Goodfin Wire - Vol. 09

The world’s first agentic AI for pre-IPO investing has arrived.

Goodfin GO launched—and it's already changing how members research, analyze, and move on deals.

Ask it to stress-test a thesis. Have it surface risks you hadn't considered. Run deep research on any private company and get back a comprehensive breakdown in minutes—not weeks. GO compresses weeks of work into minutes, then walks you through execution step by step. It's built to operate with the competence of a senior investment team—and the ability to pass the CFA Level III exam.

This is what we've been building toward. Now let's keep moving.

New firesides. New strategies. New members shaping what comes next.

Let's go 🚀

→ SpaceX acquires xAI at $1.25T valuation—congrats to Goodfin members who invested. This reshapes the upcoming IPO. More details to come.
→ Jerry Weitzman joins Goodfin Futures—the operator who scaled Databricks and now backs Anthropic, OpenAI, Ramp, and CoreWeave unpacks what most investors miss
→ QSBS rules just changed—our advanced strategies session covers the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Section 1045 rollovers, and real-world scenarios
→ Gatherings Edition 4 goes Valentine's Day—let’s make it about what actually matters: dream dinner guests, ultimate escapes, and the human qualities that endure
→ In the Rearview: Yana Welinder's founder-investor playbook, Gatherings Edition 3's boldest predictions, Eric Satz on self-directed IRAs, and Subha Rajana's Women, Wealth, and Private Markets gathering
→ Member Spotlight: Aditya Agrawal—ex-Tesla data leader, now building Voice AI at superU—on what investors overvalue and undervalue in the AI stack

What does an investor who scaled one of AI's defining companies see that others miss?

Jerry Weitzman spent six years as SVP of Sales, Americas at Databricks—building the go-to-market engine behind its hypergrowth. Now he backs companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Ramp, CoreWeave, Vercel, Groq, and Lambda.

We're unpacking: how his years scaling Databricks shape the way he evaluates AI investments today. The GTM signals that separate breakout companies from the rest. What most investors miss that operators see immediately. And his framework for identifying scalable enterprise AI companies early.

Valentine's Day edition—let’s make it about the things we actually care about.

Edition 4 brings our community back together for the conversations that matter: the escapes we dream about, the people we'd love to meet, and the ideas we're still figuring out. Whether you're a GP, founder, operator, family office member, or professional building wealth on your own terms, you'll find your people here.

This time we're going deep on: Dream Dinner Guest (who would it be and what would you ask?), The Ultimate Escape (beach, mountains, or city?), and The Human Quality That Matters Most as the world gets more automated.

45 minutes. Grab whatever you're into—coffee, tea, something stronger—and let's talk.

The Qualified Small Business Stock landscape has shifted over the past year.

Jonathan and Carolyn of CapGains, Inc. will share insights on advanced QSBS strategies, including: recent legislative developments under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, various state treatment changes, rollover planning and emerging opportunities under Section 1045, capital loss planning using "original QSBS" under Section 1244, and open Q&A on complex real-world scenarios.

This is practical, forward-looking—for anyone who needs to stay ahead as the rules evolve.

Yana built Kraftful to 50,000+ product teams, sold it to Amplitude, and now invests as an a16z Scout backing YC companies before anyone else.

On founders: "I look for doers, not planners and talkers." The red flag she sees most? Founders without drive—seasoned executives spending months brainstorming while high schoolers ship products and get thousands of users in half the time.

On AI moats: Speed and execution beat IP and data. The bigger threat isn't other startups—it's foundation companies. If your product makes sense inside ChatGPT or Claude, you're competing against distribution you can't match.

On the bubble: "We're both in a bubble and we've barely scratched the surface." Hype will correct. Substance will compound.

New year, new faces. Edition 3 kicked off 2026 with the kind of conversations you don't get in conference rooms or LinkedIn DMs. The prompts hit different this time: bold bets, what we're missing, and how to separate signal from noise.

The predictions got real. Members called proactive AI becoming the norm—agents that don't wait for commands but anticipate needs. One member pitched a "doctor in your pocket"—AI replacing physical consultations, a messaging-based app connecting patients directly to medical intelligence. The room stayed until the end, trading ideas and building on each other's frameworks.

This is what happens when you get Goodfin members in the same (virtual) room with no script.

Eric Satz, Founder & CEO of Alto, broke down how to access private market investments through retirement accounts—a space long limited by outdated processes and restricted access.

Eric's perspective comes from firsthand experience navigating the friction and custodial hurdles that made these investments difficult to pursue. That friction sparked Alto, which now supports $2 billion in assets and more than 32,000 investors. He covered the latest trends influencing private markets and investor behavior, and how retirement savers can identify opportunities to create more diversified portfolios.

For Goodfin members: You can invest in pre-IPO deals through your Alto IRA directly from our product pages. It's one of the ways we're making private markets more accessible.

We closed January strong. Goodfin Guild partner Subha Rajana hosted "Women, Wealth, and Private Markets" in Palo Alto, bringing together VCs, angel investors, and operators for an intentional conversation about late-stage pre-IPO investing.

The gathering reinforced Goodfin's mission: creating pathways for women to access private markets as active architects of generational wealth, not passive participants.

Seeking liquidity before an IPO? Goodfin enables you to sell your position to other Goodfin investors. Simply go to your Dashboard and click the "Express Interest to Sell" button on a deal you invested in. If there is demand from buyers, we’ll facilitate the exchange.

Now he's building superU, a Voice AI platform that's powered over 1 million calls and is designed to turn every customer conversation into revenue. Before Tesla, he was the first data scientist at Crown Equipment Corporation, where he designed deep learning algorithms for predictive maintenance and built the company's analytics architecture from scratch.

His edge? Knowing where infrastructure actually creates value. When evaluating AI Infra companies, he looks for developer community love—how strong the developer relations are. But he digs deeper: ease of developer usage, time-to-first-token speed, and model availability across different use cases. "Voice AI, for example, demands models like STT, TTS, LLM, noise cancellation—and most of these are built and hosted by different infrastructure companies."

When it comes to what investors get wrong about AI leadership, Aditya has a clear view. "We usually overvalue R&D/research experience in top leadership and undervalue the depth of business understanding."

And the AI trend he'd bet on if he weren't building? Memory and contextualization. "Platforms that enable agents to share context with each other with the right authentication"—the infrastructure that makes agentic AI actually work together.

We're curating the minds shaping the moment. If that's you, or someone in your circle, let's talk.

The signal that matters surfaced for you. Here's what our AI pulled from the noise this week:

→ SpaceX acquires xAI in $1.25T deal. Musk merges his rocket company with his AI venture, creating the world's most valuable private company. Space-based data centers, near-constant solar power, and a path to Mars. IPO implications for shareholders still taking shape. Read more

→ Nvidia's $100B OpenAI investment was "never a commitment." Jensen Huang clarified that the letter of intent is non-binding and will be deployed "one step at a time." Still, he called OpenAI "one of the most consequential companies of our time" and confirmed a "huge" investment is coming. Read more

→ OpenAI eyes Q4 2026 IPO to beat Anthropic. The company has begun informal talks with Wall Street banks and hired key finance leadership. Executives privately worry Anthropic—founded by ex-OpenAI leaders—could go public first. At a $500B valuation, it would be one of the largest IPOs ever. Read more

We got more signal waiting for you inside Goodfin.
Sign in to the platform and never miss a beat.

SpaceX has acquired xAI in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion—creating the world's most valuable private company. For Goodfin members who invested in SpaceX, xAI and previously in X, this is significant. The merger reshapes the upcoming IPO, giving shareholders exposure to both a dominant space company and a frontier AI model developer.

We're tracking details and will share updates as the structure and implications become clearer. Big news to everyone who had conviction early.

Vote and you're automatically entered to win exclusive Goodfin merch. We'll randomly select voters and send you something special.

Until next time,

Sharath Kuruganty
Founding Community Lead
Goodfin

P.S. – Have feedback on Goodfin Wire? Hit reply. I read everything.

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