The next three years should deliver what the last thirty did. That is John Lin's argument, and it is why he thinks the ground under founders has shifted.
John Lin is the Founding Partner of Linea Ventures. Previously, he helped start F-Prime Capital's west coast tech practice and was also a Principal at Trinity Ventures. He has invested in 50+ companies, including Numeral, Squire, Branch, Side, Weights & Biases, Triumph and You.com. Prior to that he led Product and Engineering at Roomi and worked at McKinsey and Yelp. John graduated with degrees in Business and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
He joined Jeremy Au on why AI coding has made good engineers five to ten times more effective, why everything in AI is both overhyped and undervalued at once, and where value still accrues now that a model costing billions to train can be built for tens of millions.
Then the part most founders have not priced in. A Series A used to mean $800K in revenue and a $40M round. Today it is closer to $3M and $70M, and by John's reading only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 companies make the jump. Round to round survival has fallen from about half to somewhere between a third and a sixth.
Plus how he picks: a $1B market, a path to 25x, companies between $1M and $10M in revenue, and the one question every founder has to answer.
John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lin-39a18921/
Linea Ventures: https://lineavc.com/
Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/john-lin-ai-investing
BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.
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00:00 Introduction
00:43 From Berkeley to Trinity, F-Prime, and Linea Ventures
02:59 Is AI huge, or overhyped?
04:34 AI coding, and 30 years of innovation in 3
07:44 Where the economic value of AI will accrue
11:26 Overhyped, undervalued, and no longer defensible
13:10 How John picks: market, founder, inflection point
15:12 Case study: Numeral and US sales tax filing
18:08 Red flags, and how to validate an AI idea fast
20:26 Are billion dollar seed rounds the new normal?
24:41 A tale of two cities in startup funding
26:50 Only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 reach Series A
30:04 Personal investing versus investing out of a fund
35:56 What a decade of reps teaches you
