Mike Vernal

Who they are

Mike Vernal is General Partner at Conviction Partners — a Harvard CS double-degree who spent eight years at Facebook as VP of Search, Local, and Developer Products before leading Sequoia's seed bets on Notion, Rippling, Clay, and Statsig.

Person

Mike Vernal joined Conviction Partners in January 2025 when the firm closed its $230 million second fund and expanded from a solo GP to a full partnership. He arrived from Sequoia Capital, where as a General Partner on the seed team he led early investments in Notion, Rippling, Clay, and Statsig — a portfolio that reads like a shortlist of the defining B2B tools of the 2020s. Before Sequoia, he spent eight years at Facebook as VP of Product & Engineering and VP of Search, Local, and Developer Products, living through the company's hypergrowth from scrappy social network to global platform. He graduated from Harvard in 2002 with both an AB magna cum laude and an SM in Computer Science. He writes on Medium at medium.com/@mvernal — his best-known piece is 'The Market Curve,' a framework for market sizing that's been discussed on Lenny Rachitsky's The Takeoff podcast. His public appearances — 20VC, TechCrunch Early Stage, Software Engineering Daily, and a 2025 AI Fireside Chat at Conviction — cluster around the same themes: product-market fit feedback loops, iteration tempo, and what makes AI-native companies durable.

Company

Conviction Partners is currently raising its third flagship fund as of 2026, continuing its focus on AI-native software investments. The firm added Mike Vernal as GP in January 2025 alongside the close of its $230 million second fund — more than doubling its initial $101 million debut fund. Most recently, in March 2026, Conviction participated in Harvey AI's $200 million funding round, which valued the legal AI company at $11 billion. The firm operates with a team of eight and positions itself as a pre-seed-to-Series-A investor, writing initial checks that scale up to $10 million, with a stated emphasis on Software 3.0 and AI-native startups. Portfolio landmarks include Mistral AI at a $6 billion valuation and Harvey at a $3 billion valuation as of late 2024.

Market

Conviction competes in a crowded early-stage AI investment market where firms like Insight Partners also write checks into applied AI companies. Rising AI valuations, a wave of enterprise digital transformation, and increasing M&A activity have sharpened competition for the best pre-seed and seed deals. Geopolitical dynamics are also redirecting venture dollars toward defense-tech and space, adding a new dimension to how AI-focused funds like Conviction prioritize their theses.

Network

Vernal's most immediate working relationships are within Conviction Partners itself — he operates alongside GP Sarah Guo, Pranav Reddy, and Bella Garcia-Camargo. He has an active board and observer relationship with Statsig, and collaborated with Christy Hogue on Conviction's seed investment in Corridor. His portfolio network extends to the founders of Notion, Rippling, Clay, Statsig, and Harvey.

Sarah Guo· Co-GP, Conviction Partners
Pranav Reddy· Partner, Conviction Partners
Bella Garcia-Camargo· Partner, Conviction Partners
Christy Hogue· Collaborator on Corridor seed investment, Conviction

How they likely show up

Eight years at Facebook through hypergrowth, then a long run on Sequoia's seed team → likely thinks in platform cycles and product inflection points, not short-term metrics.
Public writing centers on frameworks like 'The Market Curve' → brings structured mental models to investment decisions; probably gravitates toward first-principles reasoning over pattern-matching alone.
Repeat speaker at TechCrunch Early Stage on feedback loops and iteration tempo → operationally focused for a VC; will likely probe founders on how they learn, not just what they're building.
Portfolio of Notion, Rippling, Clay, Statsig — all B2B infrastructure or workflow tools → has a clear thesis bias toward compounding data or workflow advantages, not just growth stories.
Possibly — active LinkedIn posts on Statsig and Akita suggest he stays close to portfolio operationally, not just at board meetings.
Joined Conviction when it was already mid-stride (second fund, established GP in Sarah Guo) → comfortable stepping into a built culture rather than needing to own the founding narrative.

Conversation tips

→ Reference 'The Market Curve' specifically — it's his own framework, and engaging with it shows you've done more than skim a bio.
→ Ask about the Sequoia-to-Conviction move: going from a large established fund to a small focused one is a deliberate choice, and he'll have thought through what each model optimizes for.
→ Bring a specific AI-native company or thesis question — his 2025 Fireside Chat and Medium writing show he's thinking hard about what Software 3.0 actually means in practice.
→ Don't be vague about market size — his 'Market Curve' framework is explicitly about how to think about market sizing correctly, so he'll push back on hand-wavy TAM claims.
→ Mention Statsig if relevant — he's stayed actively involved there from founding to scale, and it's clearly a relationship he's proud of.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on 'The Market Curve' — he authored the framework, discussed it on Lenny Rachitsky's The Takeoff podcast, and it's the clearest window into how he sizes up investment opportunities.
Lead with the Harvey AI deal from March 2026 — Conviction's participation in a $200 million round at an $11 billion valuation is the most recent public signal of where he's putting conviction behind legal AI.
Mention Statsig's journey — he led the early Sequoia investment and has publicly tracked the team's growth from founding to scale; it's a through-line that connects his Sequoia years to his current portfolio thinking.

Discovery questions

You wrote 'The Market Curve' as a framework for thinking about market sizing — how has that model held up as AI has compressed the time it takes a startup to reach scale?
You moved from Sequoia's seed team to Conviction, which runs a much smaller, more focused fund — what does a smaller fund let you do for founders that a larger platform can't?
Your seed bets on Notion, Rippling, and Clay all compounded into category-defining tools — looking back, what signal at seed stage was most predictive that those would become infrastructure, not features?

Avoid

Don't pitch a company with a vague market-size story — his publicly stated framework is specifically about how founders and investors mis-size markets, and he'll probe hard on it.

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