Check Out The Top Sessions from The New New in Venture

If you’ve ever tried to understand “what VCs want right now,” you’ve probably experienced the classic founder workflow:
open 37 tabs, watch 12 minutes of one video, rage-scroll a thread, promise yourself you’ll “circle back,” and then
somehow end up reading a debate about whether “ARR is dead” (spoiler: it isn’t).

The antidote is curated signal. SaaStr’s “The New New in Venture” was built exactly for that moment:
a concentrated set of sessions from top investors and operators, focused on what actually changes when markets changeand
what never changes, even when everything feels like it’s on fire.

What “The New New in Venture” is (and why it’s still worth your time)

“The New New in Venture” was a SaaStr virtual summit (May 27, 2020) designed to bring founders and investors into the same room
(digitally) to talk candidly about fundraising, venture decision-making, and the realities of building during uncertainty.
Yes, the world looked different then. But the core topicspricing risk, proving momentum, building conviction, and managing runwayare
the same topics founders wrestle with today.

The hidden perk: these sessions give you a fast, practical “mental model refresh.” You’re not just collecting advice; you’re learning
how investors frame decisions so you can pre-answer their questions before they ask them.

How to binge these sessions like a pro (and not like a sleep-deprived raccoon)

• Pick your lens: Are you pre-seed/seed, Series A-ish, or scaling? Watch with your stage in mind.
• Listen for “decision rules”: The best moments are when speakers explain how they decide, not what they prefer.
• Write one “Monday move” per session: A concrete action you’ll do next week. If you can’t find one, rewatch at 1.5x.
• Build a one-page “fundraise brief”: After 2–3 sessions, summarize your story, metrics, and ask in one page.

The top sessions to start with (and what you’ll actually take away)

1) “Unicorn and Decacorns: What’s Changed & What Hasn’t” (Keith Rabois, Founders Fund)

This is the session for founders who feel like valuation has become a contact sport. The heart of it: the difference between a story
that sounds big and a business that is actually compounding. The discussion hits a nerve because it tackles what founders rarely say out loud:
you don’t “deserve” a unicorn valuationyou earn it through momentum and inevitability.

• Watch for: how late-stage expectations leak backward into earlier rounds (even when investors deny it).
• Monday move: write the three metrics that prove inevitability in your category (not vanity metricsdecision metrics).

2) “Adjusting Your Sails to Navigate Today’s Choppy Waters” (Chris O’Neill, Portag3 Ventures)

If your current plan assumes capital is always available, this session is a friendly intervention. It’s about learning from downturns and
turnarounds: how to prioritize, how to cut without killing your advantage, and how to build trust with investors when the mood shifts from
“growth at all costs” to “show me the unit economics.”

• Watch for: practical triage thinkingwhat gets protected, what gets paused, and what gets killed.
• Monday move: draft two operating plans: a “base plan” and a “stretch runway plan” that buys you meaningful time.

3) “Business as a Force for Good: COVID-19 and Beyond” (Sameer Dholakia, Yvonne Wassenaar, Amy Lesnick)

This one surprises people. Founders expect “doing good” to sound like a detour. Instead, it’s positioned as a compounding asset:
brand trust, recruiting leverage, and culture clarityespecially when stress reveals what your company actually stands for.
The Pledge 1% angle makes it concrete: pick a commitment (time, product, profit, or equity) and bake it into your operating rhythm.

• Watch for: the difference between performative impact and operational impact.
• Monday move: choose one impact “asset” you can pledge this quarter and define how you’ll measure it.

4) “How Does COVID-19 Change the Future of Work” (Lan Xuezhao, Basis Set Ventures)

This session is basically a time machine for founders building in a world where hybrid work is normal, not novel.
It’s less “remote work is possible” and more “remote work changes how you hire, manage, sell, and build culture.”
You’ll come away with a sharper sense of which roles must be near customers, which can be anywhere, and how “communication debt”
can quietly crush teams.

• Watch for: how investors evaluate distributed teams (process beats vibes).
• Monday move: create a one-page “operating system” for your team: meetings, decisions, documentation, and ownership.

5) “What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing” (Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures)

This session is a reality checkin the best way. Seed investing isn’t just “back the founder.” It’s pattern recognition under uncertainty:
market timing, clarity of wedge, speed of learning, and founder behavior when things break. Aileen’s style is especially useful because it’s
direct: what gets funded, what gets passed on, and what founders consistently misunderstand about “traction.”

• Watch for: investor psychology at seedwhat creates conviction when data is thin.
• Monday move: rewrite your pitch to answer: “Why now?” and “Why you?” in two sentences each.

6) “The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army” (David Sacks, Craft Ventures)

Founders love strategy. Investors love execution. This session is about building the machine that turns strategy into outcomes:
cadence, accountability, and repeatable go-to-market motion. It connects to a modern truth in SaaS and cloud:
markets eventually price efficiencynot just growth. If you want the grown-up table valuation, you need grown-up operational rhythm.

• Watch for: practical cadence mechanics (weekly metrics, clear owners, shipping discipline).
• Monday move: implement a weekly “metrics + commitments” meeting: 30 minutes, no storytelling, just movement.

7) “The Midas List Live” (Forbes / top investors panel)

This is the closest you’ll get to sitting inside the “how the sausage gets made” conversation of venture reputation.
The Midas List is produced with a data-driven methodology that weighs outcomes like exits and value creation, while also considering factors such as
ownership and stage involvement. The panel format helps founders understand what top investors pay attention toand how founders can position their
company so the “signal” is legible.

• Watch for: what matters beyond headlines: ownership, timing, and repeatable wins.
• Monday move: build a “proof of outcome” slide that shows credible paths to scale (not just TAM poetry).

The through-line: what these sessions collectively teach about fundraising

Different speakers, same underlying message: venture isn’t “a vibe.” It’s a decision system under constraints. And constraints shift.
Here are the patterns that show up again and again:

• Capital is cyclical, standards are structural. When the market tightens, the bar doesn’t disappearit becomes explicit.
• Bigger checks come with sharper scrutiny. The larger the round, the more your story must survive spreadsheets.
• Remote or in-person, trust is still the currency. You can’t “growth hack” conviction.
• Efficiency eventually gets priced. Cloud markets have repeatedly rewarded companies that combine growth with operational strength.
• Culture isn’t a posterit’s a system. Impact and values matter most when they’re operational, not decorative.

A practical “after watching” checklist for founders

If you do nothing else after watching these sessions, do this:

1. Write your fundraise brief: 1 page: problem, solution, why now, traction, metrics, team, ask.
2. Define your momentum metric: the one metric that proves acceleration (pipeline, expansion, retention, usagepick one).
3. Runway math: update your burn, runway, and the milestones you can hit before you need new capital.
4. Deal hygiene: know your key terms and what you will (and won’t) negotiate.
5. Investor map: list 20 investors who fit your stage + category, then sort by “most likely to understand your wedge.”

Conclusion

“The New New in Venture” is a greatest-hits playlist of how founders and investors think when the market is noisy.
Start with the sessions above, take one action per session, and you’ll come out with something better than inspiration:
a tighter pitch, a clearer operating plan, and fewer surprises in the room where money decisions get made.

Experiences: What founders typically feel while watching these sessions (and why it’s oddly motivating)

To make this more than a “watch list,” here are the experiences founders commonly report after spending a few hours with the best talks from
The New New in Venture. None of this requires a fancy templatejust a notebook, a willingness to be honest, and maybe a snack that doesn’t crumble
into your keyboard like a tiny betrayal.

First: you’ll feel a weird relief when investors describe uncertainty in plain English. Founders often assume the people with capital have
perfect clarity. They don’t. They have frameworks. And hearing those frameworks out loud can be calming because it turns fundraising from a mystical ritual
into a process: reduce unknowns, prove learning velocity, and make the upside legible.

Second: you’ll probably rewrite your pitch in your headmid-video. That’s a good sign. When a speaker says something like “bigger checks
demand more proof,” most founders instantly spot the gaps in their own story: the slide that’s too vague, the metric that isn’t consistent, the narrative
leap that relies on hope. The best sessions don’t just teach; they trigger productive discomfort.

Third: you’ll notice your definition of “traction” get stricter. Early on, traction can mean “people like it.” After a few investor-grade
conversations, traction becomes “people pay for it, stay for it, and expand because of it.” Even if you’re pre-revenue, traction becomes “we can repeatedly
create and validate demand.” That shift alone improves how you spend the next 30 days.

Fourth: you’ll experience the “runway calculator panic,” followed by “runway calculator clarity.” It’s common to pause a session, open a spreadsheet,
and realize your timeline is tighter than you thought. The upside: you usually come back with sharper priorities. The goal isn’t fearit’s focus. Cutting
distractions can feel brutal, but it’s also how companies become fast.

Fifth: you’ll start thinking in systems instead of heroics. The cadence/operating-rhythm sessions often create a quiet awakening:
the company doesn’t scale because you work harder; it scales because the machine gets better. Weekly metrics, clear owners, documentation, and disciplined shipping
aren’t glamorous, but they compound. And once you see compounding, you can’t unsee it.

Sixth: you’ll likely feel more confident about talking to investorseven if you’re not raising tomorrow. Why? Because your questions improve.
Instead of “Do you like us?” you start asking “What would you need to see to believe this can be a $100M+ revenue business?” Better questions lead to better
conversations, and better conversations lead to better outcomes (even when the answer is “not yet”).

Finally: you’ll want to take action immediatelyand you should, but small. The best post-watch move isn’t “redo everything.”
It’s one clean improvement: tighten the one-page brief, redefine your key metric, update runway milestones, or fix the one slide that causes investor confusion.
Do that, and these sessions stop being content… and start being leverage.