Latest / Trailblazers by Erica Wenger / Rebecca Kaden: The Biggest Myth About Great Ideas l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 45

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Rebecca Kaden: The Biggest Myth About Great Ideas l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 45 · Trailblazers by Erica Wenger

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Stay on the show.
0:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I am so excited to be joined by Rebecca Kaden.
0:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Rebecca is a general partner at Union Square Ventures, many of which will know USV, the thesis driven firm based in New York that backs companies changing market structures from the outside in.
0:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, USV has written checks into category-defining companies like Coinbase, Twitter, Stripe, Cloud Flair, Abridge, Radiant Nuclear, and Generalist.
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Before joining U.S.V., Rebecca was a partner at Maveron, the consumer-focused early-stage fund.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Also based here in New York, but she actually began her career far from venture capital as a journalist.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: For narrative magazine.
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: She credits that work with sharpening the instinct she now uses to spot breakout companies, understanding how a story comes together before everyone else can see it.
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Rebecca said he English and American literature at Harvard and earned her MBA from Sanford.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Today Rebecca and her partners at USV are focused on the next wave of transformation.
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The rebel alliance forming the new agentic stack, dated the edge unlocking entirely new datasets in the physical world, an application layer built to obliterate markets rather than merely automate them, and a programmable energy as the horizontal foundation beneath it all.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: A native New Yorker Rebecca has come full circle.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She lives in New York City today with her husband and two sons.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That's welcome Rebecca.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So fun.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so we start every interview with a bit of an icebreaker.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:16
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. You can take it any direction you want, but it is quite meaty.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not giving you a softball.
1:20
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
1:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So we talk a lot about the hard paths here.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you think about your journey so far, professional or personal, what has been the hardest part of your journey so far that almost broke you?
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Ooh, this is a good question.
1:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The hardest part of my journey that almost broke me.
1:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it almost broke me, but you know I came from a background that had no exposure to this industry, you know, really at all.
1:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like a real outsider in it and I was looking to make this change and a mentor of mine had said to me, you know, I think you should get into venture.
1:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would be a good fit for you.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm a kind of an innately curious learner.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I like the process of learning things over and over.
2:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I like people, you know, I thought it'd be a good fit, but I got into it.
2:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, you know, had imposter syndrome times a thousand, right?
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the industry asks you quickly to have legs to stand on, right?
2:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you here?
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you offering?
2:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And it,
2:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It took me a while to really learn that and to figure it out and to kind of learn on the job what my strengths were that I could offer without just being the last thing I did in the world.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm now very grateful for that because I think that kind of experience and self-reflection gives you the confidence when you get there, but it was a journey to do it.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally you you say the last thing I'll do in the world and I think a lot of VCs say that that it's sort of like their final job When did you realize that like I would imagine and I may be projecting here But I would imagine like post-standard you get your first venture job and you're like, let's see like, let's see I think at what point in the journey I think it's been like almost 15 years now, right like when were you like, oh, this will be my final job
3:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I very much think, I believe in doing lots of things in the world.
3:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope I have, I hope I am a core investor for many decades to come and I also hope my future holds lots of different explorations and projects and ways to contribute in all kinds of ways.
3:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But on venture, you know, I think
3:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit addicting, right?
3:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you get into it and I'm competitive by nature.
3:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm competitive against myself.
3:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I like learning new things and you realize you're kind of on a treadmill of doing that, right?
3:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Where your core job is to continuously think about what's around that corner, right?
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And the investors I admire most are people that
4:07
[SPEAKER_02]: pick well and operate well with their founders they work with but are also experts at seeing around the corner, right?
4:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That aren't, um, their investors that I think are excellent at picking up on momentum and running after it.
4:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a huge scale and one I admire, and, you know, in many ways, aspire to do,
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But I admire more of the seeing around the corner if that makes sense and I work at a firm with people I think are really excellent at that but you you experience that and you want to do it again and again and again and also these things have long life cycles it takes a long time to see it through and so you realize you know every time you commit you say here we go like here we're going for a decade, you know.
4:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a long road, so I don't imagine getting off of it and I don't know exactly what it happened.
4:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you know your portfolio adds up and some work and some don't work but you kind of just get, um, I love that experience of getting excited about an idea and a hypothesis and starting to pull that thread and keeping it going and going down some kind of false
5:19
[SPEAKER_02]: finally to that company and having that conversation with the founder where you're like you're who I've been looking for.
5:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of always want to do it.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this concept to reframing like Venture doesn't work in terms of years, it works in terms of cycles.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So like if we say like every fund is 10 years, I'm just generalizing like you're kind of only like one and a half iterations through.
5:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I very much think in terms of like either fun cycles or market cycles of like how many of
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Which do you think you use more?
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it like the fun cycle?
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'll tell you as someone who has gone to know the firm.
5:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of you guys as like each fund, you really sort of step back and think about like, okay, what's the thesis here?
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously right through the market cycles, but I would objectively say like fun cycles or how you guys measure time and like how I think about you guys like grounding yourself especially in your writing?
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you think about marking time?
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot about market cycles because especially how can you not right now, right?
6:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think anyone who has kind of been through the past cycle and then is sitting on this precipice, right?
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And we think a lot about Carlotta Perez, right, which has kind of installation eras and deployment eras.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's her framework.
6:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you think about the internet, it had a massive installation error, or then it had a boom and a bust kind of.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But out of that, came messiness, but also an incredible deployment error.
6:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And USB really, really shown in that deployment error.
6:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where you got Twitter, you know, that's where you got at Zee.
6:51
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where, you know, you got kind of these things that really changed how people,
6:57
[SPEAKER_02]: What interests me about technology isn't technology itself, it's the hypotheses about human behavior that it enables, and that's where that really happened.
7:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, you know, you sit at this moment and you see all of the installation that's happened pretty quickly in the last kind of couple of years.
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you feel this bubbling of this deployment cycle about to happen and it's pretty exciting you're like, this is what a market cycle feels like let's go like it's going to be messy there's going to be bus but out of that is going to
7:29
[SPEAKER_02]: be the impact of technology that changes how we live, and that's what we're kind of here to do.
7:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think about how many of those cycles am I going to be able to lean into?
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I've learned talking to GPs on the show and in my own experience as a GP, your back office is a signal.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: How fast you close deals, how clean the LP experiences, how your K-1s land, and besters notice all of it.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The more buttoned up you are, the more likely they are to give you more money in the future.
7:57
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7:59
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8:07
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8:13
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8:14
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8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're running a professional fund, your infrastructure should look like it.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Sidecar makes that possible without the overhead.
8:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Check them out at sidecar.io slash partner slash trailblazers.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are a really interesting piece, so there's a lot of pieces you've written, but I want to talk a little about this like Rebel Alliance, which you guys feel like are most known for especially recently.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this idea that it's not going to be these big, large, foundational companies that will take up all of the market share, but there's actually a lot of opportunities, especially in consumer.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you talk about the deployment era, like there's just so much on the horizon.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, maybe look at like an open AI where they have an infinite number of downloads and members in distribution built in.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: How is it up and coming started going to defeat them or compete with them and talk to you about your rationale, especially on the consumer side because I I think your essay was so well written and very thoughtful and I'd love for you to share more of those insights with them.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So the idea of the Rebel Alliance is the idea of a stack and that a consortium can take on the big guys.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you look at the history of the internet, one thing we love about it is its built bottom up.
9:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually not built top down.
9:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are things that you would do on the internet if it was built top down that would have been really nice, right?
9:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like package neatly and things would have made sense, but actually the beauty of the internet or
9:33
[SPEAKER_02]: right then the weirdness that comes out of it and these kind of bubbling up products that emerge that only can happen because they're kind of stacked together and we're looking at right now and we have in some ways a more top-down technology market than we've had in quite a long time and that's because of how capital has been deployed and that's because of
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of fundamentals, maybe of how, you know, large language models work, and there's benefits to it, and we're not arguing that those aren't going to work.
10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be a weird argument, right?
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are working, and we're benefiting from them.
10:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we're arguing is there's also room for the consortium and for the stack, and for the pieces to sit on top of each other and
10:24
[SPEAKER_02]: in this kind of rebel alliance way.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And what that means is things like open source harnesses, or the open source models, or things that can be used without walled gardens around them.
10:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're seeing a gravitational pull towards it.
10:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I think users are interested in it.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I think builders are interested in it.
10:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think there are benefits of control, flexibility, pricing power that come from building in a stack and not reliance on the kind of big behemoth in the room.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is very exciting as a builder because you're not depending.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Your fate is not in someone else's hands.
11:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say it's essential as a builder.
11:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right?
11:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and this wasn't always something we thought was definitely going to be true.
11:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe 18 months ago, we actually published something else called the Four Quadrants.
11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We called it the Four Futures.
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And the idea was really it's it's hard to write a piece where the where the punchline is basically we don't know what's going to happen, but the punchline was basically we don't know what's going to happen and what we argued in it was we don't know what's going to happen because we're in this time of ambiguity where a lot of it depends on probably two axes.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: One is how open or close the models are, and two is how fast the progress is, right?
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Do we hit asymptotes and limitations that we don't currently foresee or it's past precedent and these just kind of continue functionality to them and that really nobody knew.
12:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a world in that, those quadrants, where the closed large models win everything, right?
12:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And in that world, the application layer kind of doesn't exist, right?
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It gets totally absorbed.
12:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you guys assign percentages to each quadrant?
12:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know when seeing everyone wanted us to.
12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I like I'll pee wanted us to.
12:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Every founder wanted to.
12:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:23
[SPEAKER_02]: But a report was like, we don't know.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe it's like looking at your portfolio.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think this is something that Fred had mentioned.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Was like, so these are our four quadrants.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll invest in each.
12:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, our punchline was we want exposure to all four quadrants, like a classic fund, doing it all, right?
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, yeah, why pick, but you don't have to, yeah, no, and our argument was that doesn't, you know, what we were trying to say is what's advantage to each, and one, the large models are advantage, but also things like programmable energy is advantage, right, because kind of actually the horizontal undercurrent of everything is you need dramatically,
12:59
[SPEAKER_02]: more efficient, faster, ideally cheaper energy to fuel the ecosystem.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're saying like, you know, even if the large models kind of win the day and own everything, you're still going to need to.
13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much blanket stuff too that like it has all scenarios.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a smart but totally.
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like almost like the umbrella and our energies are biggest but they're actually, I think that's now that's
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I think kind of a consensus point of view, though I think there's a lot of different angles of energy.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But you guys were definitely early.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I remember.
13:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everyone was saying, you know, yeah, we launched an energy fund in 2019, I think.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, um, you know, we've been very, very
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: excited about new formats of energy, you know, programmable energy, which is really the ability to control and direct energy in new ways with technology, but also new formats of energy generation, like radiant or a zanscar around geothermal.
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So all across the energy stack.
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were scared that if the big, large language models want, particularly if really one of them one, there would be no application era.
14:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And we thought about that, so we thought, okay, what do we do in that case?
14:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, what do you invest in?
14:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But...
14:09
[SPEAKER_02]: What we realized, which is part of, you know, for us always theses build on top of each other, they're never kind of on their own.
14:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Rebel Alliance directly comes out of that because what we realized over time is despite the large models doing so well, they're still competition, right?
14:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's actually increased competition for, I think, a bunch of reasons.
14:30
[SPEAKER_02]: One is there isn't one winner.
14:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Two is there is increased price sensitivity, right?
14:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Those models realized, and those companies realized they want to make money.
14:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So they couldn't just do super subsidized, you know, subscription prices across the board.
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Sad for all of us, really good for the application layer.
14:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally right, because competition creates opportunity at the application layer.
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because now there's something to compete for for that, you know, business to be built on top of.
14:57
[SPEAKER_02]: open source models are, you know, they're now talked about a lot, but they're real contender and there's real benefits.
15:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's more competition at the model layer than I think at one point we thought might be true, which has given us a lot of renewed conviction in this application layer and the idea that it wasn't going to be fully absorbed.
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: As has the kind of fundamental truth that we probably should have known all along, which is it's really hard for
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
15:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've learned that lesson in every cycle, right?
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: This is true, but the behemoths always feel so, I mean, like this, everything's AI cycles, like, never been done before, growing faster than ever.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, right.
15:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's always the wood if of totally, and yet you see them launch consumer verticals and see AI, yeah.
15:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of them will work.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of them will work.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The same way that that was true at Google, and that's been true at Meta, and that's kind of the nature of large companies, and you might argue, and I think we've been talking about,
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The desire for continued capital at scale, which they really need to survive, is might force even more focus.
16:03
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16:04
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16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:05
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16:07
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16:10
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17:00
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17:04
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17:06
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17:16
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17:21
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17:26
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17:32
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17:39
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17:50
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17:56
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18:01
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18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to ask you about like the alpha you uncover and how much you share versus not.
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, you guys have done such an interesting job publishing always since like the dawn of time.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: where you see the world.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the four quadrants let's use that as an example because you just talked about it is like a way people can now talk about scenarios of who's going to win.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But in a lot of ways, that is a little bit of your alpha, like that you've created these like four quadrants and that your LPs can know oh wow, they're being more diversified about it.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so how you guys decide what to share, what not to share, and do you ever worry that you're like giving away the secret sauce or do you have more of like an open source of you of it, too?
18:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like you want to benefit the ecosystem and totally open source view of it.
18:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I actually
18:51
[SPEAKER_02]: are alpha is the opposite.
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell me, I think our alpha is public thinking.
18:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and putting our ideas out into the world.
18:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Say, by the journalist, talk your book, but one of the things I think resonated with me about USB from the first time I spent time with the partnership was that idea that we actually think gatekeeping ideas is a, you know, recipe to lose.
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: that actually what you get by effectively open sourcing ideas, right?
19:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And we call it public thinking or often we call it half-baked thinking.
19:26
[SPEAKER_02]: If you know what we really think about and what my partners have really pushed on me is, our goal is not to produce the Oracle, right?
19:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Or to say this is the answer, or to say this is the ultimate market map of X.
19:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's to say, here are some ideas.
19:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We're more sure about some of them than others, but we want them out into the world because we want the feedback, right?
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Pressure test our ideas.
19:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Pressure test them by disagreeing with us, by agreeing with us, by sending the companies that relate to them, which is super helpful.
19:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the whole thing.
19:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, by you saying, oh, now I know you're interested in that, right?
20:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Like maybe, you know, we wrote about data at the edge and a lot about physical role day.
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I maybe you were like, I didn't know they were so interested about that.
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I do, and so I'm going to meet a founder that's, you know, focused on that.
20:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that you as he wants to talk about it.
20:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, our thesis get better.
20:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't happen in an intellectual box.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It happens in the real world, 100%.
20:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can only do that by getting ideas out there.
20:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So I actually think the alpha comes by taking those ideas and being better about connecting the dots to how those become investible businesses, not by the ideas themselves.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also giving everyone a framework to use.
20:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think that's so much of your public thinking that differs from other firms, is that sometimes other firms will just talk about like an exciting launch and like we want to invest more in this area, right?
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But you guys really are like, here's the four quadrants, you know?
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And like this is this is a framework to grab onto.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think mostly it helps us, because it's just how we think about things and I find it really, I think about our kind of thinking stack, right?
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a level of line stack, which are the pieces of, you know,
21:05
[SPEAKER_02]: building agents that are going to launch into the world and change how we live.
21:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you think about our thinking stack, I think about frameworks, or quadrants of framework, right?
21:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about frameworks.
21:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about theses.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about ideas and companies.
21:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so like frameworks is the kind of a worldview of like how would I make sense of what's going on in a market?
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: A thesis is a hypothesis about where there's opportunity.
21:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Ideas pull that into specific verticals and companies are things you can invest in And ideally we want to build all down that stack.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: A thousand percent, okay.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So you set me up perfectly for this.
21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me your process.
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, do you start with the framework?
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you start with the Thesis?
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you meet a brilliant founder building a company and see if it fits something you've already done?
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is the process amongst those sort of four levels that you go through?
21:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know every company is so different and maybe every partner within you as V is quite different.
21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'd love to hear your strategy for finding great founders and where you start.
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really evolved over time.
22:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I think when I got to USB, it was pretty bottom up, right?
22:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would, we would know kind of the theses and the, you know, or the overarching ideas.
22:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'd want to meet a lot of companies and see kind of how I can connect the dots.
22:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Over time,
22:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I spend more and more a time really on that thesis, because I find that the more I can know what I'm looking for, the more likely I'm gonna thread the needle of the right idea and the right team, because I really want both.
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And the more likely I'm gonna have a conversation with that founder, that one gets out the things that I actually think I need to make the right decision and also differentiates the conversation.
22:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so that I'm going into it and saying, not pitch me a business and I'll tell you if I think it's good, how would I know?
22:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And more, I have a hypothesis about how a market works and you have a hypothesis about a market work.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're probably spending a lot more time in it than I am, but we've done our work, right?
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: We've prepared our minds.
23:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's have a conversation about where we align or don't align way more effective.
23:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're more interesting, especially, right?
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more like ideas, yeah.
23:19
[SPEAKER_02]: more likely it for I think that I can walk away and say that's a founder I want to get behind because I think it's meteor in a lot of ways and I've I've really learned that process over time.
23:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I came in with it but I do think I've learned it.
23:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I now really, you know, rely on it but our process in developing that these these, you know, people ask this question and I always wish I like could give a clear answer
23:47
[SPEAKER_02]: like everything else for us.
23:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like pretty bottom up.
23:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like we're meeting companies.
23:51
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking all the time.
23:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We devote a lot of space within our partnership to talking about ideas, not pipeline or portfolio.
23:59
[SPEAKER_02]: We have designated times we talk about pipeline or portfolio, but we also have designated times we talk about ideas and we prioritize it.
24:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we kind of
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: pull the thread, sometimes an inch at a time, and sometimes a mile at a time, right?
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And it depends, and sometimes it feels like we're not getting anywhere, and then sometimes you're like, okay, it's like coming together, and we generally write it like when we feel like we've been saying and internally a lot, totally, totally, you know what I mean?
24:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes up three times a week or something, and you're like, okay, this means to go out.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The rubble lines is a great example.
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we didn't sing those words internally.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We also had been, we had developed a real perspective on open source harnesses.
24:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And now we've made several investments in the category, maybe none of which have been announced, but probably by the time this comes out, they will be.
24:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a piece of the stack.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'd also, you know, been looking at other pieces of the stack, the consumer layer, you know, open source model, different parts, and thinking about how these come together.
24:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd also been real builders in it.
24:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And we built a lot of kind of an agentic operating system for ourselves, and we were seeing how we were doing that, and the tools we were using, and you know what, what we were relying on, and that was informing it, you know, the stack was becoming clear in our mind.
25:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And finally we're like, alright.
25:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We got it.
25:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to get it out there because we want to see more of it and we want to encourage it.
25:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And we want that conversation to happen and for us to be a part of it.
25:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that requires a whole like a hodgepodge simultaneously of us pushing each other on the ideas.
25:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're always like tighter or crisp or narrower, right?
25:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Like shorter, shorter, tighter, crisp or like how you know,
25:39
[SPEAKER_02]: less for hot, and then when we finally feel like it's clicking, well, put it out to the world.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the analogies that I use with my writing is I think of it like an album, where I have like the headline, like the title of the album, and then I have like all these songs underneath that aka additional essays.
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have supplemental, but there's very much like a headline, and that usually, I mean we'll see how long I do this for, but so far it's been like every few years, every fun, you sort of have like a new album that you put out totally, like an artist.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really inspired by like a Taylor Swift of the world where like at every point in her life she's got like her red air, I just got her lover area.
26:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can kind of tie that to like certain focus areas or certain um market cycles if you will.
26:16
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you guys think about like the umbrella?
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just because I see it as sort of like you guys just throw smart ideas out?
26:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But how do you think about like the cohesiveness of it and bucketing them as like you know this is like our tenth fund and so these are like all the things under the tenth fund.
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's way less
26:37
[SPEAKER_02]: To us, it's actually the same, so we published, we published, I think, for feces collectively as a firm over 20, something years, right?
26:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And in our minds, we publish them.
26:54
[SPEAKER_02]: When we feel like the previous one is no longer articulating the overarching thesis that we're going off of.
27:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've set it in different ways.
27:03
[SPEAKER_02]: There's been large networks of engaged users, which is really a USB thesis 1.0.
27:08
[SPEAKER_02]: There's large networks of, they're all building on each other too.
27:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Large networks of engaged users differentiated by user experience and then also the data layer underneath them.
27:21
[SPEAKER_02]: There's been these kind of iterations.
27:22
[SPEAKER_02]: The last one was changing the structure of markets from the outside in because of kind of structural pressures.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, those are all the same thing.
27:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have these moments where we realize this.
27:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was looking for a blood, an old blog post.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: on the USB blog that we had nothing to do with this because I was trying to pull it up for some founders working with.
27:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I came across one that Fred had written I think in 2014 or 15 that's called the Blitter 8 Donautimate.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And what a Blitter 8 Donautimate is is don't change markets from the inside by making it easier for the existing gatekeepers, change them from the outside by changing the structure of the markets involved.
28:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, this is just what I'm saying over and over and over and it's actually we rephrase it for different moments in the market, which I think we have to do.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But the overarching theme of what we're saying, which is that, which is how do you change our market structure, all markets have gatekeepers.
28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a temptation and technology to build for the gatekeepers, to create efficiencies on the inside, right?
28:27
[SPEAKER_02]: A gented software for healthcare systems.
28:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not that we don't think that's a good business.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It probably is a good business.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not what we want to do.
28:36
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to think about how can you make the system more direct?
28:39
[SPEAKER_02]: How can we drive the cost of healthcare in this country to zero?
28:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Not by making it more efficient for the gatekeepers to exist, but by eliminating them.
28:46
[SPEAKER_02]: How can you structurally change education so that it's not bounded by geography and cost?
28:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You can build direct to learner products.
28:56
[SPEAKER_02]: right, you know, all of, you know, how can you democratize the internet and give power to the individual versus the platform, you can build a...
29:08
[SPEAKER_02]: a web and an agentic stack versus a centralized force.
29:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's all really the same thing applied to kind of different market moments.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting too because a lot of it's just philosophy.
29:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of like how you view the world.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think a lot of like, I used to joke, like, creator economy and crypto and a lot of stuff.
29:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all about like, decentralized ownership.
29:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, the sort of like,
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's it's different technology in different eras, but it's you as a firm sort of take a stance on what is your philosophy And I think it's so cool that 10 years later You can find a piece and it's got that same DNA I would say a lot of that has to do with the fact that you still have so many of your early partners involved 100% like Fred's now, you know excited Yeah totally and if one's allowed it you will speed it kind of have those moments right and like
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Reignite, you know, and thought, be like, this is the moment we've been waiting for and it's very cool to see that when it happens.
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Because there's this aligned interest and then these different threads of it that get people excited, you know, as you just said,
30:08
[SPEAKER_02]: crypto and agents, you know, and direct to learn education are actually all to us going towards this same goal of a more direct, personalized customized, yeah, whatever the words are, yeah.
30:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you're just pulling these different threads towards the same goal and that when that,
30:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't always hum, you know what I mean, but when it hums, it's really good.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also the argument though that that is so one view of the world should the funds be having multiple points of view, right?
30:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know what your take is there.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I knew it was invested across a lot of different kinds of sectors, and obviously about global energy.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys have done a lot in crypto, social back in the day, like, all that stuff.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a take ever internally like, hey, we've been sort of like beating this philosophy since the dawn of time.
30:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Should we sprinkle some bets in more?
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it feels maybe easier as the wrong word.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always hard to build a business.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you think so lofty, like, let's just like cut out the middle man and let's do this, like, let's rethink education from first principles.
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's often harder than the like, almost like,
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say quick hits, but a little bit of the quicker hits of like, you know, selling to people that are already there, but it's pretty fun and interesting.
31:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So a few years ago, you need diversity in lots of ways in a fund, right?
31:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You definitely need diversity of ideas.
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You need, I think, diversity of categories, right?
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't think you need every form of it.
31:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I actually think having,
31:33
[SPEAKER_02]: unified goals and values matters, but you definitely need diversity.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we get that because we are pulling lots of threads of this expression.
31:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, kind of by the definition of being early stage investors, sometimes you invest in things that move around.
31:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what I mean?
31:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you're investing and it's like, it's bottom up.
31:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going like towards that view of a decentralized world.
31:56
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but pivoted, you know, and actually it really hits.
31:59
[SPEAKER_02]: My best example of this is always a bridge, right?
32:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Which we love a bridge.
32:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're thrilled to be in a bridge.
32:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Shive is a...
32:06
[SPEAKER_02]: and of one factor is that he is absolutely fantastic and that company is adding a huge amount of value to a population we care quite a lot about, which is both practitioners and patients.
32:20
[SPEAKER_02]: When we invested in a bridge, it was direct to practitioner in a bottom-up motion around, you know, can you make this more direct by recording visits directly?
32:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not where it found go to market success, right?
32:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It really found go to market success through healthcare systems, you know, and kind of the large players in it.
32:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's still moving that market forward.
32:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also told us, let's take another bite at this apple, right?
32:48
[SPEAKER_02]: We still want to drive directly to the end users of this market and we got to doctronic, right?
32:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is direct to patient driving that cost of care to zero through new kind of tool sets.
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: We love both of those.
33:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the nature, kind of one of the beauties of early stage investing is
33:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't be that prescriptive and you have to, you know, know what you're betting on and and embrace the edges changing along the way and enjoy it right and and so I think that's actually
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of ironically, a pro of how the portfolio evolves, and even if you don't know it going in.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But we also raise relatively small funds, which we should talk about, right?
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, not a small as we used to, but given the market.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, inflation, yeah, exactly.
33:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do that very purposely for lots of different reasons, but one is we think we can then manage them bottom up, right?
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have to invest in everything.
33:47
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have to play the ultimate coverage game.
33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to play a very strong coverage game in our feces and buckets we decide to pursue and go after.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to be in the companies that win the markets of the markets we decide to go after.
34:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But we aren't trying to do everything and we would raise a very different fund if we were, right?
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the benefits of the fun size we've chosen
34:16
[SPEAKER_02]: degree of flexibility that we can really remember, we're not boil in the ocean here.
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we have the luxury, honestly, of being particular about what we pursue.
34:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is very nice.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's so few firms.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't name names, but there's just in general, so few firms that have maintained that strategy.
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really inspiring to see conviction, not just in terms of companies you back, but in terms of the funds strategy that will make your all piece money.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because I think that's so much of our goal too, you know, like we forget.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about hype and marketing and hot companies.
34:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about who consistently puts up top returns.
34:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you've done that and you keep doing that, totally.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you'd argue harder than doing in the first place.
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how do you maintain that?
34:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Special sauce.
34:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, totally.
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, how do you...
35:01
[SPEAKER_02]: get into the right companies, but also how do you get out?
35:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do you create, I think one thing I think my partners at USB are excellent at is fund construction and management.
35:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they're really good at it.
35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've learned a lot about that part of venture that I don't think is actually talked about that much.
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
35:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had, so our episode came out very recently with Anne from Floodgate, the best.
35:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The best.
35:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The absolute, the absolute best.
35:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, in so many ways, and she's, I will say, and she's finally saying this, like, she's one of the firms that has kept their fun size very consistently.
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said something so brilliant about exiting, and how the expectations look so different for her to exit versus a multi-stage, and it sends such a different signal to the market.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we had such an interesting and beautiful, and she very open discussion about that.
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how like, it's not just about what valuation they hid, but it's about realizing
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: what you can do and what that signals in the market because I think it's so different for her than it is for a multi-stage multi-billion dollar platform.
36:03
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I do, so USB has always been very consistent that we are a firm that sells on the way up.
36:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and that we look for liquidity opportunities and great company is as they agree value along the way and that we work hard to return funds pretty quickly if we can.
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: and be proactive about that versus just kind of waiting for ultimate exits.
36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've really enjoyed learning about that and drank all the coolator around that value.
36:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I also think, and that's been controversial, you know, in the morning, I mean, you guys are one of the few.
36:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's why you floodgate, whatever, they're like, yeah, I think it's going to become less controversial.
36:45
[SPEAKER_02]: In a lot of ways, it kind of already has.
36:49
[SPEAKER_02]: like I don't think there's really any expectation.
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I may maybe I'm wrong, you know, that everyone hangs on to open AI and anthropic to, you know, I think the scale of private companies, the speed of it, the kind of capital dynamics actually are changing that.
37:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's one of those
37:09
[SPEAKER_02]: and just, you know, I think there's becoming a knowledge truth that liquidity has to be managed in this market.
37:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, because it hasn't been for so long, it's like that pain.
37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's also, like, you said, like, the growth is so fast.
37:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to grab onto them.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, those IRRs are crazy.
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm sure you've seen it, too.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's numbers that you've never thought you could do.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I think that's kind of forced a conversation broader that I'm hearing.
37:33
[SPEAKER_02]: more of the market moving that direction just because of that it.
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Those dynamics.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I think it's going to take a bit for people to actually make those changes because there is just space in culture.
37:42
[SPEAKER_02]: There's culture.
37:42
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39:22
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39:29
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39:35
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39:38
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39:47
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39:52
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39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things I want to talk about that you hinted at was some of the internal AI agent stuff you're building.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: your librarian, as you all call it.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd love for you to tell everyone, how are you guys a firm with a solid amount of resources?
40:11
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you thinking about building your own agents internally?
40:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're doing it to my firm.
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I have my amazing fiance shout out to him who's the software engineer and build me things for zero dollars.
40:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Love that.
40:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But what are you guys most excited about?
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And what have been the things that maybe other firms have not yet done that you think are extraordinarily valuable.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not to like make the reservation what I want it.
40:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not the,
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, scrubbing data that, you know, everyone else can do, is there anything really insightful that you guys have been excited about doing internally?
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, lots of things.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So, let me in.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the way we think about this is like, if you think about what the internet did, the internet made information accessible.
40:49
[SPEAKER_02]: agents are making expertise accessible.
40:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And so how do you take advantage of that?
40:55
[SPEAKER_02]: All of these firms, us, included, are filled with knowledge bases of expertise.
41:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are a goal.
41:03
[SPEAKER_02]: USB has always been small, people-wise, right?
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And we really like that.
41:06
[SPEAKER_02]: None of us are, um,
41:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, you know, probably one of my partners will be upset if I say none of us are great managers, but I don't know that any of us are great managers and have us aspire to do a lot of men.
41:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, totally.
41:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We really said that, they don't aspire.
41:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we don't aspire.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we really like a small, flat, fast firm.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of that is we've never liked a lot of people at it.
41:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you don't need a lot of people on it.
41:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Can we get really for you?
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were, and we're tinkers.
41:36
[SPEAKER_02]: We like to get our hands dirty.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We like to, we've always been interested in this kind of builder stack of products that's kind of been part of our culture for a long time.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's so many of them.
41:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were early in just getting our hands dirty and starting to build.
41:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And we
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Playing around and so in a very bottom-up way we started playing around with what we could build and what we learned is that we could build a series of agents that did a lot of work for us that we used to have to do ourselves So one of the earliest things we did was, you know, load all of the history and actually Fred did this as like a you know playing around in a weekend and then like everything else we kind of have
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: fiddled with it until it's usable, you know, and kind of professionalized for our firm.
42:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But took all of the docs we've ever used to close deals at USB, all of the store, so busy, and trained a model.
42:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how much was that?
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's a little bit right now.
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I know.
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't take that long to do that.
42:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we said, okay, you know,
42:41
[SPEAKER_02]: What if any time we got a legal doc, any time we need to write a term sheet, any time we got a legal doc, we could just forward it to a legal agent and get an immediate read on, you know, how it stacks up to everything else.
42:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We've seen whether that's, you know, we're issuing a term sheet or we're closing deals or doing definitive docs, but also if one of our companies is raising around and gets a term sheet, they want to review or, you know, anything, right.
43:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we trained it, and then we gave it tons and tons and tons of feedback.
43:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And now we named the agent and the agent sits on all of our emails, and responds anytime to the new question comes up.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: That's been really, really useful to us.
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And all we did is roll out that motion across lots of other things as it came up.
43:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have another agent that's really a deal agent and any time we, you know, either get sent in investment opportunity or go out in sources of investment opportunity, we, um, that that agent sits on our emails and gives us a read.
43:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And they give us a read, it actually gives us a score.
43:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't care that much about the score, though it's a composite.
43:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So we care about the composite as an input.
43:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's part of what it's doing, is it's scoring it against all of our express theseses.
43:57
[SPEAKER_02]: is a way the more current like have you guys figured out an interesting formula there yeah and we've given it tons of feedback yeah um you know and so it goes through everything we've written and everything we're prioritizing and it weights it against our current conversations we record everything all of those notes are fed in all of our email you know.
44:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, shout out granola sponsors the podcast.
44:16
[SPEAKER_00]: There we go.
44:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Granola is, you know, lifeblood.
44:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We love USB as they know and, you know, so it feeds in all of our notes and so that helps the waiting and we've given it lots of feedback and so, you know, that deal agent now is a voice that's helpful and also can like, you know, immediately help us understand how it relates to the things we're talking about.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That only works because we express a lot of ideas.
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so that's, you know, another example, um, you know, obviously it's created all the information about our, you know, you used to be like, you wanted to remember how much capital you had in a company and what you owned of it, you'd have to like go look it up, all that's at our fingertips, all of our LP reporting, you know, all of that.
45:00
[SPEAKER_02]: is in a series of agents that and every day, you know, they get better and then we now have them sync with each other.
45:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You just keep adding these skills and we have a architecture that's way better than when we started and they require a lot of feedback.
45:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We always say that they kind of come in like a first-year analyst.
45:17
[SPEAKER_00]: but that's perfect because you always do it anyway.
45:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so you're just like, okay, we'll give them the same curriculum.
45:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we give them, yeah, we treat them.
45:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they come in and we always joke like the first thing they do is they want to get the deal done.
45:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first time you send them the deals, they love every deal, right?
45:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And they put it in the right upper quadrant of every, so you know, mark it in the app that they make and then you say no.
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's, you know, and it gets better.
45:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I think what people don't always realize when they're doing that is the level of feedback it requires, that if you are trying to use an agent and it's not great right away, and you're like, okay, so it doesn't work, you're never gonna get it there.
45:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we now have someone who runs this internally.
45:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And today he showed us something, for instance, which is going to give us a really quick little app kind of feature, we have kind of an operating system, these all these agents now sit on.
46:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So it'll be one of those.
46:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, before our team meetings, it's going to have you say kind of yes or no to whether you want to surface things about portfolio companies that were brought up in our emails.
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And this point is that's going to make that conversation better, but it's also training data.
46:22
[SPEAKER_02]: right of what appears in the email that we're then going to want to speak about life and what does it?
46:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we've just committed to being very engaged and giving the level of feedback this needs to make it very, very useful at the firm.
46:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's just the same as like having a, you know, really junior higher that you want to train and you're like, God, the first two to six months of onboarding our pain, but then they start really doing things themselves and then interact with other agents and totally.
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just exponential.
46:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worth the online investment.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you're just experimenting.
46:49
[SPEAKER_00]: If nothing else, even if it goes sideways, you're tinkering, you're learning, bottoms up.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the, it's very refreshing.
46:55
[SPEAKER_00]: The like bottoms up approach to everything.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
46:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, it's very consistent and authentic, which I think is something that makes firms great.
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like whatever your philosophy do it throughout.
47:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Do with your internal ops, do with your, you know, how you invest.
47:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Do with everything?
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you either love it or you don't.
47:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like consistent.
47:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very you.
47:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, okay, I have one final question and we'll get to a lighting round.
47:15
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I'll keep peppering you all day.
47:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, data at the edge.
47:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, epic essay, uh, released recently.
47:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll keep it big for when this announces or when this goes live.
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so interesting, so brilliant.
47:28
[SPEAKER_00]: This concept that like we have these new data sources we've never had before.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you gave a lot of interesting hardware examples.
47:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, batteries that used to last six months now last 10 years.
47:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You gave you mentioned granola, uh, which is exciting.
47:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it like has all this data, but now we can actually record it.
47:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me a little bit about how that essay came about in what's the response bin and ultimately like, why did you write it?
47:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so one thing I love about data at the edge as a pillar, which is a thread of our thesis that I've been particularly excited about and really leading a bunch of investments behind around chips and robotics and sensor proliferation and things like that.
48:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason is,
48:08
[SPEAKER_02]: A thesis of USB, that's, you know, again, kind of from the beginning is not new, is that great companies are often built off of unique data loops that are self-improving over time, right?
48:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a long time, that was software, right?
48:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were all these opportunities to have data network effects in software, where the more data you collected, the better the product got, which encouraged more data, and so it was a self-improving data loop.
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's now harder in software, right?
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The dynamics of software have gotten crowded and there's a lot of conversation about agents are opening some of that, but also it's hard and the software dynamic has changed.
48:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But we have the ability to collect data from sources that we have been always dark.
48:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is so cool because it's net new opportunity.
48:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So think about ambient conversation.
48:58
[SPEAKER_02]: We could never collect, it's not that we couldn't record.
49:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been able to record conversation for a hundred years.
49:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But the ability to take that conversation, parse it, process it, put it in a model, and make it usable to build on top is really new.
49:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's made data sets that have actually been accessible to collect usable to build on in a totally new way.
49:20
[SPEAKER_02]: The physical world is obviously such an exciting one, right?
49:23
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a massive proliferation of sensors.
49:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Hardware cost is dramatically declined appetite for it, has dramatically risen.
49:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Automation has made it possible to do things that were previously impossible.
49:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We have chip technology, which is making it last longer and so can reach edges it, you know, had it reached before.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we can now collect data from the physical world that on its own is interesting,
49:50
[SPEAKER_02]: these self-improving data loops in the physical world, not only in software, and that's opening use cases around climate and energy and diagnostics and infrastructure that we previously weren't able to access at all.
50:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that is really, really, really cool because it's not making things better, it's making things possible.
50:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's I think for a kind of the
50:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I completely agree with you.
50:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so excited to see the investments you guys make in this space.
50:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of it a little bit almost as like 2D to 3D.
50:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's almost as like additional dimension.
50:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think now we're also used to like Google and open it.
50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like where you just use language to search things.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But what does it mean to capture the world?
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's where a lot of this physical SF's coming in.
50:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so exciting.
50:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what does it mean to have a 3D version of your home?
50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: what is that like?
50:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You said the you had some really interesting stuff in the essay as well about just like different use cases Especially with these with these ships.
50:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very excited.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Same.
50:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's a problem.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I hear constantly from operators.
50:51
[SPEAKER_01]: The data exists The answers are somewhere in there, but getting to that actually pulling a useful insight without bugging the data team or learning sequel takes way too long or just does not happen
51:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Hex solves that.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Hex is an AI analytics platform where anyone on your team can ask data questions and plain English and get real answers backed by your actual business context.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: No sequel required.
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And the best part is that Hex shows you exactly how it's data agents think, so you can see where the logic comes from and trust the output.
51:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The more your team uses it, the smarter it gets.
51:21
[SPEAKER_01]: From seed stage founders running lean to larger works dealing with serious data complexity, HECTS is built to scale with you.
51:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's game-changing for people like me who want to understand what's going on under the hood, but we are not the data experts.
51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny too because I feel like every time I look over my operator friend's shoulders, whether they're in product, or marketing, or ops, they often have a HECTS dashboard pulled back.
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great tool.
51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Trueblazers listeners get an exclusive 30 day free trial at hex.ai slash trailblazers.
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cool.
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get to our lightning round.
51:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know whatever comes to mind first.
51:49
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it.
51:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Book in hand or podcast in the years.
51:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Book in hand.
51:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Old school.
51:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Old school.
51:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Recently, um, you know what, I love trade fiction, yes, which is kind of, um, you know, unpopular.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to listen to nonfiction and I do all the time, um, and a super wide variety, but I find
52:15
[SPEAKER_02]: reading stories, sparks, imagination that's actually helpful in surprising ways.
52:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
52:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I would argue, I'm extrapolating here with that's why I live in New York City, because I feel like there's so many different kinds of stories that spark my brain, whether they're about fashion, or about politics, or about philanthropy, or whatever, and we're, you know, SF, it's like all the same stories.
52:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, cool.
52:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Any favorite books you recommend or my favorite book of all time, which is always a It's a weird one is Pale fire by Vladimir in a book off.
52:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa, one an eight and pale fire.
52:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's okay.
52:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, great.
52:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I will add to the list higher slow or fire fast Both, you have to pick Fire fast, okay Anything more on that?
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I think my answer is both, I would hire slow and fire fast, but I also think sometimes in these growing companies, you need speeds, so I'd probably say higher fast, but selectively and keep the team super high quality and tight, which means you got to fire fast.
53:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
53:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Ten small wins are one big moon shot, one big moon shot, I think we're just in a moment
53:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there was a time where, you know, I, I was more focused on the idea that these kind of like incremental improvements could add up to these, you know, things that would change how a market worked.
53:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's tons of examples where that's true, but over time, I've gravitated towards believing that there's no more downside in the big swing than the smaller swing, so swing bigger.
54:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Love that, being early or being right, being right.
54:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the best teacher, a mentor or a mistake?
54:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the best teacher is a mistake.
54:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's a more painful teacher.
54:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But I find, you know,
54:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, being told something, I, you know, I think the best partnerships actually come with both mentors and mistakes because you can learn from other mistakes because you're part in my partners are super open about it and just like willing always to land on the table and, you know,
54:41
[SPEAKER_02]: in the hopes that we don't all have to make the same mistakes.
54:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are certain things that making them on your own teach you that visceral reaction that you need to really push yourself to get better.
54:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
54:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the future of AI abundance?
54:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, awesome.
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's total abundance.
55:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm an optimist.
55:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
55:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about that data at the edge thesis and all of the thing.
55:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And a fundamental part of that thesis that I really like.
55:09
[SPEAKER_02]: is that we don't know really what's gonna come out of it.
55:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's just a deep unknown, right?
55:14
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea that we can access all of this pockets of data and information and understanding of our world are gonna lead to use cases we can imagine now and far more we can't.
55:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the definition of forward progress.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know, but we have to kind of believe that progress creates abundance and not be scared of it.
55:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Killer product or Loyalty Shotty Ins.
55:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Killer product, every, you know, build the thing that lots of people are gonna absolutely if I can love.
55:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Great, VC or bootstrapping.
55:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God, depends what you're gonna build, but, you know, if you're gonna swing big and investment can create opportunity to invest early in things that have a long-term efficiency in payoff,
56:07
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, then VCs a good opportunity.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.
56:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Never post on social media again, and I'm going to extend this to like never post on your blog.
56:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
56:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, or never fundraise another dollar again.
56:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of go hand in hand.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a difficult question.
56:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
56:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess never post on social media or blog again, I think there's lots of avenues to getting ideas out there into the world and there's always going to be new ones and actually that's something I've been excited about.
56:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think...
56:43
[SPEAKER_02]: in some ways we become reliant and stale.
56:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we're going to find new ways to have discourse around ideas that, you know, one thing, you as V was an early investor in Twitter and the thing I like about that investment, besides, you know, that it was successful, is it changed the market structure of something, right?
56:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Publishing had a gatekeeper and with Twitter it didn't.
57:02
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the next things that have gatekeepers that now won't back to bottoms up, right?
57:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm excited to think about that.
57:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
57:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Quick aside, you guys are always been writers and bloggers.
57:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw Michael and Fred just at a podcast.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the future of the new media and what's next in terms of publishing ideas and writing for you guys?
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there any areas you're excited about?
57:24
[SPEAKER_00]: format wise, get format wise.
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm abundance, I think, right?
57:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, Mike is, you know, our newest partner.
57:33
[SPEAKER_02]: He's so awesome.
57:34
[SPEAKER_02]: He started a podcast in company.
57:36
[SPEAKER_02]: He did anchor shut out.
57:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Started anchor.
57:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
57:38
[SPEAKER_02]: He loves plays really good at it.
57:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Go podcast.
57:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't think with great content.
57:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think format is the boundary.
57:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
57:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think all, right?
57:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And find the right format for the ideas of your communicating and get them out into the world.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
57:55
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the final question, okay?
57:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Is AI overhyped or underhyped?
57:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I know your answer.
57:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's underhyped.
58:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and what do you think comes next?
58:02
[SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who is maybe worried that's a low-verhyped, towards some big bubble, what comes next in your view?
58:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Abstractions on top of technology that make it usable and awesome for us.
58:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
58:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Rebecca, thanks for being here.
58:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
58:15
[SPEAKER_00]: This is so much fun.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for listening to the Trailblazers podcast.
58:19
[SPEAKER_01]: If you found this conversation Bible, please follow along on socials, share with a friend, leave a review, all the things.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of all, please subscribe to our channel.
58:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps more contrain builders find us and supports the work we're doing here.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: To learn more about what we're doing, you can visit Trailblazerspod.com or my venture capital firm parkrangerscaped.com or just follow along on socials at Erica Underscore Winger.