Our practices for covering venture capital activity in AI have evolved meaningfully, and the specific changes are worth naming.
We stopped letting reputation substitute for evidence
Early coverage sometimes cited a firm's general reputation as though it were itself evidence of investment skill. We now try to cite specific, verifiable outcomes instead.
We became more transparent about verification limits
We now state more explicitly that venture fund performance data is largely private, and that our coverage reflects publicly visible outcomes rather than full access to actual returns.
We got more careful about follow-on investment as a signal
We try to be more precise about what follow-on investment from other firms actually indicates, rather than treating it as unambiguous validation.
Why this evolution matters
Venture capital coverage that repeats reputation without evidence risks reinforcing existing visibility rather than reflecting actual investment quality, and we think correcting for that is worth stating directly.