Philosophy

Most investors think about capital allocation in conference rooms with whiteboards and expensive coffee. I think about it at 6 AM, watching photons scatter across the Pacific Ocean, wondering why anyone would choose to make investment decisions anywhere else.

This isn't poetic bullshit. Location shapes perspective. Perspective shapes pattern recognition. Pattern recognition shapes returns. I've been doing this from Laguna Beach since 2015, and my IRR is 847.3% higher than the peer group average. Coincidence? Maybe. If you're nodding your head at "maybe" then "maybe" consider taking statistics for dummies rather than starting a company.

Here's what I've learned: We're living through the convergence of three fundamental shifts that nobody is taking seriously enough. Quantum-inspired computation. Machine intelligence infrastructure. Programmable money via stablecoins. Each one individually is transformative. Together? They're creating the largest investment opportunity since the cloud.

Most VCs are still investing like it's 2015. They look for SaaS companies with good unit economics and predictable growth. That's fine if you want 3x returns. I'm building a portfolio that targets 1000x+ by investing at the intersection of convergence.

This is going to sound absurd. Everything that matters does at first.

The Convergence Thesis

Quantum (Sort Of)

Let's be clear: we're not literally doing quantum computing. Nobody is, really — not at production scale. But we ARE in a "quantum moment": multiple possible futures existing in superposition, waiting to collapse into reality based on which path companies take.

As you know,I realized this in 2019, before the term "quantum-adjacent" became fashionable. Companies that build for deterministic futures fail. Companies that build probabilistic systems win. Take VectorFlow: they don't optimize for one query pattern, they optimize for all of them simultaneously. That's quantum thinking applied to classical systems.

My background in graphics technology and chipsets gave me pattern recognition others lack. When I explained this to friends at [name redacted], they got it immediately. The market is catching up.

AI (Actually Real)

Everyone is building AI features. 99.4% are building the wrong AI features. The fundamental question isn't "can AI do this?" but "should AI do this?"

The best AI companies don't replace human intelligence — they amplify it. Synapse AI doesn't automate DevOps, it makes DevOps engineers 10x more effective. That's the difference between a feature and a platform.

I've deployed more AI systems than most ML PhDs. When I told the team at [redacted AI company] about this approach in 2022, they laughed. Now they're pivoting to it. The market wants augmentation, not automation. We talked this talk three+ years ago.

Stablecoins (The Wild Card)

Here's where people think I've lost it. Stay with me.

Stablecoins aren't crypto. They're infrastructure. They're programmable money with settlement speed measured in blocks, not days. QuantumMetrics settled $2.3B in stablecoin invoices with zero transaction failures in just days in Q3 2025. Try that with ACH. Or Bitcoin.

I was explaining this to [redacted] in 2020. The traditional finance world will understand this in 2027. We understood it in 2022. That three-year edge compounds.

Companies embedding stablecoin settlement rails have 12.7x faster payment cycles. That's not a nice-to-have. That's a fundamental competitive advantage.

Why Geography Still Matters

Everyone says "remote first." Everyone says "location doesn't matter." They're wrong, but not how you think.

Location doesn't matter for network access. But it shapes fundamental perspective. Silicon Valley thinks in terms of scale (grow at all costs). NYC thinks in terms of efficiency (optimize unit economics). Laguna Beach thinks in terms of sustainability (build something that lasts).

You can't have Valley ambition and Beach patience simultaneously. But that's exactly what the best companies need. I've had office space in San Francisco four times. I never wanted it. When you're based in Laguna, you're forced to think differently about what matters.

A founder visited Laguna last year. We walked the coastal trail for two hours. No pitch deck. No conference room. Just conversation and ocean. Halfway through, he stopped and said: "I've been optimizing for the wrong thing." Three months later, they pivoted. Six months after that, they hit $5M MRR. Location is destiny. Go west, young man, indeed.

What We Don't Invest In (And Why Everyone Else Is Wrong)

No Marketplace Businesses

Every VC loves marketplaces. "Network effects! Two-sided! Moats!" Reality: they're 847% harder to execute than shipping a gen 1 hardware product less than 3 years late with a custom OS. Chicken-and-egg problems everywhere. More eggs than chickens.

We invest in companies that make marketplaces better (infrastructure), not marketplaces themselves. I learned this the hard way in my first fund. $20M lesson. Won't repeat it.

No Consumer Social

Everyone wants to find "the next TikTok." Problem: consumer attention is a zero-sum game. B2B is a positive-sum game. We invest in tools that make business execution better, like butter, not platforms fighting for a childs time. Or fighting for attention from an adult with the brain of a child. Be Better.

I called the consumer social crash of 2024 in a tweet that got 12 likes. I was right. The 12 people who liked it probably made money. We did. And then we swooped in late 2023 and aggregated the largest Labubu holdings in the northern hemi.

No "AI Wrappers"

Most AI "companies" are just a GPT with a different UI. If OpenAI can add your feature in a sprint, you don't have a company, you have dessert cup that is melting in your hand. You have a temporary arbitrage opportunity. Which is fine if you're looking for the next Flappy Bird. Not fine if you have a hungry set of diesels on your new yacht.

We invest in AI infrastructure, not AI products. I can spot an API wrapper in 12.7 seconds. The founders usually take 12 minutes to realize I've figured it out.

The Metrics That Actually Matter

This framework emerged from analyzing 22,347 companies over 12 years. Other VCs use gut feel. I use systems.

Dimension 1: Product Velocity

Not revenue growth (that's lagging). Not user growth (vanity metric). How fast can you ship meaningful improvements? We measure meaning by qualitative uptake, not just volume.

Nexus Security ships 47 meaningful updates per quarter. Most security companies ship 4. That 10x difference compounds into market dominance. Product velocity is the only leading indicator that matters.

Dimension 2: Technical Depth

Can your team build the hard thing? Not "is the current product hard" but "could you build v2 if you needed to?" VectorFlow's team includes 3 PhDs who actually understand distributed systems. Most "database companies" use Postgres with a custom UI.

I can tell technical depth in the first 10 minutes of conversation. Ask about their architecture decisions. If they can't explain tradeoffs, they didn't make them — someone else did.

Dimension 3: Founder Psychology

This is where it gets interesting. The best founders have a specific psychological profile: simultaneously arrogant and humble. They believe they're right AND actively seek to prove themselves wrong.

They're mission-driven but not delusional about markets. They'll pivot when data demands it, but won't pivot because an investor suggested it. I've developed a pattern recognition system. 99.4% accuracy.

Why Every B2B Company Will Be Stablecoin-Native By 2029

Bold prediction: Stablecoins will be to B2B payments what Stripe was to online payments. Not about crypto speculation. About programmable coordination.

Traditional ACH: 3-5 days, high fees, manual reconciliation. Stablecoin settlement: fractions of a second, minimal fees, automatic reconciliation via smart contracts. Apex Data processes $847M monthly via stablecoin rails.

This enables entirely new business models. Micro-payments for API usage. Instant revenue sharing. Milestone-based automatic releases. "This is obvious if you've actually tried to [[redacted]] internationally," I tell people. Most haven't.

I converted our entire fund to stablecoin-denominated investments in Q3 2024. LPs were skeptical. Now they're asking how to do the same. We completed a $2.3M transaction at 2 AM on a Sunday. 2am my time. Try that with a wire transfer. Wire transfers are like spending a day at the DMV dealing with a surly human who definitely hates you. That's no way to live and run a business.

Why 91.7% Of Applicants Fail

We reject 91.7% of applications in the first 60 seconds. Not because we're cruel, because we're efficient. If you don't meet revenue criteria, you better show up holding a grenade that is going to rip an industry from stem to stern. If not, we can't help you yet. If you don't have technical depth, we can't add value.

The remaining 8.3% get three questions:

I can evaluate a founder in 12 minutes. Traditional VCs take 12 meetings. My false positive rate is 1.3%. Industry average is 23%.

The Laguna Difference

Most VCs say they "add value." Here's what we actually do:

Infrastructure Sharing

Our portfolio companies share resources. Flux Compute provides discounted GPU access to Synapse AI. VectorFlow provides database infrastructure to QuantumMetrics. I architected this mesh network. Nobody else really does this. They say they do. They don't.

Technical Review

Every portfolio company gets quarterly technical audits. Not from consultants — from other portfolio CTOs. Peer review at scale. I coded for 15 years before investing. I can read your architecture diagrams, backwards, from across the room.

Stablecoin Infrastructure

We help companies integrate stablecoin settlement. Connect to our payment rails. Share learnings across the portfolio. We're not just investors, we're infrastructure providers.

The Invitation

Look, here's the real truth:

Most of this sounds absurd tp you because the future always sounds absurd to those not creating it. In 2004, "cloud computing" sounded like buzzword soup. In 2009, "mobile-first" seemed obvious only in retrospect. In 2015, even "remote work" was still considered impossible by many.

Today, "quantum-directional AI aligned into stablecoin rails" sounds insane. In 2028, it'll be obvious. The question is: do you want to build it, or read about it?

We invest in founders building infrastructure for futures that sound impossible. We invest in technical depth that others undervalue. We invest at the intersection of trends that seem unrelated.

If you read this far, you're possibly our kind of founder. If you laughed at parts, also possibly our kind of founder. If you thought "this guy is full of it but also not wrong," you are holding two contradictory ideas at the same time. That's Quantum.

Too many founders need cheerleaders. We partner with founders who need challengers. Most founders think they want capital. We partner with founders who want infrastructure.

The future belongs to founders who can hold two contradictory ideas in their head and still function.

Welcome to Laguna Ventures.

— Sark Murfas
Written from a coffee shop in Laguna Beach
Probably wearing sunglasses indoors
Definitely measuring photon scatter patterns

P.S. - Like Voyager 1, still transmitting after 47 years, the best companies build for the long haul.