Chemistry
topic on 8 shows · 19 statements across 10 episodes · said 24 times in 3 episodes since 2024
20VC 21 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 3 
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
the Knowledge Project 
Latent Space 
My First Million 
the Green Blueprint 
the a16z Podcast
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20VC 21the Official SaaStr Podcast 3
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19 statements about Chemistry, every show
Biology cannot solve everything and chemistry often wins
“As much as I love biology, we can't deploy it for every single solution. Chemistry wins a lot.”
Bilgen: Chemistry experts rarely possess data science and bioinformatics skills
“People who understand chemistry Tend to be not the kind of data scientists and bioinformaticians that analyze the data.”
DHH: Science Nobel laureates do their breakthrough work in their twenties
“If you look at Nobel Prize winners who win in physics and chemistry and math and so on, they all do their formative work in their twenties, basically. Then there's a decade of application in their thirties, and then they get the Nobel Prize for that work they …”
White: Machine learning in chemistry centers on graphs, symmetry, and geometry
“In chemistry, it's all about graphs, right? It's all about how do you represent these graph structures. It's all about symmetry and geometry.”
Fedus: Physics and chemistry demonstrate scaling laws similar to AI
“On the material science side, we're seeing scaling laws within physics, within chemistry both with respect to simulations, with respect to experiment, and it's like the same kind of principles at play and ML.”
Goldberg: Distracted incumbent VCs create opportunity for boutique funds
“Our view with chemistry is that the idea of having a small team, clean slates, this playing offense at a moment where many people are distracted is a really interesting idea for founders that want that, that kind of relationship.”
Goldberg: Chemistry will make about 25 investments over three years
“It's about a three-year fund, and we'll have, you know, about 25 investments in each fund.”
Goldberg: Chemistry capped individual LP stakes near 10%
“We wanted to keep enough diversity in the fund where we didn't get anybody, you know, kind of much over 10%. And that was kind of where we adhered to. So we wanted about 20 LPs and that's pretty close to where we landed.”
Goldberg: LPs cited co-founder team risk as main rejection reason
“The biggest reason we heard was the three of you haven't worked together. And there's a lot of teamwork, team risk and a new fund at this size with three people.”
Goldberg: LP diversity should focus on independent thinking over institution types
“One of the best piece of advice we got was build a diverse set of LPs and not in terms of the institutions you just described Fund to fund family office you know endowments and foundations, but people that, you know, think differently and think independently.”
Goldberg: Chemistry mandates in-office work five days a week
“In office every day is a really important tenant of how we think about building. You know, we're a new team. We're a startup, right? Like we need to be shoulder to shoulder.”
Goldberg: Chemistry uses a single-trigger model for investments
“So we are a single trigger model, which means that any one of the three of us can make a decision on an investment and go with it.”
Goldberg: Multi-stage VC optionality dilutes focus and conviction
“Because it focuses you in a way that I had not done before where the date, the danger of the optionality of being able to do every stage at every time is you have to keep so many doors open. There is something that, that focuses the mind by saying, this is the…”
Goldberg: Chemistry will limit fund concentration to 10% per company
“I can't remember what legally we have as the concentration limit, but certainly we don't want more than 10% of the fund in a single company.”
Goldberg: LPs advised Chemistry to accept low-ownership brand deals
“We had some LPs say exactly the same advice, which was one of our more surprising moments from our fundraise where some of the LP said, you know, listen, it's that important that you're in some of these brand deals to be able to establish yourselves and don't …”
Loehr: Emotions drive performance neurochemistry more than logical thinking
“Emotions probably drive more of the chemistry than anything.”
Dines: Trading Off Team Chemistry for Executive Experience Almost Always Fails
“If there is no chemistry, this is not gonna work. So because of my imposter syndrome, I tended to trade off chemistry for experience. And with very rare exceptions, it always went bad.”
Strogatz: Biology is purely material and will ultimately be explained by physics
“It is ultimately chemistry and physics. I mean, there's no, I don't believe in any vital spirit Or soul, or anything like that. I'm sure some people do, but I don't, I mean, to me, it's all material. It's gonna ultimately be understood in purely materialistic,…”
Hennessy: Machine learning is driving scientific breakthroughs across biology, chemistry, and astrophysics
“You just see breakthroughs in biology and chemistry, in astrophysics. Coming out of various forms of machine learning. So all of a sudden it becomes this tool that is applicable to a whole range of things and is changing those fields.”