Masterclasses

In this session from the 2025 Data-Driven VC Summit, Adam Shuaib shares how his team uses data to improve how they find and invest in startup founders. Drawing on insights from 20,000 early-stage companies, he explains what traits and behaviors—like having a co-founder, responding quickly to emails, or even having a shorter company name—can help predict which startups are more likely to succeed and raise future funding. He also talks about how personality traits, past experience, and even the words used in pitch decks can influence investor decisions. Rather than replacing human judgment, Adam shows how data can help venture capitalists make smarter, faster, and more consistent decisions. This session gives a behind-the-scenes look at how modern VC firms are blending human insight with AI to spot the next big thing.

At the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, Sarah Guemouri (Atomico), Mike Arpaia (Moonfire), and Olivier Huez (Red River West) join a panel discussion on building and scaling engineering teams inside venture firms. They explore team structures, hiring strategies, compensation models (including carry and bonus), and the cultural divide between tech and investing. Key differences emerge between firms born with data DNA versus those evolving toward it. The panel offers candid insights into how to attract and retain world-class engineers in a traditionally non-technical domain—and why getting GP buy-in is non-negotiable when building truly data-driven VCs.

At the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, Yohei Nakajima—General Partner at Untapped Capital and creator of BabyAGI—delivers a high-impact keynote on building an AI-powered VC co-pilot. He showcases internal and founder-facing tools he's built to automate core VC workflows like deal sourcing, due diligence, networking, and portfolio support. Emphasizing his "build in public" philosophy, Yohei shares lessons from rapid experimentation using LLMs, Zapier, and custom CRMs, and gives practical tips for VCs looking to adopt AI. A must-watch session for anyone exploring the future of AI in venture capital.

In this panel of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, Amanda Widjaja, David Hefter, Johannes Ziegler, and João Pedro Gonçalves dive deep into how leading firms define and operationalize the metrics that truly matter across the VC funnel. From sourcing and conversion to founder support and internal accountability, the panelists share how they build KPI dashboards, avoid vanity metrics, and drive firm-wide adoption of data-backed decision-making.

This session from the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025 features keynote speaker Alex Patow, Head of Data Science at Index Ventures, discussing how large language models (LLMs) are reshaping the venture capital workflow. Alex shares hands-on examples of how Index is applying LLMs for sourcing, diligence, portfolio support, and internal knowledge management. He also explores the organizational challenges of LLM adoption, from data quality to human-in-the-loop design, and offers a practical roadmap for VC firms to move from experimentation to scaled deployment.

This keynote session from the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025 features Rahul Nath, General Partner at General Catalyst, in conversation with DDVC’s Andre Retterath. Together, they unpack the strategic and cultural foundations needed to build a truly data-driven VC firm. Rahul shares hard-won lessons from scaling internal data systems, aligning teams around data-informed decisions, and integrating AI into sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio support. The session outlines a phased approach—from building the right infrastructure and team, to embedding data into daily operations.

This panel, part of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, explores the evolution of relationship intelligence in venture capital and private equity. Featuring Polina Jack (Bain Capital Ventures), Maya (Rothschild’s Five Arrows), and Thijs (Dawn Capital), the session dives deep into how firms are modernizing their networks using internal tools, CRMs, AI, and knowledge graphs. Panelists share real-world use cases—from mapping connections and scoring relationship strength to organizing data-driven events and enhancing due diligence through expert networks. The discussion also touches on entity resolution challenges, human factors in adoption, and the future of scalable relationship mapping across VC, PE, and LP workflows.

Part of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, presents a deep dive into startup ownership trends using cap table data from over 50,000 U.S. startups. He covers founder dilution through funding rounds, equity splits, vesting schedules, advisor and employee equity norms, and the impact of AI on valuations. The talk highlights strategic tradeoffs between bootstrapping and VC, data-backed benchmarks on equity at each stage, and real-world fundraising scenarios. The session concludes with a Q&A exploring predictive signals, super voting shares, and late-stage incentives.

Part of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, this session features Kyle Poyar—co-founder of Tremont and author of the popular Growth Unhinged newsletter—sharing cutting-edge go-to-market (GTM) strategies. Kyle challenges outdated MQL/SQL playbooks and introduces a modern, account-based, data-driven framework for building pipeline. He breaks down how top teams are leveraging GTM tech stacks, signal-based selling, and cross-functional collaboration to convert high-intent accounts more efficiently. Whether you're scaling from $1M to $10M ARR or revamping your GTM motion, this session delivers practical, tactical insights you can apply right away.

Part of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, this fireside chat features Marc from Equation discussing how limited partners (LPs) are beginning to adopt data and AI tools to evaluate and invest in venture capital funds. He shares how Equation rebuilds GP portfolios bottom-up using tech-enabled benchmarking, and how LPs can improve sourcing, diligence, and allocation strategies. The session explores why data-driven decision-making is still rare among LPs and what’s needed to scale these practices across the ecosystem.

Part of the DDVC Virtual Summit 2025, this session features Abe from AngelList presenting new research on whether seed investors should follow on in later rounds. Using 10,000 simulations across 150 portfolios and 10 years of data, Abe challenges conventional wisdom and shows that always following on may lead to lower median returns and higher volatility. The talk offers a data-driven, sometimes controversial, perspective on diversification, portfolio construction, and the role of luck in venture investing.

In this session from the DDVC VIrtual Summit 2025, Nicolas from the AI Finance Club shares how finance teams can use AI to save time, boost accuracy, and streamline workflows. He walks through real examples like financial modeling, reporting, and tax audits, showing how tools like ChatGPT and Claude can simplify complex tasks. The talk also highlights top AI tools and offers a roadmap for teams of any size to start using AI today.

SignalFire CEO Christopher Farmer discusses his data-driven approach to venture capital and the technology behind the company’s system of tracking companies. He speaks with Cory Johnson on “Bloomberg Technology.”

In this episode, Sachin and Adam interview Jonathan Hsu, co-founder of Tribe Capital. They discuss Jonathans upbringing, background in physics, the invention of data science, takeaways from being a partner at Social Capital and building Tribe. There is so much to learn from this conversation and it’s not one to be missed.

In the episode, RIchie Cotton from DataCamp and Andre explore the concept of data-driven venture capital, the challenges of traditional VC and why digitization has had a huge impact on the industry, the data-driven VC process, the use of modern data and AI technologies in identifying potentially successful projects, the human element in VC, the challenges and opportunities of early-stage investments, the importance of early identification of these ventures, cultural and organizational indicators and much more.

In this episode, the EU-Startups Podcast catch up with Andre Retterath, Partner & EagleEye Lead at Earlybird Venture Capital and Author of Data-Driven VC. Earlybird VC was founded in 1997 and is a European early-stage VC firm that invests in all development and growth phases of technology companies. With more than EUR 2 billion under management, eight IPOs and 31 trade sales, Earlybird is one of the most established and active venture capital firms in Europe. In Earlybird's team, Andre focuses on enterprise software with a particular interest in developer, data and productivity tools, alongside AI-centric products and robotics. He has been leading Earlybird’s engineering team and the development of our proprietary data-driven platform “EagleEye”. Andre conducted his Ph.D. at the Technical University of Munich on the topic of "Machine learning and the value of data in venture capital". Moreover, he was previously educated at Harvard University, University of Cambridge and Georgia Institute of Technology, among others. Andre is also an Author of Data-Driven VC, a community of 30k+ experts interested at the intersection of startups, venture capital, data & AI. With 173 episodes, 30k+ subs, 2.2m annual reads, they produce three weekly newsletters "Insights", "Essays", and "Picks", the annual "Data-Driven VC Landscape" report, events, and more. Andre talks about the shift from traditional VC to a data-driven approach. He explains how data-driven VC provides an edge in picking winners by improving the sourcing and screening process. He also highlights the importance of balancing data-driven insights with gut feelings and the human component in venture capital. André shares insights on overhyped startup metrics and the value of headcount as an indicator. He discusses the challenges of integrating data science in VC and the future of VC, including the professionalization of the industry and the aggregation of VC tools.

In this episode, Indian Silicon Valley (ISV) Jivraj Singh Sachar speaks to Arjun Sethi - the Chief Investment Officer and Co-Founder of Tribe Capital. He has led Tribe to scale to $1.6Bn+ in AUM and has most recently launched an India focused fund to do Series A investments across the geography. Tribe is one of the most successful funds of this generation and they have invested in 13+ Unicorns across the globe with a very differentiated way of investing - quant based Venture Investing. They have a proprietary product Termina, which they use to release their famous 8-Ball reports and share with founders. Through this conversation you can understand how Arjun thinks about Venture Capital and how they look at India. This is a great deep dive into one of the most prolific Venture minds of our time.

This is an episode of The Pomp Podcast with host Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano and guest, Arjun Sethi, the Co-Founder and Partner at Tribe Capital. In this conversation, Arjun and Anthony discuss market timing for product-market fit, the cyclical nature of growth tactics, slow vs fast money, n-of-1 companies, and Tribe's view on cryptocurrency.

In the world of data driven venture capital, technology and analytics create a new era of investment opportunities. A data-driven fund can harness the power of data and machine learning to get in early on companies with the potential to disrupt their industries, streamline internal operations, and support portfolio companies. In this article, Pedram Birounvand, Head of Data Management at EQT, and Maximilian Fleitmann, founder of VC Stack, take a deep dive into the workings of a data-driven fund - from how data is harnessed to what roles comprise a data team.

In this episode of Turpentine VC, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and Seven Seven Six, joins Erik Torenberg to discuss how Seven Seven Six is a “tech company that deploys venture capital”, the lack of internal metrics in venture, and how he plans to reinvent venture using software. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite:http://netsuite.com/turpentine