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Josh Wolfe Discusses Innovative Investments (Podcast) · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: His name is Josh Wolfe, and this week is a
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  Speaker 1: tour to forced discussion on venture capital and technology and
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  Speaker 1: behavioral psychology in the world of deploying risk capital in
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  Speaker 1: the sciences. It's absolutely fascinating. If you are at all
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  Speaker 1: interested in the way venture capitalists think, uh, how new
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: technologies are found and developed and exploited, and how they
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: are adapted and eventually just become part of the everyday usage,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and what the future might look like ten forty a
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  Speaker 1: hundred years off, then you're gonna find this to be
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  Speaker 1: an absolutely fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado, my
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  Speaker 1: interview with Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital. This is mess
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: There's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My
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  Speaker 1: special guest today is Josh wolf He is the co
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  Speaker 1: founder and managing partner of Lux Capital, a venture capital
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  Speaker 1: firm that supports basic science and scientists and entrepreneurs who
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  Speaker 1: are pursuing counter conventional solutions to some of the world's
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  Speaker 1: most vexiting problems. He is a founding investor and board
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  Speaker 1: member with Bill Gates in Kai Metta. He is a
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  Speaker 1: co investor with folks such as Mark Andreson and Peter Thiel,
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  Speaker 1: and he's a director at firms such as Shapeways, Stratio,
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  Speaker 1: Scalio Control Labs, and Variant. Josh Wolf, Welcome to Bloomberg.
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  Speaker 1: Very great to be with you. So you have an
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  Speaker 1: unusual background. You're You're like a molecular biologist coming out
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of Cornell and your early work is on aids immuno
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  Speaker 1: pathology research. How does that translate to finance? And then
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  Speaker 1: venture capital? Venture capital is investing the people who are
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  Speaker 1: inventing the future, and people that are inventing the future
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  Speaker 1: tend to be technologists and engineers and scientists, and so
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  Speaker 1: you have to speak their language. But when I was
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: growing up, I was going to be a doctor. I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: was gonna go get an m d and then an
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  Speaker 1: m d, pH d. And then I met people who
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  Speaker 1: were actually making money, and I got way more enamored
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  Speaker 1: with capital markets. And I remember doing my internships on
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  Speaker 1: Wall Street, and then I was at the Summer's doing
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  Speaker 1: uh scientific research, and my mentor was actually trading futures
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  Speaker 1: and options in the science lab, and I got so excited.
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  Speaker 1: I said, you know, what are you doing? And he
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  Speaker 1: explained and and so I got way more enamored with
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  Speaker 1: capital markets than than science itself. But venture capital was
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  Speaker 1: the perfect hybrid because you get to bet on scientists
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  Speaker 1: who are inventing the future, but you just gotta understand
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  Speaker 1: what they're doing. So how much of this being enamored
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  Speaker 1: on of finance comes from your background? You you grew
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: up in in the hood in Brooklyn? Yeah, well, I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: have a buddy you grew up in c Gate. I
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  Speaker 1: know that area really well, Um, did that affect the
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  Speaker 1: way you looked at the world of of money and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: capital or was it just your upgring Well, first of all,
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  Speaker 1: if you don't grow up with money, you want it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So that's always a virtuous thing. And I actually think
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  Speaker 1: that the best entrepreneurs the kind of people that we
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: back and we look forward. If you can find the
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: people that have the chip on their shoulder that they
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: came from some sort of messed up background, it's almost
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: always predictive that they're going to be very ambitious, hungary
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  Speaker 1: and ambitious. Now you want them to be ethical and
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  Speaker 1: ambitious because you also get a lot of hustlers and hucksters. Now,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you grew up in Coney Island right by the seaside Carnival,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and you are filled with hucksters. So I would say,
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  Speaker 1: if anything, growing up in Coney Island made me super
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  Speaker 1: skeptical and cynical of human nature. I'm always fond of
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  Speaker 1: the Shakespearean quote that there's daggers and men smiles, and
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  Speaker 1: you grow up with this distrusting, slightly squinty eyed. You know,
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  Speaker 1: what's this guy's angle? What's the agenda that he's got?
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  Speaker 1: The boardwalk? Did that to you? Yeah, you've got New
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  Speaker 1: York City people talk about is diverse, but the reality
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: is you've got Brighton Beach with Russians, and you've got
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  Speaker 1: Coney Island that's primarily African American Latino, and you've got
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  Speaker 1: Korean on clothes. But you go to Coney Island on
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  Speaker 1: the boardwalk and it is just the absolute melting pot
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  Speaker 1: of New York. That's that's quite quite fascinating. So so
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  Speaker 1: you end up in finance, who work your way through
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  Speaker 1: a couple of well known firms. How did you end
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  Speaker 1: up pivoting to use the VC word into venture cap
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  Speaker 1: It's funny because the word pivoting is totally banded lux.
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  Speaker 1: We only pirouette. We don't pivot. We pirouett. I got
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  Speaker 1: very lucky, and everything in my life I was describes
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: randomnessnoptionality and ex post factor. I can explain everything. Is
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  Speaker 1: this perfectly near chain a priority? You never know and
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  Speaker 1: you recognize that most people are similarly situated, but are
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  Speaker 1: somewhat oblivious to that fact. Well, but again, if you're
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  Speaker 1: gonna be skeptical about other people, then you have to
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  Speaker 1: be a little bit skeptical of yourself too. So intellectual honesty,
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  Speaker 1: I think is a is a good virtue, but it's hard.
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  Speaker 1: So I got lucky, and I met a guy named
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  Speaker 1: Bill Conway. And Bill is one of the three founders. Yeah, exactly,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Carlisle Group founder David Rubinstein, famous one. He raises the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: money bill Less, famous by by design and invests it.
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  Speaker 1: And he's just an incredible human. He decided, And again
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  Speaker 1: I don't know the circumstances of the day or the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours that preceded our meeting, but he was
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in a good mood and we pitched him and I said,
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  Speaker 1: you know, we want to build this great firm, And
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  Speaker 1: he said, I hope you make a billion, and he
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: invested with us. In my life, There's not nothing that
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I could have pointed to in the path dependence of
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  Speaker 1: this internship or this job, or going to Cornell or
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  Speaker 1: this class I took that would ever lead to that meeting.
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  Speaker 1: And so I'm humbled by what I call randomness. That
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  Speaker 1: is truly truly random, isn't it. So you and I
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  Speaker 1: met at a dinner not too long ago, hosted by
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  Speaker 1: any Duke on an educational um project that she's working on.
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  Speaker 1: But I always kind of scan the people who are
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  Speaker 1: going to be at these dinners, and there was something
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  Speaker 1: in your bio that really made me laugh. And you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: describe your venture background as having an interest in science
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  Speaker 1: fiction like technology. I love that descriptor. But you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: have to explain what you mean by that, okay. So,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: so everything that is around us today was invented by somebody.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody came up with the idea, and that idea started
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  Speaker 1: quite literally as a fiction. It did not exist. It
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was in somebody's imagination. Now, if you accept the premise
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  Speaker 1: that a lot of the inspiration for technology from other
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  Speaker 1: people who were inspired but didn't invent it, they were
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  Speaker 1: the people who literally wrote the science fiction books, they
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  Speaker 1: wrote the graphic novels, they wrote the comic books, they
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  Speaker 1: made the movie, they did the special effects, and they
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  Speaker 1: imagined what could be. And it turns out you fast
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  Speaker 1: forward and you look at the Luxe portfolio today, a
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  Speaker 1: huge number of the companies that we've invested in the
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  Speaker 1: ideas behind them, the technologies, the design even was modeled
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  Speaker 1: on things that happened twenty four years ago in science fiction.
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  Speaker 1: And I've actually kept a archive of some of the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: sci fi archives, so if we went through these quickly.
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  Speaker 1: You've got the motorola, probably from Star Trek. It was
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: called the star tack phone, right, that was one of
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the first things. Right then in the rotors you can
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: get to sing the word Star Trek and not invite
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  Speaker 1: a trademark dispute exactly. Okay, Now you've got today, you've
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: got Siri, and you look at the image and the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: thing for Siri, it's just a silver version of how
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: from Space Odyssey. You've got Michael Douglas disclosure. He goes
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: into this room and he three D scans himself and
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  Speaker 1: he enters this virtual reality world. This was around the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: same time as like on More Man. If you remember
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: that okay, not not a fan favorite, but one of mine,
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  Speaker 1: and that sort of presaged the virtual reality landscape. You've
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  Speaker 1: got pod racing from Star Wars today. That's drone racing Lee.
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  Speaker 1: You've got robotic surgery when Luke Skywalker's hand is severed
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  Speaker 1: by Vader. That we got both Intuitive Surgical and then Orse,
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  Speaker 1: which was one of our companies that we sold to
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  Speaker 1: Johnson Johnson earlier this year for six billion dollars plus,
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  Speaker 1: not too bad. And and all of these things were
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  Speaker 1: born in somebody's imagination. And if you think about really
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  Speaker 1: what venture capital is, it is believing before other people understand.
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  Speaker 1: And what are you believing? You're believing in somebody's vision.
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  Speaker 1: Now the differences, you have to make sure that they're
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  Speaker 1: not full of it, that you don't get a theo nos.
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  Speaker 1: And you have to have literally literally just wrote down
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  Speaker 1: the word there and and and that is now. Now
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  Speaker 1: here's the intellectually honest thing. You do not know at
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  Speaker 1: the moment of inception or conception of a company, whether
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  Speaker 1: the person is malicious or delusional, whether they are intellectually
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  Speaker 1: honest or not. And so you put up a little money.
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  Speaker 1: It's like an anti in a poker game. You're trying
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to figure out is this person for real? And you
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  Speaker 1: try to find what are the technological milestones that will
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  Speaker 1: tell me that this is for real and not BS.
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  Speaker 1: And the biggest thing if you walk into my firm
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  Speaker 1: and you sit in our Monday partners meeting, if you
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  Speaker 1: asked any of the partners, what is Josh going to
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  Speaker 1: ask about the technology or what is he thinking? The
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  Speaker 1: second that somebody is pitching it, I am thinking, whether
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  Speaker 1: I say publicly or in thinking it privately, is this
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  Speaker 1: a fraud? So you raised Sarah nos It's such an
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: interesting question because my read of that entire situation from
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  Speaker 1: the get go is that it was both delusional and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a fraud simultaneously. She had zero medical background. She had
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  Speaker 1: and it's amazing how all the healthcare and medical device
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  Speaker 1: vcs passed and everybody else came in didn't know better.
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  Speaker 1: But it appeared that she believed she could legitimately do this,
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  Speaker 1: but with no basis in fact. So at what point
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  Speaker 1: does delusion become fraud? Well, when the technology doesn't work.
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  Speaker 1: I had a friend who is at a very large
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  Speaker 1: deck a billion investment fund that was doing crossover investments
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  Speaker 1: to their public market portfolio. They have forty billion dollars.
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  Speaker 1: They were making private investments. They were going to visit
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: there on us and they said, what's the number one
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  Speaker 1: question that you would ask if you were us doing diligence?
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  Speaker 1: And I said, does it work? And you'd be surprised
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: how many people just want to believe the narrative of
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the story goes back to science fiction and not verifying
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: if it's science fact. Now, you had all these other
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: telltale signs with her, Uh, the octygen are in boards,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: which all signaling value people that had you know, great
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: military or geopolitical and and just tolly inappropriate from medical technology.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But to your point, there was nobody there that really
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: had any sophisticated biotype perform and experience. Now, the truth
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: is liquid biopsy, the ability to detect from a small
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: drop of blood analytes that are indicative of cancer or
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: something else will eventually from someone see the light of day.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: But you think about the scar that it has put
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: on the industry in the sector and how hard it
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: is for a legitimate entrepreneur that's developing legitimate technology. Today
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: they've raised this significantly, So it's not just that she
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: was a fraud, and her partners were frauds. They've literally
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: set medical technology back because now everyone's gonna be skeptical
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: even of legitimate breakthroughs. And now, realistically, is it set
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: back one year or two years or three years, or
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: has it raised the cost of capital for that? How
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: many people will die over the course of that setback.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So you can argue that there's blood on our Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not a fan. In case you can't tell, I'm
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  Speaker 1: with you. And look, it's easy for all of us
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  Speaker 1: to say back then, and I believe, by the way,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: because I know that you are a fellow skeptic that
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  Speaker 1: was a fraud. It's harder today both socially to come
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  Speaker 1: out and say I think that another company is a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: specific fraud. Now there's an entire realm of quantum computing
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  Speaker 1: today that I think is going to be wrought with frauds.
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  Speaker 1: It has all of the criteria for a fraud. People
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: don't understand it. They have fomo if you're missing out,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: they think that it's gonna be something really big. They
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: don't want to feel stupid because they don't understand it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And so people are parting with money and I think
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: that you're going to see at least one and maybe
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  Speaker 1: as many as five public frauds related to quantum computing.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: The tragedy of the comments finds its way even to
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: venture capital. Tell us a little bit about your team
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: at LUX, who are your partners and what what does
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: everybody do? Well, let's start with my founder, my co founder,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: who's Peter Abert. Peter is my dispositional opposite, which I
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: think if you are going to have a firm as
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a critical thing. Now it's interesting because in hedge funds
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you typically have one PM and they make all the decisions.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: In private equity you tend to have teams. So Peter
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and I are the co founders. And the reason that
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it's important is he is the optimist. I am the pessimist.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting before you, and I am wearing all dark.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I wear all black, and it's just my disposition. I
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: expect the worst. It helps pessimistic. But for the skulls
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: all over them. Correct Pete. You will catch him in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: nantucket reds, in pastel colors. He is much more like
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: my wife, who happens to be an activist hedge fund manager.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: She's more perma smile me as they say you know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I've got RB you know, resting be face, so so
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  Speaker 1: I expect the worst. He expects the best. And if
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: you had an entire firm that was like me, we
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: would be a bunch of cynical short sellers just trying
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to spot the frauds and doubting everybody. If you had
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: a firm entirely like him, we would be lemming growth investors,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: just paying any price and going off the cliff. The
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  Speaker 1: balance that we've had as friends for twenty five years
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and his partners for twenty has made culturally the firm
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  Speaker 1: what it is now. From us flows everybody else. And
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: so you've got ten other investment professionals, and everybody is
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: intellectually and ethnically and gender diverse. Now what is it?
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  Speaker 1: What does that mean for me? We've got people that
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: are Kashmiri, Pakistani, Iranian, Brazilian, Australian, You've got a bunch
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of white New York Jews. But the intellectual mix of
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: people is so different. You've got electrical engineer PhDs. You've
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: got people that have stem cell PhDs, people in material
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: science PhDs, people that have no technical background and are
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: excellent at capital raising and marketing. And when we descend
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: upon a company the entire And it's funny because I
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: used this analogy the other day and people had no
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: idea what Vultron was. And I feel like I'm a
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: young guy, but jeez, it dated me. But it's like
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Vultron coming together. You get all the robots come together
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: into this Megatron and uh, it's just, uh, you know,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: a diverse group of people that all think differently. I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: always say that if two people think the same, one
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of them is unnecessary, and uh, it's it's a lot
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of fun. So you're concerned that your cultural references are
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: out of date, and you're like, what almost fort Okay,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: wait until you're in your fifties and you'll drop a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Monty Python or a Caddy check reference in the whole
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: table of millennials look at you like perfect um. So
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: so you focus a lot on um. Basic science to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: some degrees tell us the sort of companies luxe investment.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: So it really is something that's in the cutting edge
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of an area that we think that other people haven't found. Now,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the reason we do that is we want really high
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: scientific technical complexity, not because we want to tackle things
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that are really hard. It's because we don't want competition.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: It is way easier in venture capital to go find
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the next company that is developing an app for the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: smartphone or some social media software or something that is
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: relatively easy. But the problem with funding easy things is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you get hundreds of competitors, talk about random outcomes. Of
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: those hundreds, who really is going to know which is
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the next Snapchat or Instagram or whatever. It's practically in random. Now,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I know that you're a student of skill verse lock,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and the great question always, I think in this domain
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: is can you fail on purpose? Something that Michael Mobison
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: has and and in in in picking amongst a field
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: of five hundred competitors in software, you know you've got
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: let's say, equal probability one chance. If you can find
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: something where there's only three or four or five competitors,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you can look a lot smarter because now maybe you
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have a twenty chance, assuming all things equal, of picking
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the winner. Can you can you invest in all five
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: or two out of the five or anything? You're typically conflicted,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: but sometimes depending on the stage of things, you might
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: invest in one and then later on something else comes
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: along and you might invest in it, but because you
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: know that it should really be part of the first
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: thing that you invest in, and by being able to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: influence that outcome and say, you know what, don't split
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the baby, don't try to split and and and recruit
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: competing talent, don't try to go to customers and and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: confuse them. Be part of one enterprise. And it's better
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: owned something smaller, of something much bigger than to try to,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: you know, compete head to head. So sometimes we will
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: influence those outcomes, but by and large, the stuff that
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: we're investing is that the cutting edge of science and technology.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It's hard, there's barriers to entry, there's intellectual property that
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: imposes a negative right on people, so that you have
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a moat. Again, all things that and I am psychotic
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: about competitive advantage give the company that you're investing in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a better chance than just pure luck. It makes a
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: lot of sense, uh, when I think about batting averages
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: for the typical VC funds, usually, and I'm going back
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to the you know, the John Dwarves of the world, um,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties vcs they tend to spread spread
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of money around, most of which did not
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: generate a positive yield. And then there's a handful of
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: not just winners, but giant outside winners, hundred cks. You know,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: think about eBay and Apple and and Amazon going down
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the list. Given this area and and the more basic
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: science that you're focusing on, is it a similar distribution
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: or how do the numbers shake out? You're looking for
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: one home run to subsidize the next fifty or is
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: it the distribution different? So let's let's look at the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: macro on venture. You've got two extremes, one of which
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: we say is spray and pray exactly what you're exactly
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: what you're describing, Just bet a lot of lottery tickets.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: You have intellectual honesty or told naiveta you don't know
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: what's gonna work, and in rhymes, so you know it's
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: true exactly. The the other extreme stick with rhyming, wait
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and pay. Okay, so you wait until a winner emerges.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: You pay a very high price for the higher chance
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: of being correct. But obviously the higher the price you pay,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the lower you're expected return. So in one case you're saying, well,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: let's bet in fifty or a hundred or two hundred
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: companies and make small investments buying lottery tickets, and the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: other you say we're gonna load up into the ones
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: that are winners, but we're gonna do it at such
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: a high price, then maybe we're only gonna get a double. Now,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: for a successful venture fund, your look for three x
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: or four x cash on cash over the ten year
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: period that you've got locked up money. Now, I always
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: say the great advantage that we have as venture capitalist,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: let's say, over peers and other alternatives like hedge funds.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Hedge funds might have quarterly, monthly, maybe annual liquidity redemptions,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: and that's a hard thing because it creates an institutional
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: imperative where the manager is focused on the short term.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: We get to focus on five, six, seven years because
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: our investors capital is patiently locked up for a decade. Okay,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: if everything goes well, you might get three to four
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: x cash on cash. Now some funds you might have
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a ten x fund, and some of you might have
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a too, But on average, that's what you're gaming for.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: There's two ways to cut it. First is you assume
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: that one or two of your companies return the entire fund,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: all the capital that you've raised one time. Over our
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: newest fund five million dollars, we've got a pair of them.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: It's it's we recently closed a billion dollars, but the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: five million dollars. You might have one company where you
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: own ten percent of it and it sells for five
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. You've got five hundred million dollars back and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: growth proceeds. It's returning the fund one time over. You're
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: next five companies in aggregate proceeds, return the fund another
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: time over. And in our case where you build a
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: portfolio about companies, then the ensuing fifteen or twenty companies
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: will turn it another time and you end up with
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that three x cash on cash. The other way to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: think about it, and again simple math. A third of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: your companies are total zeros. You lose everything, a third
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: you make back give or take a dollar, and the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: third you make ten x, and you end up with
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a three x cash on cash. The problem is you
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: don't know which companies when you invest, are gonna be.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: If you did, you can only invest in the three
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I'm only going to put the money in the ten
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: x correct. Now, of course, what we do wherever your
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: confidence in your conviction is high, you upsize, and you
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: know portfolio allocation, You put more money in the things
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that you think are going to be great, you try
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to put less money and but put so much of
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: this is reputational. And so you mentioned John Doer before
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and some of the great venture capitalists of the past,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and it was their reputation in backing a winner that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: begot them the next deal. It's very much like when
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you sit in a movie theater and they say from
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the director that brought you you know, or from the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: producers of and it's that signal. It's the same signal
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of why elite you know, universities attract elite performers and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you get this path positive feedback effect. But so much
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: of our business, if you are intellectually honest, is luck.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: There can be no doubt about that. Um. Although if
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you go with this, can you fail on purpose? I
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: can guarantee you that I can fail on purpose. I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: can pick the absolute worst entrepreneurs that cannot raise money.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I can absolutely pick fraudulent companies, and I can absolutely
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: pick teams that can never deliver. And I could fail
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: on purpose. Well, but that just says that there is
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a skill component that doesn't by itself eliminate the lu
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So the threshold for having a fl decent venture fund
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: is hey, if you can eliminate a lot of that fraud,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: that's how you end up with a three or four
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: x as opposed to a one and a half for
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: a two s well. And really the best is can
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: you develop the reputation and can you actually be able
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to help companies so that you get the best entrepreneurs.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Because the truth is what we do in the end
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of the day of security selection and a little bit
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: of competitive intelligence gathering and some smart capital allocation, but
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the most important thing that we can do is attract
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the best founders because they are the people who do everything.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, limited partners give us
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: money and they allocate to us, and we in turn
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: give it to the entrepreneur, and the entrepreneur in turn
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: decides who they're gonna hire and who they're gonna fire,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and what technologies they're going to prioritize and how they're
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: going to sell. And the single best trait of an
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: entrepreneur is somebody that can tell a story, somebody that
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: has that narrative power, going back to science fiction and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: just being able to back those individuals. They are the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: people that recruit talent, They are the people that raise
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: money They are the people that garner attention and wind deals,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and that is what makes the metric capital business quite
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: quite fascinating. Earlier we were talking about UM science fiction
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and how that led to your interest in venture capital.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: But you've developed a philosophy that I think is somewhat
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: atypical from some of those other vcs UH and business
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: people I've mentioned. One of the one of the things
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: in your bio UM stood out to me EO. Wilson.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: You said he might be the person that had the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: single greatest impact on humanity. Explain that, well, totally biased view,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: but but he had the biggest impact on me intellectually.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: This was modern Renaissance thinking. The book Concilience, which I
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: probably read and there about so over twenty years ago.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Was this idea in science that turned me on. In
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: turn to Charlie Monger, these two people are our compatriots.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Charlie's view of Renaissance thinking and worldly mental models and EO.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Wilson's view of the unity of the hard sciences and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the soft sciences, between psychology and physics, between economics and geology,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and finding patterns lets you identify some universal truths, and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: so if you can continue to find those first principal
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: universal truths. I think it sets you on a good
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: path for making good decisions. Quite quite interesting. I assume
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: you've worked your way through Port Charlie's Almanact. I've given
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: so many copies of that away. I've I've created more
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: doorstops and the coffee table book gifts, and he's one
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: of my whales. If you, if you can get around
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: to introducing us, I would love to. You know, I
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: have a funny story. Uh. My wife and I went
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: years ago to the Berkshire Annual Meeting and we were
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: at the I forget if it was the days into
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the Marriot, whatever the hotel was, and before I actually
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: had invested with Bill Gates, there was a dinner and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: it was Bill Gates, it was Buffett and it was Monger.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I picked my wife up from the airport because I
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: arrived earlier, and we go out to grab her bag
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and the car was broken into. Your car, our car
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: was broken into and everything was stolen, the laptops and
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: everything was gone. In Omaha. I go to the front
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: desk and while we're going to the front desk, who
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: was settling the bill for their private dinner restaurant Charlie
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Munger and here I am. My wife is really upset.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: You know, all our stuff was just stolen from the car.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And there's Charlie Munger at the front and she looks
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: at me and she's like, go ahead. You know, it's
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: just she knew that Charlie was gonna trump, you know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the front. So um, and you had a conversation. I did,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and it's a highlight that you have great memories of. Well,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you know, he's not a very loquacious person, you know,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: nothing to add but h but I think that his
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: his rigor in being you know, I remember there was
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a story that somebody asked him what is the single
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: thing that you would attribute your success to? And he
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: said being rational? Fair enough, right, And that's if you
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: can try to be as rational as possible, which means
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: identifying all the points where you are irrational. Um and mindful.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: You know. We were at dinner together with Anni Duke
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and Danny Kneman and and Kaneman's partner's wife, Amos Tversky's wife,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Barbara Correct, who also just wrote an amazing book. And um,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: it's really interesting because Danny has identified all of the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: mental biases, the cognitive biases, that we have and it
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter because even being aware of them, you still
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: he will still fall victim to them. It's called the bias. Bias.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Even knowing your own awareness of of these cognitive issues
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: is not sufficient to defeat them. Looking at an illusion,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: even knowing it as an illusion, it still works on you.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: It's how you wired. You know, we were very well
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: does line to adapt to the savannah, But these more
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: complex capital risking ventures where risk is out there but
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the dangle of reward, our brains just go on the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: fritz when that's presented to us, at least our instinctual brains.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Getting past that, you have some shot. But it's not easy.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting because you know, we we respond to
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the bustle in the hedgerow right, the little little sound
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that's there, and is that a tiger you know? Or
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: is it just the wind in my world? I have
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to respond to that with heightened sensitivity. Is that a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: little signal over there? Is that entrepreneur into something big?
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And so we're constantly overreacting, in part because it is
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: so zero. Some I do not have the opportunity to
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: invest in the public markets where I can say, you
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: know what, I really like that, and it's up ten
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: per cent or it's down ten percent. There is a
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: zero sum nature where I am racing to beat everybody
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: else to the big scientific technological breakthrough and own it
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: before everybody else can. I like that answer, and kudos
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: on the Zeppelin reference. I appreciate that. UM. There's another
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: quote of yours. I like you. You refer two things
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: as minnows and mega's. Explain what that means. This is
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a phenomenon right now, the minnows and the mega's and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: venture capital UM. Historically, you had lots of firms that existed,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and maybe they were two hundred, four hundred, five hundred
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: million dollar firms. What you've had in the past few
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: years is a phenomenon that has created a barbell of
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: capital allocation to very small funds, and many of them
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: what I call the minnows. These are people who have
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: raised ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred million dollars.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: They are a single or in some cases a duo
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: g P general partner, and this is a spray and
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: prey approach to VC. In some cases they are, but
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: more importantly, they're very It's like the institutionalization of Angel investing. Okay,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: that's fair. Why is this happening in part because there
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: is a junior person at a major fund who found
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the hot deal that made the fund a lot of money.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: But the problem is that person is not part of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the succession of the partnership. They don't have the economics,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: They're not gonna get paid. So the limited partners recognized,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: you know what, Jane Smith or Joe Smith, they were
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: really the deal maker here. Let's put them in business
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: because they are the future of venture capital. And the
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: LPs are thinking, how do I get a big allocation
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in the next climate Perkins or Sequoia, and how do
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I get that early? So that has created what is
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: intelligent to do on a small basis with a handful
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: of these people. But again a prior you don't know
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: which ones are going to be really successful hundreds and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: hundreds of minnows. Now, the way that we look at
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: that as a firm is, these people are our friends.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: They are a source of deal flow. We can be
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: a source of capital to them. Some of them are
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: going to turn into great franchises. Nearly impossible to predict
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: which ones. At the other extreme, you have the megas,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the megas are the people that are raising billions of dollars.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Now the eight hundred pound guerrilla or Godzilla, depending on
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: your view, is soft Bank? Sure SoftBank has cosion funds.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Is just it's a hundred billion dollar guerrilla. Well, it
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: is a complex beast, and I would call it Godzilla.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And it has completely changed the undulating landscape. Why because again,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: in public markets you have relative efficiency at times. Of course,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: you know you have massive inefficiencies at the times, but
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: there is no market more inefficient than ven your capital.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Where in the private markets, a single price setter can
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: come and just decide what the price of something is.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: They create the market clearing price. There is no short selling,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: there's no counter offers, there's very little liquidity. So soft
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Bank has come and created all of these unicorns and
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: deck accords. And what's crazy is the money that they're
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: putting to work. In some cases they are pricing up
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: their own investments. Now, put on the tinfoil hat for
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: a moment. I have a more slightly nefarious view that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a reason that soft Bank is doing this. Understanding the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: motive is that they're doing this to be able to
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: create paper assets and increases and paper valuations that can
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: serve as collateral against indebtedness. That it's north of a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. So by being able to invest in we
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: work at ten billion dollars and then pricing it up
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: to twenty, you just showed that you had gain and
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: your billion dollar or two billion dollar investment. And if
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you look at their earnings over the past one or
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: two or three quarters, a significant portion of the profits
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: that they are reported is from these paper gains I
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: liquid and then when one of these companies actually exits
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: and you have liquidity, like an uber or gardens, they
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: take those proceeds instead of distributing to the investors, They say,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: you know what, we're gonna borrow against this. We're gonna
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: issue debt and sell it to retail. So I think
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the entire complex, which is really run by a bunch
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: of Deutsche Bank X credit structure credit. You know, Deutsche
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Bank is the most straight up bank there is, of course,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's no risk there that you know, you
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: have total collapse and uh so, so I think that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: this is for venture capital systemic risk and one of
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the poster children of illiquidity. I think that the narrative
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: about singularity in the future. All of that is great
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: for society because it funds all kinds of experiments. But
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: for the soft bank and soft bingk investors, I would
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: be very, very nervous. So soft bank is a Ponzi scheme.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Quote unquote, says Josh Wolfe. I'm gonna put that down
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and put those words in your mouth. Um. The minnow
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and mega model, by the way, very much reminds me
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of one of the smartest things that one of the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: smartest banks does, which is Goldman Sacks. Are you familiar?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: You know when when Goldman Sacks has a hot trader
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: or they have a manager who's killing it, rather than
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: have that person slip out and launched their own thing,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: they'll tap and say, hey, have you have a thought
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of starting a hedge fund? Will help fund you. We'll
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: give you first billion dollars, will help you raise capital
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: owned by the way, where your prime broker, and we're
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: gonna have a piece of the GP. But go out
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and um, a thousand minnows have spawned, and that's how
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you end up with where we twelve thousand hedge funds
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: these days, most of which barely earned their keep um
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: including fees. Beyond fees it's it's not necessarily a money maker,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: but that description of VC funding minnows is what Goldman
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: has been doing for I don't know, twenty years. It's
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: actually very interesting because on the hedge fund side, you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: between Citadel and Millennium and bally Asney and SEC, you've
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: seen that phenomenon right where they say, Okay, we're gonna
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: do risk management of the top, we're gonna have a
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: lot of people will blow them out if they lose
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you know, teen percent or whatever. The was notorious for
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: that in in venture capital. First of all, the time
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: frame to know if somebody has made money is so long.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: But um, but you haven't had that kind of institutional
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: complex because the time that it takes to find out
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: if somebody is right or wrong, the pay schemes, all this,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it's just it's it's very complicated. But you do have
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: this bifurcation in many many investors that are making small bets,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and that is good for the angel investor, the person
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: that's starting up. It is easier than ever if you
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: want to start a business to find capital, and that
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: has an important footnote which is the beneficiary of that.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Over the past few years has been we work because
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: ever I see, I thought you're gonna say the public,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: why why we Because the public gets subsidized. The public
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: is always the beneficiary in the end, even during bubbles, right.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, of course pensioners and retirees lose money, but
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the reality is we continue progress. Right in the Jim
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Sarrewicki had a great quote many years ago in The
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: New Yorker which said, in greed and average lies the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: hope of progress. Sure, and it's true because that's what happens. Right.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Everybody finds something, they overdo it in the short term,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: they underestimated the long term. But in that greed and avarice,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: lots of stuff gets laid down. The book that best
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: summings up that sir Wicki quote is um Pop Why
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: bubbles are great for the economy. So you look at
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: railroads and televisions and cars and computers and fiber optics.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Every with the exception of financial bubbles like the Great
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Financial Crisis just leaves behind debt. But every other bubble. Look,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: so you probably remember Global Crossing and Metromedia, Fiber and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: all the fiber optics companies that were laying unlit cable
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: at something like two thousand dollars a mile, and it
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: end they'll go bankrupt, and it gets bought the next
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: generation for pennies a mile. And that's what makes YouTube
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and Facebook and Netflix and all these other bandwidth intensive
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: applications viable because some losing investment basically made the Broadman
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: available for free. So you hit it, you hit on
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and I think two really important things and percent right
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: right late nineties, you had a narrative promulgated by George Gilder,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: who happens to be a friend. Yeah, but but George
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: god Guilder used to literally say I worked with a
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: guy used to get the Guilder Telecosm newsletter, and I
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: would read it and I would always come away with,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: what is this? I don't do price nonsense. Price is
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: what matters in the public markets. How can you not
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: do price? George was directionally right about technology, okay, and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: there's certain directions that's a tough call to make. Hey,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the the fault position of human technological advancement is up.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I could save you two thousand dollars a year in
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the newsletter, But you had that Guilder effect right where
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: he would come out and because everybody else was looking
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: at it. It was a big bold letter. Whatever the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: public company, the thing would be upft. Remember Nortel, he
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: got behind it exploded, and go down the list of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: all of the j D S Uni phase and all
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: these guys. Okay, so so, but you're right, Gary Winnick
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and Global Crossing. Now Hype got high cost a capital,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: God low, like you said, hundreds of miles of dark
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: fiber optic God laden lid. And the winner from all
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of that was the third world who got connected to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the Internet for free. The losers were the growth investors,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the public investors. The winners were the distressed equity guys
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: who came and picked up all the assets for cents
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: on the dollar. Now you go back almost a decade
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in venture capital, the same thing was happening with solar,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: an alternative energy. Everybody was funding solar, and you didn't
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: have to be a genius to predict this. You just
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: hadn't know a little bit of history going back ten
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: or fifteen years, which was optical networking was the only
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: to be. If history doesn't repeat it rhymes, it was
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: going to be the same thing as solar. And so
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in solar we said sit out the ride, don't invest
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have massive hype. It's gonna lower the cost
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: of capital. People are going to do uneconomic things, and
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the winner will be the third world that gets connected. Now,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: my anticipation of the time was that the private equity
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: guys would come in and scoop up these assets for
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: cents on the dollars. And I was wrong, really because
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the people that scooped up the assets for cents on
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the dollar were the Chinese. Huh, and they now dominate
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: the solar electric quite quite fascinating. Let's let's talk about
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: some of the technologies that are out there and how
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: they're doing. You know, when three D printing first came out,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: what is it almost fifteen years ago? Is so the
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: promise was we'd all have these fun two D three
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: D printers. I need a part, you can print just
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: about anything. We'd be printing heart valves. So we've been
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: printing all this stuff And did we get our our
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: hopes up too high? Is that still somewhere off in
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the future or has three D printing really been an
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: overhyped bust? Yes? Yes, and yes so really yes, I
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't expecting it has been an overhyped bust. But This
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: is predictive if you know your history of technology, what
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: you do, you look at Karlotta Perez and the diffusion
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: of technology through through history. You go through a um
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: installation phase where everybody gets the thing and people are
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: tinkering for the past twenty years, and those typically near
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a generational long thing, maybe it's three quarters of a generation,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: but between years. So for the past twenty years you've
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: had the installation phase where people are getting lots of
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: different three D printers. You have top ones that do
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: cost a few thousand dollars, but they really do don't
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: do very much. They print plastics and it's good for
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: schools and universities and tinkers and this kind of stuff.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: But then you've had the domain of prototyping, and so
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: that's also been another you know, early that's a big
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: cost saving the two thousand hour or three the bigger
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: units that you could design a part and say, let's
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: see what it looks like in three days. Yes, but
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: it's still modest. It isn't the boom that we've all
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: been looking for. Three printing. Now, I do think that
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: over the past three or four years we've been entering
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: this deployment phase so you go from installation, which is
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: twenty years to now deployment. We invested in a company
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: called desktop Metal, and when we invested it was about
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: three and a half years ago. The industry for spare
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: parts and UH end use parts was maybe five billion dollars.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Today it's nine, so rapid growth in the industry. It's
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: probably going to ninety over the next decade. Son x
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: ten x and over ten years. Now. Why, if you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: look at most of the economics of manufacturing, it is
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: spent on tooling, but the vast majority of the value
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and use parts and these spare parts, if you can
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: change the economics of how you make this stuff. Historically
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: you ship them and you ship it three ways see
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: air or land, but there's a fourth way to ship
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: apart digital digital. So eventually my mechanic is going to
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: tell me my turbo charger needs a new fan and
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: he'll be able to print it and slap it in
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: instead of waiting six weeks for it to show up
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: from Germany. And in fact desktop Metal is working with
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I think seven different automotive companies for exactly this. These
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: small bespoke parts, a water impeller, UH something is part
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of a motor where it does not make sense to
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: spend the fixed cost to tool and die a part
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: where you're not gonna make ten thousand or a hundred
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: thousand or a million of them. You just need one
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: or two of these parts. So I think that that
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: is going to be a big trend, and particularly if
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you look at a company like Desktop Metal is a
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Boston based company. It has grown very significantly, got BMW
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and g E and and uh Saudi Aramco and whole
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Slive Strategics that are investors alongside us. But the other
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: piece of this is wait a second, you said sodium
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: ram comes on interrupt. So what you're that you just
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: made me think of is you have some a crew
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: out at a offshore oil rig that needs and something
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: breaks and to get something flown out to them could
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: take a week and they lose a week of production,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: or they have a machine, they manufacture the part and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: they're down for four hours and that's it. Correct. Now,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: maybe it's not four hours, maybe it's a day and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: a half, but but yes, because the the installation phase
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: where you had a bunch of these printers there that
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: we're doing plastic, there's no way that an industrial company
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: is gonna be able to use that. Now, when you
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: have the sophisticated laser centering metal three D printers, it's real,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: it's real pieces, it's real technology for real applications. So
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: that's one. And you're seeing this in jeff In in
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: jet engines, in automotive, you are seeing it. If you
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: get a knee implant, if you get a hearing aid,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: it is a good chance over that that is three
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: D printed product. Now, this is not a biological product.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: This is still some form of play sticks and or no,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: it's it's it could be titanium for your knee. And
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: what I mean by by it's not a it's not
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: an organic product, a metal or plastic. So um, how
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: far off is the Hey and need a new aotic
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: card valve? And I don't want one from a cow.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Almost all of this stuff is still structural. When you
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: start thinking about the other component, which is function, you're
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: really far off. There's a guy, I think wake Forest
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Tony Atala who's doing three D printing of organs. Now
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: that's that's the sort of vision I'm thinking. Now. I
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: think the best need to kidney print. They can't do kidney,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: but the best that they've done is a bladder because
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: it's basically just structural right, it's hold old fluid. So
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: in other words, it doesn't have the mechanical functions. Even
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: if you're working with stem cells, you can't maybe in
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a lab, but today, like being honest as an investor,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: you we are far far away from being able to
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: introduce structure into that alright, So so maybe years, a
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: hundred of years. I think it's possible. I would say
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: high probability. In an hundred years, I think it's more likely.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Rather than printing it, we're probably going to harvest them.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: We're gonna grow them, and that approp I'm not. We're
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: going to grow them inside of animals. Now, there's gonna
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: be ethics about that. But today if you want to
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: no ethics about growing kidneys in front side of animals,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: if you wanted to take it from yes, but as
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: for for a pig or or who are very similar
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: biologically to humans or or a chimp, it's a nicer
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: life for them than they becoming bacon. Yes, but it's
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a there's ethical debate. Okay, thanks, take take let's take
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: care of that ethical debate. You're gonna save millions and
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: millions of lives and inconvenience a few chimps. How is
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: that debate going to go much further than that? I
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: think that if you can, if you can appeal to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the default morality of are you reducing suffering, then you
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: have an entire camp with people that increasingly and this
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: is this is observable. It's not speculative that more and
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: more people are embracing animal rights and saying, you know what,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: it's sentient, it's suffering. Look, there's nothing more I love. Actually,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: this is not fully true. Nothing more I than bacon.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: The only thing I love more than bacon is peanut
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: butter and bacon, which I know sounds disgusting, but it
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: does sound disgusted, but it is amazing. Okay, So I
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: have a friend who's a vegan who eats bacon, and
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know this comes from a pig, right,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: And the answer is, but it is delicious, so so.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: And by the way, pigs are actually much smarter than
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: doors or horses, and that hasn't slowed down the human
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: onslaught of pork. But doesn't make it right. So okay,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: but you can you can make the we're digressing, but
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: the ethical argument that it's wrong. We can intellectually agree
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: with it, but in the marketplace that is a giant
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: losing argument, is my point today. And you are seeing
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: both as evidence. If you look back in the arc
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: of history, I think that what we're seeing with Beyond Meat,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: you will see you know this uh til ray like phenomenon.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I think this is a company that ends up. You know,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that's we value eight but after it ran up, after
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: run up five et. But the market is saying something
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: right now, maybe you've got algois and maybe you've got
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: momentum investors and maybe got people, but there's demand and
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: an interest in this, and it's it's if you believe
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that markets tell you something. Right. Markets are there to
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: serve you, not to tell you. But but if if
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: you believe that there's something in the ascendency of Beyond
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Meat a single in the same way that the ascendency
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: of global crossing and these other things, going back to
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: that pridor the ascendency of these things tells you that
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: there's something there. And I do think that we're a
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: rounding air in the world of food. Let's you and
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I make a bet right now, when is the first
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: year in our lifetime, when the annual pork consumption short
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: of a worldwide you know, disease phenomena like bovine won't
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: won't happen all right? How about on a per capita basis?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: What about per capita even it won't happen in our
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: all Okay, So now that we've taken care of the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: ethical issue, which is an interesting debate with no real
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: market thing um, which brings us back to I don't
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: even know how we got three D printing to three
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: D printing. So if it's not if it's not the organs, um,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it's not the organs, But it is the parts inside
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the body. It is the parts inside the aircraft, it
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: is the parts inside the ship. Where the and it's
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: really interesting because the you change the economics of manufacturing,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: it has geopolitical implications. If you're just shipping a cat
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: file instead of having spare parts in inventory sitting in
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: a port of which there are trillions of dollars sitting imports,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: there's interesting implications. Same thing you're saving on storage, you're
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: saving on transportation. It's a greener approach for sure, Even
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: whatever energy consumed by the printer, it's better than manufacturing
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: and storing and shipping or whatever. It sounds like it's
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: a no brainer if it if it can successfully penetrate
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that mark, I think the no brainers gonna come in
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: it's economics. So we have another company here in New
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: York and half the operations are here in New York,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: half are in ninehoven In in the Netherlands. They have
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: made twelve million unique parts, over a million users and
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: customers hundred thirty countries. They'll print two million parts this year,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: unique parts, individual unique things. If you are a small
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: business and you have a room that's not dissimilar from
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the room that we're sitting in, you know, matter a
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: few hundred square feet or whatever it is, that's filled
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: with inventory, and you think about the cash conversion, sure,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and how much is locked up in that. If you
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: can free that by instead of having the inventories and
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: just uploading that as a CAD file and printing it
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and shipping it on demand, it will unlock capital. Anytime
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: you unlock capital, I think you create value sure for sure.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: So so let's talk about some of the other things,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: some of the other areas that you focus on. And
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: I have not mentioned um the company that you one
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: of your early investments that was in nuclear waste for mediation. Um,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: let's talk about that, and then I'll have to ask
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: you about thorium. Tell us about what you guys did
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: with nuclear waste remediation at a time when everybody else
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: was looking at green alternate event. So, so if you
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: listen to and there were very smart guys and very
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: successful older venture capitalists, but John Door and Venode coastle
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: are they with the legends, and they were writing the
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: op eds and they were crying on ted stages, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: they were really promoting the idea with Al Gore and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: others that the most important thing you could find were
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: solar wind, bile fields, ethanol battery electric cars. Okay, the
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: problem was everybody agreed with that. And the number one
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: thing that is predictive of returns is not whether there's
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a hockey stick growth curve that Gartner tells you this
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: is going to be a big industry, but how much
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: money is going into the industry. More money that floods in,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the higher the price of the assets, it'll be great
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: for consumers, lower returns. So we said, where is nobody looking?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing that I love to do. I
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: love to understand where is the consensus and where's the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: varying perception. What's the thing that nobody else is looking at.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody was talking about nuclear. You watched Al Gore's movie
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: back then, Inconvenient Truth, doesn't even mention the word nuclear
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: because it was taboo. It was politically taboo. So we
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: looked at nuclear. We spent a year and a half
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: looking at every part of the fuel cycle. We started
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: with the uranium miners. Maybe there's something there. Turns out
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: there all hucksters and fraudsters in New Mexico, Nevada, so
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the Coney Island and me said, you know what, stay away.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: You and I have had the Mark Twain quote. But
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: my favorite discussion, but the old time grid is Mark
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Twain quote is what is a mine? It's a hole
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: in the ground with a liar standing there, exactly exactly. So,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: so that was the same thing, right. And and by
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the way, uranium mining, if if, if it took off.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Uranium itself was such a small portion of the cost
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of operating a nuclear plan. It was relative in consequential,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: whereas the marginal cost of nat gas and oil it
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was primarily driven by the underlying material to the commodity.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: So we we said no to irany minors. Then you
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: looked at modular reactors. This is a good idea smaller
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: reactors that could be moved easily in and and built,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, incrementally. So instead of building a billion
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: dollar giga watt you know, a power plant for to
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: serve a million people, you will build an array of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: say thirty thirty megawatt plants, each one maybe cost you
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars, and you build it over time. Now,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the problem with that is is really for the domain
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: of very long uh tenure investors, maybe sovereigns, billionaires, people
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that could wait five years not for the technology to develop,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: but because the regulatory Okay, so we said no to that.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: But then you look around and you say, GE's the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: biggest unsolved problem with nuclear is not the political it's
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: it's what do you do with the waste it's disposed?
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: And so you've got, you know, this whole push for
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Yucca Mountain, which would be a geological repository. We have
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: spent tens of billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain. Do
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: you know how much waste has gone in zero So
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: we looked at that and said, okay, that's sort of interesting. Now,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: what about the the way that you store nuclear waste
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: on site? And it turns out that there are basically
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: two companies. One that makes a vertical cask like almost
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: a casket to put the rods, and one that makes
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: a horizonto one, so you can make a vertical water,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: you can make a horizon on one. But that was
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: basically some innovation, right, that's the innovation. Now what happens
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: is these rods inside the reactor, you know, they go
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: through a nuclear chain reaction, They heat the water, the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: water turns the turbines, that's hod of nuclear power. Then
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: when you're cooling them, they sit in a pool of
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: water for five years and then they're pulled out and
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: they put into these little caskets five years just to
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: cool down. No, no additional reaction, that's just a very
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: low level background. Water is a natural neutron observer. And
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: but but there's all this low level waste that is
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: sitting there. So everything from worker dose radiation to parts
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: and and and there's a big market for that. But
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: the bigger market and this was the thing that really
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: got us. If you actually sit and I promise you.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: This is not scintillating reading, but it was insightful because
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: nobody was looking at it. If you read the d
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: OE budget billion dollars a year, six billion of it
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: is spent a nuclear waste clean up, you have you
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: read the Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis. Yes, the whole
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: that last third of the book is all about what
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the people think the Department of Energy is about energy.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: It's not. It's about nuclear nuclear weapon clean up and
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: some nuclear energy. Now that that book was written well
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: after this. So this is two thousand. Uh. Hanford, Savannah River,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Idaho National Vannah River is giant, huge people. People are
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: unaware of how there is an entire city in Hanford,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Washington to Washington. You fly in there, there's an airport
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: dedicated to this one bar. It's called the Three Eyed
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Fish Bar, like out of the Simpsons, and and the
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: entire thing is a community and a complex dedicated to
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: nuclear waste clean up. Now, the people that are making
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: all the money, and when I tell you they make money,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: it's billions of dollars a year basically shoveling waste from
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: one side to the other. And this will be going
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: on for decades it's U r S, it's c H
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: two M hill, it's floor, it's the big engineering primes.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: So we looked at this and said, not only do
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: you have this in the U S, but you have
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: this in the UK with a site called Cella Field,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: you have this in France with log Is there an
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: opportunity for a high tech solution that could win contracts
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: by doing this faster and cheaper. We looked around. We
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't find anything nobody else's and that nobody was in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the space. And I gotta tell you, going around for
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: a year to nuclear waste conferences, I was certainly the
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: only person under fifty years old, uh, and I was
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: certainly the only venture capitalists there. So we go and
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: we find the best technologists that we can, and we
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: find the best people that were under the age of
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: sixty because they weren't that entrepreneurial in this space. And
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: to be honest, we found people that were like fifty
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: eight or fifty nine, and we end up blocking him.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: The best technologies, which were a combination of material science
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: and chemistry and physics, materials that could grab the worst
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: radio activelopments like caesium and strawntium acium, uranium, plutonium. And
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: then we had a second technology called vitrification, which in
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Layman's terms is glassmaking. Take the stuff, lock it up
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: into a glassmate, putting it in in silicon or some
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: other silicate is glass. And but you're heating at about
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: seventred degrees, it turns into this molten form. It can't leak,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: re leach into the radio acci radious, not cranking. Haven't
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: transmutated it. You know that that doesn't really exist. But
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: but but in gold and we know that does exactly.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And then and then oh, start a mining company and
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: taking public so with a liar exactly. So so we
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: we ended up starting a company. We named it Curryon
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: after Madame Curie, and in part because with a K
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: to be cute, and and uh in part because I
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: read the article in the about the Department of Energy
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: and it said that there's billions and billions of curries,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: which is the measure of radiation. And that was the inspiration.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: So we started the company and with very little money,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: and uh, I had two of our LPs who were
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: prominent hedge fund managers and Austin. We put a total
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: of three million dollars into it. And I put a
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: million and a half in from our fund at the time,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and we owned thirty five percent of the business. We
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: stake these guys. They go off to work and the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: first year they did about a million revenue. Second year,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: black Swan, you had a negative event, which was the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: seismic event that led to the earthquake that led to
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the tsunami that led to the Fukushiman disaster. And lo
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and behold, the only company picked in the US for
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: this cleanup was this little company, Kuran. So we went
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: from a million dollars in revenue to forty then eight
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: still working there now it's still still are and and
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: they actually sold to Veolia, which was a French giant.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: We sold for four million dollars, going to third of
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the business. We made an excess of forty times our
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: early money where suring the entirety of that fund. And
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: it was gratifying because we like to sound says as
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: as santimonious as it sounds, that we like to invest
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in matter that matters. It was meaningful because you actually
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: did something to reduce all the radiation from this disaster site.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And we got to make our investors a lot of money.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Josh Wolf. He is the
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: co founder and managing partner of Lux Capital. If you
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and come back for
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: continue discussing all things technology and venture related. You can
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: find that at iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Bloomberg, wherever
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: you're finner. Podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. Check out my weekly column on Bloomberg
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: dot com. Sign up from my daily reading list at
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Rid Halts dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Josh. Thank you so
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: much for doing this. I've been looking forward to this
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: for a while, UM, since you and I sat at
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: what was a fascinating dinner UM and I hope something
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: comes out of it. Uh, really interesting idea that any
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Duke is working on. You mentioned my friend Michael Mobison
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: was also there. It was really a murderers rogue of people.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: There are quite quite a gallery of intellect. I don't
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: know what's going to come of it? But I thought
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: it was fascinating and I thought what you discussed was
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: really interesting. I have no idea what it was, but
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: it led me to say I should have him come.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Here's an interesting guy to sit and chat with. So
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: what do you recall what your big idea was in that? That? Meaning?
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: You know what I actually think at least one of
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the ideas was as they were thinking about how do
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: you get more broad distribution about decision making for young people,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: how to train people to make better decisions and while
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: they're in the junior high school level, and and and
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the first principles approach that you would want to take
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: to this is, well, how do you reach those people?
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: And the old school thinking is let's put it into
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the curriculum of the schools. And every time that you've
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: tried that, you know it's typically failed. And so you know,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: go where these people are. So if if you've got
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: social kid, yeah, or that you know, if that you've
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: got young kids it's on roadblocks, you know, have gamify
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: this so that young people can be on roadblocks and
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you know, playing decision making games and looking at things
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: maybe even starting to learn to think of probabilities or
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: slightly older generation it's it's podcast, or it's uh, it's
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: this is this is now old school media. I used
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to think this was so cutting edge. You're telling me
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: this is now old People that are listening here no voltron,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: they know Caddy Shock, you know they younger, younger people
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: maybe not, that's uh. I've had a number of NBA
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: professors tell me they assigned m various episodes of this
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: is homework. So there's some right, it's it's content you have,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: you have amazing access to amazing people. Why not, it's
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: it's quite it's quite insane. Talk about dumb luck. That
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: will have a longer conversation about that. At another time,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: we were just talking about nuclear waste remediation, and I
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: have to ask you about the concept of thorium powered reactors.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many years ago, this was a
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: huge article in Wired magazine if you were coll wired
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: um about all the advantages of thorium and how productive
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: it is and how low grade the waste is, and
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: yet nothing's ever seemed to happen with that. I'll give
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you a probability in a timeframe, there's a fifty chance
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: that we see something in the next fifty years, and
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a ten percent chance that you see something in the
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: next ten years, and if you do, over seventy percent
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: chance that comes from China. The Modi family has been
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: backers of an effort on the East Coast. I think
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: it was called thorium power. We looked at a bunch
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: of efforts. The problem is it is very long, very expensive,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: regulatory fraud. It's just it's it's just gonna take too
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: too long. The virtues of thorium are great. You know,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: it's cheap, cheaper, lower, probably cheaper than uranium or or
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: any of the other and lower. The biggest virtue of
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: it is you have less probability of proliferation because one
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: of the outputs of traditional nuclear is plutonium. No plutonium thorium,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: which is really interesting. And um, let's talk about there's
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: a few text subjects we didn't get to. I have
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: to ask you about chrono biology. Yes, so let's talk
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: a little bit about And my understanding of this is, Hey,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: we could take the RNA sequence and clip off the ends,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: which tells people tells other cells when they're supposed to die,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and theoretically we have an infinite lifespan there. There's there's
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: many different dimensions of this idea of chrono biology, and
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the biggest one is that different cells in your body
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: are different ages, and there are markers on those cells
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: that can tell how old something is. So the Prokinje
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: cells in your brain are probably twenty five years old,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: oh mine much older than that. They feel it anyway.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: The gut and skin cells you have are maybe days
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: at most weeks old. So different parts of your are
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: basically regenerating and growing and dying at different times. You're
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: not like there's not one Barry, right, You're made up
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: of lots of different things at different ages, and so
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: being able to do a body clock to understand those
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: different things is important. Second, it turns out, of course
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: we have circadian rhythms, right, you get tired at night,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: You have different levels of hormones at different times of
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: the day. Different people might be night owls people might
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: be but there's something to that physiologically throughout the day.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: The third is that there's now evidence and scientific papers
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: are coming out showing that if you give chemo at
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: certain times of the day to certain types of people,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: that it might be more effective than others. Really, so
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: there's something in the body about when you're being reactivate.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Look you you, I'm sure have a time when you
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: feel that you are your most alert when caffeine works
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: on you, Whereas you might after lunch go into your
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: food coma at three o'clock or something and caffeine just
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't work as well as it does, say at nine thirty,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: when you know your hormones and and metabolites are are
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: spiking at a different rate. So the idea of chronobiology
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: is within the cells, between the cells, and even between people.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Is there something about the dimension of time that plays
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: relevance for medicine in the body. That's that's quite fascinating. Um,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: what else? Autonomous driving GPU gaming to your concept of
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: of UH, intelligent machine goes from GPU from gaming to
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: power artificial intelligence to machine learning. What's next? Is this
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: what's going to drive fully autonomous driving, autonomous military vehicles?
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Where does this go? And explain what GPU is? So,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: So GPUs are graphic processing units. This is the ability
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: to do UH large scale multidimensional processing of polygon. So
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: back in the day, if you had in a Nintendo
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: sixty four, it was this big revolution. If you were
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: playing James Bond, back in the day, it was like, wow,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you know like three dimensional you know Simulation Tank Command.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I remember that game, and that was two dimensional. But
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: but you can see what was all three dimensional polygons
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and that's how they created the sense of depth and
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: the illusion of space exactly. But but over time you
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: can see this clear progression, almost like a Moore's law
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: of visualization. But we went from CPUs, the central processing units,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: which were primarily dominated by Intel, to GPUs, which were
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: primarily dominated by in Vidia. Now, the narrative in public
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: markets around Nvidia was this is tightly coupled to PlayStations,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: PS four and uh xboxes. But suddenly something happened a
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: few years ago, about seven years ago, where they invented
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: a language called Kuda c U d A, and it
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: put it in the hands of academics and researchers who
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: suddenly said, wait a second, instead of using CPUs for
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: high throughput computing, we can instead use GPUs to do
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: this processing. And they started doing the processing for neural
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: networks to be able to do artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: And so you saw the shift where GPUs were primarily
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: coupled to the consoles and gaming to suddenly being the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: soul of the new machine inside of things like autonomous
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: vehicles and drones and simulations. This is an area when
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: you say, like what's next In terms of autonomous vehicles,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: increasingly the technology stack is um is maturing. You have
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: light ar, you have solid state LDAR, but the really
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: valuable thing is the simulation. And this is a fascinating
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: phenomenon because it is affecting many different industries, the gap
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: between reality and that which is simulated, so the ability
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: to render reality in physics engines, He's leading everything from
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you can play a simulator on something like Drone Racing
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: League and you can actually fly a drone and it's indistinguishable.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: You can actually simulate something inside the human body using
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: a CT scan of a body and have a GPS
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: guided experience using a surgical robot. You can actually have
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: a simulation of a street and then have an autonomous
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: vehicle that is learning on the simulation as opposed to
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: actually learning driving in the road, and it's increasingly indistinguishable.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: So typically that takes place on a screen. I know
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you're a sci fi guy. When do we get um
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: the star Trek Wholegram room the whole of deck well,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you've got we have a company actually called looking Glass
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: that's doing volumetric display, but we're not needing three dimensional
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: without a screen. Three dimensional. You have a screen, but
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: you have no V R A R glasses, So it's
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: a it's an optical trick like holograms are. But the
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: future there is that you'll be looking at something lookin
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: too uh um. You know, a pitch on a soccer field,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: then it's in three dimensional like a fish tank, and
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: you're watching the game, you know, right there. H So,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: one last star trek thing I have to ask you about.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: You've talked about transporter technology, right and we're not talking
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: about spooky um connections at a distance or anything on
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: a on a sub atomic level. You're literally talking about
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the ability to send matter from here to there. Explain that, Well,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think you can do. I mean that is
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: science fiction. What you can do is, I can take
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: a picture I'm looking at a coffee cup on our
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: desk here. I can three D capture a similar acorum
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: of that cop I can now it's a CAD design.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: I can turn the atoms into a representation in bits,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and I can send those bits as a cat file
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: digitally to a three D printer, and I can print
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: a version of that, but I am not actually transporting
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the individual atoms which is copied it. Which is why
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: I will never step foot on a transporter, because people
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: don't realize the transporter kills you and creates an exact
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: duplicate of view wherever it goes. And I was always
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: I was always surprised at Star Trek how that never
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: came up other than the doc not wanting to do it.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: But every time you step on a transporter, if you
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: want to make a device to execute people, and this
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: would be it, right, you basically take people and disassemble
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: them on a molecule and atom by anom basis. Now,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the fact that you have the ability to reassemble them elsewhere,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're not dead. This is just an
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: exact duplicate. But I just thought that was an interesting
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: But so you're talking about reporters are not an investable thing.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: You're you're talking about basically the variation of three D
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: printing using at a distance, using using um a full
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: three D scanner, scanning you know, and and three D scanning.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: The resolution has increased exponentially over the past few years
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: and so that's going to continue, and I think that
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: you can capture very discrete elements. Uh. This is another
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: area where actually I'm very excited about biology, which is
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: the imaging and microscopy tools that are coming out to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: be able to capture things in real time at a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: near atomic scale inside of cells. But the idea of
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: teleportation is you know, today's science fiction three D scanners
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: coupled with three D printers will closely approximated, but it's
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: still a trick and at a molecular level, you know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: let's we might as well talk a little bit about
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Crisper and gene editing. Um, are you describing building these
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: things from scratch or are you talking about growing these things, designing,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: redesigning the genes and growing them or doing a scan
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and reproducing them. Well, there, no, no, So in biology,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: there are there are people that have gene libraries. They're
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: trying to assemble nuclear tides. There are people who are
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: editing them using the technique of Crisper. Crisper is really,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say, an overhyped technique, but it
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: is a very hyped technique that was a fundamental breakthrough
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: and the fundamental breakthrough was effectively control C, control V,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and computing. It was copy and paste. You can actually
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: use this technique to be able to transpose code, dawns
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: or nucleotides from one part to another, and so that
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: allows you to literally edit like a Microsoft word with precision.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: But we are still so far away from being able
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: to deliver. There's been no crisper in a human There's
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: been no technique where you say, you know, Jeez Barr
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: has got a genetic defect here and let's you know,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: edit that out. It's just it's it's it's so far
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: away from practical reality that it's still a lot of hip.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: But when you say so far away a thousand years, no,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a hundred years, ten years impossible
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: to predict because you could have a breakthrough, you know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: in so intellectual but realistically, fifty years from now you
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: will be able to edit not you but you can
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: today edit embryos. You can you know in China is
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: doing this. China, and this is something I always say
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: that China lacks something that we have, and because they
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: lack it, they will be ascendant. And the thing that
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: they lack is the ethics and regulatory apparatus that slows
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: things down here in the US. Well, the way to
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: let me rephrase what you just said, China prioritizes the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: group over the individual. In America, our priorities or the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: individual of the group. And that's the difference between individual
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: rights or a society that's lasted five thousand years totally.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: And and the result of that, I think is that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: many of the advances in biotech will actually in the
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: near future occur in China, particularly around CNS disorders Parkinsons.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: And the reason I say that is, first of all,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: with the growing demographic population we have that are going
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: to get older here in the US and suffer from
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and neurodegenerative diseases and inevitability. Statistically,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: that is a huge market. We have shifted much of
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: our primate research outside the US because of ethics reasons.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: China does not have any such ethics reasons. They do
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: work on prisoners that even Americans would be a guess
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: that that that may be so, but they are definitively
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: doing work on primates. Uh. And I think what's gonna
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: end up happening is we will import from China the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: drugs much in the way that the US X boards
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Hollywood to the rest of the world. I think China
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: will be exporting drugs and hopefully you know, it's well tested,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: close to FDA approved apparatus, so that we're not in
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: in uh important crazy stuff. But so, what's the difference
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: between doing the research? This is where the ethical slash
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: economic discussion we had earlier comes to four. Is there
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: a difference between doing the research or purchasing the end
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: result of that research? To me, it's the same effectively,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the research was done. You may not like it, but
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: you're eating the pork or you're buying this product. How
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: are you not as responsible for the research as if
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: it was done here? Isn't it hypocritical to pretend otherwise?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: And this goes to whether we're talking about food or
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: what have you. Well, look, it is a US citizen,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: your your tax money goes to university research, and you
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: might fund some research. Whether you agree with that or not.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I mean that's the age or the War Department or this.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: So that I mean, which itself is another ethical issue
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: we should touch on. Because military technology, I think is
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: going to be an absolute boone in venture capital. I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: think it's one of the most exciting and important areas
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: in the next you know, five years um in part
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: because the vast number of big tech companies from Google
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: on down are issuing wanting to do work with military.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: They have such pressure from the HR and I R
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: departments that people are saying, I don't want to work
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: on this stuff. It is creating a giant, gaping, whole
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: void where there is a tremendous opportunity for some of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: the smartest technologies, some of the smartest scientists and engineers,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: to work on these wicked, thorny problems in defense. Your
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: pal Peter till We are co invested in a company
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: called and Roll. I think it is going to be
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest companies in defense. If you look
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: at the new entrants. If you look at the new
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: entrants in defense, you know, you've got Lockeed, You've got Raytheon,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: You've got be A, You've got General Dynamics. There hasn't
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: been anybody over the past. They've all conglomeratized over the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: past thirty years. There used to be fifty companies in
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: that space. There's seven. And in some cases you have
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: people that are doing amazing things, but it takes a
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: very long time, and they're working on huge, multi billion
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: projects like the thirty five Joint Strike Fighter. In other cases,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: you have many, many small beltway bandits who are just
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: getting these cost plus contracts because they know somebody that
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: knows somebody. But true innovation the thing that I think
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: gave American military might, which in turn gave our economy
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: the ability to project power across the globe and control
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: two oceans, and all the geographic plus military advantage we have,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: it has to be supported by continuous technological advantage. Is
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: something that over the past twenty years, I think has
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: slipped away. I think very few engineers want to really
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: work on these problems, and I think the smartest ones
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: that do are not only going to make a fortune,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: but they're going to do a tremendous patriotic duty. Quite
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: quite interesting. There's a fascinating story about how a bunch
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: of engineers tried to get the Navy to take radar
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: in the new book um Loon Shots. It's just astonishing
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: that this was an old technology by the time it
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: was put to work in World War Two. Nobody could
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: get the War Department, which, as it was called, back
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: then to recognize the military value of this, I gotta
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: think there's a million things. It's always I mean, even
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: the Jim Wolsey, whose former I who was a venture
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: partner on our firm Familiar really he uh you know,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: tells a story of of Amber, which was he traded
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: a bunch of alpaca back blankets to um to some
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: people over in eastern Europe to be able to get
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: a runway and then actually fly a drone. He was
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: looking at Milissovitch and uh and in that early drone
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: was predator by this really entrepreneur Abe Caram at the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: time wolves. He went to the d O D and said,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I need a drone. I want to be able to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: you know, have an unmanned pilot that could a pilot
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: vehicle that could give me eyes on the ground. And
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: they said it will cost five million dollars and take
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: six years. And he was able to go to this
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: entrepreneur and in five million dollars in six months they
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: were able to create this astonishing and whatever happened with
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: the company behind the Predator drone did Boeing a General
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Atomics General Stomics. Okay, that's a that's a minute. General
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: dynamics or general Atomics. Really that's a great that's a
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: great name, j um So I only have you for
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: a fine amount of time. Let's jump to our speed
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: round our favorite questions. These are what we ask all
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: of our guests. Um, first car you have our own?
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: You're making model Ford Explorer. It was a Hunter Green
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think I had it for a year
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: before it spun out on the highway and uh I
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: never drove it again. By the way, this is my
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: test question because eventually someone's gonna say, what's a what's
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the car? I don't know what you talk exactly? Uh,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: tell us the most important thing people don't know about
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Josh wall I mean, you know, there's so much that
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I don't even know about Josh Wolf right. So being
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: intellectually honest, but uh, personal side of me, I love
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: heavy metal and hardcore. I grew up going to you know,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: mosh pick Brooklyn, place called Lamore's and Life of Agony,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and I like skateboarding, and I like people that just
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: have this sort of gritty rebel side to them. Heavy
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: metal hip hop. When you say heavy metal, like my
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: hip hop following ends at Pulse Boutique with the Beastie Boys,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it's too commercial, like you know Black Moon.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: On the hip hop side, um uh, like two commercial
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: is three eleven or or and and on the heavy
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: metal side it would have been um deaf Tones, Life
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: of Agony, bio hazards, you're hard for. Like, to me,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: heavy metal is Black Sabbath and that's like when I
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: was coming up. But you say that today. But when
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Black Sabbath came out, people were like, what is this
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: devil music? Exactly? Um, tell us about some of your
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: early mentors. You obviously have a few who have helped
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: shape your career. Well, it's interesting there there used to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: be this placard outside of our old office. We were
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: on forty first Park in Madison that we're down on
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Broadway and you said that, Um, you know, reading great
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: books is like having conversations with you know, the best
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: minds of history, and so so many of my embedded
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: in the ground. And so my office is forty Brian Parks, right,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: they're they're fabulous. They're all over and I don't know
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: who did that, but it's genius. I love it. And
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: and you know you're you're looking down, you're looking at
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: your feet, you're looking at your phone or whatever, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: you notice these things. But that one always hit me
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: because so many of my mentors in a sense are
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: people that I never met, that are dead right there,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: just live in the pulp and the ideas. But but
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the one human mentor that I really I feel oh
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: my career and and the intellectual honesty is Bill Conway,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: the founder of Carlisle, who is just his ethics, his integrity.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the deal docs say, it doesn't
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: matter what the contract says, you just do the right thing. Um.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: The kind of questions he asks, the way that he
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: speaks without saying things. You know, it's, um, what do
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: you mean by speaks without saying things? Um, he has
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: a diplomatic way of saying things, and sometimes the messages
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and what he doesn't say. And uh, I find that
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: there's a handful of people that can communicate that way
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: where you sort of intuit what they mean without them
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: actually being explicit. Quite quite interesting. Um. Talk about investors,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: be at VC or otherwise, who influenced your approach to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: the world of risking capital? Well, you know, I think
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I read every bio and every article that I could
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: about the early venture investors Um, so you know Tom
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Perkins and General Drio and all the early venture capitalists,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: um and and so many of these lessons are basically
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: irrelevant because you have this depends there's an idiosyncratic moment.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: I remember there was a guy from a firm he
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: was a legendary investor back in the day, Ben Rosen
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: from Seven Rows, and he was early investor in Compact,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: which was once a significant technology investment Invincent. You just
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: need one. You just need one because you get one
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: hit and then that hit begets you know, a reputation
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: or reputation but gets more hits and so on. So
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: on the venture capital side, it was you know a
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: handful of individuals. The person who I have the most
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: respect for and venture capital hands down as Bill Gurley.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I think he's a true investor. I think he came
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: from the cell side on Wall Street and he understood
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: how to be an analyst. First, he understands businesses, he
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: understands human nature. I think he happens to be a
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: towering giant because he's very tall and I'm very short.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: But um, we're both on the board in the Santa
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Fe Institute, and and I oh with Michael exactly. Michael
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: chairs it and and and so, uh So, I'm very
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: fond of Bill um and uh you know, but there's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Bill Janeway is another guy who I think really interesting,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: super smart guy, and the way that he always thought
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: about risk and technology was an influence. Um. There's an
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: older guy, Chris Brody, who was a Warburg pinkis who
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time with. I've probably learned
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: how to be a good board member from watching uh Chris,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: you know, hold people accountable. So a lot of you know,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: individual lessons. But but from an investing philosophy, I mean,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: hands down, it's like the value investors because they were
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: just rational and they have they wouldn't touch venture capital.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: You know, Charlie Munger and Buffett and everything that I
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: could read you know that they've ever written or said,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: and all the you know, acolytes that followed from them,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: I think are just It gives you a a grounding
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: sense of a true business and markets and human psychology
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: and and uh so, I think even as a venture capitalist,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: you know, if you if you haven't studied those greats
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: your you get a massive deficit. Let's look about books.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: We've mentioned a few over the course of our conversation,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: what are some of your favorite books, be they fiction,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: non fiction, techychology. I'm a voracious reader, so so fiction nonfiction,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: so Conciliency. O. Wilson was a great Um. How the
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Mind Works Stephen Pinker. Um. I loved The Operator about
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: David Geffen And I like reading biology. Uh sorry biographies? Um,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: why Zebras don't get old scar? Oh? Sure out of Stanford?
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: What's this game? Poki? Right? Suppolsky Roberts Polk is he's
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: a primatologist, right, but at the end of the day,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: where where he's really a behaviorist if you think about it.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: But but we we are two primates sitting here talking, right.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: And related to that, there's a great book that Robin
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Hansen wrote in the past one or two years called
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: The Elephant in the Brain about signaling and if you
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: understand why people the motives behind why people do things.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. Um, let's see the on
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: the fiction side, it's interesting. My wife really got me
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: into fiction. Got no going back in fifteen years or
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: something like that. But the Magics, um, and it was
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: sort of the psychological profile. Oh. I can't remember the
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: author's name, but it was m A g u s.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: It's this guy's got this like Greek island and he
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: he has this teacher professor who takes this little sojourn
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: there and he's just like all these mind games that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: he plays with John Fouls. Yeah, it was. It was
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: dark and cool and psychologically that turned me onto a
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: British writer, Rachel Kusk, who's writing like every sentence you
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: know I mentioned before, I love the line that there's
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: aggers and men smiles from Shakespeare and so just her
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: use of language and the psychologically astute prose that she
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: has is great. Um she has a trilogy that seems
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: to be Outline is the first um and and Transit
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: was the second, and Kudos I think is the third.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: Um fiction recently over story by Richard Powers. It's just
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: brilliant pros And I really got turned onto fiction because
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: I think that you can you can tell more in
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: a paragraph by an amazing fiction author who understands human
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: psychology than you kind reading an entire textbook. So I'm
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: surprised there isn't a science fiction title on the list
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: because you talked so much previously about sci fi, Neil Stevenson,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I mean by you know by far the depth, the
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: rigor the foresight. You know. The Diamond Age for me,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: probably around the time that we were starting Locks was
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: just such an inspiration. Um, Diamond Age. Yeah, and I
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: know that one. And he didn't he do seven Moons? Yeah? Right?
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: And um yeah, and then and then TV writers like um,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: you know, David Milch and Deadwood and the current writers
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: on Westworld. Um, I just I think it's absolutely brilliant,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: scintillating soliloquies that they put forth and philosophically erudite, really interesting.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: We are in a golden edge of television, I think. So, uh,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: tell us about a time you've failed and what you
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: learned from the experience. Well, you know, there's business failures
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: and there's personal failures. The business failures you lose some money, right,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: or you made a bad decision. So if you're losing money,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: is you know you're not gonna hit home around every
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: time you're at bad may not be a failure. It's
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: within the expected distribution and returns. We watched as process
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: first outcome right, So so there are times where we
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: actually make money, but we considered it a failure because
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: we have the wrong process. So what I mean by
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: that is maybe our thesis was we were going to
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: make a certain amount of money or we gonna work
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: for this reason, and we were. We ended up making money,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: but we're totally wrong. We consider that a process failure.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: But being you know, I don't want to sound like, um,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know to cliche here, but like, the the
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: biggest failures for me are the things that have the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: permanence of regret. So choices I made, or relationships that
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I under invested in, or people that I didn't spend
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: enough time with who passed, like, those to me are
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: the biggest failures. And um, if there was like if
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: there was a younger Josh that I can go back to,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: it would be you know, some of the relationships that
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: I wish I could have fixed or or people like
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: I said who passed, that I could have spent more
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: time with. Those to me of the biggest failures because
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: you can never fix them. You lose money and investment.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: You know, a big deal, you'll make money in another one,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: but you know, you lose a person or a friendship
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: or relationship. I think those are the biggest failures. So afterwards,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: I'll give you the secret to time travel and tell
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: you how you could solve those issues. Um, and I'm
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: not kidding. What do you do for fun? What do
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: you do when you're not reading or or at work?
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: My my kids are just you know, it's an amazing adventure.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: I've got three of them. Uh you know, now there
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: are nine six and three, two girls and a boy,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and you know you get to just see the world
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: through their eyes and and make all kinds of new
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: mistakes over. Um. So I love my kids, I love
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: my family. I was an only child, though I ever
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: wanted was a big nuclear family, and my parents blew
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: when I was young. So this is sort of the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: chance I've had to make it right. Um. Love reading, skateboarding, basketball,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: just still skateboarding. In fact, there's a Sunday morning crew
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: of Dad's, um you know that are sort of between
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: forty and five, and we go out and try back
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: at the skate park. And you've got to keep the
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: orthopedics busy. They need to earn a living also, UM,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: tell us what you're most optimistic about today and what
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: are you most pessimistic about? You know, I think this
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: is a constant. I'm always optimistic about scientists and uh,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: you know, the incremental discoveries and the big breakthroughs that
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: they're going to make, because I think it's an inevitability.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: I always talk about this sort of directional hour of progress,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: and I think there's an absolute inevitability, just driven by
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: human greed pursuit of status, that we are going to
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: continue to discover incredible things that by definition, nobody ever anticipated.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: So I'm optimistic about science itself as a process. Um.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: I am generally pestimistic about human nature. I mean, the
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: best and unfortunately the worst things that I think happened
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: in the world are not because of um, you know,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: inanimate things. It's because of animated things. Is about people,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: two legged mammals who who are you know, filled with
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: um too much read or too much fear, too much hate,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: or too much ignorance. And and so I'm generally pessimistic
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: about human nature. And and uh, you know that classic
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Daggers and men smiles. UM. And our final two and
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: most favorite questions, what sort of advice would you give
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: to a millennial or recent college graduate who came to
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: you and said, Hey, I'm interested in a career either
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: as a technology entrepreneur or a venture capital. I think
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: the single most important thing for anybody is to UM,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: to build your brand, be differentiated, be indispensable. UM, stay
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: close to the money. You know, find where the capital
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: is flowing and stay close to it. That was one
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: of the great early advices that I got from somebody. UM.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: And and be voracious in your reading. I think you
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: have to be exposed to so many things so that
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: you can sort of develop your passion and then from
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: your passion development expertise and be able to stand out
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: so you know, all those things are in a linked UM.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: And the best advice that I probably give, again with
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: regret to my older self, is I think you need
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: to find the balance between having the chip on your
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: shoulder and the ambition. And then UM, you know, being
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: mindful that every relationship you have and every person that
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: you know, at some point in the future, they're going
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: to be a call option and you don't want that
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: to expire. So UM, you know, be good to people.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: That works for me. And our final question, what is
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: it that you know about the world of venture capital
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: investing today that you wish you knew twenty or so
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: years ago when you were first getting started. I wish
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: that I would have known and this is gonna sound
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: a bit cynical, how rigged the game is. Um, I
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: think every system at every point is rigged. And if
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: you can figure out you know, that little uh, you know,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: mechanical turk in the machine that's pulling the con rigged
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: Yegg explained that a little bit every look in you know,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: people thought, you know, just gotta pick the winners or whatever.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: But the system was rigged. I p O s were rigged,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: the distribution of IPOs was rigged. UM, you know, housing
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: market c d O s. There's always a game being played,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: and it's and there's a a a secret that the
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: people who are making the most money basically keep they
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: won't acknowledge public until after the fact. And so I
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: think at any point in time in some domain it's happening.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: And whether it's central bankers today, or whether it was
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: the housing crisis, or whether it's the soft bank stuff too,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: you know today or um, that there's always some game
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: that's being played that is totally unfair and rigged. And
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: UM and to sort of appreciate that and and look forward, UM,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: try to try to figure out where's the system rigged,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: because it always is somewhere quite quite cynical and fantastic, fascinating.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Josh. I almost called you
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Josh Lux Josh Wolf, managing partner and co founder of
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Lux Capital. If you enjoyed this conversation, we'll be sure
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: to look up an inch with down an inch and
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: on Apple iTunes and you can see any of the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: previous two hundred and fifty such conversations we've had over
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the prior five years. UH. You can find that wherever
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: final podcasts are sold Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, etcetera. We
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: m IB podcast that Bloomberg dot Net. I would be
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: meant remiss if I did not thank our crack staff
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: who helps put this together each week. Carolin O'Brien is
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: our audio engineer today. Michael Boyle is my producer. A
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: tick of Val Bronn is our project manager. Michael Batnick
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: is our head of research. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.