Event strategy: hobby-driven gatherings over happy hours

Mark Goldberg is a Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Chemistry, a new early-stage venture firm with a $350M debut fund backing standout software companies from Seed to Series A. Prior to Chemistry, Mark was a Partner at Index Ventures, where he led early-stage investments across software and fintech for nearly a decade. Before Index, Mark was one of the first business hires at Dropbox, helping the company navigate hypergrowth. 

Discussed in this episode

• Why Mark studied international relations, and why venture feels like “the liberal arts of jobs”
• Index’s US “invisibility” era and what that taught him about building a new firm
• The Chemistry spinout thesis: “take great multi-stage DNA, reconstitute it with focus”
• Fund design: pre-seed → seed → A, light reserves, and concentrated doubling-down
• Hiring strategy: network access > spreadsheet diligence
• Culture principles: excellence, performance, “no one takes themselves too seriously”
• Conviction-based investing vs consensus IC, and why omissions are the real killer
• The hardest lesson in venture: managing co-founder dynamics (and when to just listen)

Episode highlights

00:00 — “A+ people want to work with A+ people.”

01:46 — GTMfund’s 2026 prediction: big players come roaring back (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Uber/Waymo).

14:51 — GTMfund platform metrics: thousands of support items, intros, hires, and fundraising connects.

26:29 — Why Mark left Index to build Chemistry: big-fund lessons, rebuilt with focus.

33:39 — Chemistry’s strategy: early-stage focus, light reserves, and building for “product-market discovery.”

44:05 — “Venture doesn’t scale well.” Why Chemistry stays small to avoid bureaucracy.

49:59 — Events that actually work: chess tournaments, surfing, and hobby-driven gathering > happy hours.

54:56 — Investment process: conviction, not consensus—optimize for outliers, not averages.

1:10:32 — Hardest lesson in venture: co-founder dynamics, and learning when to listen (not “advise”).

Brought to you by: AngelList

From starting as a small, operator-led rolling fund, to evolving to an institutional platform, AngelList has been a core partner in every phase of GTMfund’s growth. Their software-first fund admin infrastructure allowed us to scale without sacrificing agility — from onboarding hundreds of LPs seamlessly to handling compliance, capital calls, and reporting as our fund size evolved.

As we expanded from Fund I to Fund II, AngelList took care of the back-office operations, allowing us to stay focused on what matters most: investing in world-class founders and building the strongest go-to-market network in venture. 

They’ve scaled with us across funds and into the future.

If your fund is growing in size or complexity, check them out at www.angellist.com/gtmfund.

Follow Mark Goldberg

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-goldberg-25458110
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/Mark_Goldberg_X (formerly Twitter)
• Chemistry (website): https://www.chemistry.vc/Chemistry

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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