@MarathonMP
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Marathon is an investment firm that partners with obsessed founders in technology. @gokulr @mbgilroy @alexgorgoni @ChaseAPackard @GraceGEverett
NY | Menlo Park | LA
Joined December 2024
- Tweets122
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- Followers2.5K
- Likes340
Marathon retweeted
All the focus on top line growth ignores burn / efficiency.
There are actually two paths, one is super fast growing but highly inefficient / high burn. The other is fast growing but efficient.
If you're in a large market and have grown revenues from 5 to 15M this year, or 3M => 12M, burning sub-5M (burn ratio of 0.5) and you can't raise, please message me.
We at @MarathonMP absolutely love companies that compound efficiently for years.
i'm sad to announce that our recent fundraising round did not go according to plan...
we initially planned to raise $18m.
we didn't end up getting that number.
we ended up raising a $40m series a instead.
co-led by @MarathonMP and @chemistry, with participation from @Wing_VC, @AMD Ventures, @outsetcap, @fiftyyears, and @ycombinator, and our existing investors doubling down on @wafer_ai. we are also joined by an incredible list of angels, including @JeffDean (CEO, @DiscoLoopAI), @rauchg (CEO, @vercel), @andyfang (CTO, @DoorDash), @kvogt (CEO, Bot), @akothari (COO, @NotionHQ), @eastdakota (CEO, @Cloudflare), @deepgramscott (CEO, @DeepgramAI), and more.
back to the kernel mines
Marathon retweeted
Great list. We @MarathonMP have a strong and value-added presence in NYC thanks to my partners @AlexGorgoni and @ChaseAPackard, who I believe are two of the best and most thoughtful investors in tech today.
In Marathon fund 1, 50% of portfolio companies are HQed in NYC.
We also have a great space for founders to work out of. Two of our companies were incubated in the space.
25 VCs I'd recommend if you're trying to fundraise in NYC:
- @htaneja | @GeneralCatalyst
- @djparekh | @insightpartners
- @joshk | @firstround
- @johnelton | @greycroftvc
- @joevc | @LererHippeau
- @porteous | @rre
- @OrbiMed
- @nkatragadda | @boxgroup
- @thione | @gaingelsvc
- @HenryLMcNamara | @GreatOaksVC
- @generalatlantic
- @wolfejosh | @Lux_Capital
- @albertwenger | @usv
- @sbarsh | @dreamit
- @john_frankel | @ffvc
- @stevenkrein | @StartUpHealth
- @mattturck | @firstmarkcap
- @JoshuaKushner | @ThriveCapital
- @cshapiro | @collabfund
- @Borthwick | @betaworks
- @robgo | @NextViewVC
- @startupman | @compoundvc
- @ryanfeit | @seedinvest
- @villi | @Category_VC
- @jefielding | @EverywhereVC
Marathon retweeted
Thank you Ramesh for your friendship and partnership over the years. Excited to see the @MarathonMP hat in the wild, and hope to see it become an essential piece of tech swag that every entrepreneur and leader proudly sports to showcase their commitment to the marathon of company building!
@gokulr handed me this Marathon Cap. Fitting gift: building anything worthwhile is a marathon, not a sprint: endurance over intensity, distance over pace. Wearing it as a reminder. Thank you, Gokul.
Guess we're both fans of making borders matter a little less @Revolut.
Global money 🤝 Global payroll.
Over to you, @NStoronsky 👀
h/t, @ChaseAPackard 🫡
Marathon retweeted
Great collab between @MarathonMP and our friends at @GVteam on the consumer AI builder dinner.
Most participants want to do it again, which is a good signal :)
Good people, smart ideas, and plenty to talk about.
Loved seeing GV General Partner Sangeen Zeb and @gokulr of Marathon Management Partners bring consumer AI builders together!
Marathon retweeted
SWAG
At @MarathonMP, our swag game is focused on our hats. While we have great branded shirts, backpacks, etc, it’s the hats that founders, LPs and others love (and love to wear). A founder’s termsheet closing condition was that they get one hat in every color :)
The hat simply reads “Marathon”. The word is incredibly malleable and everyone can affix their own meaning to it (for example, the Nike logo on the side, coupled with Marathon, can lead the observer to the conclusion that the wearer is a runner, and in fact that’s the most common “stop in the street” reaction our hats get :))
Of course, the reason we chose Marathon as our name is that it epitomizes the endurance and grit needed to build legendary companies. And we are here as the founder’s supporter and helper through the company building marathon.
But there’s no reason to not have fun along the way, and swag is a great way to showcase the philosophy.
They also come in 6 different colors (more coming soon!) so you can build your own collection, one for each day of the week.
We hope to get one to you when we meet you in person!
Marathon retweeted
My @MarathonMP partner-in-crime @MBGilroy does a fantastic job outlining our philosophy in this interview. The work across talent, partnerships, GTM, etc. starts before we invest, so founders see firsthand what they’ll get with Marathon as a partner.
Very fortunate to learn from Michael every day (going on 6 years now!), alongside my other talented partners @gokulr @AlexGorgoni.
The Marathon Continues!
Every VC in the market is now reading the same customer call transcripts. That is not an edge. That is a commodity.
The moment diligence becomes something you read instead of something you do in person, it stops being diligence.
@MBGilroy , co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, which runs $400 million across software and fintech.
"If all my competitors are reading the same transcript, who cares? What am I going to learn from that that's differentiated from the market?" he told me. "You will know if I'm lying, if my eyes are darting around the room, the classic touching your nose."
AI gave every investor the same call notes. It did not give anyone an edge, because an edge that everyone has is not an edge. The firms still doing customer back channels, still getting on Zoom, still watching a founder's eyes when they answer a hard question, are the ones who will actually know something the market does not.
The humans who stayed in the room are about to get paid for it.
Marathon retweeted
Imagine a founder who feels zero loyalty, zero reciprocity, a true psychopath. Even that founder would still give you the allocation nine times out of ten.
That is how predictable value creation actually is. It has nothing to do with being liked.
@MBGilroy co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, on why the best founders reward the investors who showed up before there was anything to invest in.
"A non-psychopath is gonna say yes ten out of ten times," he told me. "Very few people do it. We call it the anti Ozempic way of life. It's just good old fashioned hard work and discipline getting you in the room and keeping you in the room and winning that business."
Platforms sell founders a dream of endless mindshare and access. What actually wins allocation is boring: showing up for the pre-portfolio work, months before there is a round, with no guarantee you get in. The best predictor of future value add is value already added. Everything else is a pitch.
Discipline is not glamorous. It is just the only thing that compounds.
Marathon retweeted
70% gross margin. 10% gross margin. Same sector, same growth rate, completely different business.
Most investors still value companies off a revenue multiple. That habit quietly breaks the moment you leave classic SaaS.
@MBGilroy , co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, $400 million across software and fintech.
"In fintech, we only use gross profit multiples, because I can be looking at a business that's 70% gross profit or 10%," he told me. "It doesn't mean the 10% gross profit business is any worse, but it does mean they're different. So taking a revenue multiple there makes zero sense."
Revenue multiples work when gross margin is roughly constant across a sector, the whole premise behind classic SaaS comps. Fintech blew that assumption up years ago, with margins ranging from negative to 80% depending on the model. Gilroy now applies the same lens to AI software, where the spread is just as wide and most people are still pricing it off top line revenue.
The multiple you are using might be pricing the wrong company entirely.
Marathon retweeted
The biggest mistake in venture is not missing the winner. It is backing the company that finishes second.
You can be right about the trend and right about the market size and still lose, because you underwrote the wrong logo.
@MBGilroy , co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, told me this is the single most expensive error he sees.
"The biggest mistake you can make in our business is backing the number two, three or four business in any given market that ends up working," he said. "Not only do you lose money, but it's the opportunity cost of putting a lot more money into a business that's gonna make money for ourselves and for our investors."
Everyone underwrites the trend. Almost nobody admits that picking the category winner is a separate skill, and getting the first part right does nothing to protect you from getting the second part wrong. Capital behind the number three player is capital that will never touch the company that actually returns the fund.
Being early and being right are not the same thing.
Marathon retweeted
My partner @MBGilroy's interview perfectly captures our philosophy at @MarathonMP.
One of our core tenets is to prove to founders BEFORE we invest that we will be one of your best SDRs (i.e. help connect you with potential customers) and also one of your best recruiters (i.e. help connect you with potential talent).
"Every VC says they'll help founders."
Almost none are willing to structure their entire firm around proving it.
@MBGilroy , Founding Partner of @MarathonMP and former GP at Coatue, built Marathon around one simple idea:
"We're not reactive to trends... By saying no, we can pour time into these founders."
He calls it "pre-portfolio."
Before investing, his team works with founders as if they're already on the board. Customer introductions. Product feedback. Hiring. Real work.
The logic is simple.
If you only start adding value after wiring the money, you're already too late.
The best founders don't choose investors based on promises.
They choose them based on demonstrated behavior.
That philosophy also explains why Marathon only invests in a handful of companies each year. Focus isn't a branding exercise. It's the product.
Anyone can say they're founder-first.
Very few are willing to build a business that makes it impossible to be anything else.
Thank you @jrichlive for the kind introductions!
We’d like to thank @AlphaSenseInc for sponsoring this episode!
Full episode below 👇
youtube.com/watch?v=InuUGU31…
Marathon retweeted
Watch full episode: youtu.be/InuUGU31kkw
Marathon retweeted
Every VC in the market is now reading the same customer call transcripts. That is not an edge. That is a commodity.
The moment diligence becomes something you read instead of something you do in person, it stops being diligence.
@MBGilroy , co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, which runs $400 million across software and fintech.
"If all my competitors are reading the same transcript, who cares? What am I going to learn from that that's differentiated from the market?" he told me. "You will know if I'm lying, if my eyes are darting around the room, the classic touching your nose."
AI gave every investor the same call notes. It did not give anyone an edge, because an edge that everyone has is not an edge. The firms still doing customer back channels, still getting on Zoom, still watching a founder's eyes when they answer a hard question, are the ones who will actually know something the market does not.
The humans who stayed in the room are about to get paid for it.
Marathon retweeted
Commodity diligence = commodity outcomes
Every VC in the market is now reading the same customer call transcripts. That is not an edge. That is a commodity.
The moment diligence becomes something you read instead of something you do in person, it stops being diligence.
@MBGilroy , co-founder of Marathon Management Partners, which runs $400 million across software and fintech.
"If all my competitors are reading the same transcript, who cares? What am I going to learn from that that's differentiated from the market?" he told me. "You will know if I'm lying, if my eyes are darting around the room, the classic touching your nose."
AI gave every investor the same call notes. It did not give anyone an edge, because an edge that everyone has is not an edge. The firms still doing customer back channels, still getting on Zoom, still watching a founder's eyes when they answer a hard question, are the ones who will actually know something the market does not.
The humans who stayed in the room are about to get paid for it.
Marathon retweeted
Stripe / PayPal...
Deal: Stripe + Advent buying PayPal for $53.4B, or 28% premium to yday closing price. The two buyers would own equal stakes in the business and "PayPal hasn’t responded to the offer" which we keep reading...
Marathon retweeted
The biggest AI lab in the world just built a campaign around one question: can AI be trusted?
We've been asking our version for a while now. In June, we ran a campaign called "In AI We Trust". We asked strangers on the internet, what's the wildest thing you'd trust AI with?
At inaiwetrust.co, it's a live wall of answers. People voted. The best take won $1,000. The responses range from brilliant to gloriously unhinged, and every single one tells us something about where AI is headed.
What was different about our campaign versus the gloomy outlook in the Claude ad: when you ask people about trusting AI with joy instead of dread, they show you the future. They imagine AI planning their weddings, negotiating their rent, raising their sourdough starters. And running their payroll, which happens to be the wildest one of all, because it's the one where trust has to be real.
That spirit of playful, serious ambition is exactly why we built @NiuralAILabs. Trust is the most important currency in AI; we love that the whole industry is finally asking the right questions.
Marathon retweeted
TWO TOP 15 APPS
If growing one product into top product is hard, growing two is 10x as hard.
Kudos to the @cloudwalk team on having TWO products in the top 15 finance apps in Brazil. Besides mainstay @infinitepay (merchant facing), their consumer product Pierre just cracked the top 15.
It’s incredibly rare for a company to have the DNA to build both an amazing merchant product and an amazing consumer product, but that’s the kind of rare company that CloudWalk is.
Excited to be an investor and supporter in this generational company.
Marathon retweeted
Welcoming the newest member of the @MarathonMP family @straikerai !! The Marathon Continues!
LEADING STRAIKER'S SERIES A
I'm incredibly excited for @MarathonMP to lead @straikerai’s $64M Series A and to join the board. My partner @AlexGorgoni and I will work with our friends at Citi Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), and Lightspeed to help co-founders Ankur Shah and Sreenath Kurupati build a generational company.
AI agents are the fastest-growing workforce in enterprise history. IDC expects more than 1 billion AI agents deployed across enterprises by 2029, 40x the number in 2025. No workforce in enterprise history has scaled this fast. Every CISO I've spoken with is staring at the same situation: business teams are deploying agents into production faster than security teams can even inventory them. SaaS-era security tools weren't built for software that reasons and acts on its own.
Straiker is purpose-built for the agentic era: discovery of every agent across the enterprise, pre-deployment adversarial testing through STAR Labs, and runtime protection that catches threats as they happen. The product capabilities compound through threats caught in production feeding back into pre-deployment testing., and vulnerabilities found in testing feeding back into runtime defenses. Importantly, Straiker's partnerships with frontier AI labs put new attack patterns into the detection engine before they reach a customer.
The combination of Unstoppable trend and Exceptional product is leading to incredible customer pull. The more enterprise security buyers and frontier AI labs we spoke with, the more excited we got as we heard how differentiated and powerful the Straiker platform is. The proof is in the numbers. Run-rate revenue has grown 15x+ in less than a year.
Ankur Shah and Sreenath Kurupati are a rare founder pair. Either one alone would have been sufficient reason to invest. Together, they're the perfect team to redefine agentic security. Ankur scaled Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Cloud as SVP and GM into one of the largest cloud security franchises in the world. He is one of the best product and business leaders I've ever met: equal parts product instinct, customer obsession, and operating discipline. Sreenath founded Cyberfend, a fraud detection company acquired by Akamai, and then led AI and security research there. I've known him since our undergrad days together, and is one of the best technical and product minds I've ever worked with (I was also an advisor to Cyberfend :)).
We are honored to work with Ankur, Sreenath, and the Straiker team to build the company that defines how the agentic workforce gets secured.