We mostly invest in people we already know

A lot of firms talk about deal flow like it's a fire hose. The more that comes in the top, the better. We've never really worked that way at Peoples Ventures.

Our best ones didn't start as deals. They started as relationships. A friend, a friend of a friend, someone I'd watched build for years before there was anything to invest in. By the time money moved, I already knew how they handled a hard week, whether they did what they said, how they treated the people around them. The diligence was just years of paying attention.

That's slower, it doesn't scale, and I'm fine with both. I'd rather know twenty people deeply than screen a thousand. A small circle you actually trust beats a big pipeline you don't.

It also means we invest with people we'd want to know either way, folks we'd have over for dinner, not just names on a cap table. There's a friends-and-family feel to how we work, and that's on purpose. Trust you've already built is the best underwriting there is.

If you're building something and we don't know each other yet, that's alright. Most good things start with a hello, and I've never been in a hurry about the things that matter. Here's to the long way, and the relationships we build along it.