Pavel Muntyan

the nicest and smartest guys always seem to be bald for some reason so i made a baldness ranking based on net worth bald kings, this one's for you

if you want to start your career in VC, here are some of the best opportunities: 1. @a16z — Frontier Research Intern, NYC ($3.5K–$4.5K/week). deadline: Nov 20 jobs.a16z.com/jobs/andreesse… 2. @PrecursorVC — AI & Investment Operations Intern (paid, part-time, no VC experience required). deadline: Nov 29 precursorvc.com/internship-a… 3. @BessemerVP — Summer Analyst 2028, NYC ($2.2K/week + $5K housing). deadline: Nov 30 job-boards.greenhouse.io/bvp… 4. RootedIn VC — Fellowship (Stanford students, 10 weeks). deadline: Dec 13 cresca.ai/apply/fi_cc764f67b… 5. @kleinerperkins — 2027 Engineering Fellow. deadline: Jan 31 jobs.ashbyhq.com/kleinerperk… 6. @kleinerperkins — 2027 Design Fellow. deadline: Jan 31 jobs.ashbyhq.com/kleinerperk… 7. @TrueBridgeCP — 2027 Summer Analyst, Chapel Hill (10 weeks, rising seniors) truebridgecapital.applytojob… 8. DRW Venture Capital — VC Analyst Intern, Chicago ($80K annualized + housing) job-boards.greenhouse.io/drw… 9. @EqualVentures — Analyst/Associate, NYC ($75K–$200K + fund carry) jobs.ashbyhq.com/equal-ventu… 10. Cross Creek — Investment Analyst/Associate, Salt Lake City (0–2 years experience) crosscreek.vc/careerposts/in… 11. @galaxyhq — Associate, Venture Investor, NYC ($150K–$175K + bonus/equity) job-boards.greenhouse.io/gal… 12. @pillar_vc — Investing Analyst, Boston (seed-stage investing) pillar.vc/careers/investing-… 13. @pillar_vc — Venture Associate, Deep-Tech, London pillar.vc/careers/venture-as… 14. TheVentureCity — Investment Team Intern, Madrid (paid, 6 months) theventurecity.typeform.com/… what did i miss?

best vc content formats based on my experience - deep research into specific niches and market shifts. for example, @gregisenberg wrote an excellent article, "$5T Opportunity: AI Roll Ups," which we probably should've written ourselves, considering how early we invested in Dwelly. this is a great format because you help readers understand the reasoning behind a particular opportunity, backed by data and experience. it could also be research into a broader market shift, like @kwharrison13's article "The Death of Venture Capital's Short Kings." the key to making this format work is having real expertise and being able to explain complex things in a way people can easily understand. - investment theses. this is similar to the first format, but it's more actionable because you're actually putting your own money behind the thesis. you explain where you see opportunities and market inefficiencies, then show how you're acting on them. a great example is @GEVS94's article "Rise of the Borderless Founder," which explains the reasoning and data behind the thesis while also showing what they're doing about it: hosting dinners for these founders, recruiting them, and investing in them. - breakdowns of recent deals. calculate who made how much money, what multiples investors achieved, and so on. this is @PaulBonnet's signature format, and it consistently gets great views. most people either can't be bothered to do the math or don't know how. seeing the actual numbers when someone has already done the work for you is always interesting and genuinely useful for understanding what's happening in the market. - interesting early-stage artifacts. what a unicorn looked like when you first invested in it. an interesting story about a portfolio company's founder. @a16z posted "Cursor, 4 years ago," featuring a Hacker News screenshot where the founder described the project as an email extension. it got 1.4M views. they've also posted what SpaceX's first reactor looked like, Airbnb's website in 2008, and so on. all of these posts performed extremely well. - lists and maps of startups or people. curated lists and rankings almost always get great engagement. there are two main reasons. first, you tag people and appeal to their egos. people naturally want to react to and share content that features them. second, you've done the research and created something that solves a real problem for someone. say someone wants to learn about VC. here's a list of the best creators covering the venture capital industry. that same list is also useful for GPs and CMOs at other funds who are building their own content strategies. this is one of @cosign's main growth strategies, and it works extremely well because of the obvious network effect. - interpreting research data. take an interesting statistic and explain what it actually means, or challenge a well-known investor's or founder's opinion using data. this format is particularly effective. @credistick is great at it, and his content consistently gets strong views. not everyone can connect the dots and draw conclusions from numbers, and plenty of people don't even look at the data. presenting it this way gives your arguments real evidence. - podcasts and clips. this is becoming especially relevant following the recent announcement from @XCreators, and @HarryStebbings has really nailed this format. but you can't just start another podcast because everyone else is doing it. the space is genuinely overcrowded. you need to understand exactly what problem you're solving and for whom. before launching, check whether someone else is already solving that problem better than you could. there's not much point in starting yet another podcast unless you can get someone like @elonmusk on it. you need to know who's going to watch and why. - educational content. how to fundraise, how venture capital works, and so on. @harris has been publishing some good articles in this format recently. there are two things to keep in mind. first, who's reading it? if your goal is to attract LPs, they obviously already know the basics, and so do experienced founders. this type of content usually attracts beginners and tends to work well on TikTok, Instagram, and similar platforms. second, check whether someone has already explained the topic better than you plan to. writing the hundredth explanation of how venture capital works isn't going to add much value if you have nothing new to say. - personal reflections. just observations from your own life and work. which types of founders tend to perform better, something non-obvious you've learned about relationships, whatever. anything you think could be useful that comes from your personal experience. sometimes it's just a thought worth sharing. - digests of what happened over the past week or month. a great format when you focus on a specific niche. @pavelprata is perfect with his monthly VC/LP debrief. if you don't have a large audience yet, don't try to cover every piece of news. pick a smaller segment you know really well and become the best and most popular source in that niche first. - nostalgia. what happened in VC over the past year? this isn't a regular format, but it can be amazing if you put real effort into it. some friends of mine who ran a large football media account used to create incredible illustrations capturing the year's biggest and most memorable moments through tiny details. they'd then build a list around those illustrations. - interactive content. recently, all kinds of vibe-coded websites featuring memes have gone viral. @vkleban made a cool game where both players are controlled by Jev models. others have built websites that calculate how much your X account is worth, and so on. if you execute the idea well and make people curious enough to try it, this format almost always performs extremely well. lower-quality formats that still work - announcing that you're investing and asking people to drop their pitch decks, websites, or startup descriptions in the comments. it's engagement farming and tends to attract a lower-quality audience, but it works for generating views. - memes about recent events. just look at @TurnerNovak's most popular posts. almost all of them are memes. maybe one in ten really takes off, and the audience isn't always that relevant, but the format clearly works. - shitposting and short takes. i'm not a fan of this format, and frankly, i'm not very good at it. still, these posts can occasionally get incredible traction. @chiefofautism has built a great audience with this approach.

i made a list of the best VC creators on X to follow and learn from @cosign - @shaunmmaguire (Sequoia, deep tech and defense) - @saranormous (founder of Conviction, co-host of nopriorspod) - @eriktorenberg (GP at a16z, built mts, the academy and cosign) - @kwharrison13 (GP at Contrary, founder of Contrary Research) - @pavelprata (founder of Murph Capital, monthly VC/LP debriefs) - @dunkhippo33 (co-founder and GP at Hustle Fund) - @MartinGTobias (founder and managing partner at Incisive Ventures) - @mariogabriele (founder of The Generalist, partner at Hummingbird) - @TurnerNovak (founder of Banana Capital, host of ThePeelPod) - @rex_woodbury (founder of Daybreak, writes Digital Native) - @ttunguz (founder and GP at Theory, daily data posts) - @HarryStebbings (20VC, the most prolific interviewer in venture) - @PeterJ_Walker (head of insights at OpenRouter, best data storyteller in venture) - @zebulgar (founders fund, president of vardaspace) - @Samirkaji (CEO of Allocate, host of Venture Unlocked, best source on emerging managers) - @edsim (founder and GP at boldstart) - @_AlexMenn (founder and GP at Begin Capital) cosign.co/lists/paulklayvc/t…

best character traits for founders who are about to fundraise - childhood trauma. as we know, some of the most successful people are also the most traumatized. someone with a healthy work-life balance and everything going well in their life doesn't have much reason to dedicate their entire life to building a billion-dollar company. childhood trauma can create incredibly strong, long-term motivation. for some founders, building a company becomes a way to prove something to themselves or the world, and that motivation can last for decades. - disagreeableness. as an entrepreneur, you can't agree with everyone. you need focus and clear priorities. at some point, you'll have to fire a friend, replace your CEO, turn down a major client, and make plenty of other difficult decisions. you need to be comfortable making those calls, even when people are unhappy with you. if you're constantly trying to please everyone, you'll end up making decisions that are bad for the company. - heretical thinking. the biggest opportunities often exist where something widely accepted turns out to be wrong or simply not the best solution. most people never even question those assumptions, let alone try to prove them wrong or build something better. it takes a certain type of person to challenge conventional wisdom. people will laugh at them, dismiss their ideas, and tell them they're wasting their time. they don't particularly care because they genuinely believe they're right and are determined to prove it. - neurodivergence. ASD, ADHD, etc. you've probably noticed that a lot of founders are pretty unusual people. there's a reason for that. building something extraordinary often requires a mindset that most people don't have. the pressure is enormous, the uncertainty never really goes away, and most people wouldn't want to live like that. some neurodivergent founders can turn traits like intense focus, unconventional thinking, and obsessive interest in a particular problem into a serious advantage. they can spend years working on something that other people would have given up on long ago. - speed. focus, focus, focus, and speed of execution. that's what makes the difference. everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, yet one person can accomplish in a day what takes someone else a week. the best founders move incredibly fast, make decisions without overthinking every detail, and dedicate themselves completely to what they're building. work smart, work hard, and keep moving. the faster you execute, the faster you learn, and the harder it becomes for competitors to catch up. - technical talent. people with exceptional technical ability are rare, and unlike the other traits on this list, this is a hard skill. in my experience, it often comes with at least some of the characteristics mentioned above. these people can be difficult to communicate with, incredibly demanding, and obsessed with details that most people don't even notice. but when someone has exceptional technical ability and the ambition to build a company, they can create products that would be almost impossible for an average team to replicate. that's an enormous advantage, especially at the earliest stages.

the AI tools every founder and operator should have on their radar right now coding agents - amp (agent threads linked to git commits, useful as shared team context) - antigravity (another way to work with Claude and Gemini) - opencode (open source, multiple models, runs in your terminal) - claude code (subagents, skills, project memory, MCP) - codex (a second opinion from a different model family, great for code review) - cursor (multiple models in one editor) running agents across the company - QM (YC's open-source internal agent, lives in Slack) - multica (AI agents as teammates, with actual task management) - paperclip (a meta-harness for coordinating agents across different tools) - herdr (manage agents running across multiple machines from one place) - buzz (Jack Dorsey's workspace for people, agents, and code) agents that use your computer - claude cowork (desktop tasks and workflows) - dots (OpenAI's always-on agents inside ChatGPT) - muse (Meta's agent for computer tasks) - gemini spark (Google's background agent for Ultra subscribers) - grok bot (one of the more interesting interfaces in this category) tools for actual business workflows - fin / decagon / sierra (customer support) - ramp (finance and spend management with AI built in) - rogo / hebbia / alphasense (research and analysis) - reducto (document parsing, including messy real-world files) - clay (GTM research and enrichment) - granola (meeting notes that are actually useful afterward) - n8n (connecting tools and automating workflows) running AI on your own hardware - ollama + LM studio (running local models with more control over your data) - deepseek / qwen / kimi / GLM (open-weight models for high-volume workloads) - hermes (Nous Research's agent with persistent memory and local deployment options) - moshi (accessing agents from your phone) what am I missing?

most founders know they need to target the right VCs when fundraising but there's something else worth paying attention to: what kind of investor are you actually talking to? besides the obvious differences between private equity, hedge funds, VCs, and other investors, every VC has their own investment thesis, preferred stages, sectors, and geographies but even within venture, investors approach deals very differently I'd break them down into 7 types worth understanding: 1. lead investor. usually writes a larger check, negotiates the terms, and takes a meaningful ownership stake. often does extensive due diligence and may want a board seat or an active role in the company's development 2. follower investor. prefers joining rounds led by someone else. they still do their own evaluation, but often rely on the lead to set the terms and coordinate the round 3. angel investor. invests personal money, often in founders they know or industries they understand well. some are professional angels, while others invest alongside their main job or business 4. institutional VC. invests capital raised from LPs through a professionally managed fund. usually has a more structured investment process, with partner discussions, investment committees, and specific ownership or return targets 5. strategic investor. brings something beyond capital that can directly help your business grow, whether that's distribution, industry expertise, partnerships, or access to customers 6. family office. manages the wealth of one or more wealthy families. some have dedicated venture teams, others invest directly through family members or external advisers. their decision-making processes can vary a lot 7. syndicate. a group of investors pooling money to invest in a deal, usually through an SPV. in my experience, they can be easier to raise from, especially if you're looking for smaller checks and a faster process. but it really depends on who's running the syndicate one important thing: these categories overlap an institutional VC can lead or follow a round. a family office can invest strategically. an angel can organize a syndicate the point is to understand how each investor makes decisions, what they expect from a deal, and what role they can realistically play in your round that can make a huge difference in how you approach them and structure your fundraising

if you're integrating AI into an existing company, learn from the people actually doing it software - @sarahmsachs (head of AI at notion) - @fergal_reid (chief AI officer intercom, building fin) - @fnthawar (VP head of eng shopify, AI-first engineering) - @dharmesh (co-founder/CTO hubspot, publishes simple.ai) - @karrisaarinen (ceo linear, automation loops inside the product org) - @levie (ceo box, enterprise AI adoption) - @cramforce (CTO vercel) - @briansolis (head of global innovation servicenow) - @robdthomas (SVP ibm) fintech - @emilygsands (head of data & AI at stripe) - @rahulgs (CTO ramp, agentic systems in production) - @geoffintech (CPO ramp, wrote the company-wide AI adoption playbook) - @daschreiber (ceo lemonade, AI in insurance) data & defense - @ssankar (CTO palantir) - @2112Power (founder hadrian, automated factories for defense & space) mobility - @praveenTweets (SVP CTO uber, 70%+ of PRs now from agents) - @aelluswamy (leading AI at tesla) - @dmitri_dolgov (co-ceo waymo, physical AI at scale) - @qasar (ceo applied intuition) who else should i add?

some interesting numbers on what's actually happening with AI adoption in companies > only 37% report any impact on EBIT from AI, unchanged from last year. and just 6% qualify as high performers, attributing at least 5% of EBIT to AI > last year, 32% expected AI to reduce their workforce. this year, only 14% say it actually happened > AI spending has almost doubled in a year, from 1.7% to 3.3% of revenue. over 80% of that spending now happens outside IT budgets > 42% expect to give AI agents actual decision-making authority by 2030. only 5% have the governance in place to do it safely > 32% have already decided against buying at least one software product because they could build it themselves with coding agents > around 20% say AI operating costs, including token usage, are already limiting adoption

the best fundraising strategy is to ask investors for advice tell them you've been working on something and have a hypothesis you'd love their thoughts on. they've seen hundreds of startups, so you want to know if you're thinking about the market the right way use the conversation to show how well you understand the problem, the market, and what you're building if you're onto something genuinely interesting, they'll probably ask if you're raising anyway. that's literally their job, finding great companies to invest in and if they're not interested, you still win. you'll hear their concerns, get a chance to address those concerns, and be better prepared when you talk to other VCs

facts that were true in 2020 > the average founder of a top 0.1% startup was 45 > 50-year-old founders were 2x more likely to succeed than 30-year-olds > founders in their early 20s had the lowest chances of a successful exit > even in tech, the average founder was around 40 > 3+ years of industry experience doubled your odds of building a top startup > founders who successfully exited were 46.7 on average facts that are true in 2026 > average AI unicorn founder age dropped from 40 in 2020 to 29 in 2024 > AI startups reach unicorn status in 4.7 years vs ~7 years historically > outside AI, unicorn founders are still getting older > health and biotech unicorn founders are older than those in other sectors > 40% of unicorn founders are repeat entrepreneurs > 25% of unicorn founders are immigrants

don't have ambitious people around you? build your circle online here are some of the best young builders on X to learn from and connect with - @gajesh (18, engineer eigenlabs, building darkbloomai) - @richardzphotoz (19, media & brand a16z) - @zach_yadegari (19, sold cal ai, building yourpersona) - @DeRonin_ (20, ceo arcane, angel investor) - @jia_seed (22, co-founder jam, ex-big tech) - @im_roy_lee (ceo cluely, raised $15m from a16z) - @sandylikesfrogs (Stanford, experiments with AI agents running businesses) - @0xSigil (Thiel Fellow, founder underdogai, backed by a16z) - @ansonyuu (hardware normalfactoryco, AI + manufacturing) - @mathurahravi (design engineer netflix, runs rabbitholeathon) - @AnnieLiao_2000 (founder solaris_ai, grew buildclub to 70k+) - @_rajanagarwal (AI research openai, ex-Amazon AGI) - @aditabrm (built r-1, reducto's document parsing model) - @schisofrenia (co-host MTSlive, AI interviews) - @hannahsgao (math/CS stanford, ex-openai) who else should i add?

read the summary before bookmarking another article you'll probably never open again learning from other people's experiences in your 20s could save you years of mistakes and wasted time