I build things, invest early, and keep it essential
Swiss. Builder, early-stage investor, pilot, photographer, dad. First company at 14 — couldn't stop if I tried.
~50
Startups backed
Tomahawk.VC + Tenderloin Ventures
6
Companies built
Code & State · so far
Build — DFINITY · Sendtask · Liquity
Invest — Tomahawk.VC · Tenderloin Ventures
Studio — Code & State
ADVENTURE PILOT
PHOTOGRAPHY
ZU-WBG
UNDERWATER
QUICK ROUND · ~5 MIN
One thing you've recently automated
Name · what you're building · one thing you automated in your business lately.
Even a small one. I want to see how far each of you already runs on AI — that tells me where to take the rest of our time.
01
Investing in the AI Era
“I run the fund with a team of agents. Let me introduce Tommy.”
MY FUND TEAM · TOMAHAWK.VC
Meet Tommy, my fund analyst
Tommy
INVESTMENT ANALYSIS AGENT · TOMAHAWK.VC
Sees every inbound before I do. He doesn't decide — he makes sure each deal is either killed cleanly or lands on my desk fully dissected and IC-ready, inside 48 hours.
WHAT RUNS AROUND HIM — THE SCAFFOLDING
A runtime, not a chatbot
Tartare spawns him when a trigger fires and logs every step — auditable and repeatable, not a chat window.
Pre-loaded with the fund's brain
Thesis, the 40/30/30 rubric, the whole portfolio — injected at startup. He begins ready, not briefed.
An automated trigger chain
Email → Missive → Thea attaches the deck → Tommy picks it up in ~60 seconds. No human touch.
Teammates in their lanes
Kestrel red-teams blind · Thea drafts & sends · then he closes the loop into Notion + Slack.
DEMO · HOW WE RUN DEAL-FLOW
From inbound to investment case
INBOUND
It lands
Email → Missive → Thea flags → Tommy picks up. Every deal, first.
< 2 HRS
Triage + research
Auto-decline the no's; go deep on the rest, 30–90 min each.
Came to call 2 with two design partners signed and a working integration.
Same deck, same slides — "still thinking about the roadmap."
EMPATHY — do they speak the customer's words?
Quotes three customers verbatim — the exact phrase for the pain.
"We serve SMEs." Can't name one, let alone a person.
Market30
EVIDENCE — shipped, not slideware
10 named customers, 3 paying; can replay the call that closed each.
"$50B TAM" — and can't name a single customer.
DISTRIBUTION — a repeatable wedge
First 12 came through one channel they can describe and scale.
"Content + paid + Product Hunt." A prayer, not a plan.
Moat30
WHY NOW — what just changed?
Inference cost fell 100x in 18 months — couldn't have existed before.
"It's always been a problem." Then why hasn't it been solved?
10x ON ONE AXIS — not 3x on five
Audits 10,000 documents overnight vs a 20-person team.
"Better UX, a little faster." That's 1.5x — we can't back 1.5x.
PURSUE ≥ 4.0 · DISCUSS 3.0–3.9 · PASS < 3.0 — weighted across all three.
DEMO · WATCH ONE CASE RUN
Tommy runs the case. I just decide.
// a real case · DD round 4 · today
tommy ▸ read thread (12 msgs) + the thesis
tommy ▸ score: founder 3 · market 4 · moat 2
→ DISCUSS 3.0 · Notion card + IC memo written
kestrel ▸ blind counter-review
✗ £18M raised → £1.43M ARR · exit math fails
conviction 1/5 → PASS
tommy ▸ integrates Kestrel · revises to PASS 1/5
⚠ decline drafted + assigned to Cédric. Send? [y/n]
14 minutes of Tommy's time. 90 seconds of mine — I read the conclusion, agree with the PASS, hit send.
DEMO · ONE REAL DEAL, END TO END
What landed — and how Tommy read it
What landed: a warm family-office intro forwards the CEO of a UK music-licensing startup — licenses mainstream music to creators and brands on the major video platforms. A 25-slide memo arrives the same minute. Raising £1.1M to breakeven · £2.5M pre · EIS.
PILLAR
SCORE
WHAT DROVE IT
Founder
3
Nine years building the only rights-clearance tech that lives inside the major video platform's system — but the founder's been diluted to a sliver.
Market
4
A real, verifiable licensing gap. ~6k paying subscribers, £1.43M ARR; a brand vertical just starting to prove out.
Moat
2
Technically deep — but the labels are supplier, shareholder, AND hold change-of-control. The moat caps the margin.
Tommy → DISCUSS 3.0 · "the brand vertical has something; nine years and £18M to reach £1.43M ARR does not." → flag to Kestrel, blind.
KESTREL · BLIND COUNTER-REVIEW
Then Kestrel attacks it — blind
PROS — THE BULL CASE
A real, verifiable problem — an industry-wide licensing gap, not a niche complaint.
Genuine technical depth — integrates at the video platform's rights-infrastructure layer; nine years to build.
Label equity stakes create supply alignment and real switching costs.
Brand vertical shows live demand — six figures already invoiced to early customers.
CONS — THE BEAR CASE
Capital-efficiency failure — £18M across five rounds to reach £1.43M ARR. A nine-year stall.
Exit math fails — public comps trade ~8× revenue; £300–500M needs 15–25× growth.
The moat is a margin trap — the labels control any exit and the margin ceiling.
Misaligned cap table — the last round was a steep down-round: prior investors' verdict, in writing.
KESTREL: PASS · conviction 1/5 — best case is a small acqui-license. Not a venture outcome.
OUTREACH · DRAFTED FOR MY SEND
The reply I sent — and what came back
▸ DRAFT · DECLINE · THEA, IN CÉDRIC'S VOICEwaiting: my send
Thanks for the detailed walkthrough — you've built something technically real that nobody's managed in nine years, and the brand-licensing angle is genuinely interesting.
We're going to pass. The math doesn't work at this entry: £18M+ deployed to reach £1.43M ARR isn't a seed story, and the comps don't support a £300–500M outcome from here. The label equity and change-of-control structure also caps the margin and the exit — structural, not solvable with this raise.
Wishing you the best with the round. — Cédric
◂ THE FOUNDER REPLIED
Answered every kill-question straight: six figures invoiced to early brand customers, ~£190k/month burn, no independent runway — and the whole exit thesis rested on a catalogue unlock that was an "agreement in principle" from days earlier.
The answers confirmed the read — they didn't change it. A clean pass, fast — and the founder got a real reason, not silence.
GREEN FLAGS · RED FLAGS
What I look for in AI-era companies
GREEN FLAG
RED FLAG
AutomationLEAN BY DEFAULT
A team of 3 handles 200 inbound leads a week with agents — zero SDR hires.
Hired 4 salespeople in month 2 because "enterprise needs a human touch."
VelocitySHIPS BETWEEN CALLS
8 days between our calls → shipped the integration three customers asked for.
An 18-month roadmap with phases and gates. No customer has touched it.
LeverageDOGFOODS ITS AI
3 people doing the output of 15 — commits, support volume, customers all confirm it.
AI lives in the deck; pricing, support and onboarding are all manual.
The tell — “what did you personally ship in the last 30 days, with how many people?” The answer takes 30 seconds, or it doesn't exist.
THE OTHER HALF OF THE JOB
The one signal — and why we pass
My single best predictor: what did they ship, close, or learn between two conversations?
More predictive than the deck. More than the metrics. A founder who shows up to call 2 with two new customers beats one who polished the slides.
Kestrel scores blind — never sees Tommy's number first. Converge, and it's a strong yes; diverge, and that gap is the whole conversation.
PASS PATTERNS I SEE EVERY WEEK
Capital-efficiency catastrophe— raised £18M, ~£1.43M ARR. Exit math never closes.
The multi-miracle deck— needs four things to all go right. P(all four) ≈ 0.
Distribution gap— great product, no credible way to reach a customer.
Valuation before evidence— $20M+ pre, zero customers, nothing shipped.
WORKSHOP · PAIR UP (2–3)
Build an agent together
STEP 1
Pick one thing to automate.A repeatable task that eats time but doesn't need you. Steal one from the round.
STEP 2
Give it the information it needs.Use the contract framework (next slide): role · inputs · steps · never · escalate.
STEP 3
Make it fire repeatedly.A trigger + one tool wired, so it runs again without you. Run it once together.
ROLE:_________ OWNS:when __ , do __ INPUTS:_________ STEPS:1) __ 2) __ 3) __ OUTPUT:what + where NEVER:_________ ESCALATE:when __ → me FIRES:on __ (trigger)
STUCK? STEAL ONE
Inbound lead → 5-line brief
Weekly competitor scan → digest
Support FAQs → drafted replies
User interview → 3 insights
A good agent looks like a good job description — not a clever prompt.
02
Building in the AI Era
“Zero to one, agent-speed. Let me introduce Spark.”
AERIAL · MOLTEN EARTH
MY STUDIO TEAM · CODE & STATE
Meet Spark, my studio operator
Spark
STUDIO OPERATOR · CODE & STATE
Runs the Idea Factory: discover ideas from real signals, validate against one falsifiable bar, build the winners. Weekly ritual — kill one, add one, advance one.
THREE PHASES · RUNS ON TARTARE
Discover — signals → ideas against a thesis
Validate — cheapest test that could change our mind
Build → spin out — winners get their own repo + CEO
The whole fleet is orchestrated by Tartare — a platform I built to run agents like a team.
CODE & STATE · THE IDEA FACTORY
How we ideate & validate fast
DISCOVER
Signals → ideas
HN Show HN, IndieHackers, live SEO (Ahrefs KD). Against a thesis.
VALIDATE
One falsifiable bar
Name the ICP in a sentence. Write the kill threshold before spending.
BUILD
2-wk prototype
Cheapest test that changes our mind — not "can we build it?"
SPIN-OUT
Own repo + CEO
Winners spin out into their own company. The factory moves on.
Validate cheapest-first: ask the room → check live SEO → $500 ad test → only then build.
Our edge is the kill rate, not the hit rate.
DEMO · VALIDATE ONE LIVE · ~8 MIN
Live: metered billing for API-first SaaS
HANDS
ICP check.Who charges on usage? Who wants to but hasn't — too complex? The gap is the ICP.
LIVE
SERP + SEO check.Search 'stripe metered billing setup' — nothing founder-friendly. Ahrefs KD ~20–28: the wedge is open.
HANDS
Willingness to pay.Who'd pay $49/mo today? 3 of 8 hands = enough to justify a $500 ad test.
WRITE
Set the kill threshold.10 paying signups at $49/mo in 45 days — or kill. Written before a dollar is spent.
BEAR
Run the bear case."What makes this fail?" If Stripe already shipped it — open the docs, kill it in the room.
Kill it in the room, or greenlight a $500 test. No deck.
HOW I THINK
I turn lessons into principles
Every time something works — or burns me — I write the lesson down as a principle I can reuse.
The list matters less than the habit of building it. Reflect, distill, reuse.
…and there's one more example of this habit sitting right in front of you. Next slide.
A FEW OF MINE
Say no to almost everything.
Start with the problem, not the solution.
Scale through agents, not headcount.
Speed and focus beat resources.
The rest live at cedricwaldburger.com.
Efficiency isn't doing more — it's doing less, better.
P.S. — THE REVEAL
This deck was built by Thea
Every slide, every line of copy, the layout, the code — built by Thea, my personal agent. I gave her the brief and we argued about wording. I never opened a design tool.
Why it looks like this: the retro-Mac frame, because a computer you boot up is a company now · black-and-white, so the one yellow thing per slide is the point · demo-first, because showing beats telling.
The talk about building with agents was built by one. That's the whole point.
// thea ▸ build deck.app for SFF Studio
brief ▸ "make it fun · demo-heavy · less is more"
design ▸ System-6 frame · one yellow / slide
write ▸ one self-contained HTML file · 24 slides
cédric ▸ argued about wording (won ~half)
ship ▸deployed → sff-bootcamp.vercel.app
the talk about agents… built by one.
THE STACK I ACTUALLY RUN ON
My toolkit
DICTATION
Wispr Flow
I talk, it types. Most of my input is voice.
AI
Claude + Code
My agents — and how I build them.
AI
ChatGPT
Second opinion, quick lookups.
TERMINAL
iTerm2
Where the work happens.
EMAIL
Missive
The shared inbox my agents work inside.
MEETINGS
Fathom
Auto notes + transcripts.
LAUNCHER
Alfred
Keystroke everything.
CHAT
Franz
Every messaging app in one window.
DIY · BUILT IT
WinMan + hi-res
~200 lines of Swift: window snapping + a hi-res display mode.
Keyboard-first, voice-first, and a few tools I wrote myself in an afternoon. The bar to build your own has never been lower.
THE FLOOR IS YOURS · ~1 HR
Open discussion
Take it any direction — investing, building, agents, the journey. Ask the one you actually came with.
Or let's get practical: build your agent live, or run a validation on your idea together.
DURING THE BATCH
How to use me
Check-ins — decisions, not status
Office hours — pricing, hiring, raising, GTM
My network — customers, talent, co-investors
Building with agents — ask me about Tartare, the platform that runs my fleet
Excited to talk: AI-native operating, zero-to-one, and what makes a fundable pre-seed.
Slack: in your mentor channel cedric.waldburger@tomahawk.vc · cedricwaldburger.com
FileAgentsSpecial
SFF STUDIO · 20262:00 PM
