Amir Rustamzadeh, partner at Firestreak Ventures, sits down with Victoria Melnikova to talk about how to spot a force-of-nature founder before anyone else does, why most developer tool ideas are no longer venture scale, and what the current state of VC really looks like for early-stage founders. He also shares his journey from interning on NASA's Curiosity Rover at Jet Propulsion Labs to sleeping in his car at SpaceX, to coining the developer experience role at Cypress, to becoming a hands-on investor backing companies like Lovable, Daytona, and Perplexity. Plus, Amir gives a rare, sober take on inflated seed valuations, why big-name firms at pre-seed can hurt more than help, and where he still sees opportunity in the race to build infrastructure for agents.

Victoria Melnikova is a business and go-to-market expert for developer tool ...