Readout Capital

All investment decisions are made by the two managing partners, Jordan Jacobs and David Wu. The firm does not employ associates or junior investors, keeping the decision-making concentrated with the individuals who built the thesis. Wu's background is in Stanford's AI Lab, while Jacobs brings operational experience from an ML startup acquisition.

Readout sources deals inside research labs before founders incorporate. The partners maintain direct relationships with principal investigators, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral researchers at Stanford, MIT, and adjacent institutions, identifying teams with defensible scientific IP that has not yet been packaged for venture investment.

Readout writes initial checks of $500,000 to $2 million into pre-seed and seed-stage companies. The firm typically invests before institutional capital has entered the round, often serving as the first or second institutional check alongside angels and university-affiliated funds.

Readout has not publicly disclosed a sector exclusion list, but its investment activity clusters tightly around applied AI, enterprise software, digital health, and fintech. The firm has not made known investments in hardware, consumer internet, climate tech, or capital-intensive industrial businesses, which fall outside its software-plus-science mandate.

Readout currently operates as a single-fund structure without disclosed feeder vehicles, co-investment funds, or philanthropic sidecars. The firm's small partnership size and concentrated portfolio strategy suggest it runs one primary vehicle at a time, though fund documentation is not publicly available.

Readout concentrates on fewer than 15 positions per fund and maintains board-level engagement through the scientific validation phase, which implies active follow-on reserve planning. However, the firm has not publicly disclosed its formal reserve ratio or follow-on participation policy in subsequent priced rounds.

Readout competes for pre-seed AI allocations against larger multi-stage firms but differentiates on timing: the firm engages founders before company formation, often assisting with incorporation and initial IP structuring. This places Readout earlier on the assembly line than most institutional venture firms, which typically meet companies after a C-corp exists and a deck circulates.