Byron Ling
A venture investor who co-founded Twelve Below in 2021 after partner roles at Primary Venture Partners and Canaan Partners, backing founders in consumer health...
“I think about the cap table as like a living room. It's like people move in, they rarely move out.”
How I Invest with David Weisburd · Startups & Venture · September 2026
Context
Ling was describing why he runs a first founder meeting as a conversation rather than an interrogation: the goal is for the founder to trust him, because the relationship that follows is close to permanent. He says this is the expression he uses with founders directly once a deal starts getting serious. It is an argument for slowness in a stage of investing known for speed.
Transcript
…to hear how they're going to approach the problem. They will inevitably face all these product and customer problems that they have to solve. And so, much of what we're trying to do at the earliest stages is say, how good of a problem solver are you? And I think communication is a big part of that.
…are going to be invested in you for at least 10 years. Here, you could argue it's a similar timeline. Is that also a great leading indicator when a founder is just very authentic with why they're doing something, even if not every part of the story may be the most flattering thing about themselves?
…The best founders are inherently very authentic and you feel that. And this is part of why are they doing this? You actually don't actually have to ask why that many times because they're going to be such clear articulators of why they're doing this and why they're probably the only person in the world that would do this otherwise. When you go on these journeys, you're going to be with them. I think about the cap table as like a living room. It's like people move in, they rarely move out. And I use that expression oftentimes with founders that we're starting to go deeper with because we want them to feel like they can learn about us. And it's not a one-way road. It's a two-way partnership. Getting to authenticity quickly and then figuring out: do you work well together? It's very hard if people are trying to put a facade on and just trying to raise money. What we find is you want…
Everyone I talked to on the show is chasing the same thing, an edge. And more and more, the edge comes down to your information. Not just having it, but being able to trust it when the stakes are highest. AI is doing more of the information gathering for you every day, and most tools are very good…
You seem to have this understanding of exactly what kind of founder you're looking for. This excellence. How many meetings? That take you to get to understanding what excellence looks like.
We've probably met about 30,000 founders so far in the last 10 or 12 years, just having been focused on pre-seed and seed. So it's a very high volume. It's an evolving muscle. It's sort of like you're just trying to get better at it every single day. One of the challenges is you make these…
More from How I Invest with David Weisburd
