Mark Goldberg on Building Chemistry and Rethinking Venture Partnerships

Harry Stebbings speaks with Mark Goldberg, co-founder and managing partner of the new venture firm Chemistry. Both have recently launched funds. Goldberg says the world does not need another venture fund in general, but he and co-founders Christina and Ethan wanted a focused partnership where experienced investors could spend more time with founders.

He does not claim fund size alone creates alignment. His concern is that senior investors at large, multi-stage firms can have less time for new companies as their portfolios, management and administrative obligations grow. Stebbings notes that maturing portfolios consume time even at a single-stage firm; Goldberg agrees, particularly when exits are scarce.

Goldberg argues that large organizations spend significant time on management and bureaucracy. He provocatively characterizes portfolio services as a way to scale investors rather than preserve a direct founder-investor relationship. He acknowledges that such teams can contain excellent people and that the original innovation was valuable; his preference for a smaller model also serves Chemistry’s positioning.

Stebbings challenges what alignment means, asking whether Chemistry takes only common shares. Goldberg says he means incentives and time spent with founders, not that all investors and founders hold identical securities. Stebbings argues most venture investors add little and founders often want capital and minimal interference.

Goldberg agrees that doing no harm clears a low bar and that later-stage founders may mainly want price and autonomy. At the early stage, he sees value in a trusted investor who will answer a difficult call about a co-founder or other personal decision. This is his account of the service his new firm hopes to offer.

As a young Index Ventures investor without a personal brand, Goldberg says he competed on effort, promising that each founder’s success mattered enormously to his career. He lost some deals and won others. Chemistry’s new team hopes its experience and existing relationships will help it compete without the weight of an established institution.

Stebbings suggests younger founders especially value established brands; Goldberg frames the distinction as familiarity with the venture ecosystem rather than age. Founders outside Silicon Valley may know household names, while a new fund can begin with people who already know its partners. He cites the team’s past board and investment experience as a source of that network.

Discussing Doug Leone’s view that venture has become a low-margin commodity, Goldberg describes a decade of industrialization: larger assets under management, more personnel and institutions where founders may know the brand but not individual investors. Stebbings notes that Sequoia’s individual products can be more size-constrained than headline fundraising numbers suggest.

Chemistry aims to return to a smaller, relationship-oriented model inspired by firms such as Benchmark and USV. Goldberg says its fund is $350 million, focused on leading seed and Series A investments. The plan is roughly two or three investments per general partner each year, about 25 companies over a roughly three-year investment period.

Stebbings questions whether the fund can lead $15 million Series A checks while maintaining diversification and reserves. Goldberg says the firm targets opportunities before a category leader or financial traction is obvious; a $10 million to $15 million check is feasible, while a $30 million deal would be a very large commitment.

Chemistry plans a light reserve model, rather than automatically following its pro rata allocation in every round. It can double down in exceptional cases, Goldberg says, but he argues spreading reserves indiscriminately may not serve founders or limited partners. Stebbings points out that Chemistry will still compete directly with larger firms; Goldberg agrees.

Stebbings worries that larger seed rounds and high prices have become normal even without much traction. Goldberg says some deals fail the risk-return test, but believes attractive companies still exist in the vintage. He is willing to stretch on valuation when he has unusually strong conviction in a category leader and its founding team.

Goldberg does not avoid competitive markets: he sees competition as evidence of an opportunity and looks for founders capable of executing against rivals. The strongest early founders, he argues, withstand setbacks and learn quickly. He agrees with a criticism of importing rigid OKRs into very early software companies.

After product-market fit, Goldberg sees leadership hiring, especially go-to-market leadership, as a frequent constraint. A useful investor can show founders what strong leaders look like one or two stages ahead, he says, while acknowledging that some early leaders do scale all the way to an exit. Stebbings adds that recruiting, ramping and replacing a poor hire can consume many months.

Forced to choose, Goldberg favors first-time founders for their hunger and willingness to pursue ideas others consider foolish. He also likes founders who tried once without breaking through. He is less excited by a founder who may have lost urgency after a very successful exit, while acknowledging there is no single rule for everyone.

Asked who should not choose Chemistry, he says founders seeking a brand with decades of history may prefer an established firm. Stebbings argues a brand can make later fundraising easier but questions whether it reliably helps with hiring or customers. The speakers agree founders value different things.

Chemistry raised over the summer, roughly June through August, Goldberg says. The team found interest among LPs who felt some venture firms had become asset managers. It sought about 20 LPs, with no one investor much above 10% of the fund, and says the round was oversubscribed; these are the firm’s own fundraising claims.

Fundraising gave Goldberg empathy for founders pitching him. What feels like one of many meetings to an investor may be the most important meeting of the day for the person presenting. He recommends that investors experience being on the other side and values LPs who give clear, direct feedback even when they decline.

The partners met LPs in person and traveled extensively. Goldberg estimates about 100 meetings, screened partly for a demonstrated willingness to back first-time funds. Although the firm received more interest than it needed, it also heard many noes; the most common stated concern was that the three partners had not previously worked together as a team.

He recalls an amusing meeting in which a partner accidentally drank hard seltzer while believing it was ordinary sparkling water. Less successful meetings were those where LPs wanted the team to justify venture capital as an asset class from first principles, suggesting a mismatch in expectations.

The team wanted LPs who thought independently rather than an investor base that all followed the same institutional pattern. A few investors moved from an expected six-month process to a commitment in two weeks, giving the new partnership confidence during fundraising.

One substantive disagreement was whether Chemistry should hire junior investors. Goldberg initially preferred a general-partner-only team; his partners saw value in different ages and networks. They agreed on a small team of two junior people, with one hired at the time, while trying to avoid recreating a large firm’s hierarchy.

The team expects to work in the office together, which Goldberg sees as important for a new partnership. He admires several investors and newer firms and believes generational transition at large institutions is creating room for a new group of venture managers. That view also supports Chemistry’s own market thesis.

Stebbings worries that too much money still pushes prices to unreasonable levels, recalling a deal lost when a rival doubled the price and accepted common shares. Goldberg says industry contraction and a turnover in firms can happen together. Neither claims the competitive pressure has disappeared.

On companies staying private longer, Goldberg expects capital markets to create more secondary liquidity for early investors. That is a prediction, not an existing guarantee. He says LPs told him venture funds often take closer to 15 years than ten to close, making patience essential.

Stebbings predicts many 2021 funds will not return one times invested capital. Goldberg expects a difficult vintage but is unsure whether returns will be below one times, and suggests they may be better. Both are offering forecasts without a full dataset in the conversation.

Highly marked private companies can lose morale and momentum when employees no longer believe the valuation is realistic, Goldberg argues. Stebbings says he asks founders to choose a price they are 90% confident they can triple by the next round; he reports that this often leads to lower proposed prices. It is a negotiating heuristic, not a probability estimate that can be verified here.

On AI, Goldberg thinks simply calling a company an AI business no longer attracts the premium it did earlier, although he acknowledges very expensive infrastructure rounds continue. Stebbings disagrees and says he has seen pre-product companies valued above $750 million. Their contrasting views are snapshots of their deal flow, not a comprehensive market measure.

Chemistry uses a single-trigger model: any one of the three partners can make an investment decision. Goldberg argues that requiring consensus can exclude the outlier opportunities where only one person has strong conviction. The same model may admit weaker deals as well; the intended trade-off is access to extreme winners.

His most painful miss is Chime. He praises Revolut’s product velocity and expects a very large digital bank to emerge, while Stebbings favors Revolut’s chances in the US. Goldberg adds that an unfamiliar company might eventually win there. These are their competitive opinions and predictions, not established outcomes.

Lending is difficult, Goldberg says, and his fintech investing has often focused on infrastructure. Still, he would back an exceptional founder even in a market he dislikes, including lending, because founders can iterate into a compelling business. He notes that his partner Ethan is more market-focused, so the partnership does not hold one uniform view.

He warns that experience can become a trap if it leads an investor to dismiss a category permanently. Knowing the details of a market can help, but can also cause investors to reason themselves out of unconventional opportunities. He admits that hearing repeated pitches has made it hard for him to keep an open mind about AI sales tools.

After raising his own fund, Goldberg says he is more committed to giving founders honest, constructive reasons for a rejection rather than a polite but unhelpful explanation. Stebbings observes that a multi-stage firm may want to preserve optionality for later rounds; Goldberg agrees that Chemistry’s narrower stage focus changes that dynamic.

He says he would more readily increase check size than compromise on ownership when convinced of a winner. He cannot recall the legal concentration limit, but says the firm does not want more than 10% of the fund in one company. Stebbings cites much larger single-company allocations elsewhere; Goldberg says that would make him uncomfortable.

Stebbings advises the new firm not to avoid small stakes in prominent companies if those relationships are valuable. Goldberg says some LPs gave the same advice and others the opposite, illustrating a real tension between portfolio math and access to outstanding founders rather than a settled answer.

In the quick-fire round, Goldberg names Index mentor Mike Volpi as a continuing source of advice and says he would like more independent thinking in venture. He agrees that rapid information sharing among associates can harm a company that is not formally fundraising.

He is working on redirecting his time toward new investments after carrying a heavy portfolio and board load. Stebbings points out that this clean-slate freedom cannot last as investments accumulate; Goldberg agrees but says the current phase is energizing.

Among firms he admires, Goldberg highlights Meritech for growth investing, Accel for Series A and Uncork among seed firms. These are personal opinions about peers and strategies, not forecasts of their actual returns.

Building a new firm means solving basic operational problems without the support available at a large institution, which he finds both hard and enjoyable. Asked whether wealthy investors are better because they fear downside less, he is unsure: his observation is that many successful investors love the craft, with money more a consequence than the cause.