How to get funded now: VCs Reid Hoffman, Aileen Lee, and Stacy Brown-Philpot, with Van Jones

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
AI is supposed to make work easier to manage, but too often it just adds more to manage on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already juggles. Any business can add AI, but the real breakthrough is being able to scale and manage it. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business, IBM.

**Reid Hoffman** (0:24)
When we're in these times of disruption, the old power structures are no longer as firm or as strong. Doesn't mean they're non-existent. Doesn't mean that there isn't still privilege of which school you went to and which community you grew up in. But it means that that's a much less of a rigid guidepost. Don't limit yourself.

**Aileen Lee** (0:43)
I think we have a lot of Icarus companies right now. They're flying pretty close to the sun. It's like a shoot the moon strategy.

**Van Jones** (0:50)
The human dynamic here, in other words, no matter what the tech is and what the market is, if the people aren't able to work together and if somebody's sending a signal that they're the wrong jockey, that can blow up the whole thing.

**Bob Safian** (1:05)
Those are the voices of Reid Hoffman, followed by investors Stacy Brown-Philpot and Aileen Lee, and capped by media figure and entrepreneur Van Jones, recorded live on stage at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco on October 8th. The investing landscape for VCs and entrepreneurs has shifted dramatically this year. In this special episode, Van plays the role of moderator, engaging Reid, Stacy and Aileen in a candid conversation about what's changed in the investing space, what it means and how players on all sides need to adapt. The exchange is full of lessons for right now, so let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response.

**Van Jones** (1:55)
We're gonna talk about where we are in the world of investing. I'm gonna start with my own founder story. I am a founder of an AI startup, and I did all the different things you're supposed to do. I identified a problem that I knew about, which is how messed up the distributed workplace is. And so I said, hey, let me build a company to fix this. So I found an amazing technical co-founder. We went out, raised some money, and pre-seed. Then we built a product that is working. It actually works. It sounds good.

**Aileen Lee** (2:29)
I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.

**Van Jones** (2:30)
Oh, the shoe is coming.

**Bob Safian** (2:32)
The shoe is coming.

**Van Jones** (2:34)
I've got this product. This is amazing. Now, let's go back into the market to raise money for GoToMarket. We're still pre-seed. And in the past two years, something has changed. They're not doing this. They're doing this. I'm seeing elbows. I'm like, I don't want to see elbows in a meeting. I'm seeing elbows on the Zoom call. That's a bad sign. And then they're asking questions about profitability.
I'm pre-seed.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:06)
Yeah.

**Van Jones** (3:07)
Profitability. They're asking questions about conversion from pilot to paid. What's your moat? I'm like, I'm pre-seed.
Something has changed. Having a good story, not enough. Having a great team, not enough. Having product markets fit, not enough. There is something happening in the marketplace right now when it comes to investment. And we've got three of the best people in the world to ever do it. And they're going to help you if you're an investor or if you are a founder, understand what's happening. First of all, we've got Aileen Lee. She actually coined the term unicorn. And now she's doing Cowboy Ventures. Give her a round of applause.

**Aileen Lee** (3:48)
Thank you.

**Van Jones** (3:53)
Stacy, Stacy Brown-Philpot is here. You may have heard of something called TaskRabbit. Give her the round of applause for building that into a massive powerhouse. And she's now running Cherry Rock Capital. And then we also have this young man struggling to make a difference in the world.
Reid Hoffman. Give Reid a round of applause as well. So, look, this is going to become a therapy session for half of us. If you could tell the founders in this room some hard truths, what are one, two or three things that you want every founder here to understand about the investment climate right now for new companies? What are the things that you are looking for that you're going to have to stick with? And we may not want to hear it, but tell us the truth. What's going on out there?

**Stacy Brown-Philpot** (4:47)
I'll go first. We invest at Series A. Series A, the bar has moved. And Aileen, you can talk about where the bar is for Seed. But the bar has definitely moved. The pace of technological change, the expectations of returns. We want to see, can it scale? So what's the difference between early product market fit, like 10 people like your idea, versus 10,000 people liking your idea, versus a million people like your idea? The honest truth is, you showing up with 6,000 customers is not enough. You have to show me the potential of how do I get to 60,000 and 600,000, and on what pace can you do that? And before there was always the assumption that the next round would take care of that, that's gone now. You have to demonstrate that sooner, a lot sooner. I need to know, you took you 18 months to do this, while you need to do this in nine months.