We don’t have a decade-long investment history. We don’t have hundreds of companies in a portfolio. We are still building the institution.
And I think it’s better to be clear about that.
Over the last year, we experimented with different ways to support early-stage founders.
One of those experiments was the 16VC Founder Fellowship.
It was ambitious.
It also didn’t work exactly as intended.
The Fellowship ended earlier than planned.
Instead of hiding that part of the story, I want to document it.
Because building a company is rarely a straight line.
You try something.
You learn.
You change the model.
Then you try again.
That’s where 16VC is today.
The first experiment
The idea behind the Founder Fellowship was simple:
Create a global environment where early-stage founders could learn, build, meet other founders and become more prepared for the next stage of their companies.
We wanted to make support available to founders who were often too early for traditional venture programs.
That meant founders could be extremely early.
Some had ideas.
Some were building.
Some had early users.
Some were already generating revenue.
The program gave us an opportunity to work directly with founders and understand what they actually needed.
It also exposed us to the challenges of trying to build a founder program at scale.
What didn’t work
The Fellowship ended earlier than planned.
There were things we would do differently.
Program structure could have been clearer.
Communication could have been more consistent.
The experience needed more focus.
And we learned that trying to serve too many founders through a broad program can make it difficult to provide the depth founders actually need.
These aren’t theoretical lessons.
We experienced them ourselves.
That’s valuable.
Not because every experiment needs to succeed.
But because every experiment should teach you something.
The uncomfortable part of building
When something doesn’t work, there are usually two options.
You can defend it.
Or you can learn from it.
I prefer the second.
The easiest thing would have been to pretend everything went perfectly.
That’s not how I want to build 16VC.
We’re early enough that we can still change the model.
So that’s what we did.
From Fellowship to Accelerator
The next version of 16VC is the Accelerator.
The difference is important.
The Fellowship was an experiment in building a broad founder community.
The Accelerator is designed to be more focused.
Fewer companies.
More structure.
Clearer expectations.
A defined investment.
A defined program period.
More accountability.
The current Accelerator model is:
$200K investment
~6% ownership upon conversion
Post-money SAFE
20–25 companies
3 months
No program fee
Pre-seed and seed
San Francisco · New York · London
Demo Day in San Francisco
Applications for the first cohort close October 4, 2026.
The cohort starts January 11, 2027.
These terms represent the next model we’re building.
We are still building the track record
There is another part of this story that is worth being direct about.
16VC is still early in its investment journey.
The investment track record is still being built.
That means we don’t want to manufacture a portfolio just to make the website look impressive.
As investments are completed and can be publicly documented, we’ll add them.
Company.
Founder.
Stage.
Investment.
Date.
Source.
Over time, that becomes the record.
Not a claim.
A record.
Why build a public record?
One of the things I’ve realized while building 16VC is that information about a young venture firm can become fragmented very quickly.
Someone sees a post.
Someone hears something from another founder.
Someone reads a comment.
Someone finds an old program page.
Someone asks a question about the fund.
And suddenly there are ten different versions of the same story.
I don’t think the answer is to argue with every version.
The better answer is to document the work.
So we built:
The 16VC Record.
It is a public place to understand:
Who I am
What 16VC is
What we have tried
What happened with the Fellowship
What we learned
How the Accelerator works
What the investment terms are
What companies we eventually back
What can be verified
What remains undocumented
The principle is simple:
Facts. Context. Evidence.
Not a pitch deck. Not a response. A record.
I don’t want The 16VC Record to become a reputation website.
It isn’t supposed to convince everyone that 16VC is great.
It isn’t supposed to respond to every criticism.
It isn’t supposed to tell founders what they should think.
It’s simply a place where the information is organized.
If something worked, we’ll document it.
If something didn’t work, we’ll document that too.
If something is not publicly available, we’ll say so.
If something changes, we’ll update it.
That’s what building in public should mean to me.
What comes next
The next major milestone is the first 16VC Accelerator cohort.
We’re looking for ambitious founders at the pre-seed and seed stages.
Some may already have users.
Some may have revenue.
Some may still be extremely early.
That’s okay.
The goal is not to find founders who already have everything figured out.
It’s to work with founders who are building something ambitious and have the potential to become exceptional companies.
The Fellowship taught us a lot about what founders need.
The Accelerator is our attempt to build a better version of that experience.
And the investment record will come with it.
Still early. Still building.
There is something useful about being early.
You don’t have to pretend the story is finished.
You can change the product.
You can change the model.
You can admit what didn’t work.
You can build again.
That’s where I see 16VC today.
Not finished.
Not pretending to be.
Just building.
The Fellowship was one chapter.
The lessons became the next chapter.
The Accelerator is where we are going next.
And eventually, the companies we back will become the strongest part of the record.
Until then, we’ll keep documenting the work.
Facts. Context. Evidence.
That’s the record.