Emerging VC Talent: Edition 9, James Hueston

May 1, 2025

By Juliette Richert
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
Welcome to my monthly interview series on emerging VC talent! We talk everything from gathering insights on emerging industries and tech, to venture dynamics, to career-best practices.
In the ninth edition, I interviewed James Hueston, Senior Associate at Primetime Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund that incubates and invests in the people and companies that transform the quality of living for older adults.
TL;DR: Key Takeaways
Hot Take: There’s never been a better time to be a founder — and never a harder time to be an investor. Technological acceleration favors speed and scrappiness, but LP over-allocation, concentrated capital, and return pressure have made investing more challenging than ever.
Best Practices: Use AI to eliminate low-leverage tasks — and reinvest that time into deep work, critical thinking, and relationship-building. AI tools shouldn’t replace human intelligence, but enhance it — serving as a thought partner that elevates strategic output and clarity.
Setting Up for Success: The fastest way to level up early is to get close to the work — shadow seasoned investors, study real deals, and seek feedback often. Hands-on learning, paired with structured resources like VC University or the Young VC’s Handbook, builds the judgment and pattern recognition you can’t get from theory alone.

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Juliette: What was your very first job?
James: Good question. The very first job I ever had was actually unpaid. I volunteered at the Denver Public Libraries. I started off as a shelver when I was 12 years old. I would go to the library and shelve books for eight to ten hours each day over the weekend. I just loved being around books and being in the library. I was lucky enough to live in downtown Denver, where they have one of the coolest, biggest libraries anywhere I’ve been in the country.
Eventually, I parlayed that into running the teen advisory board for all of Denver Public Libraries. It was a collection of about ten of us, and we would advise the library on how to better engage children and teenagers and create cool programming. That was an amazing opportunity.
The first thing I actually got paid for was working at a card game and board game store. I’ve always been a big gamer. I grew up playing Magic: The Gathering at a super high level. I was basically a professional — top 200 in the world at one point.
Juliette: What is your favorite board or card game today?
James: I still play a good amount of Magic every now and again. But my favorite now is probably Dominion. It’s a deck-building game that changes every time you play it. It’s medieval-themed. It’s my fiancée’s favorite game too. I got her into it, and now we play it all the time together and with friends. I think we’re up to six expansion packs now.
Juliette: What is a hobby that influences how you think about work or professional growth?
James: I have a lot of hobbies. My ADHD lends itself to having a whole collection of interests. My home office is full of them. I have golf gear in the corner, I’m big into video games, I have a whole shoe collection, a driving simulator setup, and I also play hockey weekly at Chelsea Piers.
I’d say the one that probably relates to work the most is golf. Not just because it’s known as the go-to relationship building sport in finance and investing, but because I see it as an allegory for life.
In golf, the outcome is 100% in your control. There’s no such thing as a bad bounce or bad wind. Technically, you should be able to take all of that into account. You should be able to swing a perfect swing every time if you know how to do it. Any failure in your shot comes down to either a misread of the environment or poor execution.
When people get angry or cheat at golf, that tells me a lot about how they handle life’s challenges — how they win or lose with grace. Plus, I just love spending four to five hours outside in nature, talking with friends and colleagues. It’s one of those lifelong sports you’ll never perfect, and I love that pursuit.
Juliette: Can you share your professional background and how you got to where you are today?
James: Right now, I’m an investor at Primetime Partners. We write $1M–$4M checks into seed and Series A startups, all focused on helping older adults and caregivers live healthier, happier lives. Primarily in the U.S., but we keep an eye on global solutions too.
I’ve been here for about two and a half years. Before this, I spent two and a half years at NTT Venture Capital, which is backed by NTT Group out of Japan — a massive conglomerate doing $130B+in annual revenue across 80 countries. We had $500M in capital to deploy across all stages and sectors, which was a wild experience during the 2020–2022 bull market.
It was an incredible learning opportunity, but I felt like I was an inch deep and a mile wide. I wanted to go deeper. And with some personal experiences around my own parents’ aging, plus my background in economics, the aging space just clicked for me as both a massive macro trend and a deeply human issue.
I actually started in venture straight out of college, which is rare. But I had some cool experiences in school, including being on the CEO’s advisory board at Cinemark Theaters. That was through a friend on the fencing team at Vassar. I was on the lacrosse team, and we bonded because we were the only ones at 6:30 AM lifts.
Cinemark had an average board age of 68, and wanted younger voices, so they brought in ten Millennials and Gen Zs to advise. We got to pitch ideas and influence decisions. If you ever see baked goods or merch at Cinemark now, those were our ideas. It showed me the innovator’s dilemma firsthand — how hard it is for big companies to move fast.
I also grew up around startups. My mom started early childcare centers in Colorado open from 7 AM to 11 PM to support working parents, and my dad was a small business lawyer helping SMBs sell to PE or venture-backed companies. So I had visibility into the startup world from a young age.
After college, the pandemic hit and a boutique bank rescinded my offer. I reached back out to NTTVC, worked for free, got a contract, and eventually a full-time role. That led me to where I am today at Primetime.
Juliette: How did you approach skill development early in your career?
James: Venture is overwhelmingly complex. And there are a million different ways to do it well. I was lucky that the managing partners at my first firm were twenty-year veterans who pushed me to be a more critical thinker and really understand their diligence and sourcing process. We also had some amazing principals on the team who helped me a lot.
I also took online courses, especially in financial modeling. One great one was VC University, by UC Berkeley and NVCA. Presently, I highly recommend the Young VC’s Handbook by Sakib Jamal. He interviewed 50 or 60 VCs, pulled out each person’s “superpower,” and structured the book like an internship. You can read a chapter a day and really get a feel for the job.
Juliette: How do you stay current and continue learning within your investment thesis?
James: It’s a mix of secondary and primary sources. I still do a lot of online research and use tools like ChatGPT and other, more nuanced AI tools for deep research. But I also read 20 to 30 newsletters every morning across venture, tech, healthcare, and politics to stay up to date.
The biggest shift my team has pushed me on is getting closer to the primary sources. I talk with decision-makers at health systems, health plans, ACOs, and area agencies on aging. I ask them what their biggest pain points are, what’s been tried and failed, and why. I combine that with what I’m reading and use both to inform investment decisions and find white spaces to invest.
Another big source of learning is conversations like this — talking to other investors and sharing ideas and best practices.
Juliette: Are there any trends you’re excited about right now?
James: The pace of innovation in AI is astounding. I don’t think people realize that we’re already living in the future. Voice AI, for example, is now virtually indistinguishable from a real person. There’s a startup called Cartesia that can clone your voice from three seconds of audio. I sent a voice clip to my mom, and she thought it was me.
All of this makes me think about the idea of a post-truth world. With AI now capable of cloning voices, faces, and even writing styles with near-perfect accuracy, distinguishing what is real from what is fabricated will only get harder. There’s already an overwhelming amount of misinformation and disinformation circulating today, and AI is going to massively amplify that problem, if it hasn’t already.
I think the most significant trend that we need to be thinking about over the next couple of years is: genuinely what does it mean to be human? How do we use AI in a way that it is a companion and tool, not a replacement for our own critical thinking or ability to take agentic actions in the real world?
For investing, I’m excited about tech-enabled services that thoughtfully integrate AI to improve operational efficiency without replacing the human element. I don’t want to invest in pure automation plays that seek to eliminate people entirely from the workflow. Instead, I want to back businesses that leverage AI internally to streamline operations, empower employees to achieve more with fewer resources, and maintain high-touch service standards. I believe there’s an enormous opportunity in legacy services industries that have historically been labor-intensive. By building new companies from the ground up with AI as a core enabler, we can create scalable businesses where small, well-supported teams accomplish what previously took dozens of employees. I see this approach as the future for many sectors, particularly in healthcare, aging services, and other complex systems that require both efficiency and empathy.
Juliette: How are you using AI tools in your personal workflow?
James: I use ChatGPT Pro for deep research, brainstorming, and refining my thought processes, often starting with my own research and then uploading it into ChatGPT for validation and improvement. I also use Claude and Notion together for creating workflows and summarizing larger bodies of information. Although I’m not technical, I’ve been learning how to use no-code tools to extend my capabilities.
For note-taking, I use Quill, which automatically records and summarizes conversations based on the persona of who is speaking, helping me capture the most important insights without having to manually document everything. For managing email, I use Serif, which learns my email habits and drafts responses based on how I typically interact with different people and scenarios; while I usually tweak about 80% of the drafts, they still save me a huge amount of time since most tweaks are incredibly minor.
I also rely heavily on Grammarly to ensure my communication is polished, especially when translating big, sometimes complex ideas into clear writing.
The overarching philosophy is to use AI to handle the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that pull me away from the human experience, like note-taking during meetings, administrative email responses, and organizing research. By automating these areas, I can spend more of my energy on building authentic relationships, having thoughtful, in-depth conversations, synthesizing information at a higher level, and focusing on strategic and creative work. I believe AI should not replace human critical thinking, but rather enhance it by serving as a thought partner to audit, refine, and elevate the work I’m already doing. This approach ensures that technology complements rather than dilutes the value of human connection and deep intellectual engagement.
Juliette: What are your thoughts on where early-stage venture and private equity are headed?
James: The rate of technological change is so high that I truly believe there’s never been a better time to be a founder, but never been a worse time to be an investor. Founders can build and iterate faster than ever. But investors are facing major challenges: over-allocation to venture, low DPI, and a massive flight to safety.
Last year, 75% of all LP dollars went to just 29 venture firms, which shows how dramatically capital has concentrated at the top. These mega-funds are now playing a very different game — deploying huge amounts of capital into a small set of high-velocity companies and needing truly massive exits to deliver returns. Andreessen Horowitz’s latest fund is a good example — based on its size, it would require nearly $900B in total exit value to justify returns, which is more than the venture industry has historically produced in aggregate. These firms often deploy based on dilution targets rather than traditional valuation logic, leading to rounds priced at 50–200x revenue multiples, especially in buzzy sectors like AI. It’s a completely different world from where smaller funds operate.
For smaller funds, the future is about investing in “seed-strapped” companies — businesses that are extremely capital-efficient, often targeting niche but sufficiently large markets, and can achieve strong exits in the $100M–500M range. These companies may only raise a seed or Series A round, then grow steadily without needing significant follow-on capital, and ultimately get acquired by strategics or private equity.
Given the current market environment, where LPs are over-allocated and mega-funds dominate large rounds, these smaller funds must be intentional about entry points, often targeting sub-$15M–$20M valuations, and take a hands-on approach to value creation. It’s a path that requires discipline, deep conviction, and often a community-driven network to support early growth and go-to-market strategies. Funds will either need to be large enough to compete in the mega round arena or exceptionally nimble, selective, and creative to succeed at this leaner, more grounded game.
Know an emerging VC talent I should feature? Send me a note on Linkedin.
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