Despite having little name recognition, Ali Partovi has long had a significant impact in Silicon Valley, where the same high-wattage names frequently make the news. They also joined forces to invest early in tech behemoths like Dropbox, Facebook, and Airbnb.

The Partovi brothers’ investment in a business has long been seen by industry insiders as a positive indication, but Ali’s fame is now spreading beyond the tech community. The reason for this broader exposure is Neo, his eight-year-old venture capital business, which has made a commitment to transform the way great talent is found and is producing some pretty compelling evidence.

The narrative is told in part through Neo’s connection with Michael Truell.

A fellow student recommended that Truell meet with Partovi in 2019 while he was interning at Google as a freshman at MIT. Partovi offered Truell a handwritten code test to complete in 15 minutes during their one-hour sit-down. It wasn’t an uncommon request for Partovi. He and his brother frequently put teams through a tech interview while investing, acting as though they were trying to land a position at Google. However, it best represents Partovi’s methodology at Neo, where he employs technical assessments as starting points for more in-depth discussions rather than as strict judgments.

Additionally, it marked the beginning of a potentially profitable partnership between Partovi and Truell. In fact, Truell co-founded Anysphere, the company behind the well-known artificial intelligence-based coding editor Cursor, years later with Partovi’s initial support. The company is currently valued at around $10 billion and could end up being one of Neo’s best investments.

Among its wagers, Neo was the first organization outside of Twitter to invest in Kalshi, an online estimated marketplace whose rise in popularity started during the U.S. presidential election last fall, and Bluesky, a decentralized social network that was reportedly valued at $700 million in the beginning of the year funding round.

Neo’s strategy reflects an elementary reassessment of venture financing, much like Y Combinator did before it. Instead of placing bets on particular topics or teams, Partovi concentrates on finding outstanding people, frequently while they are still in college, and developing their potential through mentoring before the incorporation of a business. Neo’s early funds are doing incredibly well, although Partovi is hesitant to talk about unrealized profits when pressed. Partovi stated that there is

“potential room for it to double or triple again”

and that the initial fund is already three to four times its value. According to him, the Anysphere investment alone has more than doubled the second amount.

Regarding a cold exit marketplace and how he helps founders deal with it, Partovi stated that he instead urges them to create long-lasting value.