"Once in your life, you gotta swing for the fences. You gotta go all in. And if it works, you've obviously completely changed your life, and everybody around you. And if it doesn't, you're gonna regret for the rest of your life that you didn't take that big swing." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures
"Your AI is only as good as the underlying data that was used to train it. We built a thesis around moat through data and how application layer AI companies are not gonna be commoditized because they have defensibility built from a data moat." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures
"Instead of competing with them, we decided to focus on being the first and best inception check in AI companies in Silicon Valley. It's best to be one of the best in what you do than try to lag behind the best in something that you're not gonna be able to win in." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures
"How are you going to stay ahead of the competition in a world where two kids can vibe code a clone of your product over a weekend?"
Itamar Novick is a solo capitalist and the founder of Recursive Ventures, a pre-seed fund focused on AI and emerging tech startups. He has supported over 50 successful startups, including Deel, Honeybook, Placer, Credible (IPO), MileIQ (acquired by Microsoft), Automatic Labs (acquired by SiriusXM), Tile (acquired by Life360), SafeGraph, and Armory. He's been recognized by Business Insider as a Top 100 global seed investor (#17 in 2021, #29 in 2022). As an operator, he helped take Life360 from Seed to IPO, scaling the business to over $250m in revenue.
Itamar joined Jeremy Au to talk about what still counts as a moat in AI, why proprietary data is only the starting point, and where AI actually replaces people instead of augmenting them. He also looks back on twelve years at Life360, joining as VP of Product and leaving as the CFO who took the company public, and why he now writes the first check at pre-seed.
Itamar’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamarnovick/
Recursive Ventures: https://www.recursiveventures.com/
00:00 Introduction
02:01 Coding at 11, and the army cybercrime unit
04:12 Product management before Agile
06:00 Gigya, and meeting Zuckerberg in 2008
07:27 Morgenthaler Ventures and the first inning of SaaS
08:37 Twelve years at Life360, VP Product to CFO
11:36 "Kids are never gonna have smartphones"
13:53 Raising $500M and 11 corporate VCs
16:31 The VC story problem, and which VCs got it
22:26 Going full time into venture, and why pre-seed
27:48 How Itamar picks: team, TAM, and moat
30:06 Data as the moat, and the customer data flywheel
35:48 Where AI can and can't replace humans
40:33 Taking the one big swing
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Pre-Seed Venture Capital, Silicon Valley Startups, Data Moats, Generative AI, Startup Fundraising, Product Management, Founder Advice
