Sitar joined Newton Venture Program for a fireside chat. She came with a clear point of view and did not hold back.

At the heart of everything she shared was a simple conviction: great venture investing isn’t about frameworks. You are spending real time with the people, not the decks. And that proximity matters, because the differences between founders are radical. Understanding the specific market a founder is going after, deeply and with preparation, is one of the most reliable ways to build momentum as an investor.

That preparation is not incidental. It is the job itself. She was direct: it helps to have a prepared mind in venture. Pattern matching sharpens over time, and history is one of the best tools available. The investors who study what came before are better equipped to read what is in front of them now.

On Founder-Market Fit, her framing was precise. It is not about sector experience alone. It is about a founder's hypothesis on the problem. The strength of that hypothesis, and how deeply it connects to who they are, is what drives how Connect Ventures invests. They are looking for founders who are highly opinionated, move with high velocity, have built something defensible, and are genuinely user obsessed.

She was equally candid about the current environment. GTM is more expensive than it has ever been. If there is a known playbook for what a startup is doing, and the whole market can see it, producing venture-scale outcomes becomes significantly harder. Founders need to be building now, not planning to build. In the time and age we live in, a working version is a baseline expectation.

For investors, the role is fundamentally about evaluating risk. Technical risk. Market risk. And the networks that allow you to do that diligence with depth and speed are not optional. They are the infrastructure of good judgment.

She closed with two challenges that stayed in the room. First, make sure AI does not replace your thinking. The tools are powerful, but the thinking has to remain yours. And second, if you are not comfortable with uncertainty, you are in the wrong industry. Venture is not a place for those who need resolution. It rewards those who are prepared, curious, and willing to back outlier founders before the outcome is obvious.