solo-gp
(10)
The VC Who Sells Before He Wires
Jordan Wan spent ten years staffing the sales teams of a thousand startups. Now he invests in the founders before they have one - and helps them figure out how to sell.
The VC Who Bet Against Unicorns - and Started Posting
Erica Wenger raised $4.3 million from 130 backers to fund 'elephants, not unicorns.' The unusual part isn't the thesis - it's that she built a following first.
CapitalX
CapitalX is a San Francisco early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2020 by general partner Cindy Bi. It writes $100K-$500K seed checks into enterprise, SaaS, AI, fintech and developer-tools startups, with larger follow-on positions through SPVs, and runs an online-first, high-conviction model backed by an unusually operator-heavy base of limited partners. The firm points to a portfolio that includes Zapier, Rippling, Cruise, Turing, Flutterwave and Boom Supersonic, and a run of unicorn outcomes as its calling card.
Elad Gil
Elad Gil is a Silicon Valley polymath - biologist-turned-Googler-turned-Twitter VP-turned-solo venture capitalist - who has backed 40+ unicorns including Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Pinterest, and OpenAI. Managing $3+ billion as one of the largest solo GPs in venture history, he also co-founded Color Genomics, wrote the 'High Growth Handbook' (published by Stripe Press), and co-hosts the No Priors AI podcast with Sarah Guo. His blog (Elad Blog) reaches tens of thousands of readers on startups, AI, and longevity.
Oren Zeev
Oren Zeev is an Israeli-American billionaire venture capitalist and the most successful solo general partner in VC history. Operating entirely alone from Cafe Venetia in Palo Alto - no partners, no office, no employees - he manages $2.5B+ in assets under management across 9 funds. His concentrated, conviction-driven approach has delivered ~100% IRR since 2008, with landmark investments in Navan (TripActions), Tipalti, Houzz, Chegg, and Next Insurance. His $50,000 'relationship check' in Navan's founders before they had even incorporated the company eventually became a $1B+ payday when Navan IPO'd in October 2025.
Ullas Naik
Ullas Naik is the Founder and General Partner of Streamlined Ventures, a Palo Alto-based seed fund with $325M+ AUM across 8 funds and 200+ portfolio companies. A Mumbai-born immigrant who cold-called his way onto Wall Street 40 days straight, he went on to back AppLovin and DoorDash at seed stage before either company had a name anyone recognized - a combined market cap now exceeding $170B. With 21 unicorns and 3 decacorns in his portfolio, he operates as a solo GP with a reputation for being a 'founder whisperer' who brings candor, empathy, and conviction to early-stage investing.
Rex Salisbury
Rex Salisbury is the founder and solo general partner of Cambrian Ventures, a $20M early-stage fintech fund born out of one of the largest fintech founder communities in the US. A former Merrill Lynch banker turned bootcamp-trained software engineer turned a16z partner, Rex built his reputation by running grassroots fintech meetups for years before a single dollar of fund capital. His Cambrian newsletter reaches 20,000 subscribers, his founder-only Slack has 1,100+ members, and his Fund I achieved a ~50% seed-to-Series A graduation rate against a 15.4% industry average. Early backer of Deel, now a $10B+ decacorn.
Turner Novak
Turner Novak is the founder and solo General Partner of Banana Capital, a seed-stage venture fund investing in internet-first founders. He grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, in a single-parent household with intermittent internet access, then built a career path from CFA studies and endowment investing to VC entirely through Twitter presence and a viral fantasy portfolio. He hosts The Peel podcast, writes The Split newsletter, and operates from Ann Arbor, Michigan - proving that Midwest contrarianism and relentless online engagement can be a genuine edge in consumer tech investing.
Mario Gabriele
Mario Gabriele is the founder and writer of The Generalist, a long-form tech and venture newsletter with 163,000+ subscribers ranked among Substack's top business publications. Raised in England by an Italian father and American mother, he cut a nonlinear path through law, culinary school, fiction writing, and seed-stage VC before going full-time as a solo creator in 2020. His signature style - combining equity research depth with fiction-writer storytelling - earned him citations in the FT, WSJ, and Bloomberg and attracted a loyal paid following. In 2022, he launched Generalist Capital, a $12.25M solo GP fund, and by March 2026 he had joined Hummingbird Ventures as a full Partner.
Packy McCormick
Packy McCormick is the founder of Not Boring, a weekly newsletter with 250,000+ subscribers that covers technology, business strategy, and startups through long-form essays. He also runs Not Boring Capital, a solo-GP venture fund with two funds totaling ~$38M invested across 79+ companies. A former investment banker and startup operator, he turned a writing homework assignment into one of the most-read independent tech publications, pioneering a 'media flywheel' model where newsletter content and venture investing reinforce each other.