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Seed Investing at Scale | David Tisch, Managing Partner at BoxGroup | Ep. 10

This week I enjoyed riffing with David Tisch, Managing Partner of BoxGroup. BoxGroup is an NYC-based seed stage venture capital firm that has invested in over 500 seed-stage startups over the last 15 years, including Plaid, Ro, Ramp, Clay, Scopely, Warp, Cursor, PillPack, Amplitude, Flatiron Health, Stripe, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Flexport, Classpass, Vine, GroupMe, Airtable and more. David is the Chairman of GoodDog, a marketplace to find pets online. He is the co-founder of TechStars NYC and serves on the board of Friends of Hudson River Park. We covered: - Scaling something deemed unscalable - Art of being collaborative - Taste not being teachable - VC help being overrated - Building a NYC brand Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:27) Scaling a collaborative fund (8:23) Stack ranking portfolios (11:29) Investing at seed (17:29) Hiring for taste (22:30) The art of being collaborative (29:03) VC help is overrated (41:38) Why VCs pass on companies (48:11) Building a brand in NYC (55:02) North Stars in early-stage investing Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

David TischguestJack Altmanhost
May 21, 202559mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

How BoxGroup scaled collaborative seed investing without changing its model

  1. BoxGroup has scaled a collaborative seed-only approach instead of following the conventional VC path toward larger, later-stage, more concentrated investing.
  2. Tisch argues seed investing is inherently messy and uncertain, so the right approach is people-first judgment, consistent behavior over long timelines, and a model optimized to invest in the best companies rather than “win” ownership.
  3. He believes most VC “value-add” is overstated; the most reliable help is network access—especially helping founders raise follow-on capital—while too much investor input can actively distract or harm.
  4. The conversation also covers why brand matters uniquely in venture, why “signaling” is often overblown, how team trust and individual decision-making enable speed, and how geography affects company scaling (with AI pulling gravity back to SF).

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Seed investing is a ‘mess’ you must embrace, not optimize away.

Tisch frames seed as irreducibly uncertain—most decisions will be wrong—so firms that can’t tolerate that drift toward later-stage models where outcomes feel more legible.

Optimize for investing in the best companies, not for ownership mechanics.

Requiring a fixed ownership percentage forces a “pick me or them” dynamic and can conflict with the primary goal of backing the best founders; BoxGroup stays collaborative to reduce that conflict.

You generally can’t stack-rank early winners with precision.

He calls it egotistical to claim you can reliably identify the winner from day one; great outcomes often include pivots, slow-burn traction, or non-obvious paths that defeat early ranking.

The seed ‘bar’ is mostly about people, not markets.

At seed, BoxGroup prioritizes founder IQ/EQ and the ability to recruit and lead hundreds to thousands, plus a simple test: if everything they say is right, does the outcome matter?

Taste isn’t teachable; it’s hired for and shaped by life reps.

Tisch argues investing judgment is an extension of broader personal taste, built from lived experiences; the firm’s job is to recruit people whose taste will scale, not to train it into them.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

We don't want to be your best investor, we want to be your favorite investor.

— David Tisch

I think seed is just a mess, and I think it's a happy mess for me.

— David Tisch

I don't think that anybody can stack rank their portfolio properly early in a life cycle of a company.

— David Tisch

If we know more than you, we shouldn't invest in your company.

— David Tisch

Venture capital is the only financial asset class where brand matters.

— David Tisch

Seed vs A/B vs late-stage VC as different jobsCollaborative seed model vs leading/ownership requirementsPower-law outcomes and portfolio constructionFounder evaluation: leadership potential + importance of missionTaste: hiring for it, not teaching itNo IC/voting; individual decision-making and trustVC help, brand, signaling, and founder distraction riskGeography: New York vs Bay Area; ecosystem depth for scalingConsistency over time as founder alignment

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