Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.
Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital.
In this episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming back Oren Zeev of Zeev Ventures to help unpack the current world of venture. As many know, Oren has remained a one-man firm since inception, and manages nearly $3B in assets. We dove into the growing disconnect between private and public valuations, how FOMO and massive fund sizes structurally push large platforms into chasing a handful of companies, and why Oren intentionally avoids playing that game in favor of high‑conviction, early‑stage investing with smaller, more focused funds. Oren shares his views on the first wave of AI (infrastructure, models, and chips) versus the underappreciated application layer, the real moats in “vertical AI” beyond thin wrappers, and how to separate healthy, durable growth from momentum and creative accounting. We also discuss his decision to lean in on companies like Navan through extreme uncertainty, how he thinks about getting to follow on conviction, when it’s not obvious. This was a fun one to record as Oren is uniquely transparent and honest in his views. Hope you enjoy it.
Oren Zeev is the Founding Partner of Zeev Ventures, a highly successful early-stage investment firm focused on backing exceptional founders and category-defining technology companies. Over his career, Zeev has been an early investor in companies including Audible, Chegg, Houzz, Tipalti, and Navan, with several growing into major technology businesses. Before founding Zeev Ventures, he was a General Partner at Apax Partners, where he developed extensive experience investing in technology companies.
Topics in this conversation include:
* Market Bifurcation and Disconnect Between Public and Private Valuations (2:46)
* FOMO, Large Funds, and the Cost of Omission for AI Deals (5:07)
* Two Investor Camps: Playing With House Money vs. Chasing Missed Winners (8:00)
* Parallels and Differences Between the Dot-com Bubble and Today’s AI Boom (17:39)
* Moats in Vertical AI, Thin Wrappers, and the “SaaS Apocalypse” Narrative (25:59)
* Capital Availability for Solid but Non-Hypergrowth Companies (33:40)
* Biggest Investing Misses, Lessons From Proptech and Chips (41:27)
Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Oren. If you’d like to get Venture Unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe.
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