Alexander Davis's Disruptive Investments: Late-Stage Tech Investing

Interesting see this caliber of late-stage investing being built from Dallas rather than SF or NY. Davis is long Texas—and his firm, Disruptive, has quietly built one of the more unusual, and successful, models in late-stage investing.

"What actually matters today when building a company?" It’s a question Harlem Capital’s Co-founder and Managing Partner, Henri Pierre-Jacques II, gets asked regularly by founders. Read his latest insights on the velocity of iteration and why speed is the ultimate competitive advantage in an AI-driven world. Sponsored by Harlem Capital

Early-stage founder? Read this. Investors aren’t waiting for you to “look Silicon Valley-ready.” They’re looking for: real problems, clear solutions, and founders who move fast and learn faster. Start where you are. Build what matters. Follow @HoneytunsVentures for resources that actually help. #HoneytunsVentures

The best co-founder probably isn’t someone you’ve worked with before. We analyzed 350 U.S. tech IPOs and $1B+ acquisitions over the past 20 years in our Billion-Dollar Founder Study. Founders who hadn’t worked together built companies with 26% higher exit valuations. Familiarity feels safer. But the data suggests the edge comes from complementarity, not proximity. In fact, OpenAI’s core founding team never worked together at the same companies. Sam and Elon assembled researchers from academia and major tech companies over a shared interest in Artificial General Intelligence. It’s why we built Outcast Ventures and Catalyst, to rethink how founding teams form. 📚️ Read the full study here: https://lnkd.in/gMtgqW5t 🤝 Apply to Catalyst by 4/6 - Program for top 1% builders to meet their co-founder: https://lnkd.in/g3iwrMsq

I just told an 18 year old founder "no", but tried to give them the roadmap to a "yes." I don't usually invest outside of Europe, but I couldn't ignore this founder’s reach-out. They were bold, clear, and ambitious. However, their pitch had a few "yellow flags" that many early-stage founders trip over. Here is the advice I shared: 🔴 Be careful with your valuation promises. If you target "less than a unicorn," you lack ambition. If you only talk billions, you look deluded. Instead focus on market potential and revenue. Let the investor do the dreaming. 🔴 A great bio is a start, but VCs buy "proof of delivery." Show me that ideal customers actually want what you're building and that you can deliver. 🔴 Do things that don't scale: Even in DeepTech, you have to get your hands dirty early on. Being a founder at 18 is a superpower. I'm rooting for this one. The ecosystem grows when we take 5 minutes to give feedback instead of just ghosting.

Strategic Discovery isn’t for every founder. And that’s intentional. It’s for founders who: ▪️ are committed to building ▪️ are preparing to raise ▪️ are ready to confront complexity ▪️ are willing to examine their assumptions Not everyone is at that stage. And not everyone should be. Limiting access ensures the process stays valuable for those who are ready. Strategic Discovery opens on the 1st and 15th of each month. Limited seats must be reserved in advance. https://lnkd.in/dyq8RCDY #StrategicDiscovery #SeriousFounders #StartupDiscipline #CapitalReady

We're still thinking about the depth of this conversation! Grateful for the leadership behind our Winter 2026 M&A Bootcamp and for creating space for founders to engage in the kind of honest, high-caliber dialogue that truly moves the needle. From M&A readiness to AI-driven shifts and founder mindset, this session was a powerful reminder that building with intention today shapes the opportunities of tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who made this conversation so impactful, this is what community and learning in action looks like.

Last week I had the privilege of moderating the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center's Winter 2026 M&A Bootcamp and absolutely loved the energy! The audience was incredible. Sharp, engaged, and full of questions that pushed our conversation well beyond the surface. A few themes that surfaced throughout our conversation: 1. Discipline and rigor aren't optional. Buyers are doing more diligence than ever, and the companies that move through acquisition conversations smoothly are the ones that already operate with clean financials, tight data infrastructure, and clear internal reporting. 2. Start earlier than you think. The founders who are best positioned for M&A, whether as a seller or a buyer, aren't the ones who started preparing when a deal appeared. They're the ones who built with optionality in mind from day one. M&A readiness is a byproduct of good company building. 3. AI is fundamentally changing the game. Strategic buyers are moving faster, doing more with less, and evaluating AI-enabled businesses through a completely different lens than just a few years ago. For founders building in this space, the question isn't just "what does your product do?" - it's "what is defensible, and why does it command a premium?" 4. And perhaps most underrated: founder mindset. Knowing when to stay the course and when to engage, especially when inbound interest arrives earlier than expected, is one of the hardest judgment calls in company building. To every founder who joined us and brought such fantastic questions, thank you. You're the reason events like this are worth doing. A huge shoutout to my brilliant panelists Tucker Serenbetz, Managing Director of TMT Strategy at KPMG, and Ross Tanaka, Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. These two brought a rare combination of candor, depth, and real-world practitioner insight that I know resonated with everyone in attendance. Grateful to share the stage with them. And of course, none of this happens without the incredible team at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center! Thank you for continuing to build spaces where founders get access to the kind of honest, high-caliber dialogue that actually moves the needle. Colin Mahin Michelle Eisenberg Reilly Gill #MergersAndAcquisitions #Entrepreneurship #StartupStrategy #NasdaqEntrepreneurialCenter #Founders #MandA

Our partner Max Gazor weighs in on software returns with The Wall Street Journal. The era of SaaS is fading. Heavy private VC markdowns are on the horizon. A generation of VCs were trained to sell exposure, not returns. That playbook is done. The best founders now want precision and deep technical expertise. Concentrated inception stage investing, with decades of outcomes, at the frontier of AI: Striker Venture Partners. Link in comments

The best founders right now are closing rounds on their first meetings and VCs hate it. Investors want to get comfortable with the founder and the business they don't want to skip diligence. But there's no time. The current market doesn't allow it. The best founders are so rare that if you don't move, someone else will. Serial founders with exits. Frontier lab alumni. Top AI researchers. The 0.1%. VCs compete for them the way startups compete for customers. Term sheets go out before the second call. There is no time for a six week process. There is barely time for a six day one. I heard VCs are building relationships with people at frontier labs who haven't even decided if they'll start a company. That's how early the game has moved. Every investor I know would prefer to do proper diligence. They just can't afford it on these deals. So they bet on the team or on undeniable traction. That's it. I lost a deal like this in the past. Hot founder, massively oversubscribed round. I focused on understanding the business end to end. By the time I had a clear picture, he'd signed with someone faster. There wasn't time to fully understand it. That was the point. What's the last deal you lost to speed?