The Crash Course: How Collide Capital is Building a Generational Firm to Back Founders Who Deserve It
What does it actually take to build a venture capital firm that lasts 20 years?
Brian and Aaron, co-founders of Collide Capital, sit down with Due Dilly to break down the unglamorous, strategic, and deeply intentional work behind building a generational VC firm — not just a fund. From cold-emailing the CIO of UC Regents (and sending a thousand emails nobody responded to) and building a nonprofit that has graduated 300+ Black undergrads into Goldman, Apple, and Spotify — this episode is about what it means to show up before you have capital, credentials, or proof.
In this episode, we get into:
- The proof-of-concept portfolio that made their first institutional raise possible
- Why Brian will pass on any founder he suspects is working on two things
- Aaron's framework for finding founders with trauma-rooted obsession — and why that predicts a decade of focus better than pedigree
- Collide's internal metric: iteration velocity — and what it tells them about a founder
- How they think about the AI era (hint: they've seen this movie before)
- The Collide Campus program — from undergrad scouts to a Stanford-backed accelerator
- Why endosymbiotic theory might be a better model for venture than survival of the fittest
Collide Capital backs founders at the collision of different backgrounds, ecosystems, and lived experiences. They manage 75+ portfolio companies and have been backed by some of the most respected allocators in the industry.
- 📧 Email us: podcast@duethedilly.com
- Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn
📺 Leave a comment on YouTube
The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only.
