Jack Altman
Investing at Alt Capital.
“In this environment, you would need to believe an 18 to 100 story for the next year. … On the surface, that used to be enough where everybody would be super interested if all you heard was it's a software company, like 5 to 18. Whereas now, if that's all you heard, you'd be like, well, why wasn't it 5 to 40? Which is insane.”
Uncapped with Jack Altman · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Context
Ev Randle asked whether a startup that grew from $5 million to $18 million in revenue would still interest them. Altman says AI-era growth has reset what investors expect, so numbers that used to win a round now raise questions.
Transcript
five to 18. It's like, I don't know if you can raise. I don't know if there's capital there. Would you,
I don't know, like, would you look at a five to 18? Or what would it take for you to look at it? You would need,
and this, in this environment, you would need to believe an 18 to 100 story for the next year. Or you would just need to think that they were doing something that was so difficult and unique that it just had insane growth durability forever after. Yeah. But on the surface, That used to be enough where everybody would be super interested if all you heard was it's a software company like 5 to 18. Whereas now, if that's all you heard, you'd be like, Well, why wasn't it 5 to 40? That's right, you know, which is insane.
It's so insane. But it's
all because of this code pull.
That's right. 100%. Which, you know, like a related topic that we've been talking about is that there's sort of two archetypes, or there's almost like a continuum of how levered you are to the trend. And then do you have like the old hallmarks of like durability, enterprise stickiness? Like some of…
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