The Automated VC | Yohei Nakajima, Founding Partner, Untapped VC

This week, Peter is joined by Yohei Nakajima, founding partner of Untapped VC and one of the most forward-thinking investors in the AI space. Known for his public experiments with AI agents and automations, Yohei shares his radically different approach to venture capital: investing from the top down.

Yohei explains how he uses the social networking site X and his AI community, Baby AGI, to map market trends, develop a unique conviction, and source founders, flipping the traditional referral-based VC model on its head. He also dives deep into his personal quest to automate the mundane parts of the investor workflow, what he’s learned from building an AI version of himself, and what parts of the job can never be replaced by a machine.

This episode is a look into the future of venture capital, packed with insights on building a differentiated brand, why founders should lean into their strengths, and how AI is changing what it means to be an early-stage investor.

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00:00 – Intro: A top-down approach to VC
01:45 – Why top-down investing is Untapped's core thesis
02:24 – How to build unique conviction as an investor
04:15 – Using a public audience to source and vet founders
05:02 – Why don’t more pre-seed VCs do outbound sourcing?
06:29 – How defensible are today’s fast-growing AI companies?
08:00 – The "hobbyist" VC: How genuine joy becomes a differentiator
09:15 – The surprising bottleneck of automating your own job
10:48 – What is a VC's core value when tasks are automated?
11:45 – The parts of the VC job that should never be automated
13:20 – Lessons from building an AI version of yourself to advise founders
14:12 – How much of VC advice is standardized?
15:40 – Why innovating on portfolio construction is so difficult
17:18 – How AI experiments can provide value back to LPs
19:03 – Pitching an AI-native VC: How to stand out
20:31 – Why are so many founders building the same thing?
22:24 – Does a "breakout" launch signal a company's potential?
23:56 – Should founders focus on their strengths or weaknesses?
25:18 – A pre-seed take on today's frothy AI valuations
26:49 – Inside the VC mindset: Why investors can be surprisingly risk-averse
28:04 – Are accelerators still useful for early-stage founders?
30:15 – The San Francisco question: Do you still need to be there?
32:48 – How pre-seed founders are thinking about their capital strategy
37:25 – Why haven't more VC funds automated their own operations?
38:52 – Acting as a one-man R&D department for the VC industry
41:28 – The next big trend in AI: Context management and memory
44:23 – The future of Untapped: From a single fund to a VC platform?
47:11 – Who should be a VC that isn't one today?
49:10 – The most creative way an investor can add value

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