The Exchanges

Q What did you not take risk on that you wish you had?

A I mean, it's always around an investment or working with a team. I mean, I talked to Peter at the time he was putting the team together for PayPal, and I had invested in PayPal, and I'm like, why would I join PayPal? You know, like, I'm already an investor, and I already have shares, you know, but the answer was, you know, go all in. And then when, ah, the day that acquisition of PayPal by eBay was announced, Um, Peter had resigned, and I met him up at the Sundeck restaurant in, um, up on, uh, Sand Hill Road, and he said, you know, Kevin, I'm working on this business, and, you know, we're taking kind of the fraud algorithms from PayPal that kind of find these associations between disparate nodes, and, and we're going to use this to, to catch terrorists, and, you know, do you want to get involved? And I, I said, Peter, like, you're a libertarian. Why would you want something so, like, invasive of one's privacy? And that was the wrong response. Shouldn't have done that. I should have joined Palantir.

AI assessment note: “I should have joined Palantir.”

Q That is absolutely incredible. I do want to ask, what would you most like to do now kind of with this kind of very interesting perspective and you had on, what would you most like to change about the world of tech and venture when you look back on it now and kind of the world that you engage in through the SPACs perspective?

A I think really in general is finding what to change on the investing side is really finding a genuine fit between a founder and an investor. A lot of times they become quick sales processes and an investor or that is an entrepreneur is swept off Their feet and a term sheet is signed before really assessing and evaluating the full range of investors. You're making a long-term partnership decision. You really want to be thoughtful as to evaluation, to the terms, to who is going to be on your board for 10 years. For example, I've been fortunate to have a two-time investor, and that's Roloff Botha, involved in both companies from near cradle all the way through the public markets, and having Roloff Botha from Sequoia involved was really a game changer there, and we Very precisely chose Roloff. In the case of Eventbrite, our Series A was actually the lowest price term sheet, but having that trust and knowing his brainpower and prowess in building companies, it became a very easy choice for us, and he worked just as hard as Julia went through, I would argue, perhaps the hardest hit COVID business in the tech space as being a live entertainment and ticketing business, and we've gotten through a most amazing turnaround, which I think, Harry, you should consider for another episode.

AI assessment note: “finding what to change on the investing side is really finding a genuine fit”

Q That is absolutely incredible. I do want to ask, what would you most like to do now kind of with this kind of very interesting perspective and you had on, what would you most like to change about the world of tech and venture when you look back on it now and kind of the world that you engage in through the SPACs perspective?

A I think really in general is finding what to change on the investing side is really finding a genuine fit between a founder and an investor. A lot of times they become quick sales processes and an investor or that is an entrepreneur is swept off Their feet and a term sheet is signed before really assessing and evaluating the full range of investors. You're making a long-term partnership decision. You really want to be thoughtful as to evaluation, to the terms, to who is going to be on your board for 10 years. For example, I've been fortunate to have a two-time investor, and that's Roloff Botha, involved in both companies from near cradle all the way through the public markets, and having Roloff Botha from Sequoia involved was really a game changer there, and we Very precisely chose Roloff. In the case of Eventbrite, our Series A was actually the lowest price term sheet, but having that trust and knowing his brainpower and prowess in building companies, it became a very easy choice for us, and he worked just as hard as Julia went through, I would argue, perhaps the hardest hit COVID business in the tech space as being a live entertainment and ticketing business, and we've gotten through a most amazing turnaround, which I think, Harry, you should consider for another episode.

AI assessment note: “what to change on the investing side is really finding a genuine fit between a founder”

Q Can I ask if you were advising, you know, one of the day, Endowments, institutions, pension funds, you name it. Having been through the process and having also just analyzed the SPAC environment and landscape, if you're advising them, seeing this new swathe coming through their door, how would you advise them on SPAC evaluation?

A It's really only based on people, because there's no assets, there's no P and L, or there's a small, tiny L, but no P, because it's just amount of money held in trust. A-star holds two hundred million dollars in trust, And a very simple structure. And so what is evaluated there? It's entirely evaluated on people and looking at their background. Are they really effective in understanding of tech? They've been immersed in the ecosystem of the innovation economy. Do they reward both the company and the shareholders from the investments they make? Are they seen as founder friendly? All these are just a few of the questions and I'm really heartened. We're out to raise the tide of all ships and we think we'll benefit from that as well. But I'm very heartened to see people like Mark Stodd and his team at Dragoneer bringing a vehicle to market Mark is a phenomenal investor. He's shown in the Airbnbs and Ubers and many other investments he's made over the years that he's a very effective steward of capital, and for the fact that he's now out in the open markets trading his SPAC vehicle or his SPAC vehicle is trading is very exciting, and for the first time retail and many long-only investors can get involved in that company. We see the rumors of Mickey over at Ribbit bringing us back to market, and these are the types of exemplary leaders and great investors that we want to see more out…

AI assessment note: “It's really only based on people, because there's no assets, there's no P and L”

Q them? Because if everyone kind of became Forward thinking visionaries like Founders Fund, it would lead to a much more proliferated market for the, for the deals that are potentially slightly out there that maybe like stem centrics like Brian did. Uh, so how would you like it to change and what do you think is kind of optimal for the Valley moving forward in terms of changing investing patterns?

A Well, I mean, I, I think it's great for society if, if there was more frontier as they call it investing, but that is the definition of venture capital is that there were no, uh, you know, again, back to the example of the internet, there were no internet Specialist in the early nineties. It was just people took a chance on this new emerging segment that didn't know this. And so in the same way, the reason that what drew me to founders fund was this notion of finding great, talented, very special founders like Elon with SpaceX investing in the space industry before, you know, this really was something that would be even considered for venture investment or this, this fund again, before my time had a seed invested in And DeepMind before AI became a buzzword, or Oculus in the early seed rounds before VR became a buzzword, and so I wish there was more of an effort to seed all these very exciting new areas that are happening here today.

AI assessment note: “I wish there was more of an effort to seed all these very exciting”

Q And I worry that we have too much capital too early, and that great businesses are being destroyed by too much capital too early. Do you feel the same?

A We're vehemently in agreement. Uh, this is, you know, the challenge of our time. I feel there's like Boyle's Law as applied to capital. So, uh, if you raise a million dollar round for your seed company, you'll spend it and build a company with that million. But if you raise five million or ten million, you'll spend it just the same and get to the same milestones. And so, you know, it's, it's kind of like the capital Um, expands to fill, like, the bank account, um, and is, but used in the same manner, and we're kind of awash with capital. So this is a period where we have, uh, so much capital, so little hands-on assistant in insights, and then, you know, we don't need, like, the eighties or nineties to come back where venture capitalists would, like, strangle Founders and throw CEOs out of office after, you know, two quarters, but there's no checks and balances. And so even the best founders, uh, have a lot of trouble when you have so much capital and so little oversight that you, you know, kind of drift a little bit. You don't have the same kind of tight discipline that you have if every little penny counts.

AI assessment note: “We're vehemently in agreement. Uh, this is, you know, the challenge of our time.”

Q And I worry that we have too much capital too early, and that great businesses are being destroyed by too much capital too early. Do you feel the same?

A We're vehemently in agreement. Uh, this is, you know, the challenge of our time. I feel there's like Boyle's Law as applied to capital. So, uh, if you raise a million dollar round for your seed company, you'll spend it and build a company with that million. But if you raise five million or ten million, you'll spend it just the same and get to the same milestones. And so, you know, it's, it's kind of like the capital Um, expands to fill, like, the bank account, um, and is, but used in the same manner, and we're kind of awash with capital. So this is a period where we have, uh, so much capital, so little hands-on assistant in insights, and then, you know, we don't need, like, the eighties or nineties to come back where venture capitalists would, like, strangle Founders and throw CEOs out of office after, you know, two quarters, but there's no checks and balances. And so even the best founders, uh, have a lot of trouble when you have so much capital and so little oversight that you, you know, kind of drift a little bit. You don't have the same kind of tight discipline that you have if every little penny counts.

AI assessment note: “We're vehemently in agreement. Uh, this is, you know, the challenge of our time.”

Q So talk to me. I'm just too intrigued now, because I can't picture it being at a normal venture fund with Monday morning partner meetings. If you want to push a deal through, What do you do? How do you structure it?

A Well, there's, there's quite a bit of autonomy among team members here. And, you know, I think what's, what's most important is just strong conviction in a founding team. And based on the, you know, size of investments we bring in, we, we generally kind of scale or bring in more and more team members to get thoughts and input. But if a, uh, you know, I've been pleasantly surprised if a, a team member has strong conviction, you know, whether it's a quarter million dollar FF Angel, that's, you know, the minimum amount that generally we invest in this kind of angel vehicle of ours, all the way up to fifty million, we can move quite quickly and deploy that capital. And that's been, you know, I think part of the success of Founders Fund is not having a kind of traditional bureaucratic structure.

AI assessment note: “quite a bit of autonomy among team members here... based on the size of investments”

Q Talking of kind of deploying that capital, you've said before that you think investing in the valley is broken. So talk to me, why do you think this is?

A You know, if I, I think back, I like to look at things historically. If you look back at the original investors in the Valley, it was a lot of financiers from the East Coast that came out West and from this defense industry that had formed in the Valley early on, you know, you saw the semiconductor industry come out of that Fairchild and others. And, you know, that was truly venture capital where, where, where these investors would, would deploy capital into these companies that were in industries yet to be defined. And, you You know, so there is this real risk-taking sort of sense, and I think that if you look at, uh, the early nineties, there were those risk-takers that deployed capital into this fledgling industry of the internet, and I think what's happened today is there's been this overly segmented kind of focused investing in, in areas that in many ways are just afterthoughts, uh, so there's funds that are just focused on AI or funds that are Just focus in other particular verticals, and we don't think that way. We stay sector agnostic and instead look just at the individuals, and in doing that, that's enabled Founders Fund, and this is far before my time, to be at the ground floor of some very important companies. SpaceX is, uh, you know, a grand example of that.

AI assessment note: “what's happened today is there's been this overly segmented kind of focused investing”

Q Can I ask, do you concentrate capital on the way up? And was it an obvious winner from day one?

A We were able to put some amount of capital in the A that Reid Hoffman led, which, thank you, Reid, um, for, for making some room there. But then from our perspective, it popped so fast to a billion valuation at that time in, you know, 2011 or 12, it, it just seemed like, okay, it's run away from itself. So we almost, we never really had the chance to concentrate capital, and mostly because it was such an efficient business that just didn't require the rounds, um, that other businesses like, you know, Facebook seemed to Be raising quite a bit, and there was a lot of activity, and a lot of secondary. In Airbnb, there was almost zero secondary.

AI assessment note: “we never really had the chance to concentrate capital”

Q Can I ask, do you concentrate capital on the way up? And was it an obvious winner from day one?

A We were able to put some amount of capital in the A that Reid Hoffman led, which, thank you, Reid, um, for, for making some room there. But then from our perspective, it popped so fast to a billion valuation at that time in, you know, 2011 or 12, it, it just seemed like, okay, it's run away from itself. So we almost, we never really had the chance to concentrate capital, and mostly because it was such an efficient business that just didn't require the rounds, um, that other businesses like, you know, Facebook seemed to Be raising quite a bit, and there was a lot of activity, and a lot of secondary. In Airbnb, there was almost zero secondary.

AI assessment note: “we never really had the chance to concentrate capital”

Q Can I ask a weird one? Why did you do Airbnb? At the time it was not obvious. You know, it's famed how many people passed, and it's a weird idea when you kind of view it in isolation and put it in context of the time, which is people would let other people stay in their homes and they don't know them, and that would be a business?

A You know, these types of seeds, like the seed of Airbnb, the seed of Pinterest, you know, at the time, even seed of, of PayPal, you know, were very non-obvious, and in the case of Airbnb, you know, it was the passion. You know, we'd go over to, I think the loft was on Natoma, or there was a street which, Tahama maybe, uh, that, that Brian, Nate, and Joe all lived together, and they were building together, And we'd go over and hang out with them, and, you know, they were just working nonstop, and, you know, and I, I think, I, I mean, I like to think about Airbnb as kind of distributed storage, but not for bits, or images, or sound, or video. It's distributed storage for people. You know, you can have a EMC big drive like on-prem in your enterprise, Or you can have things distributed, and it's far more efficient and cost-effective, and, and so on, and when you think about Airbnb, they built the kind of perfect, massive, distributed hotel throughout the entire planet, um, and, and what a wonderful business, and what it was, what they conceived in that, in those days, their, uh, in their loft is, you know, what is here today, a massive scale.

AI assessment note: “in the case of Airbnb, you know, it was the passion.”

Q Oh, I sent it back at five 15. Did I miss it?

A No, but does that mean that you, at, at five 15, you no longer want to invest? No, like the, the investor will always be there. Um, I think it's fair for founders to go out and assess the market, and more importantly, assess the partner, and so we just have to un-entangle ourselves. You can, there's bad behavior on both sides. There's, like, the obnoxious shopping, like, okay, just give us the term sheet, and, you know, and, and I, you know, promise we're gonna get this done. I just need a couple days, and then, you know, you find out that they went and shopped it like crazy, but To the flip side, you know, a, a fund can lock a founder down, and that founder just hasn't done their work, or hasn't been able to do the work to speak to other investors and find out how others could be of help, and so.

AI assessment note: “No, like the, the investor will always be there.”

Q Which is ironic given my age, but I'm like, you know, you make so many mistakes The first time around that you just avoid the next time, and you can save so many dollars and so many hours learning the second time. What's your preference on Serial versus first time?

A Well, I should be, you know, statistically focused on Serial, and we back a lot of Serial founders, you know, like Chad Hurley, and, um, you know, we've, however, I just have a soft spot for first, first time founders. I, you know, I just, it, it's, You know, the teens, it's the Bill Gates in his teens, or Mark Zuckerberg in his teens, or, you know, all those, it's the first time around that it's, um, so spiky, or they're really swinging hard. It's that age where, you know, You know, the Army sends the Marines in and their eighteen-year-olds because they're fearless and they just really go for it. But it's also a period of creativity, um, you know, where I, I have to say I'm, I'm ageist, I'm ageist against myself, um, you know, where it's almost, you know, the Nobel Prize winners have all been, you know, I think within a very constrained age range of creativity and insight and genius or the Beatles, you know, they, uh, broke up By the time they were 30 years old, and my goal is to kind of find, um, the Beatles of the, the tech world, those great teams and individuals and talents, the Paul McCartneys and John Lennons.

AI assessment note: “however, I just have a soft spot for first, first time founders.”

Q Can I ask a weird one? Why did you do Airbnb? At the time it was not obvious. You know, it's famed how many people passed, and it's a weird idea when you kind of view it in isolation and put it in context of the time, which is people would let other people stay in their homes and they don't know them, and that would be a business?

A You know, these types of seeds, like the seed of Airbnb, the seed of Pinterest, you know, at the time, even seed of, of PayPal, you know, were very non-obvious, and in the case of Airbnb, you know, it was the passion. You know, we'd go over to, I think the loft was on Natoma, or there was a street which, Tahama maybe, uh, that, that Brian, Nate, and Joe all lived together, and they were building together, And we'd go over and hang out with them, and, you know, they were just working nonstop, and, you know, and I, I think, I, I mean, I like to think about Airbnb as kind of distributed storage, but not for bits, or images, or sound, or video. It's distributed storage for people. You know, you can have a EMC big drive like on-prem in your enterprise, Or you can have things distributed, and it's far more efficient and cost-effective, and, and so on, and when you think about Airbnb, they built the kind of perfect, massive, distributed hotel throughout the entire planet, um, and, and what a wonderful business, and what it was, what they conceived in that, in those days, their, uh, in their loft is, you know, what is here today, a massive scale.

AI assessment note: “in the case of Airbnb, you know, it was the passion.”

Q Which is ironic given my age, but I'm like, you know, you make so many mistakes The first time around that you just avoid the next time, and you can save so many dollars and so many hours learning the second time. What's your preference on Serial versus first time?

A Well, I should be, you know, statistically focused on Serial, and we back a lot of Serial founders, you know, like Chad Hurley, and, um, you know, we've, however, I just have a soft spot for first, first time founders. I, you know, I just, it, it's, You know, the teens, it's the Bill Gates in his teens, or Mark Zuckerberg in his teens, or, you know, all those, it's the first time around that it's, um, so spiky, or they're really swinging hard. It's that age where, you know, You know, the Army sends the Marines in and their eighteen-year-olds because they're fearless and they just really go for it. But it's also a period of creativity, um, you know, where I, I have to say I'm, I'm ageist, I'm ageist against myself, um, you know, where it's almost, you know, the Nobel Prize winners have all been, you know, I think within a very constrained age range of creativity and insight and genius or the Beatles, you know, they, uh, broke up By the time they were 30 years old, and my goal is to kind of find, um, the Beatles of the, the tech world, those great teams and individuals and talents, the Paul McCartneys and John Lennons.

AI assessment note: “however, I just have a soft spot for first, first time founders.”

Q for boys, it's even more of a kind of, um, And then just, like, depression and loneliness. The hard thing is, Kevin, like, our job is to invest in amazing products that hopefully make the world better, have great impact, I think. I can't find businesses in that. Calm or Headspace of the world, which makes mental wellness, health, they're not great businesses. And is there, is this our job?

A Well, we hope that there's gonna be therapeutics. I mean, the next, the, the challenge of this era, of our era, is neurological issues, like, um, and Peter always tends to be three steps ahead of us on all this. He's been after this area for a while, but, you know, as we beat back cancers, as we beat back heart diseases, disease which unequivocally has happened, um, Um, Alzheimer's, Lewy body dementia, um, you know, all these, um, mental illnesses, bipolar, like these are, are the kind of prominent illnesses of our time, and there need to be therapeutics, uh, developed for it, and, and so, yeah, this, this should be, you know, a, a kind of, there should be a, a, a, just as I think it was Richard Nixon in like the seventies said, let's go after cancer. You know, we need to, to go after these, um, neurological disorders that are becoming so prevalent in our society.

AI assessment note: “Well, we hope that there's gonna be therapeutics.”

Q Yeah, no, I do totally understand that. Can I ask, when we think about kind of where it sits in the funnel, is it kind of replacing the growth round pre-IPO? Is it replacing the IPO? How do you think about that? And then what's the exit for the SPAC itself almost?

A Well, our belief strongly is that there is no exit to a company. The most enduring companies are just going through a financing event and will continue to build on. I watched Julia firsthand go through the IPO process in September of, and that was a traditional IPO. And that was really, as we finished and completed the IPO and it was a successful one, we just were looking on the future. It was back to work. The second part to that is just that there's optionality. And more optionality is better for founders and operators, and more optionality means that there's a direct listing, there is a primary traditional IPO, and now there's a SPAC. In addition, companies still can take growth rounds, but what we've seen in the market are the winds of change, and the winds of change are simply that companies have reversed this trend of staying private for so long. We were in a world in the nineties where I think it was John Doerr that said six or seven quarters of increasing revenue growth, and the company goes Public. And what that translated to was for the longest time, it was an average of four years from inception to IPO. In the early 2000 was a strong reversal. And we went through a phase where it was 12 years as a public company, which is an insane amount of time to stay private. And there's a lot of downsides to that. The muscles of really performing well can be atrophied in the dar…

AI assessment note: “our belief strongly is that there is no exit to a company.”

Q and companies now with Founders Fund, because from speaking to Jeff, He said that, uh, consistently founders tell him you go the extra mile in order to provide support and unique advice. I'm really intrigued. What does this approach normally then look like for you, uh, and particularly at certain stages? And are there commonalities amongst the struggles and tribulations of the founders who are seeking your advice and guidance?

A Well, Harry, there's absolutely a lot of pattern matching at the early stages. So having been through those stages, uh, You know, I can have a lot of empathy for the extreme challenges that founders have. You know, you really wake up in the morning and you hear bad news, challenges, team challenges, competition challenges, product and customer challenges. You're really in the trenches, and I have a certain empathy for that. You mentioned, you know, the angel investing I had done. I really also had this kind of selfish interest in investing because I really got to be close to some amazing founders and And I got to learn from them in the, in the same process. So while there's some real block and tackle areas that, that I can help founders in those early stages navigate, you know, whether it's financing strategies or hiring or any other area, I also, at the same time, really just benefit from, uh, seeing in applying. And I used to do that at Eventbrite. I would, uh, have these interactions with say Brian and Joe at Airbnb or, or Ben at Pinterest and be able to Apply that to Eventbrite, so there's this real mutual kind of reference, I would say, there.

AI assessment note: “whether it's financing strategies or hiring or any other area”

Q Oh, there's a sun-packed peanut butter. How quickly do you know when a deal's working and when it's not working?

A There's a certain percentage, like there's some that, You know, very early on, you know, you know is going to be a struggle, and then others That wander in the woods for, you know, that take a long, long, long, long time, and, and people almost forget about them, or tell, you know, there you got investors telling, uh, these founders to return the money, and they stick with it. Um, the most important thing is just patience, um, and certainly you want them to maintain a sense of urgency, but you just have to see patience, because you just see time and time again, you know, Time as the thing to solve the problems and to get into orbit. And then there's the ones that just work from day one.

AI assessment note: “there's some that, You know, very early on... and then others That wander”

Q What are the biggest that you took with you?

A I think it's such a great form of venture that they practice. Um, it is very conviction driven. So, and it's, and it is, like, it, it is the emanation of the power law. It was, you know, it was Peter and Brian Zingerman and Napoleon that took, um, what did they take? I think they sold Spotify at the eight billion dollar price, pissed off, what's his name? Daniel. Daniel Ek, and rolled it all into Airbnb at the two and a half billion. And so they, like, doubly, doubly, like, went into things, and so that kind of going all in is very important, and when, you know, and when you look back at a fund, you just don't want something that's just kind of, like, blah, you know, a little bit of mushy of everything, and doesn't have its, like, big power law winners. Like, you just boil funds down to the SpaceX fund, and the Facebook fund, and the, Uh, Airbnb fund, and the, you know, and so on and so on.

AI assessment note: “it is very conviction driven. So, and it's, like, it, it is the emanation”

Q I do want to set some context, though, so a little bit on, on you, and, uh, how did you make your way into the world of investing, but most importantly, really, here is, like, how did you come to co-found ASTAR today? Let's start with that.

A Well, first, I'll back up and give the roots or the background of where ASTAR came from. ASTAR, and that's an A asterisk, is a Really reference to a search algorithm developed in 1968 at Stanford University. And so one, that's really a call out to our geek roots and that we're really looking only in the innovation economy for those great enduring businesses to partner with, with our first vehicle of one on this backside. And secondly, a star refers and finds the optimal path to the truth or the answer. And that's really our quest and our mission is to find a great business. I'll say that we're doing this simply because it's time for a change, and we see that change coming. So while we hope to be catalysts to that change, we see a few macro events that are making this world of the SPAC come true. The first is just in terms of seeing the venture business looking back historically. The venture business existed in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, but was a sleepy backwater. It was considered that if you were a New York investor and you moved out to the peach Orchards of the West Coast, you would be throwing your career away. And now we see in the nineties, 2000, that vehicle really driving the innovation economy, even being reformed in the economics, even being more rewarding in driving more change than the onerous economics that we saw in the say eighties, when you had three …

AI assessment note: “we're doing this simply because it's time for a change”

Q non-operating and the pros and cons of both. I had Pat Grady from Sequoia's growth team on the show the other day, and he said that the rate of decay of operating experience has never been faster with kind of the such rapid evolving cycles within technology. What's your thought process on this? And kind of the operational leverage that you have from your incredible experience building two fantastic companies.

A You know, I think that it certainly helps to have that, that operating background. I mean, I have a great deal of empathy for the founders and don't feel like I'm on the other side of the table. As I mentioned, I kind of recoil at being called a venture capitalist. And so I really, when somebody says Kevin's a VC, I kind of just like I'm taken aback by that because I still You know, maybe I'm in denial about that, uh, cause still see myself on that operating side, but you know, there's no hard and fast rules. I think that in investing, it's really, you know, how inquisitive you are. I think there's a lot of examples of great investors that are not, that haven't been operators in the past, but you know, it certainly helps on this side, especially in the early stages of really kind of helping just giving advice and guiding founders down that sort of green path Uh, towards success.

AI assessment note: “I think that it certainly helps to have that, that operating background.”

Q Yeah, no, I do totally understand that. Can I ask, when we think about kind of where it sits in the funnel, is it kind of replacing the growth round pre-IPO? Is it replacing the IPO? How do you think about that? And then what's the exit for the SPAC itself almost?

A Well, our belief strongly is that there is no exit to a company. The most enduring companies are just going through a financing event and will continue to build on. I watched Julia firsthand go through the IPO process in September of, and that was a traditional IPO. And that was really, as we finished and completed the IPO and it was a successful one, we just were looking on the future. It was back to work. The second part to that is just that there's optionality. And more optionality is better for founders and operators, and more optionality means that there's a direct listing, there is a primary traditional IPO, and now there's a SPAC. In addition, companies still can take growth rounds, but what we've seen in the market are the winds of change, and the winds of change are simply that companies have reversed this trend of staying private for so long. We were in a world in the nineties where I think it was John Doerr that said six or seven quarters of increasing revenue growth, and the company goes Public. And what that translated to was for the longest time, it was an average of four years from inception to IPO. In the early 2000 was a strong reversal. And we went through a phase where it was 12 years as a public company, which is an insane amount of time to stay private. And there's a lot of downsides to that. The muscles of really performing well can be atrophied in the dar…

AI assessment note: “more optionality means that there's a direct listing, there is a primary traditional IPO, and now there's a SPAC.”

Q for boys, it's even more of a kind of, um, And then just, like, depression and loneliness. The hard thing is, Kevin, like, our job is to invest in amazing products that hopefully make the world better, have great impact, I think. I can't find businesses in that. Calm or Headspace of the world, which makes mental wellness, health, they're not great businesses. And is there, is this our job?

A Well, we hope that there's gonna be therapeutics. I mean, the next, the, the challenge of this era, of our era, is neurological issues, like, um, and Peter always tends to be three steps ahead of us on all this. He's been after this area for a while, but, you know, as we beat back cancers, as we beat back heart diseases, disease which unequivocally has happened, um, Um, Alzheimer's, Lewy body dementia, um, you know, all these, um, mental illnesses, bipolar, like these are, are the kind of prominent illnesses of our time, and there need to be therapeutics, uh, developed for it, and, and so, yeah, this, this should be, you know, a, a kind of, there should be a, a, a, just as I think it was Richard Nixon in like the seventies said, let's go after cancer. You know, we need to, to go after these, um, neurological disorders that are becoming so prevalent in our society.

AI assessment note: “there need to be therapeutics, uh, developed for it”

Q have liquidity needs. And if it's your angel money, fuck it. Let it ride. You know what? Fine. But if it's fund money, sometimes you'll need to show liquidity for the next fund. Sometimes you'll have pressure from LPs to get liquidity back. There is a change in how one views liquidity sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. I, I'm just fascinated, Kevin. Why did you move from angel to VC?

A I mean, I like a challenge. And sometimes Venture people aren't so nice. You are, Harry. Don't get me wrong, I liked, I, I love, loved angel investing, but it's just time, you know, to, to graduate up to the big leagues, and, and that's kind of the, the story here. Probably not, um, but we'll have to prove, uh, to the world that, that, uh, uh, you know, that we're worthy. So, back to, like, the, the Sequoia file, you know, uh, side of things is, I love how Sequoia says, we're only as good as our next investment, and, you know, that's the mindset, is you just can't say, oh, back in Airbnb and Pinterest, and, uh, what is that? Jason Calcanis loves to talk about his investment in Uber.

AI assessment note: “I like a challenge... it's just time, you know, to, to graduate up”

Q have liquidity needs. And if it's your angel money, fuck it. Let it ride. You know what? Fine. But if it's fund money, sometimes you'll need to show liquidity for the next fund. Sometimes you'll have pressure from LPs to get liquidity back. There is a change in how one views liquidity sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. I, I'm just fascinated, Kevin. Why did you move from angel to VC?

A I mean, I like a challenge. And sometimes Venture people aren't so nice. You are, Harry. Don't get me wrong, I liked, I, I love, loved angel investing, but it's just time, you know, to, to graduate up to the big leagues, and, and that's kind of the, the story here. Probably not, um, but we'll have to prove, uh, to the world that, that, uh, uh, you know, that we're worthy. So, back to, like, the, the Sequoia file, you know, uh, side of things is, I love how Sequoia says, we're only as good as our next investment, and, you know, that's the mindset, is you just can't say, oh, back in Airbnb and Pinterest, and, uh, what is that? Jason Calcanis loves to talk about his investment in Uber.

AI assessment note: “I like a challenge... it's just time to graduate up to the big leagues”

Q spoke to Julia before the show, and she mentioned three people in particular who maybe shaped a lot of who you are and how you think just from the time that you spent with them. One of them was Peter Thiel. And as I want to start on this, I'm a huge Peter Thiel fanboy. Um, What are your biggest lessons from Peter, and how did Peter impact your mindset?

A Yeah, I'm a huge Peter Thiel fanboy. It's, it's the things he, he says are indelible, like these, he'll say things that maybe don't register at the moment, but then later on, you'll really understand, you know, what it meant, and he just is somebody that he sees the world in, in a different manner. Uh, I, I would say that Peter, you know, like a lot of People at Stanford is incredibly brilliant, but it's also that he just views the world under a different lens, and with that lens, he can kind of tease things apart and interpret things in a way, um, you know, that when you look at an object or you look at, you know, one of these tests of an inkblot, he'll see something very different from everyone else.

AI assessment note: “he just views the world under a different lens”

Q spoke to Julia before the show, and she mentioned three people in particular who maybe shaped a lot of who you are and how you think just from the time that you spent with them. One of them was Peter Thiel. And as I want to start on this, I'm a huge Peter Thiel fanboy. Um, What are your biggest lessons from Peter, and how did Peter impact your mindset?

A Yeah, I'm a huge Peter Thiel fanboy. It's, it's the things he, he says are indelible, like these, he'll say things that maybe don't register at the moment, but then later on, you'll really understand, you know, what it meant, and he just is somebody that he sees the world in, in a different manner. Uh, I, I would say that Peter, you know, like a lot of People at Stanford is incredibly brilliant, but it's also that he just views the world under a different lens, and with that lens, he can kind of tease things apart and interpret things in a way, um, you know, that when you look at an object or you look at, you know, one of these tests of an inkblot, he'll see something very different from everyone else.

AI assessment note: “he'll say things that maybe don't register at the moment, but then later on”

Q Can I ask, with such a fantastic angel portfolio, what was behind the decision to institutionalize your angel investing with the move to Founders Fund? What was the catalyst for that decision?

A Well, I think that you really have to capture, you know, what's the expression? Lightning in the bottle. To have found a company, I mean, all the, the elements, uh, you know, that primordial soup has to be just right for company formation. But on the other hand, the investing side is really this wonderful position to really go out there and find and, and help founders, uh, get their companies off the ground and, and really look for that next great company. And, and, you know, having kind of put in log the time on the operating side, I was really excited to To be on the other side of the table and really, really mentor new companies and hopefully bestow some wisdom in the process of doing that.

AI assessment note: “I was really excited to To be on the other side of the table”