Slice Podcast

Finn Murphy, founder and solo general partner of Nebular Ventures, dives into his unique approach to investing in talent-dense opportunities across emerging sectors like quantum computing and healthcare tools. He reveals how he tracks where innovative minds gather, opting to invest where others overlook potential. Finn shares his conviction-driven strategy of following talent rather than trends, emphasizing a genuine partnership with founders and exploring unconventional assets. His insights challenge traditional VC models by prioritizing people-first investing.

Sarah Smith, founder of the Sarah Smith Fund, discusses her journey from an educator to a prominent solo GP in venture capital. She emphasizes the importance of building scalable systems from day one. Sarah reveals her innovative approach to creating talent pipelines and enhancing investor experiences with AI tools. Her fellowship program at Stanford serves as a unique incubator for emerging talent, empowering students with hands-on venture experience. In a world of venture where many follow the same script, she encourages a diverse, multi-faceted approach to investing.

Another 12 episodes later, and season 2 of the slice podcast has come to a close.We started the slice pod with a simple intention: to create a space where emerging managers could speak plainly about their strategy, yes, but also their doubts, lessons, and the behind-the-scenes mechanics of building a firm. We wanted real conversations about what it means to start a fund in this moment.Somewhere between the stories of first checks and fundraises, between LP pitch decks and GP advisory calls, a pattern began to emerge. The managers who stick with you, the ones who seem most likely to outlast the hype cycle, aren’t just chasing alpha. They're designing institutions. ones that look different from the last generation. Smaller (most of the time In other words: they’re building with constraint. and they’re turning that constraint into a competitive edge.This season, you’ll notice a recurring theme: stay small to stay dangerous.As fabri put it:"Don’t go bigger. start small. stay small. play in the cracks, the nooks, the crannies, where the big funds simply can’t follow. it’s structurally impossible for them to compete. that’s where you win."It’s a reminder that small funds don’t have to become big funds. in fact, many shouldn’t.because the game changes. the edge dulls. the returns compress. one $200M outcome might return a $20M fund 10x. that same outcome barely registers in a $300M vehicle.An important piece that we’ve come to believe is that it’s not just about portfolio construction. It's about firm construction. Who you raise from matters. (the LPs are your customers!) Who you make money for matters. It shapes how you operate, how you’re perceived, what you’re allowed to do.Slice exists because we believe something structural is shifting in early-stage venture. the old playbook “raise big, spend fast, go wide” doesn’t work anymore. We’re in the post-ZIRP, AI-native era, and capital efficiency isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a survival skill.As rounds get smaller, check sizes compress, and founders delay dilution, the managers best positioned to win are the ones who can move fast, cut tight checks, and spot talent before it’s consensus.You don’t do that with a $150M seed fund. You do it with $15 - 20M, first-check fund, and a map of the edges where opportunity lives.That’s what this season taught us, and it reinforced our belief that LPs looking for outlier returns shouldn’t chase logos, but rather chase leverage. This leverage lives in the cracks among the emerging, overlooked, and underestimated.A sincere thank you to our guests, to every manager who joined us this season:Eric Slesinger, Cameron Porter, Nick Tippmann, Ethan Austin, Cam Crowder, Santosh Sankar, Ivan Montoya, Madeline Darcy, Chris Wake and Lili Rogowsky, Ben Orthlieb and Romain Serman, Dakota McKenzie, and Will Lehmann.thank you for trusting us with your story. for sharing the hard parts, not just the wins. for showing up not as a brand, but as a builder.This pod wouldn’t exist without you, and it wouldn’t be worth making if it didn’t help the next wave of managers feel a little more seen, and a little less alone (!!)We’ll be back soon with season 3. Until then, H.A.G.S!! To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

Before launching Step Function, Will Lehmann spent years at Bain Capital Ventures, cutting his teeth on enterprise software deals. Now he’s charting his own course with a $12M fund that’s small by design, early on purpose, and built to back edge cases before they become power laws.Most managers who spin out of multistage platforms make the same mistake. They raise big because they can, then wonder why the quality of founders drops off. It’s a common pitfall where they’re suddenly exposed to the truth that those founders were there for the brand of the firm, not the individual GP. Will is betting on something more durable: being the right size to matter."$250k is meaningful to the founders, and small enough that you can be collaborative," Will explains. It's the sweet spot where you get "the support of a multistage investor but with the look and feel of a super angel."Step Function's focus is backing technical founders building infrastructure software. Developer tools, data infrastructure, AI infrastructure, security, monitoring, observability. Will sees two forces at work here that most miss.First, the density of power law outcomes. “I struggle to think of any other area of software where you so reliably get multiple multi-billion dollar outcomes every year.” The enterprise software data on exits backs that up: Snowflake ($3.4B), Confluent ($828M), Rubrik ($752M) on the public side. Plus huge acquisitions like Databricks’ billion-dollar-plus bet on Neon.Second, the practitioner's advantage. Infrastructure software attracts founders who are users first, builders second. They've lived the pain, understand the gaps, and have prescriptive points of view on what needs to exist. "That was me," Will reflects. "I have a very prescriptive point of view on what the product is and how to build it. That true authentic mission-driven founder…I just don't find it quite as common in other spaces."This matters more than most realize, and as he puts it “Incremental improvements at the infrastructure layer create step function changes at the application layer.” It's systems-level thinking that compounds across the entire software stack.Will acknowledges the comfort of being at a large fund. A dedicated IR team, teammates, institutional support. But he's betting that being small, nimble, and specialized gives him the best shot at delivering returns to LPs. In a world where venture is splitting between early and late, Step Function plants its flag firmly on the early side, where the big guys have left cracks of opportunity.The infrastructure software wave isn't slowing down. If anything, it's accelerating as AI reshapes how we build, deploy, and scale systems. Will's positioning Step Function right in the path of that transformation, backing the technical founders who will architect the next layer of the stack. We just hope that he stays small ;)Special thanks to Evan for the intro to Will 🙏 To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

Dakota McKenzie, founder and general partner of Dynamic Growth Partners, shares insights on supporting early-stage technical founders. He discusses the patterns he’s observed in startup failures, emphasizing that impressive metrics don’t guarantee success. Dakota explains the distinction between consulting and investing, revealing how only one of his many clients has entered his portfolio. He candidly addresses the challenges of balancing revenue goals with product fundamentals and the importance of fostering independent, resilient founders.

Ben and Romain met in San Francisco 10 years ago, and like any good partnership origin story, they bonded over what they thought was broken. "We always thought there's something weird with the venture capital industry," they explain. "VCs, investors, mostly work at Blue Bottle Coffee, meeting with founders in real life and working on spreadsheets. We never stopped talking about the fact that probably the people who invest in tech should use a little bit of tech themselves to perform better."Fair point... In an industry that prides itself on backing innovation, most funds operate like it's still 1995.The duo don’t come from traditional VC backgrounds..Ben was deep in B2B SaaS and M&A at LinkedIn and Romain is running the US Office of the French Sovereign Fund, a 35B-AUM financial institution.They weren't Ivy league MBAs with Tier 1 fund pedigrees. They were, in their words, "ETs entering that world that we want to dominate."Together, they decided to build a venture fund that operates like a fintech company, sourcing deals through AI and making investment decisions with machine learning precision. Agatha, their sourcing and screening algorithm that processes over 8,000 founding teams annually across North American B2B companies, screening them down to about 400 worth engaging with. Most established funds see a few hundred deals per year through their networks. Blue Moon systematically evaluates 20x that volume."What Agatha does is that it ingests data on each co-founder, basically what experience they have, what education they have, and their personality inferred from everything that's said and written publicly," Romain explains. The output? A score from 0 to 100 predicting the chances of raising a Series B.Why Series B? "The algorithm was trained on the fundamental question: what are the chances of that team to raise in the future at least $20 million." It's practical, you don't have to wait 10-12 years for ultimate outcomes, and there are more data points to train on.The results speak for themselves. Four years in, they've already produced two unicorns from their 2021 vintage. They're tracking as a top 1-2% performing seed fund based on TVPI metrics.The AI Orchestra is made up of 6 agents:* Agatha: Sourcing and screening* DaVinci: Their AI VC analyst that sits on a knowledge base of everything Mark Andreessen has ever said publicly* Raphael: AI chatbot for founders that beats ChatGPT 80% of the time* Kojak: Portfolio performance tracking* Bloomberg: Deal flow coordination with top 50 US funds* Slash: The orchestrator (named after the guitarist, because naturally both ben + romain play guitar)"We do north of 10,000 API calls per day," they note. Most "AI-powered" funds do around 100. "2 million zaps a year."When DaVinci analyzes a deck, it's not like dumping it into ChatGPT. "Because it's a RAG and because it sits on top of a living knowledge base that is better and improving every day, the output is just 10x, 20x, 100x better."Most emerging managers struggle with the value-add question: how do you help 50+ companies without burning out? Blue Moon solved this from day one by outsourcing value-add services.They pay for executive coaching (from coaches with three exits), sales coaching, and CTO mentorship programs. "Most founders tend to be from tech side product or R&D. They'll figure out sales, but if they figure it out six months faster, that's how much value you've delivered."It's scalable because it's systematized. They have 50 companies in their portfolio and it works fine.When we ask about competition, they're refreshingly direct: "It drives me nuts when I see articles about people that... they're using data and AI, but sometimes TechCrunch will do an article about something that we don't even think about as a feature in one of our products."The barrier isn't technical, it's cultural. "A lot of GPs still believe, 'I've been doing this work for 20 years. I'm very good at pattern recognition.'" The irony? Machine learning is all about pattern recognition.Most established funds can't change their processes because "the analysts and principals are like, 'I don't want to be replaced.' So I'm opposing this tool."Now going into fund II, they have raised the bar of selection. “Agatha spits out a score. When we started with Fund One, we looked at all the companies above the threshold. Now the threshold is really high with two unicorn founders in the portfolio”"Over the last 60 years, venture capital at an early stage was a function of time and network," they observe. "The future is seed investing will not be a function of time and network anymore."They're building the infrastructure for that future. Not just for themselves, but as proof of concept for the industry. They already help other VCs score their deal flow and share high-quality deal flow with top funds, building social capital in the process.Blue Moon represents a rare combo: the foresight to see where venture is headed, the technical depth to build toward it, and now the early results to show it’s working. They’re one of the first to do it this way and while it’s still early, two unicorns in four years from a fund many once brushed off? That’s worth paying attention to. To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

What happens when you combine moonshot ambition with radical empathy? You get Atypical Ventures, the early-stage fund investing in what they call “plausible science fiction” … think data centers on the moon.In our conversation with Lili and Chris, we unpacked how they think about frontier investing and why “engineers with empathy” win.Chris got into venture after years of working with quietly awesome people solving hard problems. He was the first employee at satellite company Spire, then worked in early ops at Clearbit and Vercel. He started Atypical to build something different. Lili joined a year later, bringing experience from running her own law firm, helping companies from pre-incorporation through Series A.“The brightest minds in the world should have every single advantage,” Chris told us. “If they win, we all win.”Atypical bets on founders who pair breakthrough technical ideas with real emotional intelligence.But what does that actually mean? “Empathy is an amorphous thing,” Chris said. “But what we really mean is intellectual humility. You can be one of the top people in the world, but you realize the shores of your ignorance are wider than the shores of your intelligence.”The best founders know how to walk the line. They share their vision with confidence, but they also show taste. They want more than just capital. They want a real partner.Atypical holds themselves to that same standard. Fund I was $7.5M. For Fund II, they scaled back to $15M from a $25M target.“Early-stage frontier tech is the loneliest job. You’re incentivized to look crazy and be right,” Chris said. Instead of spreading themselves thin, they leaned into focus. $1–3M checks, 10% ownership, 10 companies per fund. If they’re right about just 10 bets, they can go deep on each.That’s the thesis in action. Question your assumptions, follow the evidence.So how do you find the people building data centers on the moon? You don’t wait for them to show up in your inbox. Chris reads papers, cold emails researchers, and follows ideas most investors overlook. Some of their best referrals come from founders they’ve passed on. But the real insight? “The outliers aren’t ever in the group chats.”Their LPs think differently too. SpaceX engineers who get it right away. Real estate investors who understand high-risk, high-reward. Carefully chosen partners who are fully aligned. To date, they’ve executed ~$34M in syndicates. A signal that their thesis resonates.At the core of Atypical is a simple belief: perspective shapes experience. “To believe that change is possible is to make it so.”You won’t find an “Uber for X” or “Airbnb for Y” in their portfolio. They look for ideas that create new markets and net new value, not just a sliver of something that already exists. They invest across atoms, bits, and cells because the frontier is always moving. What feels early today won’t be in two years or five Sundays from now.And while most startups fail for predictable reasons, not everything shows up in a spreadsheet. Some lessons are only learned through trust, self-awareness, and how you treat people when things get hard.In a world where founders are expected to perform a certain kind of persona, Atypical asks different questions. Can you sit in silence and actually listen? Do you seek discomfort as a way to grow? Are you accountable for the downstream impact of what you’re building?They’re not trying to predict the future. They’re backing the people bold enough and grounded enough to build it.Thank you Fede for the intro to Chris & Lili! 🙏 To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

Most VCs are systematically terrible at recognizing patterns when it comes to women's health. Not because they're dumb – these are smart people. But because they fundamentally lack the lived experience to see what's staring them right in the face.Madeline has grown into the role of an emerging manager, seasoned by her time as a consultant. Instead of going to a multi stage firm, Madeline chose to build something of her own.. To “zag when others zig”. And this makes sense when you peel back a layer, and get to know where she comes from.She's one of 13 kids from a blended family in Australia, parents who met working at Domino's, moved to the US as a teenager, and watched her mother navigate chronic conditions within the Medicaid system."When we started to talk about GDP, we didn't account for work that was done at home, meaning if you are taking care of your aging mother. That does not account for GDP. Yet the moment that you get an outside care worker into the home now that's part of GDP."Think about that for a second. We're measuring economic activity completely wrong, which means we're sizing markets wrong. No wonder most funds think women's health is niche when it's actually the majority of healthcare spending.Investment in women's health companies increased 314% since 2018, while overall investment for the health sector increased 28%. (SVB’s Innovation in Women’s Health Report) Sounds impressive until you realize that's just catch-up from a ridiculously low baseline. The global FemTech market was estimated at USD 39.29 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.37% from 2025 to 2030, with some estimates suggesting it could reach USD 130.80 billion by 2034. (Research and Markets)Madeline thinks even these numbers are conservative because they're based on the narrow definition of women's health that VCs love to box themselves into, and this is where Madeline’s thesis differs. While most funds are still stuck thinking about fertility apps and period trackers, she's looking at Alzheimer's, heart disease, osteoporosis – conditions that disproportionately affect women or affect them differently."70% of our healthcare is largely driven by chronic conditions. Women are living longer, which means they are more likely to be the caretaker of their spouse versus the other way around. They are more likely to be involved in end-of-life decisions. They are more likely to inherit financial decisions. And this is all part of health, too."Suddenly you're not talking about a niche market. You're talking about the future of healthcare itself.Here's where things get really interesting. Madeline's observed something that should make every LP pay attention: investors calling markets "saturated" after just 2-3 companies hit near-billion-dollar valuations. She digs deeper in her article with Forbes. "I have observed that the investor group tends to think things get saturated fairly quickly. So you might hear from many investors, 'Infertility is saturated. We now have 2-3 startups that have reached almost that billion-dollar mark. We're done.'"Infertility. One of the most fundamentally human markets that exists. Saturated after three companies. The same thing is happening with menopause after companies like Flo Health ($200 million), Maven ($150 million) and Midi Health ($63 million) raised large rounds in 2024. These aren't saturation signals… they're proof of concept for much larger opportunities.Her core investments span the care economy, pre-seed and seed stages, backing companies like Proov (infertility), Swehl (breastfeeding), Elektra Health (menopause), and Guaranteed (end-of-life hospice care). But it's her thesis that extends far beyond traditional women's health categories that makes her interesting.Special thanks to Talal for the intro to Madeline. To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

In Latin American venture capital, there's a script. It starts with Stanford or Harvard, maybe an MBA. English fluency. A clean resume. Ideally, a few years at McKinsey. Ivan Montoya never read the script.Born in Colombia and raised in Silicon Valley, he's the solo GP behind NuMundo Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage fund investing in Latin American fintech, property tech, and supply chain startups. While most funds in the region are still betting on polished pedigrees, Ivan is betting on overlooked potential.His best example? A founder he calls "the Mexican Bill Gates.""I didn't even have the fund yet," Ivan recalls. "So I put in $20K of my own money. After I closed my first fund, I wired him $150K. Eight months later, another $150K."That founder, Mairon, had no college degree. No connections. No VC polish. Every other firm in Mexico passed.Fast forward to today: $30 million ARR, $25 million raised in equity, Series B closed. And still, most of his capital came from the U.S. and Brazil, not Mexico."When I met Mairon, I just thought…I can do something different here."Latin American venture capital has long followed what Ivan calls "central casting"—looking for founders with specific profiles."Most VCs here look for a certain founder profile," he explains. "Someone who went to a top school in the U.S., speaks English well, because at some point, they'll probably need to raise from U.S. investors."This approach has produced winners. Look at Nubank (David Vélez, Stanford GSB) or MercadoLibre (Marcos Galperin, Stanford GSB). But it's also narrow."There's a kind of 'central casting,'" Ivan says. "And if you don't fit, it's very hard to raise money."The result? Massive blind spots where exceptional founders get filtered out before they ever reach decision-makers.As a solo GP, Ivan has structural advantages that larger funds can't replicate."In Latin America, Mairon would've met the most junior person at a fund, if he got the meeting at all," Ivan explains. "Then that person has to convince a partner. But the partner doesn't know him, and he hasn't been to college, so… they pass."Emerging managers like Ivan are pattern-matching on different signals: hustle, market insight, execution ability. They're finding exceptional founders that the traditional playbook misses.Ivan's success reflects his broader thesis about timing. He believes Latin America is entering its "Fairchild Semiconductor moment” that generational inflection point when ecosystems mature and start producing exponential outcomes."Fairchild kicked off a cycle in Silicon Valley: 1962 to 1977," he explains. "I think Latin America started its cycle with Nubank, around 2010. Now we're in 2025, 15 years in."If he's right, emerging managers are perfectly positioned to capture this wave. They have the flexibility to bet on unconventional opportunities and the time to develop deep conviction.The Latin American venture ecosystem is evolving rapidly. While established funds continue to play important roles, emerging managers like Ivan are proving that size isn't always an advantage.For founders who don't fit traditional molds, emerging managers offer an alternative path to capital. For investors looking at Latin America, emerging managers offer access to deals and perspectives that larger funds might miss.The next wave of Latin American unicorns might not come from central casting. They might come from emerging managers willing to bet on overlooked potential…just like Ivan.Special thanks to Sahej for introducing us to Ivan. To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com

With its third fund now closed at $54 million, Dynamo continues to lead investment in the technologies that make, move, and monetize the world's goods.When Santosh Sankar co-founded Dynamo Ventures in 2016, supply chain tech wasn't trendy. Today, the Chattanooga-based firm has become the go-to investor for founders reimagining global commerce infrastructure."Our thesis has always been about the backbone industries of the economy…When we started ten years ago, people questioned why we'd focus solely on supply chain and logistics. Now, everyone understands that these foundational systems need modernization."What struck us in our conversation was how Santosh maintains the hunger of a first-time fund manager while demonstrating the strategic clarity that comes with three successful fundraises.Dynamo's evolution shows an increasing focus on getting in earlier. While Fund II maintained a 50/50 split between pre-seed and seed investments, Fund III is leaning more heavily into pre-seed, with two-thirds of investments now happening at this earliest stage."The pre-seed stage is where we can add the most value," Santosh explained. "We're making high-conviction bets when others are hesitant, writing meaningful checks, and providing hands-on support when founders need it most."He adds that too many investors want to see traction metrics before committing. They’re comfortable making decisions based on the founder's vision and their understanding of the market opportunity. That's their edge. “We oftentimes look for insight at the early stage that we're investing at because if I can find and buy into your insight behind why you're doing what you're doing and the way you're doing. I can then help you craft that into something that's defensible. When you compound that over time, it turns into a moat. It drives me nuts when some investors ask a pre-seed company what their moat is, or seed company, or arguably in a series A company, they’re in the middle of building it.”Recent news on Stord’s $200m round at a $1.5b valuation confirms Dynamo’s thesis. As the first check in 2016 from Dynamo’s $18m Fund I, Stord has since* Sustained profitability since 2024* 5.5x growth since 2022* Over 30M orders delivered in 2024* Expanded to 11 Stord fulfillment nodes with a network of partner centers around the globe"Supply chain isn't just having a moment," Santosh observed in a recent LinkedIn post. "It's experiencing a fundamental shift in strategic importance. What was once viewed as a cost center is now recognized as a competitive advantage."When we asked about timing their third fund during market uncertainty, Santosh was clear: "The macro conversation helps us. The push for reshoring, nearshoring, and supply chain resilience isn't cyclical—it's a generational shift. Leaders now understand that optimizing for efficiency alone creates fragility. We're investing in the companies building robust, anti-fragile systems."Unlike VCs clustered in tech hubs, Dynamo embraces its Chattanooga location at the center of America's industrial economy. Santosh emphasizes believing in the power of place. "Being headquartered in Chattanooga gives us proximity to the real economy – the warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities that make modern life possible. We're not just investing in technology; we're investing in transforming industries that have been the backbone of the global economy for generations."While rooted in America's heartland, Dynamo's vision is global. Two-thirds of their investments are in North America, with the remaining third internationally distributed."Maybe what we haven't addressed so far is we’ve invested globally since our first fund," Santosh shared. "Two-thirds of our fund has been invested in North America, and the balance overseas. There's a concentration in Europe, but Latin America is clearly becoming very important to us, and we have a smattering of companies elsewhere in the world as well."Innovation has no zip code, and Dynamo stands apart by making carefully selected investments where they provide substantial capital and hands-on support:* Deep industry connections to potential customers and partners* Operational expertise in supply chain and logistics* Tactical support on go-to-market strategy and talent acquisition"We're not in the business of making a hundred bets hoping a few work out…We make fewer, more concentrated investments where we can truly partner with founders. That approach requires confidence in your thesis and the discipline to say 'no' a lot."With Fund III now closed, Dynamo is set to continue transforming global commerce infrastructure through its high-conviction, hands-on approach to pre-seed investing."Our vision hasn't changed since day one," Santosh reflected. "We believe the future of supply chain isn't just about incremental efficiency…it's about reimagining these systems from the ground up. The founders we back are building that future, and we're honored to support them at the earliest stages of their journey."Congratulations to Santosh and the entire team! We're excited to follow your journey as you support founders building technologies that make our world go around a bit smoother.Special thanks to John Gleeson for introducing us to Santosh. To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com