The blueprint for starting a new firm with Chemistry Ventures, including the work needed before choosing your partners and non-consensus decision making.

Chemistry Ventures, a new $350 million debut fund, aims to disrupt the venture capital landscape by offering early-stage founders a high-hustle, personalized partnership model that contrasts with the bureaucratic structures of larger firms. Founding partners Kristina Shen, Ethan Kurzweil, and Mark Goldberg define their "right to exist" by providing senior-level attention and agility, positioning themselves as a speedboat in a market dominated by institutional oil tankers. The firm utilizes a single-trigger decision-making process, empowering individual partners to champion high-conviction bets while maintaining a collaborative, non-consensus culture. By prioritizing direct, long-term relationships over traditional, unscalable portfolio services, the team seeks to capture outlier returns. Their fundraising strategy focused on identifying independent-thinking LPs who share a commitment to pure-play early-stage venture, ensuring alignment for a multi-decade franchise rather than a short-term financial play.