As a former VC and repeat founder, I've reverse-engineered how AI companies are raising on $100M+ valuations. Here's the playbook.
How AI Companies Are Raising $100M+ Valuations
The Profile
Be a white male, 23, and a Stanford dropout.
The Resume
Work at OpenAI for 6 months and quit before your performance review. Tell VCs you left due to safety concerns.
Find someone who got fired from Anthropic and call them your CTO. You can put on your deck "Founders are from OpenAI & Anthropic."
The Traction
Get into YC or Speedrun. Buy each other's products so you can claim $100K ARR in stealth before Demo Day.
Launch on Product Hunt. Buy 1000 upvotes. You're now the "#1 fastest-growing AI startup."
The Game
Get a meeting with Sequoia. Tell a16z that Sequoia is interested. Tell Sequoia that a16z is interested. Neither was interested. Now both are interested.
Let Sequoia invest in two tranches. First $1M at $5M, next $1M at $100M valuation. All Tier-2 VCs will throw money at you after this because they are sheep.
The Bottom Line
If you just get step 1 right, everything else is easy. That's the uncomfortable truth about how some founders turn questionable startups into massive exits.
The venture world runs on pattern matching and FOMO. Once you understand the game, you see it everywhere.
If you want to know how to become a better CEO without playing these games, that's a different conversation entirely.