Your partner for growth
https://youtu.be/Bj8GLntLNos This is my new podcast, The First Bet. What I'm going to be exploring with my guests is how you get conviction to make a decision to deploy capital or commit a significant amount of resources when there is so much unknown and you have so little information about the opportunity. These are quite … Continue reading Navigating Life’s Big Decisions: Insights from Alec Torelli
May you live in interesting times. That old line was meant as a curse — the wish that you'd live through chaos instead of calm. Welcome to software in 2026. Over the last month, investors woke up to the potential of AI for traditional software businesses, and the reaction was brutal. More than $1T in … Continue reading Surviving Softwaremageddon: How to Invest in SaaS When $1T Just Vanished
(And How to Profit Before the Buffet Closes) Here is the history, data, and research to support my core AI thesis: apps will be bigger than Infrastructure, and we are only at the beginning of the App Era. Remember when everyone thought the big money in cloud was owning the data centers? Cute. Twenty-ish years later, … Continue reading Why the AI Application Layer Will Eat Infra for Breakfast
I'm a solo GP at Incisive, writing $250k-$500k checks Pre-Seed to support B2B founders. After 20 years of investing and over 300 investments, it is more clear than ever that pre-seed investing isn't about spreadsheets and market projections—it's about people and pattern recognition. Business Insider put me on their list of 100 best early-stage. investors … Continue reading How I Gain Conviction in Early-Stage Startups
Every founder I’ve ever backed has faced it — though few could name it.It’s the quiet drag that slows progress, kills momentum, and convinces you to postpone the hard thing until tomorrow. Steven Pressfield called it “The Resistance.”And if you’re building a company, it’s your most dangerous competitor. I have seen it in every one … Continue reading ⚔️ The Resistance: The Invisible force Every Founder Must Face
#EssentialsOnly – My 30 Days of Stoic October This October, I’m doing something simple, strict, and surprisingly hard: spending 30 days living with only the essentials. No extras. No indulgences. No mindless spending. I’m calling it #EssentialsOnly, and I’m pairing it with the mindset of #StoicOctober—a month of practicing restraint, clarity, and discipline, based on … Continue reading EssentialsOnly – My 30 Days of Stoic October
(A practical field-guide for founders who’d rather ship product than explain spreadsheets.) Picture this Why this matters When a pitch crosses my screen, the first thing I do is sanity-check the revenue story. A single whiff of mischaracterised topline and you’re filed under Charlatan, not Optimist — often for good. As I remind the 3,500+ … Continue reading One of the Fastest Ways to Torch Investor Trust? Fuzzy Revenue Math
Insights from Martin Tobias (Incisive), Webinar for Founders, September 17, 2025. Here are the Slides TL;DR — The Baby Unicorn Formula: Pick a “hair‑on‑fire” problem and attack it with a tiny, founder‑led team that ships weekly, grows 5–7% MoM, and proves distribution before you overbuild. Keep the original problem sacred (soft pivots only), insist on … Continue reading Anatomy of a Baby Unicorn: How Pre‑Seed Startups Actually Break Out
A one‑page template to frame your product as “deleting steps” in a painful B2B workflow. TL;DR (One Liner for your Company) We remove [X] for [target user], deleting [N] steps and saving [Y] hours/$ per month. Time‑to‑value [Z] days. Starting with: [where you start]. 1) Problem & Target User Who: [role, industry/segment] Pain: [manual step] … Continue reading Reducing Friction at Scale — Founder One‑Pager
Watch the full broadcast through this link: What is Product Market Fit and how do you know when you have it? In the exciting yet challenging world of venture capital and startup development, understanding the concept of Product Market Fit (PMF) is crucial. In a recent discussion featuring Martin Tobias and Gary Benerofe from MU … Continue reading RECAP: “What is Product Market Fit and how do you know when you have it?”