Josh Wolfe

Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Lux Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Josh Wolfe is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Lux Capital, a venture firm focused on ambitious scientific ventures. He is a founding investor and board member at Kymeta alongside Bill Gates.

17statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.82/5average certainty → 2.06/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 13said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · 3 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Josh argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

Wolfe: The future of AI and machine learning is in GPUs

“The future of AI and machine learning is going to be in GPUs.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 14:17 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted

Wolfe: Kymeta is the only board Bill Gates joined besides Berkshire and Microsoft

“It's the only company that Bill Was on the board of besides Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 11:54 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

How they sound: speaking style how? →

272 words/min while actually speaking · 3.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Josh Wolfe: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 18 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,829 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Josh Wolfe is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host 4/10

setup questions received 80%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 16:43“To what extent does this kind of aqua hire IP heavy nature concern you with the industry?” ▶ 18:51“Do you think that potentially we need longer fund cycles?”

What they said17 What others said13 Episodes1

Everything Josh Wolfe said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Josh Wolfe: Tourist VCs investing in frontier tech will lose a lot of money

“I think that there are a lot of tourist VCs who are in these domains that are going to lose a lot of money”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 7:22 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Opinion

Wolfe: Tech's Praise of Failure Is Disingenuous and Founders Are Faking It

“I think that there is a culture that talks about praising and prizing failure, but I think it's disingenuous. I think people pretend to wear failure on, you know, as this badge, and every time you ever see an entrepreneur and you ask, oh, how are things going,…”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 23:10 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Prediction Held up

Wolfe: The future of AI and machine learning is in GPUs

“The future of AI and machine learning is going to be in GPUs.”

Opinion

Wolfe: Cognitive diversity is the form of diversity that matters most

“My whole view is that the diversity that matters most is cognitive diversity.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 15:47 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Wolfe: Next generation of industrial titans will be scientists and inventors

“The next generation of industrial titans are going to be scientists, technologists, inventors”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 8:02 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

What-if

Lux Capital Missed a $4B Exit by Selling Nervana to Intel Early

“In that case, I think we would have loved, collectively, amongst the other syndicate investors as well, that maybe we waited for You know, a year or two, because we probably, instead of selling for four hundred million to Intel, could have sold for four billio…”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 16:58 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Wolfe: Investing with a 3-10 year horizon creates time arbitrage advantage

“If the public markets are thinking one or two years out and discounting back, and VCs are thinking one or two years out, then if you are thinking three, four, five, or let alone 10 years out, then you've got a time arbitrage advantage.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 18:30 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Wolfe: Lux Debates Small Checks More Than Large High-Conviction Deals

“Our internal partnership debates are usually the fiercest over the smallest dollars of what we have low conviction. When we have high conviction, our dollar checks are the highest, and everybody is near consensus.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 25:47 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Josh Wolfe: Big Breakthroughs Come From Renaissance-Style Interdisciplinary Founders

“And so I think the same thing is sort of happening in the entrepreneurial community on the one hand, where to make that incremental advance, you have to be really specialized, but because people are so specialized in all these different fields, the people that…”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 6:11 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Disclosure

Josh Wolfe: Lux Capital is willing to take market and tech risk

“You have some firms that will say, we don't take market risk, and you have other firms that say, we don't take technology risk, and we'll actually take both.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 9:03 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Josh Wolfe: Best VC returns come from novel technology in new markets

“Some of the greatest inventions, some of the greatest technology, some of the greatest companies, and some of the greatest venture investments came when you had that combination of a novel technology into a new market.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 9:26 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Assertion Contradicted

Wolfe: Kymeta is the only board Bill Gates joined besides Berkshire and Microsoft

“It's the only company that Bill Was on the board of besides Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft.”

Assertion Supported

Wolfe: Planet operates history's largest Earth-imaging satellite constellation

“They would end up buying Google satellite imagery, which was something Google acquired called Skybox, and they now have the largest constellation of Earth imaging satellites in history up in space.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 12:24 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Disclosure

Wolfe: Intel acquired Lux-backed Nervana Systems for $400M within a year

“And it leads us to a company called Nirvana Systems, and we fund those guys, and within a year, they're bought by Intel for four hundred million dollars.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 14:23 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Wolfe: The three sources of investment edge are informational, analytical, and behavioral

“I've got a rule of thumb that there's basically three sources of edge. You've got informational edge, analytical edge, and a behavioral edge.”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 17:56 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Disclosure

Wolfe: Lux Capital avoids early-stage fundamental science risk

“We're not funding true science risk, right? Those are things that are coming Maybe five, 10, 15 years incubated, often publicly funded government science out of universities, but there reaches a point where you can see that they're starting to do something in …”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 19:13 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

Insight

Wolfe: Bill Gates Focuses on the 10% of Subject Matter Worth 90%

“He would listen and sit And think, and then it would be the ninety-ten of it, meaning he would get to the 10% of the subject matter that had 90% of the value. He was exceptionally tuned in to supporting founder, CEO, very astute on the economics of product, of…”

Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 24:03 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital

The other half of the tape: Josh Wolfe's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 9 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 8 Kyle Harrison 2 Shiv Rao 1 Sahil Bloom 1 David Frankel 1