Kareem Zaki
General Partner, Thrive Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderLinkedIn ↗thrivecap.com ↗
Kareem Zaki helps lead investment activity at Thrive Capital, focusing on fintech, healthcare, and enterprise software. He has co-founded companies including Cedar, Nava, and Cadence, and contributed to investments in Ramp, Affirm, and Lemonade.
1shows
1appearances
15statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything Kareem Zaki said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Zaki: Historical venture capital success was largely passive
“There's just been a ton of passive success in the industry. So many funds enjoyed success because they happen to live in the epicenter of the greatest boom of entrepreneurial success the world has ever seen.”
Kareem Zaki: The era of passive venture capital success is ending
“If you don't compete, I think this era of passive success because you're at the right place at the right time is starting to shift away.”
Zaki: Every major asset manager will compete in venture capital
“And so every asset manager is going to come compete in space. Because it's not about they like tech or they think tech's interesting. It's just a good business now to be investing behind.”
Zaki: Poaching talent creates an uncontrollable market dependency for VC firms
“You make all these assumptions that the team's most important, but you actually outsource to other people to develop people, and you try to poach them later or get them later in their career. You've just created a dependency on the market that you don't contro…”
Zaki: Sustained industry tailwinds will eventually make any market large enough
“The tailwinds being important, because if you have tailwinds for long enough, any market will eventually be large enough”
Thrive Capital's Only Rule: Back Category-Defining Companies With Multi-Decade Tailwinds
“Again, there's one rule at Thrive, and that's to be a part of category-defining companies with multi-decade tailwinds.”
Thrive Capital grew AUM from $40M to over $10B
“If you actually think about Thrive, yes, we're a venture firm, and we've grown a lot from the forty million of fund at the time to managing more than ten billion of AUM, but we've really done it without any rules.”
Thrive Capital invests across pre-IPO, public equity, take-privates, and incubations
“We do pre-IPO rounds like Zoom or Zillow in the public markets, or spinning Vimeo out of I see you're taking Collector's Universe private, took that company private, and we actually build companies as well.”
Zaki: Private equity firms like Blackstone may enter VC by acquiring startups outright
“Maybe the Blackstone start to come to this world and they just offer to buy these companies outright.”
Zaki: Thrive Capital rarely meets startups for the first time during fundraising
“Because our lens is so narrow, we're rarely meeting a company for the first time when it's fundraising.”
Thrive Capital passed on DoorDash due to market depth and pricing concerns
“One of the ones that comes to mind is DoorDash. We had a chance to invest pretty early on in the business, even after it was kind of obvious that it was And we love the founder. We obviously thought it was an amazing experience. One of the things that held us …”
Zaki: Strong cohort velocity indicates a startup will not hit early TAM limits
“When you just see the bottoms up velocity of a business and every market growing and every cohort growing. The chances that right around the corner, you're going to hit some TAM wall is very unlikely, and you actually need to listen to the bottoms up data some…”
Zaki: High performers over-index on immediate work validation over family
“One of the things he really talks about is short-term reinforcement versus long-term reinforcement. And so when you are investing in the life of your child, you might not see the fruits of labor for 12 or 18 years versus when you're working on a deal, you know…”
Thrive Capital Invested in Instagram Growth Round From $40M Fund
“The ambition of the team, which reached well beyond the forty million fund they had at the time would suggest. And even with that small fund, they were taking big swings, you know, be a big investor in a growth round in Instagram right before Facebook. Bought …”
The other half of the tape: Kareem Zaki's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 2Vince Hankes 1
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kareem's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | General Partner, Thrive Capital | 1 +1 | 15 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |