This Week in Startups
This Week in Startups

Founders Are Now Sending VCs a File Written for AI

November 12, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Founders Are Now Sending VCs a File Written for AI

Last week, the managing partner of Dragonfly Ventures posted something that caught the panel's attention: founders are now sending him markdown files called company.md that can be opened with any large language model, allowing VCs to ask questions about the business instead of reading a pitch deck or watching a video. "You can just pull up that markdown file and start asking it questions about the business," D.A. Wallach said, introducing the topic to the roundtable.

The Rise of Agentic Venture

Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures was already ahead of this curve. About a year ago, her firm realized that 99% of VC websites weren't optimized for AI agents—they lacked FAQs, ghost pages, and other structures that make firms discoverable in an agentic world. They optimized their own site and saw results. "If venture funds are going to do it, obviously startups are going to do it as well," she said. "What a cool way to be able to prepare for a meeting before and kind of like self-serve as you're getting to know founders and industries without having to set up a call."

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What you'll learn

  • 1 Timestamped Outline
  • 2 (00:04) **Welcome and Panel Introductions** - Jason introduces DA Wallach (Time BioVentures), Ben Lerer (Lerer Hippeau), and Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures) for the weekly venture capital roundtable
  • 3 (03:08) **The Pivot Imperative** - Panel discusses why pivots are common and often lead to the biggest successes, especially in the current AI-driven environment
  • 4 (08:38) **The Company.md Trend** - DA introduces a new phenomenon: founders sending VCs markdown files designed for AI consumption rather than traditional pitch decks
  • 5 (13:01) **Going Against AI's Advice** - The panel explores whether VCs will override AI recommendations, especially given Josh Wolfe's observation that contested deals outperform consensus ones
  • 6 (19:23) **The Alchemy of Venture Capital** - DA challenges whether VCs will have jobs if AI can truly solve hard problems, prompting a defense of the human element
  • 7 (26:59) **Vibe Coding and Incubation** - Jenny reveals Everywhere Ventures is spinning out Jelly, an AI-powered data platform they built in-house for their own use

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Show Notes

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Today’s show:

Lerer Hippeau managing partner Ben Lerer predicts that venture funds under $500M will raise less money this year than in any other year this past decade. LPs are piling into megafund platforms, while family offices skip commitments for SPVs. For everyone in between, he says, “the middle is cooked.”

On a new TWiST VC roundtable, Lerer joins Jason Calacanis, Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures) and D.A. Wallach (Time BioVentures) to discuss Beezer Clarkson’s data, showing that family offices now put 34% of their VC commitments into SPVs.

OpenAI and Anthropic obviously skew those numbers a bit, but nonetheless, family offices increasingly want to “play venture capitalist” in hot late-stage deals.

What about LPs who sit in five or more platform funds? Don’t they now own all the same companies?

Plus D.A. warns about “freelance investment bankers” collecting SPV fees, Jason shares his 2% one-time SPV fee and his fights to protect pro rata, Jenny flags LPs asking managers for allocations in companies their funds don’t own, and lots more insights from our panel of insiders and experts.

Guests

Ben Lerer on X: https://x.com/benjlerer

Lerer Hippeau: https://www.lererhippeau.com/

Jenny Fielding on X: https://x.com/jefielding

Everywhere Ventures: https://www.everywhere.vc/

D.A. Wallach on X: https://x.com/dawallach

Time BioVentures: https://www.timebioventures.com/

Relevant Links

Haseeb Qureshi on founders shipping a company.md with their pitch: https://x.com/hosseeb/status/2120531493613400210

Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7B (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/travis-kalanicks-robotics-company-raises-1-7b-led-by-a16z/

Jelly, Everywhere Ventures' private market intelligence platform (beta waitlist): https://jelly.buildwitheverywhere.com/

Jack

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