What Nightclub Door Policy Taught Me About Deal Flow
The best bouncers I ever met weren't big guys with no necks and bad attitudes. They were curators. Psychologists. Pattern recognition machines in leather jackets. And everything they knew about building the perfect room, I now use to build the perfect portfolio.
If you've spent any meaningful time in New York City nightlife, you know that the most powerful person in the ecosystem is not the club owner, not the DJ, and definitely not the celebrity in the corner booth nursing a bottle of Cristal someone else paid for. The most powerful person is the one standing at the door.
The doorman (or doorwoman, or door creature, depending on the era) holds the keys to everything. They decide who gets in, who waits, who gets turned away, and most importantly, they decide the chemistry of the room. And that chemistry? That's the whole product. Because a nightclub isn't a building. It's a feeling. And that feeling lives or dies at the velvet rope.
I spent the better part of a decade watching these people work while I was building JoonBug into a digital events powerhouse. I saw doormen like Wass Stevens at Marquee, who could read a crowd the way a poker player reads a table. I saw guys at Marquee who'd wave in a group of six women while holding back a group of ten guys in suits, not because the women were "better," but because the room needed balance. I saw promoters and gatekeepers who could glance at a hundred people in line and somehow know exactly which twelve would create the right energy on the dance floor.
And here's the thing: I do the exact same thing now. Except instead of a velvet rope, I have a deal pipeline. Instead of a guest list, I have a term sheet. And instead of reading outfits and body language, I'm reading pitch decks and cap tables.
The parallels between nightclub door policy and venture capital deal flow are so precise that it's almost absurd. So let me walk you through it.
The Door Is a Funnel, Not a Wall
The worst bouncers treated the door like a wall. Their job, in their minds, was to keep people out. Full stop. They stood there with their arms crossed and their faces blank and they said "no" to everybody unless they recognized a name.
The best bouncers? They treated the door like a funnel. Their job was to let the right people in, in the right order, at the right time. It was additive, not restrictive. They were constantly asking themselves: what does this room need right now? More energy? More women? More industry people? More bridge and tunnel kids who are going to drink like it's their last night on earth and spend $400 at the bar?
This is exactly how I think about deal flow.
When I'm looking at potential investments for Neman Ventures or for my family office, I'm not starting with "how do I say no to most of these." I'm starting with "what does my portfolio need right now?" Do I need more exposure to defense tech? Is my AI allocation getting top heavy? Am I missing something in longevity or quantum? What's the mix?
A great portfolio, like a great room, needs balance. Too many of the same type and you've got a boring party. Too scattered and you've got chaos. The art is in the curation.
Read the Room Before You Fill It
Here's something most people don't understand about nightclubs: the crowd IS the product. You're not selling drinks. You're not selling music. You're selling the experience of being in a room with a particular group of people. And that experience is engineered from the outside in, starting at the door.
I used to watch promoters obsess over getting celebrities into their clubs. And sure, a celebrity sighting was great for buzz. But you know what actually paid the bills? The 500 regular people who each spent $50 to $200 that night on tickets, drinks, and cover charges. The masses. The database. The people who nobody was writing about in Page Six but who showed up every single weekend.
This is the same mistake I see young VCs make constantly. They chase the hot deal. The unicorn. The company that every other fund is fighting to get into. And yeah, getting allocation in a breakout company is fantastic. But what builds a real portfolio, a durable one, is the disciplined selection of companies that may not be glamorous but are fundamentally strong. The B2B SaaS company doing $3 million in ARR with 130% net retention that nobody's talking about at a cocktail party? That's your $50 cover charge customer. That's the backbone of your returns.
At JoonBug, we controlled the masses. We had over a million subscribers in our database, all with demographic data: age, income, musical preferences, zip code. We could fill any room, any night, with exactly the right crowd for that event. Johnnie Walker wanted men 25 to 35 making six figures? Done. A fashion designer wanted women in their twenties who lived in Manhattan? Easy.
The club owners had the celebrities and the VIPs. But we had the crowd. And the crowd was where the real money lived.
In venture, the analogy holds perfectly. The splashy deals get the headlines. But the disciplined, data-driven allocation across a diversified portfolio of fundamentally strong companies? That's where the real returns compound.
The People You Say No To Define the Room
This one took me years to learn, both in nightlife and in investing.
A great doorman's reputation wasn't built on who they let in. It was built on who they turned away. If you let everybody in, you didn't have a club; you had a bar mitzvah. (And I say that with love, having attended many outstanding bar mitzvahs in my time.) The selectivity was the brand. The "no" was what made the "yes" valuable.
In venture capital, passing on deals is the most underrated skill. Every LP I've ever spoken to asks about my winners. Nobody asks about my passes. But I'll tell you something: the deals I've said no to have probably saved me more money than the deals I've said yes to have made me.
Early on in my investing career, I was too eager. I saw a good founding team, a decent market, a pitch that got my adrenaline going, and I'd write a check. I was like a doorman who lets in every pretty face without thinking about whether the room can handle it. And what happens when you let everyone in? The fire marshal shows up. Or worse, the vibe dies and everyone leaves.
Now I'm deliberate. Every investment passes through a framework I’ve been refining for years. I first wrote about it in “Founders on Fleek,” and it’s evolved since. Today I’m looking for conviction, resilience, domain expertise, coachability, and integrity. If a founder doesn't check every box, they don't get past the rope. And I'm not apologizing for that.
Because the companies I don't invest in are just as much a part of my portfolio strategy as the ones I do.
Timing Is Everything (and the Best Arrivals Are Fashionably Early)
In nightlife, there's a golden window. Show up too early and you're standing in an empty room feeling like a dork (trust me, I know this from extensive personal experience at the age of fourteen). Show up too late and you're stuck in a line that wraps around the block, or worse, the energy inside has already peaked and people are starting to leave.
The sweet spot? Arrive just as the momentum is building. When the room is at maybe 40% capacity and the energy is climbing. That's when you get the best table, the best positioning, and the most face time with the people who matter.
This is almost a perfect metaphor for startup investing. Invest too early (pre-product, pre-revenue, pre-everything) and you're standing in an empty room hoping someone shows up. Invest too late (Series D, unicorn valuation, everyone and their mother already on the cap table) and you're paying peak prices for a party that may already be winding down.
The sweet spot for me has always been that inflection point where a company has proven something real but hasn't been fully discovered yet. Series A, maybe early Series B. Enough traction to validate the thesis, but early enough to get meaningful ownership at a reasonable valuation. That's my version of showing up when the room is at 40%.
When I backed a humanoid robotics company at Series A, that was exactly this moment. The company had a vision that was audacious but grounded in real engineering. The room was filling up, the energy was building, but it wasn't packed yet.
Every Great Bouncer Had a List, and Every Great Investor Has a Thesis
The clipboard. If you were a nightlife regular in New York in the early 2000s, you know the clipboard. Every doorman had one. It had names, notes, VIP designations, and a mental map of who was already inside and who was expected.
That clipboard was the doorman's investment thesis. It said: "These are the people I want in my room tonight, and here's why."
My investment thesis works the same way. I'm focused on frontier technology: artificial intelligence, physical AI and robotics, defense tech, quantum computing, sports, CPG and longevity. That's my guest list. Those are the categories I've decided, based on extensive research and conviction, will produce the most transformative companies of the next decade.
When a deal comes across my desk that doesn't fit those categories, it doesn't matter how good it looks. It's like someone showing up at Marquee on hip hop night with a bluegrass band. Wrong room, wrong night, wrong energy.
Does that mean I'll miss some great companies outside my thesis? Absolutely. But discipline in what you say yes to is the whole game. Every great bouncer knew that you couldn't let everyone in, even the good ones, because the room could only hold so many people before it stopped working.
Same with a portfolio. I'm not trying to be in everything. I'm trying to be in the right things.
The Regulars Matter More Than the One-Timers
Every club had regulars. The people who showed up week after week, spent consistently, brought friends, and became part of the fabric of the place. A good doorman knew every one of them by name. They got the nod, the wave-through, the best treatment. Because those regulars were the foundation of the business.
In investing, my "regulars" are the founders and operators I've backed multiple times. When a founder I've already worked with starts a new company, or when a portfolio company raises a follow-on round, that's my regular showing up. They've already proven they belong in the room. They've earned the wave-through.
This is also why co-investor relationships matter so much to me. The people who've invested alongside me in multiple SPVs, who trust the thesis, who re-up when new opportunities arise? Those are my regulars. And I treat them accordingly: first access, transparent communication, and real partnership.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from the nightlife business is that the flashy one-night visitors are exciting but unreliable. The regulars are your revenue. In venture, the same principle applies. Build lasting relationships with founders, co-investors, and LPs, and you'll never have an empty room.
Last Call
I’ve worked every side of that rope now. I've been the fourteen year old kid in borrowed confidence trying to get past a door guy twice my age. I've been the promoter with a clipboard and a crowd to manage. And now I'm the investor sitting at the metaphorical door, deciding which companies get into the portfolio.
And what I've learned across all those roles is pretty simple:
The door is not the obstacle. The door is the strategy.
Every "no" is a design choice. Every "yes" is a bet on chemistry. And the quality of the room you build, whether it's a nightclub on a Friday night or a venture portfolio over a decade, comes down to one thing: how thoughtfully you curate it.
So the next time someone tells you that nightlife experience doesn't translate to "real" business, tell them about the Bouncer Algorithm. Tell them that pattern recognition at 2am in a Manhattan doorway is the same muscle as pattern recognition at a partner meeting on Sand Hill Road.
And tell them that a kid from Long Island who spent a decade watching bouncers is now deploying capital into humanoid robots, quantum computing, and defense technology.
Because the rope never goes away. The only question is which side of it you’re standing on.
Disclosures: Neman Ventures is an SEC-registered investment adviser (CRD# 330770). This post reflects the personal views and experiences of the author and is not investment, legal, or tax advice. References to specific companies are illustrative only, do not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, and are not representative of all investments made by Neman Ventures or its affiliates. A list of all investments is available upon request. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Private investments involve a high degree of risk, including total loss of capital.