From 'heartburn' to $14 billion: Inside Menlo's early Anthropic investment that broke all the rules.

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei (left) with Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy last year. Menlo Ventures As Anthropic prepares to go public later this year, Menlo Ventures will be one of the biggest winners. The firm's initial investment made little sense under its normal playbook, and it declined to lead the round. Even with OpenAI already a household name, the partners thought the market had room for a rival. Anthropic was too expensive, too early, and had no revenue. Menlo…