💯💯💯! Doing VC for 8 years now, very few can actually do that well. It also sounds smarter to say all of the things that could wrong, where you get more buy-in from your peers, which helps reinforce how smart you may seem. VC is a lonely sport and I love it :)

Thanks for broadcasting the Maple VC strategy Garry Tan. Appreciate you 🙏🏽

Early one Saturday morning, I arrived at doug leone's home in Atherton with two vans full of Persian rugs. Doug, the charming Italian venture capitalist from Sequoia, knew exactly what he wanted—and none of my rugs matched his vision. As we talked, I offered to help Sequoia Capital

Congrats to the Clay team!

Andre Charoo 2/ Andre was early at Uber and Hired. Now, he writes $500k–$1.5M checks into Canadian-led startups before anyone else believes — especially immigrant founders building abroad. Why? Because he was one of them. And he knows the talent runs deep.

Andre Charoo 3/ Canadian universities quietly train world-class builders. But without Ivy League names or FAANG logos, many founders get ignored… until they ship something great. That’s when Andre shows up — early, intentional, and with conviction.

Andre Charoo 4/ Take Clay: a spreadsheet with superpowers turned unicorn. Andre was the first check in 2017. No AI hype. No fanfare. Just a big, weird idea + a uniquely qualified team. 7 years later? It’s now powering B2B AI workflows with deep moats.

Andre Charoo Speaking of moats… Andre leans on the “7 Powers” framework by Hamilton Helmer to assess startup defensibility — even in the AI era. In a world of fast follows, real moats still win. Here’s what he looks for 👇

Andre Charoo 6/ ⚡ Scale Economies 🔁 Network Effects 🧠 Counter-Positioning 🚪 Switching Costs 💎 Branding 🔒 Cornered Resource ⚙️ Process Power The power combo? Moats + non-consensus insight + founder-market fit.

Andre Charoo 7/ The power of counter-positioning really stood out. Legacy SaaS companies charge per seat. New agentic AI startups? They charge for outcomes. It’s a quiet revolution — and investors like Andre are watching closely.

Andre Charoo 8/ Andre Charoo still thinks like an operator. He looks for founders who can build before they’re believed in — and gives them the capital to prove people wrong. This episode is full of insight. Especially if you care about: ✅ Early-stage investing ✅ AI moats ✅ Immigrant

Andre Charoo 9/ Massive thank you to Andre Charoo for joining us on First Funders 🙌 Listen to the episode here: First Funders Podcast: firstfunderspod.com/episodes/s2e02… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7GGOsz… YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=R79jmc…

Great catching up with one of my oldest friends from my early days in Silicon Valley—18 years ago! shaherose (she/her) still pictures me running around Uber, which is pretty accurate… I’ve just traded one hustle for another Maple VC. Thanks for sharing my story—really enjoyed the

Clay continues to execute like nothing I’ve seen before. Q1 numbers are unreal. Proud to be part of the journey from day-one Maple VC

Announcing Charlie + Linear for Agents: • The fastest way to clear your backlog • Triage & plan bug fixes with Charlie • Assign Charlie → production-ready PR

🇨🇦 Canada just keeps producing greatness. SGA = MVP. Enough said. #NBAMVP

Just got access and if there’s anything that has shown me the true power and potential of agents, it’s this.

Excited about Fey, a Maple VC portco founded by Brotzky and T. Costa, that recently launched a new way to screen stocks: fey.com/finder It replaces the traditional stock screener with something more intuitive. Just type in natural language and get a curated list

Huge congrats Andrew Macdonald! Proud to have played a small part 13 years ago 😉cc dara khosrowshahi bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Uber Taps Andrew Macdonald to Be COO Amid Executive Shake-Up - Bloomberg

Go Charlie !