Is seed investing facing an existential crisis? This week on The Data Minute, Peter sits down with Rob Go, Founding Partner at NextView Ventures, to discuss the structural shifts making the “game on the field” harder than ever for early-stage investors.

Rob explains why many successful seed VCs are exiting the industry and how the rise of mega-funds and massive accelerators like YC has squeezed traditional seed firms into a narrow “subset” of the market. They dive into the “feeder fund” phenomenon, the arbitrary nature of ownership mandates, and why the $1B–$3B exit range has become a “Death Valley” for startups.

Despite the current angst, Rob shares his optimistic “bull case” for 2030, explaining why diminishing competition and a rotation away from late-stage consensus will lead to a healthier venture substrate in the years to come.

Chapters:

00:20 – Intro: Rob Go and the Seed Existential Crisis

02:16 – Defining Seed: Betting on anything before PMF

03:35 – Why senior seed VCs are exiting the industry

05:02 – The Squeeze: Mega-funds vs. Accelerators

07:02 – Scarcity vs. Abundance: What’s left for seed funds?

08:44 – The “Feeder Fund” trap and the factory supply chain

12:38 – The risk of taking seed money from a mega-fund

13:34 – Breaking down the 4 styles of seed investing

15:20 – Why specialist seed funds can be transient

19:29 – Super Compounders: Will exits keep getting bigger?

21:59 – The “Death Valley” of $1B–$3B exits

25:08 – The Blumhouse equivalent for venture capital

27:18 – Normalizing secondaries as an exit strategy

33:53 – Rant: Why ownership targets are backwards

39:04 – Offensive vs. Defensive bridge rounds

45:07 – “I’ve become way more Zen”: Why the 2030 outlook is bullish

50:18 – Outro