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Morgan Flager is Managing Partner at Silverton Partners, the longest-running and most active early-stage venture firm in Texas. He joined Silverton in 2006 and has spent two decades backing seed and Series A companies out of Austin, with outcomes including SailPoint, Ping Identity, Vacasa, AlertMedia, Black Locus and TrendKite. Silverton closed Fund VII at $248M, the largest in the firm's history, and is currently in market with Fund VIII. Before Silverton, Morgan invested at FTV Capital and held operating roles at Kintana and Ingrian Networks. He holds a BS from Stanford.

Morgan is at least doubling Silverton's allocation to hard tech, and he explains why part of that rotation is real conviction and part of it is the venture industry running from a broken toy.

⭐ This episode is brought to you by Podcast10x - https://podcast10x.com

Key topics we cover:

- Why Silverton's hard tech allocation is moving to 30-40% of the fund across defense, AI infrastructure, manufacturing and energy

- What still makes a software company defensible when features are commoditized and wrappers are worse than features

- Why he's writing more seed checks instead of holding deeper reserves as the power law sharpens

- The valuation math that makes him walk away: a $300M seed entry needs a $5B outcome, and only ~30 companies have crossed $10B in 20 years

- How LP conversations changed between Fund VII and Fund VIII, and why liquidity is now the first question

Chapters:

(00:00) - Preview

(00:52) - Introduction to Morgan Flager & Silverton Partners

(02:19) - Silverton's Evolving Deployment Strategy (2022-2026)

(03:15) - Increased Allocation to Hard Tech & Emerging Categories

(06:01) - Why VCs are Shifting from Software to Hard Tech

(08:03) - Distinguishing AI Wrappers from Defensible Enterprise Platforms

(12:25) - The Next Era of the Texas Startup Ecosystem

(15:07) - Portfolio Construction: More Shots on Goal vs. Deeper Reserves

(18:20) - How AI Creates More Capital-Efficient Software Companies

(22:26) - Maintaining Valuation Discipline in a Hot Market

(25:55) - How AI Will Change the Healthcare Landscape

(29:40) - The Changing Architecture of a Successful Marketplace

(33:00) - The Risk of Frontier Models (OpenAI, Claude) Competing with Startups

(38:00) - Distinguishing Genuine Founder Obsession from Trend Chasing

(40:38) - The Most Common Scaling Friction for B2B Founders ($1M to $10M ARR)

(43:40) - The Shift in LP Conversations and Priorities for Fund VII

(47:01) - How LP Composition has Shifted Over Time

(49:36) - Navigating Tough Board Conversations About Fundraising

(54:33) - The Core Investing Philosophy Morgan Had to Unlearn

(58:34) - Rapid Fire Round Begins

(58:46) - Sectors and Regions

(59:11) - Stage of Investment

(59:20) - Leading Rounds

(59:30) - Typical Check Size

(59:45) - How Founders Can Get in Touch

(01:00:16) - Where to Follow Morgan Online

Connect with Morgan Flager:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mflager/

Silverton Partners - https://www.silvertonpartners.com

Connect with Prashant Choubey:

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab

X - https://x.com/ChoubeySahab

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VC10X - What if it goes right? - Morgan Flager, Managing Partner, Silverton Partners

VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management

VC10X - What if it goes right? - Morgan Flager, Managing Partner, Silverton Partners