Most-Viewed Articles & Favorite Books
It’s been a big writing year for me.
I often joke that I’m not sure how I ended up in a job where writing is such a core component.
I’m an engineer at heart. For the first 10 years of my career, I wrote software and worked on data systems — rarely needing to write more than a quick, three-sentence email. So every time I sit down to write an article like this, I feel outside of my comfort zone.
I write to get feedback, share what I’m seeing in the industry, and connect with people. Each article still feels like somewhat of a challenge, and looking back, I’m surprised at how many times I managed to put pen to paper. And also at how rewarding it’s been.
Thank you for reading the articles, for the support — and for making it feel like I’m not writing into the void. Thank you, Jeff, for pushing a writing culture at Chapter One.
As we close out the year, I figured I’d send out a list of my most-viewed posts and favorite books I read.
Most-Viewed Articles
Analysis of YC's Latest S24 Batch: This article is an analysis of Y Combinator’s Summary 2024 batch. It ended up gaining traction on YC’s Reddit, which led to it being my most-viewed piece. Someone messaged me on LinkedIn saying they had applied to YC five times and always found the process mysterious, but the post had shed light on the acceptance criteria — which was nice feedback.
A Fall From Grace: The article talks about our transition from Affinity to Attio as a CRM. It was my second most-viewed article, likely because it went somewhat viral in the venture world and seemed to resonate with the common Affinity woes. The TL;DR: Attio is a third of the price, and right now, the better product.
What's working in AI? Analysis of Seed to Series-A startups: From my perspective, this is the most interesting analysis I wrote this year. I looked at all the AI companies that have raised quick Series-A on the back of their Seed rounds. The data was very clear — if you are not going after Enterprise or Vertical AI, you probably haven’t raised a Series-A.
Horizontal AI Infra & "Why Now": I wrote this article during what felt like a turning point in AI investing — as companies started to scale AI services and products, we’re seeing an increase in demand for stand-alone horizontal infrastructure: RAG, routers, and real-time content moderation.
Who Is Investing @ Pre-Seed?: This post provides data on the leading pre-seed investors across U.S. and Europe. It aims to shed light on who is truly investing vs. who just says they are, helping founders navigate the pre-seed stage.
Hello World… Meet Devin: I wrote this after I spent a night coding with Devin, the latest AI code generation tool to hit the market. Devin aims to be a stand-alone engineer and has received a huge amount of hype over the past year. I found it’s not there yet, but it does seem to offer a window into the future of code generation.
Some Thoughts On Agents - This article was an overview of the current agent landscape and highlights some of the most popular agent companies that have raised venture money. With LLMs enabling software to reason, this past year was an exciting one for agents, and I imagine next year will bring even more innovation and opportunities in the space.
Favorite Books
It was also a big reading year for me.
I thought I’d share some of my favorites in case anyone has read them and wants to chat, is looking for new recommendations, or needs last-minute gift ideas for any loved ones :)
Outro
Thanks for reading! Wishing everyone an amazing & healthy holiday season!!
Picture of the Chapter One team at The Getty’s holiday party.
I’m an investor at Chapter One, an early-stage venture fund that invests $500K - $2M checks into pre-seed and seed-stage startups.
If you have any questions on the data, or if you’re a founder building a company, please feel free to reach out on Twitter (@seidtweets) or Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesin-seidel-5325b147/).