Cyan Banister
General Partner, Long Journey Ventures. On 5 shows, 26 appearances, plus 3 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounder@cyantist ↗LinkedIn ↗cyanbanister.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Cyan Banister is an early-stage investor, former partner at Founders Fund, and co-founder of Long Journey Ventures. She was an early backer of companies including SpaceX, Uber, Niantic, and Postmates, and previously co-founded the platform Zivity.
5shows
26appearances
109statements
8resolved
2supported
3contradicted
25%fully supported
31said about them ↓ Everything Cyan Banister said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Cyan Banister: San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin refuses to prosecute crimes
“We have a DA, Chesta, who will not prosecute crimes. I just found out yesterday a friend of mine whose house was burglarized. The perpetrators were let out of San Quentin for COVID. They robbed his house, almost kicked in the door of his neighbor who had a chi…”
Banister: OpenAI and Anthropic's closed, centralized AI approach is the wrong path
“It became incredibly centralized and closed source. And you're seeing that happen with open AI and Anthropic. It's the wrong path because everyone needs to have their own models. Everyone needs to be able to be able to compete and you don't want one company wi…”
Banister: Unsure people should skip college unless studying medicine or hard sciences
“If you're not getting into medicine, or like a hard thing that requires four to six years of school, I'm not sure people should be going to school right now.”
Banister: China will train AI on Western IP and sell output back
“And then what's really going to happen is China will sell our art back to us. So they're going to steal it all anyway, because they don't care. And they're just going to basically come back to us with these models, which we've seen with DeepSeek and everything…”
Cyan Bannister: The US is currently at war with China
“We are at war with China, whether we like to admit it or not, in my opinion, and so this is very strategic.”
Cyan Banister: Uber could not build a world-changing company by being nice
“They pushed people to move fast, break things, and challenge all regulations, etc., but in order to be Literally a world-changing company, they had to do that, and they had to have those behaviors. They weren't going to be able to do it by being nice all the t…”
Cyan Banister: Multi-stage funds invest early to block rivals like a16z
“So it's a strategy, and it's a strategy to cut out the seed ecosystem and other Series A investors down the road. So there are certain firms like A-Six, Z, et cetera, that have ownership targets. And so if you want to ruin their chances of getting the ownershi…”
Cyan Banister: High taxes and safety issues drive tech exodus from California
“There's a reason startups aren't staying. There's a reason that people are fleeing. That's because of San Francisco and frankly, all of California, you can only tax people so much. And then eventually they're just like, gosh, every dollar I'm making, I take ho…”
Cyan Banister: Gun ownership and support for self-defense are surging in SF
“If anything, the silver lining of all of this is that there's more gun ownership and more people who are pro home and self-defense than ever before.”
Banister: AI will create solo millionaires running zero-employee agentic companies
“I think we're going to see a lot of, maybe not venture scalable businesses, but a lot of newly minted millionaires that are going to figure out how this all works. And they're going to set up a completely agenticized business where there's no, no real employee…”
Banister: Future wars will be fought exclusively with robotics, not humans
“Wars are going to be fought with robotics in the future. There's not going to be humans on the battlefield. There's going to be robots, and there's going to be technology, and battle bots is going to be a thing.”
Banister: Anduril will consolidate market share and become a top defense prime
“I do think that obviously Enduro is gonna consolidate a lot of it and become one of the top defense primes over time.”
Banister: Peter Thiel is exceptionally tolerant, open-minded, and widely misunderstood
“I've never met anyone more tolerant, more open-minded. He gets such a bad rep for a lot of things, but he's just probably one of the most poorly understood people.”
Banister: Long Journey secures seed deals at $5M to $10M post-money
“I'm getting deals anywhere from like five to 10 posts while all of my peers are playing in the 20 to 30 range.”
Banister: Wist is well positioned to be AR's killer app
“If he executes well, and if the timing's right, and all of the pieces are lined up just right, you know, he's well positioned to have the killer app for AR. Like, I can't think of a better one, to be honest with you.”
Bannister: California bans insurers from using forward-looking weather models for pricing
“So you're not allowed to use a weather model To price in, you know, your decision making for insurance in the state.”
Bannister: 2025 leaks will reveal government coerced Zuckerberg into censoring Meta
“And after January, we're going to find out some interesting stuff and we'll get to the bottom of, you know, how did the government pressure him to censor things? And I think he's getting in front of that because it is going to come out. And I think that is a h…”
Bannister: Tesla should acquire Uber if it enters the robotaxi market
“If they enter the robo taxi market, I actually think they should buy Uber.”
Bannister: Autonomous vehicles will be largest robotics breakout in history
“This is going to be the largest breakout in robotics we've ever seen if Waymo's any indicator.”
Bannister: AI will cause a product explosion, making seed investing harder
“I actually think we're going to see a Cambrian explosion of creativity and development of different things. And some of them are going to be stupid ideas and some of them are going to be great, but I think it's going to make our job, especially at the seed sta…”
Banister: Defense tech venture investing is currently 'ahead of its skis'
“And then defense, I think is a little bit ahead of its skis. You know, we were just having a conversation earlier, Leah and I, about this, is, you know, selling into the government is really hard, and I think people don't understand that.”
Banister: Nurse Practitioners Are Just as Good as Medical Doctors
“And these nurse practitioners are just as good as any doctor.”
Bannister has hard rules against 50-50 co-founder splits and early acquisitions
“I have a hard rule. I have very few hard rules, and that's just one of them. If I hear that, I'm out. And the other one's fifty-fifty partnership, unless they're brothers or sisters.”
Banister: Gecko Materials' valuation is fair for its business type
“By the way, your valuation is fine for what the type of business you are. It's, we're more commenting on the types of businesses we see. And they're, it's not about you. It's just, we do software mostly. Is really what it comes down to. But you could be a Spac…”
The other half of the tape: Cyan Banister's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 27 times in 12 episodes across the shows. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Miles Dieffenbach 5Molly O'Shea 4Brian Singerman 4Harry Stebbings 3David Sacks 3John Coogan 2Jason Calacanis 2Kevin Hartz 1
Statements about Cyan Banister, by other people (4)
Rios: Bridgefy leads offline communications by millions of users with no active rivals
“And I cleared up that that competitor hasn't operated. They stopped existing in 2018, and this space is not crowded at all. We are the market leader by millions of users.”
Ghai: Long Journey and Banister led Nectar's seed round with $1M
“Long Journey Ventures and Cyan, she's putting in her own personal check as well. They are going to be leading the round at a million dollars.”
Epps: Charles Hudson and Cyan Banister signed SAFEs for OMA Health
“Charles' process was so seamless and we signed with Charles. Cyan was able to sign our safe agreement, so that's really exciting as well.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 12
Sourcery 9
All-In 3
TBPN 2
the Pitch 1
2026 4 mentions in 1 episode
2025 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2024 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- What is the TRUMP BUBBLE? (ep11)
- Crypto is Back Baby (ep5)
- Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Startup Funding Competition: Will VCs Invest in AI-Powered Fashion Models Disrupting E-Commerce?
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2021 3 mentions in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode
2015 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Cyan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| THE PITCHLEDGER | General Partner, Long Journey Ventures | 20 | 29 | — | full record on the Pitch → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | General Partner, Long Journey Ventures | 2 | 28 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Sourcery → |
| 20VCLEDGER | General Partner, Long Journey Ventures | 1 +3 | 30 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | General Partner, Long Journey Ventures | 2 | 16 | 20% 1/5 | full record on All-In → |
| TBPNLEDGER | General Partner, Long Journey Ventures | 1 | 6 | — | full record on TBPN → |