phil bronner @pbronner

Cofounder @ardent_vc, investing in b2b embedded finance, marketplaces, and vertical saas+. Father of 3, LUCKY husband, Wizards, and Commanders fanatic ardent.vc Washington DC Joined March 2009

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phil bronner @pbronner

7 hours ago

@sweatystartup Those things are not mutually exclusive in my opinion

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@sweatystartup I don’t understand the title to this post. Are you saying that if you are “woke” meaning progressive and a feminist meaning support women’s rights you also do not agree with the power, purpose, fulfillment happiness and importance of the nuclear family?

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FactPost @factpostnews

a day ago

New York City just had its safest first 6 months of a year in recorded history. Murders plunged 25%, and burglaries declined 16%.

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phil bronner @pbronner

7 hours ago

Also in New York. Fewest shooting incidents, victims and murders in recorded history nyc.gov/site/nypd/news…

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phil bronner @pbronner

7 hours ago

Impressive. Needs to be studied and hopefully there are tactics that can be implemented elsewhere. #CharmCity

Democrats Deliver @DemzDeliver

2 days ago

🚨 BREAKING: Homicides in Baltimore have now dropped to the lowest level in recorded history.

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phil bronner @pbronner

7 hours ago

@DemzDeliver So great to see!!! Great work!

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phil bronner @pbronner

a day ago

@wolfejosh 100%

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phil bronner @pbronner

a day ago

@buccocapital hahahahaha! That was a good one! Why did the celtics do this? I do not get it!

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phil bronner @pbronner

a day ago

@andrewchen I am not meh on fertility trends, it is very concerning in my opinion. It is a symptom of other problems that concern me deeply: loneliness, cost of living, lack of connection and ability to engage irl, ect

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phil bronner @pbronner

a day ago

@pavelprata @chudson point of two deal archetypes at the pre seed stage is exactly what we are seeing. 5-10 for ai infra and 2-4 for other. Point 3 on deals from 100b-1t is fascinating and I wonder if it holds over time.

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The Peel @ThePeelPod

3 days ago

From @chudson on the common misconceptions of new fund managers: "The main thing most people run in to is that their strategy is not unique. It usually boils down to, “I’m a smart person with a good network.” But so is every other person you’re competing with for capital. I’m also on the investment committee for Screendoor, which is a fund of funds for emerging managers. And some of these decks are really bad. They’re not bad design. They’re not bad content. But they fail at the core question, which is the most important question I ask myself every day: why are the founders that are in our strategy gonna pick us? Half the people I meet, I’m just like, “You want to co-lead seed rounds? Great. Here’s the top 10 seed firms. Who are you gonna beat? Who are you gonna bump down the stack so that you can be in the top 10? Or what are you doing that’s interesting?” And sometimes I meet people and I’m like, “It’s you. It’s a cult of personality. It’s really you. You are the main attraction. And you should just lean into that.” They’re like, “Well, our strategy...” and I’m like, “Your strategy’s not interesting. You’re more interesting than the strategy.” And in some cases, people tell me their strategy, and I’m just like, “I just don’t think that will work. I don’t think that’s available to you.” I met someone who’s like, “Well, we want to lead top tier Series A rounds.” I’m like, “Well, how are you gonna beat Sequoia, Andreessen, Lightspeed, Index, GC?” And their answer I found to be utterly uncompelling. A lot of people also think of venture like stock picking. "If I identify the asset, I can just go buy it.” I’m like, “No, no, no. If you identify the asset, you have to convince them to sell you equity.” It's the opposite of stock picking. You have to convince the asset to pick you. And I think this is a fundamental misconception I find in a lot of first-time fund managers. The other one I find is, I meet a lot of people who are spinning out of established platforms. And I talk to them, and it’s like, “Well, how much of your success do you feel like came from the domain behind your email address?” And people are just like, “None.” I’m like, “None? You don’t think it helped you at all to have the @famousvcfirm.com?” I’m not asking you to say all of it. That would be disingenuous too. But I find those people have a different problem. Which is for them, the whole business of running a fund is usually an abstraction, because they have an IR team that raises the money, and a finance team that does the wires, a tax team, a marketing team. There are all these functions that are abstractions to them. And you have to do all of these things. So I tell them, in the first fund it’s kind of not as bad, because you don’t have an existing portfolio to service. And you can just decide to not meet companies while you’re fundraising. You get to fund two, three, and four, and you’re like, “Oh, I have a whole business over here called my existing portfolio that I have to continue to run while fundraising.” It’s hard."

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phil bronner @pbronner

4 days ago

The public market seesaw in software valuations is focused on one question: what does AI compound vs. disrupt? Embedded finance sits on the compound side. The rails to move money take years to build. AI is accelerating around them, not through them.

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phil bronner @pbronner

a week ago

Seed AI funding right now sorts into three types: 1. Pedigree teams funded pre-revenue on ambition 2. Rockets going 0 to real revenue in months 3. Vertical players growing slower but deeper, on proprietary data What am I missing?

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phil bronner @pbronner

a week ago

@Edmund_Works Congrats on the launch and success!

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Edmund Cuthbert @Edmund_Works

a week ago

Today we're launching Superposition. An AI headhunter better at finding talent than any human. We made a short film to prove it. A fictional billionaire finally admits how he built his empire. Spoiler: it was never about him. It was about the people he surrounded himself with. Watch it. Then come find your perfect weirdos.

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phil bronner @pbronner

2 weeks ago

@apartovi What an amazing story. Congrats!

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Ali Partovi @apartovi

2 weeks ago

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fintechjunkie @fintechjunkie

2 months ago

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phil bronner @pbronner

2 months ago

7/ The data layer and the security layer are being rewritten at the same time, for the same reason. Agents aren't humans. Treating them like users of human software is the bug. Designing for them as users is the work.

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phil bronner @pbronner

2 months ago

6/ Most of the security stack assumes the actor is a human at a keyboard. Once that breaks, the stack has to be rebuilt. Agent-to-agent auth, permission scoping, audit trails, prompt injection defenses at the protocol layer.

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phil bronner @pbronner

2 months ago

1/ A pattern is forming across my recent founder conversations. Agents are no longer designed as a product feature. Products are being designed with the agent as the user. Two consequences keep coming up.