Last week I was at dinner with several partners at VC funds. Everyone agreed: AI will fundamentally reshape white-collar work. Lawyers, accountants, analysts – all disrupted. Then the conversation turned to our own industry, and the mood shifted. Venture capital was different, they said. Too relationship-driven. Too human. AI disruption is something for other people.
Are VCs being arrogant, or are we really different from lawyers?
What AI won't replace
Some of this resistance is justified. Great VCs have a broad network and an inner circle of people they've built deep trust with over years. That trust lets them move incredibly fast when it matters. It opens doors otherwise locked for founders – a warm introduction to a dream customer, a call to a board member who's seen this playbook before. And it surfaces intel that no algorithm can.
The only way to know that a company's pilot is about to convert into a million-dollar contract is having someone close to the company tip you off – not running AI analysis on their web traffic. As long as private markets are private, that remains true.
But everything else – and I mean everything – from term sheet negotiations to due diligence to portfolio reporting, is going to be completely reimagined by AI. The relationship core of VC is durable. The operating model around it is not. So why does ‘AI adoption’ at most funds still mean a ChatGPT subscription and a vague plan to do more with it next quarter?
The problem is cultural
I spent five years at Google before moving to VC. At Google, solving problems with data and software is the default. Moving into venture was a culture shock – an industry that prides itself on identifying the future, yet runs internally on workflows that would feel dated at a mid-size accountancy firm.
The barrier isn't technology. It's the culture – and it runs deep. A generation of investors built their reputations on the analytical grunt work that AI now does in seconds. Embracing that isn't just an operational shift; it means accepting that a core skill you were promoted for is no longer scarce. Whether you're a three-person seed fund or a growth firm, the question is the same: are you willing to look at how you work with the same critical eye you apply to the companies you back?
You don't know who you know
Here's the paradox. If relationships are your edge, you should invest heavily in understanding them – and most VCs don't. Everyone has had the experience of meeting someone at a dinner and realising halfway through that you share a close friend. The world is small. Your network is richer and more interconnected than you think. You just can't see it.
If relationships are what AI can't replicate, the least we can do is stop leaving them to memory and chance.
That’s why we built our AI system, Rolodex. It connects everything – calendars, CRM, WhatsApp, external data – to map relationships that would otherwise stay invisible across inboxes and chat threads. Then it arms investors with the intel to make every interaction count. Before a meeting, you know the warmest path to a founder and exactly what to talk about when you get there.
To give a concrete example: back in 2024, our team heard about Blackwall, an AI-enabled cybersecurity and infrastructure company that was growing exponentially. We knew we had to meet them, but the founders weren't taking investor meetings. Rolodex surfaced that one of their board members had formerly shared a board with one of our GPs, and that they were attending an event in Brussels. One conversation later, a warm introduction to CEO Nikita Rozenberg was made — and the rest is history. That deal alone has likely single-handedly paid for Dawn’s data and AI function these last four years.
Why founders should care
The VC who turns up to your first meeting already with an understanding of your market and which doors they can open for you is a better partner than the one who asks you to (re-)explain what your startup does. The firms that embrace AI move faster on decisions, surface the right introduction at the right moment and show up to every conversation better prepared. The gap between those firms and the rest will widen, and founders will feel the difference.
Disruption is not a spectator sport
No one in venture capital disputes that AI will transform white-collar work. We invest billions in it. But there's a striking irony in preaching transformation to portfolio companies while treating our own operations as somehow exempt.
VCs should push themselves as hard on AI adoption as we push our founders. Not just to be more efficient – but because the firms that adopt seriously find the best founders faster, understand them more deeply and support them better over the life of a company. That's not an operational improvement. It's a competitive edge that compounds with every investment.
The lawyers thought they were AI-proof. They weren't. Neither are we.
