Inside the First Quant-Driven VC Fund | Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Chamaeleon
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 121 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nuno Goncalves Pedro is the Founder and Managing Partner at Chamaeleon. He won't describe it this way, but I'd call Chamaeleon something like "The RenTech of VC."
Chamaeleon is built around its proprietary data platform, Mantis, which borrows tools like factor analysis from public-market investors and operates more like a quant hedge fund than a traditional venture firm.
We talk through a bunch of data that cuts against the common narrative in venture, including why repeat founders aren't always the safer bet, why sub-$100m funds catch the majority of fund-returning deals, and why 10x might be a better target than 100x.
Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode.
Timestamps:
(1:00) When 1st time founders outperform serial entrepreneurs
(8:05) Mantis: factor-driven quant model for VC
(18:33) Why most VC’s are not data-driven
(22:28) Top 1% VC fund performance
(27:41) Early customer sentiment stronger success indicator than PMF or Team
(34:09) Importance of co-investors on performance
(39:42) Sub-$100M funds capture 70% of fund-returning deals each year
(43:53) The Neolab AI bubble
(52:16) Marketing games that VC’s play
(55:22) Most investors are not high conviction
(56:43) Startups not raising for at least 3 years are 5x less likely to succeed. 10x less likely at 5 years.
(1:00:19) Emerging managers have lowest LP interest in the last 15 years
(1:11:19) LP capital is much less concentrated than in 2011
(1:16:28) The importance of remaining relevant
(1:21:01) You must lean into your unique edge as an investor
(1:23:18) Pros/Cons of an alumni network venture strategy
(1:28:29) Specialist funds outperform generalists (with a catch)
(1:35:22) The data says go for 10x, not 100x returns
(1:41:41) Should you start or join a VC firm today?
(1:48:07) Nuno’s collection of 270+ phones
(1:53:16) Racing cars (and winning championships)
Referenced
Chamaeleon: https://www.chamaeleon.vc/
Tech Deciphered Podcast https://decipheredshow.com/
Say It With Charts: https://www.amazon.com/Say-Charts-Executives-Visual-Communication/dp/007136997X
How To Lie With Charts: https://www.amazon.com/How-Charts-Gerald-Everett-Jones/dp/1419651439
Redmagic Phone: https://redmagic.gg/
ASUS Rog phone: https://rog.asus.com/phones/rog-phone-model/
Follow Nuno
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngpedro/
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nunu, welcome to the show. |
| 0:03.8 | Well, thank you for having you, Turner. |
| 0:05.3 | Yeah, this is going to be really interesting. |
| 0:07.3 | So we kind of prepped a bunch of different sort of interesting, non-intuitive data that |
| 0:14.6 | you've kind of found in years of venture that go against the general narrative of, you know, here's X, here's |
| 0:22.3 | Y, here's a rule everyone follows. One of the ones I thought was really interesting that you found |
| 0:27.0 | was being an employee at a successful startup actually led to higher probabilities of a strong |
| 0:35.0 | venture startup outcome than previously being a serial founder. |
| 0:39.3 | Yeah, I mean, as background, we're an early stage venture capital firm, and obviously we're a little bit of a different animal in the sense that we've developed our own proprietary AI and quant, |
| 0:49.3 | quant from quantitative, just to be clear, like hedge funds, platform called Mantis. |
| 0:53.3 | And so there's a lot of insights that we have that come really from our own data and our own analysis, |
| 0:57.0 | in our own algorithms. |
| 0:59.0 | And I think there's been this sort of believed doctrine by a lot of VC firms, in particular |
| 1:05.0 | those that invest in B2B, more than the consumer side, which is a serial entrepreneur with |
| 1:10.0 | good to modest exits will |
| 1:11.3 | typically outperform a first-time entrepreneur in the B2B space, either physical or software. |
| 1:17.1 | And so we do back testing with our platform all the time. And one of the things that we were |
| 1:20.5 | doing back testing on was on talent, which is one of the factors that we do analyze. And the |
| 1:24.6 | conclusion that the engine came up with, right after we applied machine learning |
| 1:28.4 | to it and did the back testing was, well, not so fast. It depends on the first time founder. |
| 1:33.1 | And to your point, basically, if the first time founder was working for a highly successful |
| 1:38.4 | company and that person was an early employee there, not a founder, an early employee there, |
... |
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