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Jeff Morris
Managing Partner at Chapter One
Jeff Morris Jr. is the Founder and Managing Partner of Chapter One, an early-stage venture fund focused on helping companies find product-market fit.4 He has a notable background in the tech industry, with experience as both an operator and investor.
Career Highlights
Operational Experience::
- Jeff previously served as the VP of Product, Revenue at Tinder from August 2015 to October 2019.2 During his tenure, Tinder became the #1 top-grossing app in the App Store and one of the top-grossing products in mobile history.1
- Prior to Tinder, he held roles such as Growth Lead at Zaarly, Inc. and worked in Media & Technology at FTI Consulting.2
Venture Capital::
- Founded Chapter One in February 2017, where he currently serves as Managing Partner.2
- Active angel investor with investments in companies like Lyft, Roam, and Superhuman.3
Expertise and Recognition
Jeff is known for his product leadership skills and is often considered "the" product person to have on a startup's cap table.3 He has been a frequent speaker and guest lecturer at various events and institutions, including Dreamforce, USC, UCLA, and Google Monetization Days in multiple countries.2
Current Focus
At Chapter One, Jeff and his team focus on early-stage investments, particularly in the web3 space.1 They aim to support founders in finding product-market fit and offer expertise drawn from their experiences as former product leaders at recognizable startups.45
Jeff also maintains an active online presence, sharing insights through his Twitter account (@jmj) and writing on "The New Internet" via his Substack newsletter.6
Highlights
Vibe Investing Is the New Vibe Coding
The institutional memory of what happened in 2020–2022 is basically gone. It’s wild how quickly we as an industry forgot.
I have a theory that our brains now process trauma & even financial bubbles in smaller and smaller increments. We’re living through the compression of emotional memory. Our tech industry systems take in stimuli that are too frequent, too loud, and too fast, so nothing sticks.
I dug into my theory more (which you’ve likely felt intuitively but maybe haven’t articulated) and it turns out there’s actually a concept called “emotional amnesia" which is a feeling numb or disconnected about what is happening around you.
I won’t bore you with the academic details, but my takeaway as applied to venture capital is that the half-life on lessons learned (and in most businesses) is collapsing at the same pace you scroll a TikTok feed. We breeze past a $3B seed round at a $30B valuation like it’s a TMZ clip.
As a first-time manager who launched a fund in 2019, the 2020–2022 bubble left a permanent imprint on me. I’ll never forget what that period felt like.
The velocity, FOMO & the total detachment from fundamentals was intoxicating for everyone. Your seed check jumps from a $10M post to a $150M post in 30 days. Congrats… I guess? Because now you have to decide whether to follow on. And it’s a tier-one lead. What do you do?
That environment pushed every firm, including the great ones, into some objectively terrible decisions.
And when I look at venture today, the industry barely resembles what it was even six years ago. We used to joke about “vibe investing” as the exception. The charismatic founder with cult-leader energy, the weird but magnetic pitch, the occasional “let’s take a flyer and see what happens.” Now it’s the norm.
Aura and an AI narrative = 10 term sheets.
There are insanely talented, credible operators building world-changing companies. But a $50B valuation for a pre-product seed round? Is that even venture capital? Call it whatever you want (and honestly we probably need a new category name) because it’s a completely different industry at this point.
The biggest takeaway is that at almost every stage from seed, growth, crossover, even public markets, we’re operating on vibes. Maybe I’m slowly becoming a boomer for even saying this.
But it's narrative over numbers, momentum over diligence, social proof over actual proof.
Critics dunk on “vibe coding” as a Gen Z builder phenomenon that creates technical slop, but venture capital has built its own version: vibe investing.
Drop a pitch deck into ChatGPT, run a Deep Research query, and boom “I don’t even need analysts anymore!” You skim the output in five minutes between pitch calls and try to stitch together a market thesis. Meanwhile the founder is a fundraising machine and every other firm is running the exact same Deep Research report you are.
You better move fast.
So you hop into Granola, grab one smart-sounding insight from your call, and paste it into Slack like you discovered fire. Your partners light up. Then you mention the founder already has multiple term sheets and suddenly everyone’s ready to clear their calendars.
We won’t know what turns into investment slop for a few years, but vibe-driven deals are definitely going to push that percentage way up.
Maybe that’s fine & maybe this time really is different, and the outliers will paper over all the vibe-investing slop. But if you’re an emerging manager or running a concentrated portfolio, that’s a dangerous way to live. You don’t get to spray-and-pray your way out of vibes.
Right now the vibes are insanely strong. It’s exciting. I feel just as fired up as everyone else and that energy is exactly why venture and technology keep marching forward.
But if I had one message today it would be this.
GOOD LUCK AVOIDING THE SLOP.
Vibe Investing Is the New Vibe Coding
The institutional memory of what happened in 2020–2022 is basically gone. It’s wild how quickly we as an industry forgot.
I have a theory that our brains now process trauma & even financial bubbles in smaller and smaller increments. We’re living through the compression of emotional memory. Our tech industry systems take in stimuli that are too frequent, too loud, and too fast, so nothing sticks.
I dug into my theory more (which you’ve likely felt intuitively but maybe haven’t articulated) and it turns out there’s actually a concept called “emotional amnesia" which is a feeling numb or disconnected about what is happening around you.
I won’t bore you with the academic details, but my takeaway as applied to venture capital is that the half-life on lessons learned (and in most businesses) is collapsing at the same pace you scroll a TikTok feed. We breeze past a $3B seed round at a $30B valuation like it’s a TMZ clip.
As a first-time manager who launched a fund in 2019, the 2020–2022 bubble left a permanent imprint on me. I’ll never forget what that period felt like.
The velocity, the FOMO & the total detachment from fundamentals was intoxicating for everyone. Your seed check jumps from a $10M post to a $150M post in 30 days. Congrats… I guess? Because now you have to decide whether to follow on. And it’s a tier-one lead. What do you do?
That environment pushed every firm, including the great ones, into some objectively terrible decisions.
And when I look at venture today, the industry barely resembles what it was even six years ago. We used to joke about “vibe investing” as the exception. The charismatic founder with cult-leader energy, the weird but magnetic pitch, the occasional “let’s take a flyer and see what happens.” Now it’s the norm.
Aura and an AI narrative = 10 term sheets.
There are insanely talented, credible operators building world-changing companies. But a $50B valuation for a pre-product seed round? Is that even venture capital? Call it whatever you want (and honestly we probably need a new category name) because it’s a completely different industry at this point.
The biggest takeaway is that at almost every stage from seed, growth, crossover, even public markets, we’re operating on vibes. Maybe I’m slowly becoming a boomer for even saying this.
But it's narrative over numbers, momentum over diligence, social proof over actual proof.
Critics dunk on “vibe coding” as a Gen Z builder phenomenon that creates technical slop, but venture capital has built its own version: vibe investing.
Drop a pitch deck into ChatGPT, run a Deep Research query, and boom “I don’t even need analysts anymore!” You skim the output in five minutes between pitch calls and try to stitch together a market thesis. Meanwhile the founder is a fundraising machine and every other firm is running the exact same Deep Research report you are.
You better move fast.
So you hop into Granola, grab one smart-sounding insight from your call, and paste it into Slack like you discovered fire. Your partners light up. Then you mention the founder already has multiple term sheets and suddenly everyone’s ready to clear their calendars.
We won’t know what turns into investment slop for a few years, but vibe-driven deals are definitely going to push that percentage way up.
Maybe that’s fine & maybe this time really is different, and the outliers will paper over all the vibe-investing slop. But if you’re an emerging manager or running a concentrated portfolio, that’s a dangerous way to live. You don’t get to spray-and-pray your way out of vibes.
Right now the vibes are insanely strong. It’s exciting. I feel just as fired up as everyone else and that energy is exactly why venture and technology keep marching forward.
But if I had one message today it would be this.
GOOD LUCK AVOIDING THE SLOP.
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