Building a Venture Firm Like a Product | Jeff Morris Jr, Chapter One

Jeff Morris Jr is the founder and Managing Partner of Chapter One. Previously, he was employee 50 at Tinder and started Chapter One from his desk before quitting to go full-time on investing.

We talk about running a venture firm more like a product team, running 50 experiments every fund cycle, why Sequoia doing $60 million Seeds has killed round labels, why the best firms only pick right 4-7% percent of the time, running the world's smallest accelerator, branding a venture firm, when to pivot, the time he delivered Valentine's flowers himself in Kansas, why none of his Fund 1 winners were in the Bay Area, and why he never announced his $64m Fund 3.

Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Monaco for supporting this episode.

Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com

Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Amplitude: AI analytics https://amplitude.com

Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com

Timestamps:

(0:00) Publishing IC notes every week

(3:48) Do round names matter anymore?

(8:20) Putting a big check into Erebor's $2B round

(11:40) Why deep tech went from instant pass to preferred in 3 years

(15:32) When deep tech companies should raise debt

(19:03) Should this company raise $1M or $100M?

(23:25) You have two days to say yes

(25:58) Sourcing software he built at Tinder

(28:05) Their crypto book hit 22x, then the market turned

(30:58) Paradigm, SendCutSend, and re-founding a firm

(33:35) If you're going to pivot, re-found the company

(37:21) Flex's wedge was too illegible to fund

(40:13) When should you actually pivot?

(42:47) Zaarly, the Uber for everything

(45:17) Moving to Kansas City with a bag of clothes

(47:25) Delivering flowers door-to-door

(51:31) Raising a $64M Fund 3 and not announcing it

(56:33) Joining Tinder as employee 50

(57:35) The push notification that took down Tinder

(1:00:59) Why you shouldn’t start a dating app

(1:04:18) Consumer got too predictable

(1:09:00) Why consumer AI economics look worse than enterprise

(1:13:02) Launching Chapter One from his Tinder desk

(1:15:08) 50 experiments per fund cycle

(1:16:11) Product Club, the world's smallest accelerator

(1:19:05) Evolving portfolio construction between funds

(1:21:25) Why picking rates have fallen

(1:24:41) Smaller funds can invest in illegible categories

(1:27:27) Zero Fund 1 returners were in the Bay Area

(1:29:16) Don't compete with Sequoia at Seed

(1:32:01) His grandfather built Mervyn's

Referenced

Chapter One: https://chapterone.com

Erebor: https://erebor.bank

Flex: https://flex.one

SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com

Paradigm: https://www.paradigm.xyz

Supabase: https://supabase.com

Poke: https://poke.com

Floodgate: https://www.floodgate.com

SV Angel: https://svangel.com

Union Square Ventures: https://www.usv.com

Zaarly: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zaarly

Mervyn's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn's

Mervin Morris obituary: https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2021/09/10/mervin-morris-founder-of-mervyns-stores-atherton-resident-dies-at-101/

People Mentioned

Jamesin Seidel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesin-seidel-5325b147/

Palmer Luckey: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey

Mike Maples Jr: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maples/

Scott Belsky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbelsky/

Josh Elman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshe/

David Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlee10/

Max Mullen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxmullen/

Follow Jeff

Twitter: https://x.com/jmj

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmorrisjr

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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