Clancey Stahr

Clancey Stahr is the co-founder and Managing Partner of GoAhead Ventures, a Silicon Valley early-stage VC firm he launched in 2014–2015 alongside partners Takeshi "TK" Mori and Phil Brady. The three met at Stanford University, where Stahr earned a B.S. in Management Science and Engineering; he and Brady connected in 2014 on a class project studying the entrepreneurship ecosystem, while he had begun collaborating with Mori on investing initiatives in 2013. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 (Venture Capital) list for 2017.

Before GoAhead, Stahr worked as an investor at ZenShin Capital, where he led and realized an investment in Strikingly and helped manage holdings including HackerRank and Audyssey. He describes having spent close to two decades as a venture investor, partnering with founders from pre-product-market-fit through to IPO, and he brings particular expertise in sourcing Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurs and adTech deals.

At GoAhead, Stahr helped build the firm to roughly $180 million in assets under management across multiple funds, including a $115M third fund that closed in November 2021. The firm is best known for rejecting the traditional "warm intro" model: any founder in the world can submit a ~4-minute video pitch (via GoAhead's platform) plus basic company data, and the firm promises a decision within three days. GoAhead reviews 3,000+ pitches a year, makes roughly one offer per week, and can complete its full process — including a partner meeting and final decision — within a week.

• Stage: Pre-seed and seed only — the earliest institutional check.
• Check size: $200K–$1M, most commonly $400K–$500K, in exchange for a straightforward early-stage stake.
• Sector-agnostic by design. Stahr argues VCs wrongly narrow their aperture: *"I actually think that a lot of VCs confuse their expertise with biases based on their previous experiences"* — noting investors needlessly avoid whole categories because of past failures.
• No warm intros. GoAhead deliberately replaces relationship-gated access with an open, meritocratic video funnel scored against benchmarks (e.g., YC Demo Day quality), aiming to widen the net beyond the traditional Silicon Valley network.
• Speed and volume. A decision in ~3 days and a full close possible within a week; the firm values founders who can pitch crisply and move fast.
• Global reach. Founders anywhere in the world can apply, not just those in Bay Area networks.