in terms of evaluating companies at this stage. Unless you tell me you have grown from zero to ten, 20, $30 million ARR in six months, well, yeah, then we can evaluate that. But then also I'm probably not the right partner because you're gonna go raise other types of funding.
[00:08:18] And the thesis around the fund basically goes back to my own journey into venture. As you mentioned, I was part of the founding team at Munich Re. Very early on, I dabbled into, I would say, financial services and risk-related businesses, actually with another firm called Route 66 Ventures earlier on before Munich Re.
[00:08:39] And so the thesis of Overlook Ventures is basically to invest in the infrastructure of risk across AI, autonomy, and regulated markets, I would say across two kind of pillars. One is to look into how AI is basically changing risk, meaning AI safety, AI security, governance, [00:09:00] autonomy safety, and so on and so forth.
[00:09:02] So the frontier side, right? And also when you think about physical AI, how that is changing the landscape when it comes down to liability and security and safety. And then on the other hand, looking into how actually liability frameworks are shifting as we speak. And that is related to insurance, right? New insurance products, new insurance infrastructure, I call it market infrastructure. And you know how, again, traditional cyber and security is evolving in that sense as well, right?
[00:09:33] One thing I fundamentally believe in is that obviously AI is a huge wave to everything we have had to date, going back to when the internet started, to e-commerce when it came out of that. Then we had the mobile and cloud wave, and then we had blockchain. And I think now SpaceX is obviously, again, a huge topic and new endeavors in terms of space. [00:10:00] And while I believe AI is probably one of the biggest catalysts, the bigger shift here though is autonomy, right? I think that's what people or many people not even look at, but for the first time in history, we have technology that actually can execute, and we're going away from just recommending something.
[00:10:19] We had machine learning, we had data science, and all of these topics have been around for a long time, and actually the insurance industry has been one of the earliest adopters of statistical models and then machine learning models and so on and so forth. But they never, ever made or executed a task, right? They only made recommendations based on data. And now for the first time, we're entering a world where we can tell the computer to do something and it does it, right? And eventually, we don't even have to tell the computer what to do. It might just through reinforcement learning do it itself, right?
[00:10:57] And I think that's the biggest shift [00:11:00] And that's where I think the fund comes in of like, hey, the world is shifting from what we know today. Anything we have built today as humanity or any advancement we have made as society is based on human to human or human failure, right? But we don't have any frameworks when it comes down to agentic liability, agentic execution, physical AI, humanoid robots, and so on and so forth, right?
[00:11:28] And that is where I believe is a huge opportunity. And I actually, as you might know, I write about risk on a weekly basis about topics that I find interesting. And I have created like a long format post about how I see the world going forward and where I believe there's gonna be huge opportunities.
[00:11:50] And the way I look at this is that every wave we had created something became valuable, right? When you think about the internet, I think [00:12:00] information became abundant, and then search became valuable, right? When you think about cloud, compute became abu-abundant, and security became the most valuable, right?
[00:12:10] And when you think about AI, I think intelligence is becoming abundant, and trust and accountability are becoming the most valuable. And then going back to the phases we had before, when you think about cloud or the internet in general, Cloudflare became one of the most important companies, or is one of the most important companies, right?
[00:12:32] Palo Alto Networks is one of the most interesting security companies. So I believe it's the same here with AI, where intelligence and-- is abundant, and we can do a lot of things. But what becomes most valuable is like the next layer that is gonna emerge here in terms of like how the next layer of companies that are emerging and challenging of how we make intelligence trustworthy.
[00:12:58] And that goes back to like, [00:13:00] insurance, compliance, audit, infrastructure, and so on and so forth. And from the fund perspective, with Fund One, we do check sizes anywhere from like, a 100k to 250k. Try to be maybe first check in, maybe, whatever, second check, maybe they have raised some friends and family or some money from other VCs or angel investors.
[00:13:20] And I tell that to founders to be like the extended team member of the founder and the team, and eyes on, hands off. I basically, I think that's my kind of motto. Whenever you need something, I'm here. I check in with you, make you introductions to my network, and that could be anything from like go-to-market to customers to product, and help you get to the next level.
[00:13:42] Gopi Rangan: You covered a lot here but I'm gonna unpack and ask you some follow-up questions here.
[00:13:48] Amir Kabir: Sure.
[00:13:48] Gopi Rangan: You invest early. You invest quite early in the first round of funding for the founder, and you focus a lot on infrastructure for risk. And autonomous solutions are [00:14:00] changing the way we do many things, both in life and in business, and that has new implications on risk.
[00:14:07] And AI is changing the way we access intelligence, and intelligence is becoming more of a commodity, and everybody's able to use AI solutions to intelligently crunch numbers, do analysis, and generate reports, do deep research, and various other things. And that has changed the way how we can measure, manage, and mitigate risk.
[00:14:29] That's what you mean by infrastructure of risk. In this world, what is your advice to founders? How can they build a business that will thrive? A lot of things have changed, especially in the recent past, like two to five years. How do you interact with founders, and what do you tell them?
[00:14:47] What's your advice?
[00:14:49] Amir Kabir: Yeah. I think the advice has been always the same, is that make sure you're solving a problem and you're not thinking you're solving a problem, right? I think founders, and I was there [00:15:00] myself, I built another business with a friend of mine, which was a complete disaster, but we focused too much on having the perfect product and, " don't tell anybody because someone might copy us."
[00:15:10] All of these things that actually don't matter at all. It's literally going back to the first principles approach of like, what is the problem and how are you solving it, right? And I think if you dig deeper there with many founders, I believe that they're solving something that it's actually not a problem. They might think it's a problem, but I don't think there's a problem. And I think on top of that, I've seen many, the last couple of years, it might be a nice problem, it might be an interesting problem to solve, but the question becomes, is this a venture-backable business, right? There's many interesting businesses out there, but you know, they're not necessarily venture-backable.
[00:15:54] So I think that's one. I think secondly, specifically in the AI world right now, it [00:16:00] has never been easier to build something and never been harder to get someone's attention. And it is both in terms of like funding, but also in terms of like finding customers.
[00:16:10] Because now specifically from the customer side, I think it's just more overwhelming than before because there just so many that knock on your door and be like, "We have, or we might have a solution for you." And so the question now becomes what is your differentiation from the product perspective that is so much different than anything else that is out there?
[00:16:31] Secondly, if you are just people say wrapper around, large language models, how is this sustainable? I'm not necessarily saying that the labs will build this, right? That's just, I don't think that's my biggest issue. I think the biggest issue I think I have is that if you can build this, then ten other people can probably build that too, right?
[00:16:52] So what do you have that is different here? And I think that goes back to what I mentioned before when I talk to founders is that: [00:17:00] What is your unique insight here that you have, because that is the only thing that you can use, right? And that unique insight could be anything from like, "Hey, look, I have access to 20 customers in my field that I'm solving a problem for, and I have right of first refusal because these 20 people are my whatever, cousins," whatever you wanna call them, "because I have the first visibility with them, so I can show them what I have."
[00:17:29] It's not as strong, but hey, that's already great if you can call up, let's say the 20 largest enterprises and be like, "Hey I have a product here," right? That's already a wedge there, but that's not gonna sustain long. And then I think the other kind of unique insights, and I love this, love to give examples, is that if specifically in the markets that I invest in, mostly like regulated markets, right?
[00:17:53] What do you know about those markets, and how have you seen those markets evolve, and what unique insights do you bring? [00:18:00] Like, as an example, I invested in a company that is building AI, I would say governance, called Governance Infrastructure for Agents, right? So think about you are a large enterprise. You wanna build AI agents in-house, you wanna get them from demo level to production ready, how can you build kind of the framework around that? And so the founders, when you look at the profile the CEO has spent the last two decades as a scientist at DeepMind and Meta and other platforms, really digging deep into what AI does today and how we think about that, and has seen the problems that are emerging with AI. And his co-founder was part of a startup where the company sold to Palo Alto Networks, so comes from the cyber world. So I think that kind of combination of like insights into what they're building is just so unique that I was super excited when I connected with them, and obviously the topic is just top of mind right now.
[00:18:59] But [00:19:00] that's what I mean with unique insights of like, they know exactly the problem statement, have seen this through other endeavors and now trying to solve that problem. So I think these are the things that I look for and founders should be wary of, off, right?
[00:19:13] Maybe give you an example here for myself. As fund managers, you rely on a CRM tool, a fund administration tool, and all the above. A-and basically, I've built everything in-house within like the last six weeks, right? So can I sell this now? Question myself, right? I don't know, maybe.
[00:19:32] But you know, is there any kind of crazy moat here? Absolutely not, right? Someone who's like, probably much smarter than me and much more technical can build this probably maybe in three weeks, right? And so I don't know. It's just great for me, right? I don't have to pay much for like these software tools, but there's nothing proprietary here that I've built that makes it outstanding, I would say.
[00:19:53] Gopi Rangan: I see you have a very thoughtful approach to how you look at companies, and your advice is that [00:20:00] first, the solver problem and venture scalable problems are relevant for VCs, and it cannot be a problem that you imagine, it has to be a real problem. In this day and age, it's easy to start a company.
[00:20:12] There are lots of resources available, the ideas are plenty, but it's becoming very difficult to be successful. It's very difficult to get the attention of customers, very difficult to get a problem that sticks and solves for the customer and stays for a long time without getting disrupted, and that's hard to build these days.
[00:20:31] Your advice is to look for unique insights, like what do you understand about the industry? What do you understand about the problem, about the customer deeply that makes it unique, that you're able to solve the problem better than anybody else? When you walk into a conversation with a founder, how do you assess these things?
[00:20:48] What questions do you ask? Can you give an example of a company you invested in?
[00:20:53] Amir Kabir: Yeah. Yeah, sure. The conversation always starts with the founder telling obviously what they're building, who they [00:21:00] are, and these are not really proprietary questions, but it's basically like, why do you wake up in the morning to solve that problem?
[00:21:07] And the founders that I mentioned to you have a very specific answer for that. And have very specific insights into the problem that they're solving. So that, that, that- Why do
[00:21:16] Gopi Rangan: you have to ask that question? What do you expect to get out of it?
[00:21:20] Amir Kabir: What I try to get out of it is basically you tell me something that you know, you just know or like maybe a few people know, right?
[00:21:26] And that's why you're so adamant about solving that problem that you wake up in the morning to do that. And so that's what I'm trying to look for, and not just like, "Hey, AI is a huge market." That's not an answer, right? And the reason why I'm saying that, and I think, maybe I give away my own kind of secret sauce here when I talk to founders, but if you tell me the market is big, that's not really compelling.
[00:21:50] Like I know that the market is big. Many people know the market is big, right? That's just not like something that tells me, "Okay, you fundamentally have understood what this [00:22:00] problem is, and you fundamentally have answers that I don't know yet or someone else doesn't know," right? And the answer could be like, in terms of like, why do you wake up in the morning?
[00:22:11] Again, going back to the founders I mentioned, is that, "hey, we have spent the last, ten years, ten plus years within the AI world. We have seen these kind of problems emerge. We're now in the shift when it comes down to AI and autonomy. We believe that governance is like the most important things. We have built similar tools when we were like, in our previous kind of endeavors, have seen what works, what doesn't, right? And look, we have already maybe prototype here, right?" Does this mean you're gonna win? No. No. Right? But it gives me already a lot of confidence that you think about this in the right way, and hopefully I can be part of your journey and help you get to where you want to be, right?
[00:22:52] But you already have that kind of conviction and information that I'm looking for of what is this. Obviously, there's nuances to [00:23:00] this, but I think that's in general what I try to get out of this question, something that I haven't really thought about. And the other thing maybe also too to mention is that I'm very focused in topics that I want to invest in, so that's why I write about topics on a weekly basis.
[00:23:16] So if I reach out to you or like connect with you, you can be sure that I've already did my homework on this. So you don't have to educate me on what the market is, what the problem is, and why this is so good and why this is so interesting. I really wanna figure out how you think. I really wanna figure out what do you know that is so unique, and then how can this be a big opportunity.
[00:23:40] Gopi Rangan: Can you give an example?
[00:23:42] Amir Kabir: Yeah. Usually, they give me, like, really clear structured answers to, like, why this is a big problem, what they know that others might not know, what they have seen that works and what doesn't, right? And then on top of that, one other thing that I've realized too is that once we get off the [00:24:00] call and I maybe follow up with questions, I always get an in-depth answer back, right?
[00:24:05] Of like, "Hey, this is, for example, we wrote, like, a long-format memo about how we think about this. This is what the product looks like. This is from a technical perspective how we think about this," and so on and so forth. So they're very proactive in terms of, like, providing answers to me and probably others, right?
[00:24:23] And that's like across the spectrum here with the founders. And some founders have more, others have less, right? At the example I gave you, right, with the AI governance infrastructure, these guys were just so good. I met them actually before they incorporated the company and that round was pretty quickly oversubscribed, and I was fortunate enough to get in as one of the first checks because I actually helped them with their thought process around, again, going back to how to pitch to VCs and so on and so forth and also made them intros to my portfolio that could be adjacent and how they can work together, make them [00:25:00] intros to enterprises in terms of what they're building.
[00:25:03] So try to be very hands-on there in terms of providing value if possible.
[00:25:08] Gopi Rangan: You meet a lot of companies, a lot of founders, but you invest only in a few. How many startups do you meet for every one investment, and why do you say no?
[00:25:18] Amir Kabir: Oof. I don't know how many I meet, to be honest, because again, I get so much inbound.
[00:25:23] And interesting enough, though, is that I would say to all of them, even if it's like pretty briefly, because you never know what comes your way, and if it's interesting enough, I take that call. I am not too shy to take like a cold call because again, I think in this business you never know who you're gonna meet and who is on the other side.
[00:25:43] But when you look at my own tracker here that I have with the platform I've built, I'm tracking so far forty thousand companies and fifty-five thousand people over the last, like, I would say year. And that is everything, right? That is everything from inbound, [00:26:00] my outreach to scrapers that I've built to find new companies.
[00:26:05] That doesn't mean I've talked to all of them, right? But I have visibility into many. I don't have a number. During the week, how many I meet, hundreds is probably wrong, but like, I see hundreds and I talk to maybe twenty or so and invest at the end of one or two. But interestingly enough, I feel like everything at this early stage goes back to your network too, and I think obviously the brand you built as an early-stage venture fund.
[00:26:32] When you think about the large funds like, Kleiner, Andreessen, Sequoia, all the ones that people know, even those guys everybody wants to work with them, right? So they could technically sit back and relax and just wait for deals to come. But even those guys are all about in hunting, right?
[00:26:50] Because again, I think the best founders, you have to find them. They're not gonna really come to you, and so you have to really reach out to them. When I look at my own [00:27:00] portfolio, the majority actually I reached out to, and most of the time also cold outreach too. May-- basically like, "Hey, I've heard you're building something," or, I saw that you're building something.
[00:27:13] I would like to chat with you," right? Not to say that there is not quality referrals coming in, for sure, like it happens with every other venture fund too. But I would say the majority I reached out to or found somehow through my network and then reached out to and sent a cold email to and tried to get in front of them.
[00:27:32] Gopi Rangan: So you're tracking thousands of companies, and you're meeting hundreds of them every month, but you only invest in a very few, a handful. In every year, you invest only a few companies. What's your most common reason to say no, besides like the obvious no that, it's not a large company, it's not venture fundable.
[00:27:50] Once it passes the first filter, what's your most common reason to say no?
[00:27:55] Amir Kabir: I think if there's no clarity of thought when it comes down to the founder, [00:28:00] and I love when founders actually tell me, "I don't know, but I'll figure it out." I was like, "Okay, cool. That is great." Instead of like telling me like the glorious story. I think the better answer would be like, "Look, I have not maybe thought about this," right?
[00:28:13] "That's actually a good question. Let me get back to you on that." That's totally fair. But I think for the most part, the clarity of thought is missing. I feel like many are solving problems that they either think is a problem or they're solving it because right now it's a hype, so you cannot really go deep into that matter with them.
[00:28:32] I think another problem is too is that if you're raising like a $30 million seed round I don't know if like my small check is like meaningful at that stage. As much as I want to believe that this is a big company that's the hard part. I think that goes to the valuation aspect of like, "hey, it's hard to invest in just like in $500 million seed rounds."
[00:28:55] I actually saw one, to be honest that's actually interesting. I got pitched to. [00:29:00] That was a $200 million round and a $1 billion valuation for people that come out of like the labs that, want to build a new infrastructure. They got funded. I'm not surprised, but I'm just not sure if my 100K check or 150K check makes sense.
[00:29:16] Because again, it's all about risk and reward, right? Let's assume that $1 billion company really works out, and they become the next whatever, Anthropic, OpenAI, maybe just with 500 billion. Yes, that's a 500X there, right? But I think the risk and upside are just like so different than if you get into a round at $20 million valuation where someone raises $5 million, right?
[00:29:38] Because at the end of the day, these guys have to at least return the 200 million before anything comes back to anybody, right? And so that makes it already hard to the preference stack. I think we're right now at an interesting point of time again, where we see these crazy rounds. I'm just not sure where it goes to.
[00:29:57] These are some things that I look for or trying to [00:30:00] evaluate at that point. I don't care if you're a solo founder, duo founder, three founders. I think if you have more than one founder what I look for actually is that how do you interact with each other? Because I've been in that myself in a scenario where I had thought I had a good co-founder, but it was actually a complete disaster. So questions of like, how did you guys met? How do you guys know each other? How do you guys divide and conquer? Who's working on what? And so on and so forth. And nuance is there too.
[00:30:28] Again, giveaway everything it's not secret. But if I email one co-founder, is that co-founder putting his other co-founder on the CC as well, if they're very early on to keep them in the loop or not, right? It's nothing important, but things that I look out for.
[00:30:42] Gopi Rangan: Amir, you're starting a new venture capital firm.
[00:30:45] You've been in the VC world for many years. As the founder of a new VC firm, what would you change about the venture capital ecosystem to make it better?
[00:30:55] Amir Kabir: Good question. I don't know. I think we're going through that change right now. I feel like [00:31:00] we're seeing a bifurcation of the ecosystem, meaning you have obviously all of the big firms that I mentioned before, many others that are larger and have been around for a long time, right?
[00:31:11] And they will always kind of be around. And we have now the small firms like myself, maybe like I would say maybe sub fifty million or maybe sub hundred million, right? Solo GPs, maybe two GPs that just run a small fund and are very focused on specific categories and topics. I think everything in the middle is just hard to execute these days because you have to do two things.
[00:31:40] You have to first build your own brand, which is already hard by itself, and then you have to deploy that capital and return like two or three hundred million dollar fund, which is very hard to do these days, right? Unless you get into these super large deals where the exit is just like crazy. So a small fund [00:32:00] like mine, even with a hundred and fifty K check, one deal could be actually a fund returner, right?
[00:32:06] With like, fifty to whatever X there, a hundred X that could return ten million dollars. So what can you change? I actually don't know what you can change because I guess as, as long as money is abundant and people can raise funds, we will have new funds. And so that's something you can't change because I don't think you can put a ceiling into how many funds are out there.
[00:32:26] But I think that's interesting to like ten years ago, and you probably have that too, like every time you go to an event, I'm like, "Wow, I don't even know these people." Like, I've never met this fund. And like every day, a new fund is popping up. And I'm not sure if that is good or great, but you know, I think it's interesting from the founder perspective because again, it gives you a lot of opportunity to raise from different entities.
[00:32:52] But what I've seen too is that, and that's why I'm excited about my own fund, is that the best founders these days are really focused on who [00:33:00] they bring on very early on. So if you're like a specialist that really understands a specific category or topic, you have enormous chances to get into these deals. Whereas if you're like, again, there's this middle layer, you're like a two hundred, three hundred million dollar fund that is a generalist too, right? It's like, why would I bring you in? I'd rather raise a small round, execute, and then go raise from the big guys.
[00:33:23] Gopi Rangan: Amir, we're coming to the end of our conversation.
[00:33:26] I have one question for you about your community involvement. Is there a nonprofit organization you are passionate about? Which one?
[00:33:33] Amir Kabir: That's actually a great question because I just finished my program with the Presidential Leadership Program, which is under President Bush, President H. Bush, and President Clinton, the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation. And as part of that program, I'm actually might start a nonprofit myself. And so part of that is that, I'm trying to [00:34:00] enable access to the Valley and the ecosystem for people from the outside meaning providing access to students that are not in schools that are usually feeding into Silicon Valley.
[00:34:12] I believe talent is everywhere, and so that's something that I'm working on, but it's still in the works.
[00:34:19] Gopi Rangan: Amir, thank you very much for spending time with me today. You've shared a lot of insights on how you think, how you work, how you engage with founders, what you look for in startups, what gets you excited, and even insights on why you say no sometimes.
[00:34:34] This is incredibly valuable. It's very rare to find an honest conversation from a VC who gives advice to founders. Thank you very much for sharing your advice. I look forward to sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the world.
[00:34:47] Amir Kabir: Yes, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure, and thank you for giving me the chance to be on your podcast.
[00:34:53] Gopi Rangan: You're welcome, Amir. Thank you for listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. I [00:35:00] hope you enjoyed listening to real-life stories about early believers supporting ambitious entrepreneurs. Please subscribe to the podcast and post a review. Your comments will help other entrepreneurs find this podcast. I look forward to catching you at the next episode.
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