Team
Four analysts and one machine.
The desk is deliberately small. Seven streams is the most a group this size can hold to a signal list without the coverage becoming a summary service.
Mathew Rauch
Head of research
Artificial intelligence · Frontier software
LinkedIn ↗Fifteen years between infrastructure engineering and growth investing. Runs the cost-per-completed-task teardown that anchors the AI stream and edits every note before it ships.
A. Kovac
Analyst, markets & rails
Crypto & onchain finance
Former payments operator. Built the corridor-level model the desk uses to separate genuine payment volume from collateral rotation.
T. Nakamura
Analyst, hardware & operations
Robotics & embodiment · Energy & compute
Spent six years on factory floors before moving to research. Maintains the payback-period database and the interconnect queue tracker.
S. Bello
Analyst, evidence & procurement
Bio & health systems · Defense & resilience
Clinical operations background. Decomposes trial budgets and tracks prototype-to-programme conversion rates rather than contract announcements.
Desk analysts publish under the VC18z Research byline. Individual names are listed here for accountability, not for pitch meetings.
The machine
What the desk does not do by hand.
The research agent
An always-on analyst that pulls timestamped sources before it answers, leads with the thesis, and attaches the bear case. It drafts; the desk decides.
The signal lists
Four observable signals per stream, fixed in advance. The agent watches them; a human writes the revision when one moves.
The case files
Every note is backed by named situations we have followed end to end, with what we got wrong recorded alongside what we got right.