# How to win in seed stage investing today

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261/how-to-win-in-seed-stage-investing-today
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261/how-to-win-in-seed-stage-investing-today.md
Podcast: [Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers](https://stenobird.com/podcast/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261)
Published: 2025-07-16T11:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://ventureunlocked.substack.com/p/the-machine-mindset-transforming
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/168248576/491bf4c401f25620b69b54785cb186d1.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261/episodes/how-to-win-in-seed-stage-investing-today
Duration seconds: 3145

## Resource

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital. In today’s episode, we are joined by Nakul Mandan , who is the founding partner of seed-stage firm Audacious Ventures. Having known Nakul since the early days of his journey in starting the firm in 2020, I was excited to dive deep into his unique path, from his roots in India to venture capital, working at firms such as Battery and Lightspeed before starting his own firm. As venture capital has evolved and grown, the stakes of being a successful early-stage manager have increased dramatically. In our chat, we discussed how managers should think about navigating competitive markets and how a proper system around sourcing, picking, winning, and building a brand through delivering for founders requires a machine-like approach. Audacious has created its own system, which is unlike most firms, providing a nice juxtaposition of more traditional models. This was a fun and candid deep dive into seed stage investing, and we hope you enjoy my conversation with Nakul Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Nakul. If you’d like to get venture unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. Thanks again for listening About Nakul Mandan Nakul Mandan is the founder and managing partner of Audacious Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm he launched in April 2020—right when the world was locking down. A student of greatness, Nakul is inspired by extraordinary journeys, whet…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261/episodes/how-to-win-in-seed-stage-investing-today/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/venture-unlocked-the-playbook-for-venture-capital-managers-2990261/how-to-win-in-seed-stage-investing-today.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.