Ramtin Naimi - The State of Venture - [Invest Like the Best, EP.499]

My guest today is Ramtin Naimi, the founder of Abstract Ventures, back for our second conversation. Few people see as many companies as Ramtin and his firm, so this time we zoom in on what they’re seeing right now. The question he keeps coming back to is whether this is 2019 or 2021: early in a run, or at the top of one. Hot rounds now come with a second, pricier tranche for the firms that lost the deal, and he’s seen more term sheets pulled or renegotiated in recent weeks than at any time since 2021. We also get into the neolabs, one of which plans to spend $1 billion on a single training run, how the goalposts for a best-case outcome moved from $10 billion to a trillion dollars, and the biggest mistake he’s made building Abstract. Please enjoy my conversation with Ramtin Naimi. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠here⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠⁠. ----- ⁠⁠Ramp’s⁠⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ⁠⁠⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠⁠Vanta⁠⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠⁠vanta.com/invest⁠⁠. ----- ⁠WorkOS⁠⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- ⁠Rogo⁠ is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit ⁠rogo.ai/invest⁠. ----- ⁠⁠Ridgeline⁠⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by ⁠The Podcast Consultant⁠. Timestamps: (00:00:00) The Speed of Today's Deal Market (00:05:43) How Today Compares to 2021 (00:08:25) Mega Funds and LP Liquidity (00:13:43) New Ways to Pay for Compute (00:17:13) GPU Scarcity and the Neolab Boom (00:20:42) Why Proactive Seed Bets Win (00:27:42) Is Late Stage the Safe Bet? (00:31:58) Data Companies and New Angels (00:34:46) How Abstract Is Evolving (00:38:17) Rating the Market's Froth