The End of Vibe Investing?

I was listening to The Learning Corner podcast by Precursor Ventures where Charles Hudson discussed my seed inflation post. Charles made a comment that’s been rattling around in my head: “Maybe we’re applying seed strategy to Series As.”

Maybe. But I think the bigger shift is even bigger than that.

The entire skill set required for seed investing has completely changed, and the era of vibe investing is over.

A decade ago, seed was mostly a network and intuition game. You knew people, got into deals through relationships, met the founder, trusted your gut, wrote a check.

Last week I found myself deep in a contract review, doing diligence on pre-seed funds I’d never heard of, querying AI on technical issues and scheduling meetings with multiple founders across different cities. For one potential investment.

That’s just table stakes now. Managing a seed fund in 2026 means running outbound sourcing campaigns. Evaluating data rooms with real financials. Modeling unit economics on companies that haven’t hit Series A. Navigating priced rounds with complex cap tables and side letters. Maintaining price discipline when median seed post-money hits $24M.

All this, and you still need to do the old work of building and supporting a top-notch network and keeping up with the industry’s ever-shifting vibe.

This looks a lot less like the romanticized version of venture capital. The old cottage industry is increasingly a relic.

When I zoom out, I see seed VC evolving in generations.

Gen 1 was about proximity. In the dot-com days, it was about blue blazers and Sand Hill Road offices. You succeeded by being in the right geo. Access was the edge.

Gen 2 was about builders helping builders. Former founders who’d been through it, built firms with operator credibility and media platforms. They/we won deals by being relatable in ways Gen 1 never was to us.

Gen 3 is emerging now and I’m not sure what it looks like. More analytical. More data-driven. More global. Maybe AI-native in how they source and evaluate. Maybe Goldman and Blackstone enter the game by building or buying (or A16Z becomes the next Goldman?)

Here’s what I keep coming back to: the best investments in our portfolio were vibe investments. Founders we backed on conviction, not spreadsheets.

I sometimes wonder if Gen 2 was the last generation that was vibes based – and now we’re heading for programmatic VC?!