Unpopular Ventures: Annual Update 2025
To The Unpopular Ventures Community,
Welcome to our 2025 Annual Update. As a reminder, at Unpopular Ventures we focus on “the best companies, off the beaten path.” We invest in exceptional founders who are building high potential businesses, that are non-consensus in some way.
To help us find great opportunities around the world, we leverage a “Scout Program,” through which we share significant portions of our carried interest with anyone who helps us to identify, evaluate, and diligence companies that we invest in. If you would like to refer an opportunity, please check out our Scout Program Guidelines.
This is our annual update, which will be slightly longer than our quarterly updates. In addition to an update on our portfolio, you’ll also find an expression of gratitude to our community, a renewed case for why we believe UV is a good place to invest, disclaimers and an explanation about how we do our portfolio tracking, some of our current top performing investments, and links back to some of our other past content.
Thank you all for your continued partnership!
Peter Livingston and Thibault Reichelt
1. GRATITUDE
We have a lot to be thankful for, so we’ll start with a bit of gratitude. Thank you to:
OUR PORTFOLIO FOUNDERS. Thank you to the Founders and teams of all 536 portfolio companies of ours (past and present) — who allowed us to invest in their companies, and have worked like crazy to build their dreams into realities. Great Founders have endless choices of investors to take money from. Thank you for choosing us, and for allowing us to ride along as a small part of your journeys.
OUR LPS. Thank you to all of our 5400+ syndicate LPs and 100+ Rolling Fund LPs who have entrusted us with your capital. There are endless places to invest your money: dozens of asset classes, thousands of VC firms, and hundreds of syndicates and funds just on AngelList to choose from. Thank you for choosing us.
OUR SCOUTS, GUEST LEADS, AND VENTURE PARTNERS. As you know, we share carry with anyone in our network (including LPs, Portfolio Founders, and friends) — for their assistance in identifying, assessing, and negotiating one or more of our investments. Thank you to our extended family of contributors who have helped us do more than we would have been able to on our own. There are hundreds of you — you know who you are — and we are grateful to you.
THE ANGELLIST TEAM, who make the magic happen behind the scenes. Special thanks in particular to Jack Plank and Colton Smith — our managers at AngelList who we worked more closely with over the last year, who have been fantastic. An extra big thank you to Avlok Kohli, CEO at AngelList as well; we had a complex situation with one of our investments recently, and he really stepped up and helped us in a big way.
2. WHY INVEST WITH UNPOPULAR VENTURES?
It’s been a couple years since I (Peter) last made the case for why I believe UV is a good place to invest, so I thought I’d make the case anew. There are 4 main reasons: 1) skin in the game, 2) track record, 3) experience, and 4) timing.
First and foremost: skin in the game. As the Founder and Managing Partner of UV, I put my own money where my mouth is. I invest more in our own fund and syndicate than I do anywhere else: $100k per year of personal cash into our fund, and more into most of the syndicate deals we do too. I am the 5th biggest LP in UV’s fund and syndicate ($1.25M invested to date). I would like to invest more, but I am already extremely over-allocated to venture investments (irresponsibly so — most financial advisors would have a heart attack if they saw my personal portfolio) — so I have to be cautious about managing my liquidity.
Second, track record: both I and Thibault have been investing in startups for a long time, well before UV — and we have a plethora of winning investments.
Even before I started investing, I was the first employee and first engineer at a company that today has a $5B market cap (iRhythm). I later began my investing career as a solo angel, from 2012–2018, investing my own money. My first personal angel “fund” (with only my own money) has returned over 15x to date. The single best investment in that fund was made in 2015 and has returned 472x net. It was my success investing as a solo angel for so many years that gave me the confidence to start UV and invite all of you to invest with me.
My Partner, Thibault, also has an exceptional track record, including before joining me in UV. He started with some small investing as an angel in 2016, and those personal investments have already returned a realized multiple of over 5x. Since 2017 he has been making venture investments on behalf of a family office. He has done so well with them that he still invests on their behalf in addition to UV, and that family office is one of the biggest LPs across the AngelList platform. Although Thibault doesn’t have the same level of liquidity as I have, and has not been able to invest as much in UV personally, the family office that he works with is UV’s 8th biggest LP.
We started UV in 2019, and have an excellent track record here too. Our most mature vintages, 2019 and 2020, are already up 5.3x and 6.8x gross — and we expect them to keep growing much further from here. AngelList reports our aggregate IRR across the entire life of UV at 24%:
Note that the calculations behind this are not perfect — there are some investments that should be marked less, and some that are worth more (for example, Yassir’s new round has not been included — which will be a big markup for us) — but for the purpose of an apples to apples comparison with any other syndicate or fund on AngelList — this number is close to accurate.
The number has been higher in the past (even above 100% in 2021/2022), but as you likely know — the VC market has been in a down cycle the last few years and everything has slowed down. I am proud that we still have an IRR this high, at this time — which I believe is close to the bottom of this bear market. I’ll come back to this in part 4.
Third, experience. Thibault and I have experience well beyond just our winning investments, which informs our judgement today. We have both been involved with numerous startups as operators — and because of that we have deep insight into what these companies are like to build on the inside.
My personal “anti portfolio” though, is the single most valuable component of my experience. It shaped our firm’s investing strategy, and was even the inspiration for our name: Unpopular Ventures.
As I wrote in one of our recent syndicate memos, “The essence of our name and Unpopular thesis is: invest in the very best founders we can, no matter what they are doing, and *especially* if they are doing something unusual or off the beaten path. All of my biggest investing mistakes were cases when I did not invest in someone I knew was exceptional, merely because I didn’t like or understand their idea. And our biggest wins in UV have similarly all been in non-obvious ideas, markets, and geographies — but were nonetheless pursued by exceptional founders. That is the key to successful startup investing in our opinion: bet on people, not ideas. And in fact — the most unpopular ideas frequently turn out to be the best ones.”
I thought you might appreciate the color behind that, so I’ll share 5 stories.
First, the thing that made me begin angel investing was an investment I did not do in my friend’s company, Burb’n. Kevin Systrom was my fraternity brother at Stanford undergrad, and a good friend after. He and I worked down the hall from each other (at different startups) in 2007–2009 and would occasionally meet for lunch. A couple years later, I heard he was building an app called Burb’n, and was trying to raise a little money. I downloaded the app and played around with it, but I didn’t think the idea was compelling — so I dismissed it and did not reach out to him. I easily could have, and boy do I wish I had. Shortly after, he pivoted, renamed the company Instagram, and sold for $1B 18 months later (in Facebook stock at a $100B valuation — which is up another 19x since then). That was when I realized: I should invest in my friends.
The next friend who started a company was another fraternity brother, close friend, and my roommate in San Francisco for 3 years, Rainer Castillo. One day, he told me he and his co-founders were making men’s short shorts and selling them online. It was the worst idea I had ever heard. But clearly I was wrong about Burb’n, and I believed in Rainer, so I grimaced and invested a little bit. That company was Chubbies, which today is a leading men’s wear brand and exited for >$100M in cash. Not quite an Instagram-level outcome, but still a very nice win.
Based on my early success with Chubbies, and some other startups too, I waded into angel investing more and more. But I started out investing very carefully and selectively — and that turned out to be a big mistake.
David Velez was a close friend from my first year of business school. He and I later worked down the road from each other when he was a junior partner at Sequoia Capital, and I was an EIR at Kleiner Perkins — and we would occasionally meet for lunch — so I knew him well. A couple years later, I learned that he was trying to build a credit card business in Brazil. I thought “Brazil? That sounds super risky” — so I did not ask him about investing. Again, I easily could have. That company was Nubank and today has a >$60B market cap.
I guess I needed one more miss to drive the point home, because Evan Moore and Tony Xu were good friends of mine in my second year of business school. We were even co-presidents of the Stanford GSB Venture Capital Club all together. One day, Evan told me he was experimenting with an idea in food delivery. “Food delivery?” I thought, “that’s not a sexy business, and probably low margin too.” Whelp, that company was DoorDash, which today has a >$100B market cap.
Dang. If only I had invested in these friends that I knew were smart, even though I didn’t know anything about photo sharing, Brazilian banking, or food delivery. At last, I finally learned the lesson: invest in the smartest people I can, regardless of what I think of their ideas. Maybe even especially if I think the ideas are bad.
I also learned: the worst thing you can do in startup investing is not losing your money on an investment; it’s not investing in something that returns 1000x+. I would have gladly lost my money hundreds of times, if only I had invested in Instagram, Nubank, or DoorDash. This is why we invest in more companies — and take more risk — than most VCs. We have deeply internalized that the way to get the best returns is to maximize the chance that we invest in an extreme outlier — even if that means we are wrong a lot.
Fortunately, it wasn’t all misses, because in 2015 I made the investment I mentioned above that has returned 472x to date, and delivered most of my 15x personal angel fund return. Those of you who have been with us a while know what this investment was; if you don’t know and would like to, send me a note and I will tell you. Interestingly, I told everyone I knew about this investment in 2015 — well over 100 people — and in the end I was only able to convince 2 to invest relatively small amounts. My best investment was ironically also the hardest one to convince others to do. Unpopular again.
Turns out, this theme is not unique to my experience: Airbnb was famously rejected by over 80 VCs, and Google attempted to sell themselves for $1M to Excite, who turned them down. Most of the best investments are unpopular in the beginning.
The point is: I’ve been out there a long time; I’ve seen winners and losers, what they looked like at the earliest stages — and many more than I’ve shared here in just these 5 stories. That experience has been hard earned. And I believe the judgment I have developed from all that experience makes me more likely to continue making winning investments in the future — which is why I invest so much of my personal capital in UV.
The challenge though, is that those potentially best investments, the ones that sound like bad ideas in the beginning — are hard to raise money for in the syndicate format. I am quite certain that if I had tried to run a syndicate for Burb’n, Nubank, or DoorDash in their first rounds — the vast majority of you would not have been interested. This is one reason why we do so many investments from our fund, and don’t syndicate them early on; there just isn’t a lot to talk about other than a promising founder and a half baked idea.
The fourth and last thing I’ll talk about is timing.
For the first time in over 13 years, I am hearing an abundance of people express concern that Venture Capital is not a good place to invest. It’s a contrast from 2020 and 2021, when the consensus was that VC returns were incredible, and everyone was piling in. And it’s different from 2022–2024, when many were clamoring “be greedy when others are fearful!” Now in 2025, all I hear is despondence.
You can hear it in the news, as well as in the chatter on Linkedin and X. You can see it in the movement of the money: LP commitments to VC are way down, and LPs are also concentrating most of their VC/PE allocations in a handful of mega funds that they perceive to be “safe.” They are not, but hey — no one ever got fired for hiring IBM.
The last time I remember sentiment like this was in 2011/2012. It was 4–5 years after the 2007 market peak, and VC returns had indeed been weak for quite a while. If you were in Facebook or a couple other successes, you did great. But outside of those, most VCs performed terribly. This line from a 2011 NBC article is illustrative: “this decade of VC investment doom has created serious questions about whether venture capital can ever rise from the ashes.”
Turns out: 2011/2012 was an excellent time to start investing in VC.
I wonder if the timing today is similar to 2011/12. I actually think our recent vintages have quite a few good investments that will go on to deliver excellent returns — but I also recognize that the environment has been tough. Follow on capital, markups, and business growth have all been slower. Capital has pulled back, and everyone is being more cautious.
Amidst the tough environment, I am also seeing investment opportunities today that I think are particularly compelling. We allocated a big chunk of our rolling fund this past year to one of our strongest existing portfolio companies, and wrote a big fund check and ran a large syndicate for another — both of which we think are irrationally undervalued. I envision these purchases as (hopefully) similar to when Fabrice Grinda of FJ Labs went out and bought secondary Alibaba shares ahead of their IPO, or when Chris Sacca did the same in Twitter. There are incredible deals to be had right now — in large part because no one is looking.
Even though the broad market is bearish, I am feeling the most bullish I have in quite some time. I personally think we have passed the bottom in the VC market cycle, and this next decade is going to be outstanding.
Keep in mind: I am not a permabull. I actually wrote about the onset of VC winter in January 2022. But although I believed the coming years would be challenging, I also think timing the market is hard. There are always outlier startups being formed, and great investments to be made. We are always investing, through the good times and bad.
Having said that, I do think that for those of you who do like to try to time the market, now may be an unusually good time to invest in Venture Capital.
I also humbly believe that if you are going to invest in VC, one of the best places you can invest is in Unpopular Ventures. I invest heavily in it myself, and we have a long track record of finding winners. Those of you with us already: we feel lucky to have you. For those of you reading this but on the fence: we would be honored to have you with us.
3. PORTFOLIO
SUMMARY: $81M of capital invested over the last 6.5 years has grown into $199M of portfolio value. This is up vs. 1 year ago ($71M/$183M), representing ~$6M of appreciation.
On the one hand, I’m grateful that our portfolio value continues to grow. At the same time, we are clearly still in the doldrums of this VC bear market. 3% year over year growth is not what any of us invest in Venture Capital for.
Keep in mind, it’s not unique to us, nor is it unique to the VC industry alone. The entire market of companies smaller than the 10 biggest in the US has been slow in recent years:
I don’t think this trend will last forever. No tree grows to the sky. The pendulum always swings back sooner or later.
But back to our own portfolio: although I’m not happy with the recent rate of appreciation, I am also optimistic. We have a lot of companies that are doing exceptionally well under the hood, even if the markups aren’t there just yet to provide “official credit” for their performance. Venture Capital is notoriously cyclical; there are years when it’s slow, and there are years when it’s fast — money flows in, prices go up, customers buy more, and companies feel the confidence to step on the gas and grow quickly. In 2020/2021, as an example, the average VC portfolio grew in value by over 100% year over year, and there was a slew of follow on rounds and exits at high prices. That was also ironically when most people wanted to invest in VC.
The investors who reaped the rewards during that time were those who had sowed their initial investments much earlier, when the market was not hot. As I shared above, in 2011/2012 most considered VC a bad place to invest. But that is when those who made the big bucks in 2020/2021 planted their seeds.
So although the numbers are not amazing right now, I am confident that we are sowing excellent seeds that will lead to a big harvest to reap in future years.
DISCLAIMERS
As we do every year, we want to remind everyone of a few disclaimers about how we do these updates:
- Our updates lean positive. They go out to a lot of people (5,400+ LPs), and it’s not appropriate to share negative information about our companies publicly. Furthermore, VC is a game where only the extreme positive outcomes have a meaningful impact on portfolio performance. So let’s focus on those.
- There may be errors here. All of the internal portfolio tracking is done by Peter and checked by the team and some of our biggest LPs with a spreadsheet. It’s very possible we got something wrong. If you notice an error, please let us know. We strive to make this as accurate as possible.
- Startup valuation is tricky and complex. Different people do it in different ways. We explain our methodology in the appendix. You may disagree with it. You are welcome to run your own analysis and arrive at your own conclusions, using the raw data (linked below).
- The only thing that actually matters is cash on cash returns. But in startup investing, those take a long time to materialize. The intent of this analysis is to estimate how we are doing in the short term, to evaluate if we are on the right track. You can’t take any of these numbers to the bank.
PORTFOLIO STATISTICS
Our aggregate numbers, across every investment in UV’s life:
Numbers for only the UV Syndicate:
Annualized numbers for only the UV Rolling Fund:
Statistics about our investing activity:
Quarterly breakdown for the Rolling Fund:
We rolled over $42k of uninvested capital from Q2, and raised another $920k in Q3.
If you are a major LP of Unpopular Ventures, have invested at least $250k to date, and are willing to sign an NDA, we will share the complete portfolio data with you. Please submit a request via this form: link
For everyone else, you can access the de-identified data here: link
TOP COMPANIES
Here we will highlight a few of our most promising companies, organized by vintage. Note that we have A LOT more companies than these that are doing extremely well. But for the purpose of not overloading you, we are only going to name a few companies per year.
The nature of our strategy, where we invest in 100+ companies per year from our fund, is that only the investments that can return 100x+ will have a meaningful impact on our returns. We are certainly very happy when our companies produce any positive return. A 10x (or even a 3x in some cases) can produce generational wealth for the founders, and we always welcome a profit. But the reality is: we are targeting a 5x return or better for each of our vintages — and we can only get there if we have individual portfolio companies that can make a meaningful dent in that and deliver at least a 1x on the vintage (and hopefully more).
So in general, the companies mentioned below are those that have had a meaningful impact on our returns, or that we think may have a big impact in the future. The more recent vintages lean more toward the latter, given that they haven’t had as much time to prove themselves yet.
2019
Stealth — this is an investment that wishes to stay under the radar, so we can’t name them publicly here. Those who are invested in it know which it is. The company is extremely profitable, growing rapidly, and did a share buyback earlier this year — using accrued profits to buy out any investors who wished to sell. The valuation in the buyback represented a 79x return (net) to our original investment. We actually felt that price undervalued them — so we used a piece of our rolling fund to buy shares from any LPs of ours who wished to sell, at the same price. We saw it as a win/win: providing liquidity to 8 LPs of ours who wanted it, as well as an opportunity for us and our fund LPs to buy more of one of our very best companies, at a great price. We believe the investment has the potential to grow another 100x from here.
Yassir — the leading super app in Francophone Africa. We led their seed rounds on $15M and $35M pre-money caps in 2019 and 2020. The company now employs over 4000 team members and serves customers in 45 cities across 7 countries. They have an enormous amount of revenue — more than any other portfolio company of ours — that is continuing to grow quickly. Our investment has been marked up significantly, but we believe the company’s current valuation undervalues it — and we also believe the company has a lot further to grow from here. Hat tip to Thibault on this one; it was the first investment he brought to UV.
Blaze (fka Almanac) — AI that does marketing for you. This one has been a bit of a rollercoaster. We originally invested in this as Almanac, which was a completely different idea. We were one of the biggest investors in their first round on $9M pre. They have pivoted several times since, raised a $30M Series A from Tiger in 2021, pivoted again after that — and now seem to have landed on something big. They have a lot of revenue that is growing very quickly now. Thanks to Kevin Moore for the intro, and Brad Flora for co-leading the syndicate.
Sniffspot — marketplace for private dog parks. I am mentioning this one as a bit of a wildcard — because they are not super crazy big just yet, nor have they raised tons of money — but they have built a very compelling business that is profitable and growing at a nice clip. With time, I think there is a real chance this one could deliver an outstanding investment return for us, especially relative to the $7M valuation we originally invested on.
This and the first 2019 company mentioned are together part of a theme we are observing: some of our best companies don’t raise very much venture capital. It’s a contrast from the “VC Factory Model” (described by Sam Lessin) in which startups follow a charted path of seed to Series A to Series B, C etc. — and success is measured based on subsequent fundraising. That model isn’t always great for us: it results in more dilution, and sometimes these companies raise too much money, try to grow too fast, and fail anyway. The reality is that it’s actually best for us if our companies can get profitable, and grow off their own cash flows, with as little external funding as possible — even if that doesn’t give us a flashy funding event to brag about. In contrast to the big VCs that need to deploy the billions they raised — and therefore want their portfolio companies to take lots of their money — we are small, and therefore it is better for us if our companies can get big with as little money as possible.
2020
Jeeves — the global business bank for enterprises operating across 25 countries. We were the biggest investor in their first two rounds (aside from YC) on $10M and $13M post money caps, and the company last raised at a $2.1B valuation. They have not done a round in a few years, as the company is in excellent shape — with plenty of cash, 3+ years of runway, healthy unit economics, and solid growth. July 2025 was a banner month across every metric including gross profit, revenue and TPV. They closed $75M in a new credit facility and are expecting to get their first bank license in Brazil this year.
99minutos — eCommerce delivery in Latin America. We were one of the biggest investors in their seed round on a $35M cap, and they last raised an $82M Series C from Oak HC/FT and Kaszek. The public information indicates the company is doing well — with 1069 current team members according to Linkedin and continuing to grow. H/t to Ed Roman and Anish Acharya for collaboration on this.
Decentro — Fintech infrastructure in India. Although this investment hasn’t been marked up dramatically yet, the company is in excellent shape with over 1300 enterprise users in India, has built a strong foundation that is core to FinTech in India, and therefore seems poised for growth in the future. H/T to Thibault for this investment.
Hint Health — we made large investments in Hint Health in 2020 and 2021. Their revenue has grown a lot since we invested, and the company has established itself as an industry leader in Direct Primary Care. We have received secondary offers to buy our shares, which we declined. Although Hint is not the fastest growing company in our portfolio, we invested a lot at a great price, the company is in excellent shape, growing well, and we expect that over time it will deliver a very nice return on our investment.
Note that every year we typically invest in the prior years’ winners too. 2020 has significant investments in Yassir and the Stealth co, as examples. But to simplify, we will only name each company once — in the first year we invested in it.
2021
Zepto — a leading grocery delivery app in India. We invested in their first round on $13M post, and the company was last valued at $5.8B. This investment is already worth ~¾ of all the money we invested from our fund in 2021 — nearly a “vintage returner.” We believe the company will grow much further in the coming years, and if it does it will produce a nice return on our 2021 rolling fund vintage. Hat tip to Thibault for this one.
Stepful — helps those without college degrees train for entry level healthcare jobs. We invested in their first round on $13M post, and the company is now doing over $3M of bookings per month. Based on their rate of growth, we think the company may achieve unicorn status soon. H/T: Thibault.
Community Phone — simple phone service for your home or business. We invested early, and the company is doing extremely well. Thanks to Rohit Taneja at Decentro for the intro here.
Yummy — leading super app in Venezuela. We invested early on a $7M pre money cap, and although the company has had some ups and downs, it is once again on an extremely promising growth trajectory. Thanks to Steven Coulis for the intro.
Constrafor — construction procurement company that offers financing and software for general contractors. We invested early, and the company is doing very well — lots of revenue and growing fast. Thanks to Zach Kruth for the intro.
Ready — helps utility providers connect families to better services at lower cost. We invested in their seed round, they raised subsequent rounds from top tier VCs, and they have a ton of revenue that is growing nicely.
Taiv — enables customized commercials on TVs in bars and restaurants. We invested multiple times over the years, and the company is generating a lot of revenue that is growing quickly.
Terra One (fka LIBER) — AI-controlled large-scale battery systems in Europe. This is considered one of the most promising startups in Germany right now, and we think has very high potential. H/T: Thibault.
GitButler (fka Sturdy) — we originally invested in a different company here, Sturdy, which shut down/merged with a new company, Gitbutler, and part of our equity was rolled into the new company. GitButler is doing very well, and in the midst of closing a big round from a top tier VC. Thanks to Dec Kelly for the original intro here, and special thanks to Avlok Kohli and AngelList for helping us manage some complexity related to this transaction.
2022
Helius — Solana development platform. Raised lots of subsequent funding from Founders Fund, Haun Ventures, and Foundation Capital, and is doing really well. Thanks to Gian Scozzaro and Faizan Khan for this one.
Brellium — Brellium helps provider groups automate clinical and payor compliance with AI. Consistently growing its ARR. H/T: Thibault.
Novig — America’s #1 sports prediction market. We invested early, and the company is doing very well with over $170M trading volume in June. Recently raised a big Series A from top tier VCs. H/T: Thiabult.
CopilotIQ — remote health monitoring for seniors. We invested in the company’s seed round, and they are doing really well. Raised subsequent rounds from top tier VCs, has lots of revenue, and acquired another large player in the space.
nSave (fka Masref) — global bank accounts for everyone, especially those living in places where they can’t trust their banks. We invested in their first round, were followed by top tier VCs, and the company is doing great.
AltScore — AI-driven lending infrastructure, enabling any company to build, manage and offer credit products in weeks. We invested in their seed round, were followed by great VCs, and the company is doing well. H/T: Ivan Montoya
Chowdeck — food delivery in Africa. We invested very early, followed on in the company’s subsequent rounds — and they now do a large amount of volume and revenue. They started in Nigeria, and recently launched in Ghana too. H/T: Thibault
Sky Fortress — Protects Ukrainians from Russian drone and missile attacks with a network of acoustic sensors. Economist Article. We invested at a $1.5M valuation, and the company is now the leading drone detection company in Ukraine, along with Zvook, which we also invested in. H/T to Sergii Zhuk for Sky Fortress, and Thibault for Zvook. Thibault has led our effort to invest in several promising Ukrainian defense tech companies.
2023
Marathon Data — measures the revenue impact of brand with AI. We led their pre-seed, and the company has had a very successful launch — with lots of enterprise customers and fast-growing revenue.
Revv — AI powered SaaS for car repair shops. We invested in their seed round, and were followed by top tier VCs at much higher valuations. Lots of revenue that is growing fast. H/T: Thibault
Baton — Baton is the leading AI-enabled marketplace for buying and selling small businesses. Unparalleled listing quality. We invested in their seed and they have raised more money from top tier VCs and are growing fast. H/T: Thibault
Hapi — the “Robinhood of LatAm.” We invested in their seed and they have seen extraordinary growth since then. Followed at higher prices by top tier VCs. H/T: Tiago Del Rio
Felix Pago — chat based platform that allows Latinos in the US to send money abroad. Crazy growth, followed by top tier VCs at much higher prices.
Fluently — AI language coach. We invested in their pre-seed, were followed by great VCs at higher prices, and the company is seeing phenomenal growth. H/T: Sergii Zhuk
Carry — helps business owners and modern professionals build wealth. We invested in their seed and Series A, and the company is doing great.
Magic Mind — healthy beverage that improves cognitive performance. We invested in their seed, and they have seen extraordinary growth. Their product is now sold in several major supermarkets, including Publix.
222 — in real life social network. We invested in their seed round, and they are seeing rapid user and revenue growth across several geographies. H/T: Thibault.
2024
Still early for our 2024 portfolio, but here are a few that are off to a fast start:
Undermind — AI search engine for academic research. This company became profitable right after we invested — with significant and fast growing revenue. H/T: Thibault
TomaAI — AI call automation for car dealerships. We invested in their seed round, and the company subsequently raised a lot more money from top tier VCs and is growing quickly. H/T: Jack Chapman.
Conduit (fka HostAI) — AI customer service for vacation rentals. We invested in their seed, and they are seeing fast user and revenue growth. H/T: Gabriel Jarrosson
4. PAST CONTENT
Aggregating some of our past content here so it’s easy to find:
Quarterly LP updates from the last year:
All annual LP updates since UV inception:
Recent Interview: Peter with Brian Bell (4/2025)
Recent Interview: Peter on the OpenVC Podcast (10/2024)
Recent Interview: Peter with Burak Buyukdemir (3/2024)
Advice to First Time Founders (and Maybe All Founders) (8/2023)
A Word of Caution to AngelList LPs (10/2022)
Is Winter Coming? (1/2022) — Our post calling the onset of the bear market — before anyone else.
Thank you all for reading, and thank you for your support of Unpopular Ventures!
5. APPENDIX
Portfolio Tracking Methodology
As we originally explained in the Q4 ’22 update, we present our numbers to be in line with the SEC’s guidance that if fund managers present gross performance numbers, they must also present the numbers net of all fees. This is a bit tricky for us, because we offer numerous fee options to investors in our rolling fund — each of which would require a different calculation. 2 and 20 is the default option, but we also offer 1 and 30, and even 0 and 20 with a 6 year commitment. That last option is our favorite (we prefer long term stable capital) but recognize that 2 and 20 is the market standard. Most LPs prefer a shorter commitment duration — so we have set that as the default choice.
To produce “net” numbers, we standardize them along the 2 and 20 fee structure. To do this, we are starting with the amount that we actually invested into companies, which is “real” — regardless of whether you are signed up with management fees or not. We are then creating an “imaginary” number for capital raised, which is the amount of money we would have had to raise based on how much we invested, if all of our LPs had signed up with 2% annual management fees. But because some of our LPs are signed up without management fees — this imaginary “raised amount” does not actually represent how much we raised. It just serves to facilitate proper calculations net of 2 and 20 fees. Keep in mind: if you have a different fee structure than 2 and 20, the net numbers are different for you.
We also separate out our syndicate and fund investing. We kept them together before Q4 ’22, because our intent was to simply measure ourselves — to make sure we were doing a good job investing — and we didn’t really care about which type of vehicle the capital came from. But because the fees on these two entities are different, we have to separate them in order to produce numbers that are net of fees.
Marking to SAFE Caps
In addition to incorporating fees, dilution, and carry into our calculations, one thing we do that differs from AngelList is that we mark to SAFE caps — both up and down.
The intent is to produce more-accurate reporting. For example, we have some companies that have raised a down round after an equity round on a lower valuation cap SAFE. AngelList still holds those at the last equity round price, but we value them lower. We do it in the upside direction too.
We approach this with some nuance:
- Must be within reason. If a company raises on an outrageously high cap (or uncapped) or with a huge discount — we don’t count it. It only counts if the discount is zero/minimal, the cap is commensurate with the company’s progress, and reasonably close to what the valuation would be if it had been a priced round.
- If it’s a post money cap, we treat it as the post money valuation. If pre, we treat it as the pre-money valuation.
- We track and incorporate all of the dilution that would occur between the rounds, to the best of our ability. For example, if we invested on a $5 M post money SAFE, and the company then raises $2 M on a $12 M post money SAFE, we would mark that as a 2.0x — the delta between our post money (5) to the next pre money (10). If they then took $3 M more on an $18 M pre money cap SAFE, we would mark it up to a 3.0x → (10/5)*(18/12) = 3.
- If a priced round is signed but not closed yet, we use similar math, but also add extra dilution to account for potential option pool expansion. If there has been no priced round for a long time, we add an extra 10% dilution. If there was a priced round very recently, with the option pool already refreshed, we incorporate less.
- As soon as we receive a pro forma cap table or the exact share price, we revert to the official share price multiplied by the number of shares we have.
There is some debate about whether you can mark to a higher cap SAFE/note, or if you have to wait for a priced round before updating the valuation. AngelList, for example, only marks to priced rounds. However, other seed stage VCs say it’s common practice to mark to caps. In fact, the NVCA appears to believe it’s acceptable to use a cap as the effective valuation:
Historically, it made sense to only mark to priced rounds, because most rounds used to be priced rounds. And particularly for AngelList, with thousands of investments and a lean team — it’s most efficient for them to only mark to a share price. However, with the growing use of SAFEs, we are increasingly seeing early stage startups do 2–6 SAFE rounds over 2–4 years before eventually doing a priced round.
We certainly could wait for only priced rounds before updating our marks — but that means there will be no meaningful data to report for years. We (and probably you too) would like to estimate our investment performance on a more granular level. We think the best way to do that is to mark to reasonable caps as rough markers of valuation, while calculating the effect as if they had been priced rounds.
If another investor is investing on a higher or lower cap SAFE — they are legitimately investing on a higher/lower valuation — and we think it’s reasonable to incorporate that.
