The Exchanges

Q And he was also just at the Reagan National Defense Forum. I'm curious from the visit and then also his remarks at the forum, How do you now view this kind of like new world of war, and do you think it's being embraced in a way that wasn't before?

A The main change he's driving at is when you look at the industrial base, the ability to produce and the ability to get new capabilities out quickly is one of the most determinative aspects you can have as a defense department, right? It's a war department. And that's not where we're at, right? Like, we've had a strategy for generations which has been the decades-long technological edge is how we win, right? And the US invested more, had better engineers, and capitalized it more efficiently to, like, get to that massive technological edge. And there is still a dimension of that for sure, but increasingly the ability to produce at scale in a way you can afford, uh, the ability to, um, innovate fast on the software to rapidly adapt these capabilities, that's going to be the determinative characteristic, right? We see this in Ukraine. We kind of see this across the board. So everything he's trying to align around is this idea of how do we get capabilities out faster to the force, In a way that is affordable and effective, right? And companies that can work in that world, great. Companies that can't, you're gonna die. And I think that's a healthy view. What he's not saying, and I, and I think because the reality is, is there is a mix, is some of the stuff is going to look like autonomous systems, but it's not all going to be, right? There's still going to be a place for, you know, a…

AI assessment note: “increasingly the ability to produce at scale in a way you can afford”

Q in tech, and that there's going to be an 86% chance that there's going to be more layoffs this year than in twenty-twenty-four. Um, but I do think I don't know if that one's true or not, so you'd have to check the data. But, um, you would think that because of all this mix, new industries might pop up. What are you thinking might, like, what could come next?

A Yeah, I think it'll be a lot more of things that right now are really limited to people with resources. So I think there'll be a lot more legal use cases and way more representation and legal, I think like real time understanding of your company, your balance sheets, accounting, it'll, There'll be a lot more there. So I think it'll be industries that already exist, but much more abundance. On the nursing side right now, if you're dispatched from a hospital, maybe they follow up with you for three months or six months, but it just doesn't make economic sense to follow up with patients nine months a year out. But if you were truly doing the best thing for your patient, you would follow up with them in nine months and in 12 months. So I think a lot of these industries like healthcare, insurance, legal, where people have resources, but then are tapped out, there'll be just a lot more around that. And so I think you'll have way more sophisticated markets in all of these places.

AI assessment note: “I think it'll be a lot more of things that right now are really limited”

Q do, and that's why I have, like, multiple companies and a foundation and all kinds of other stuff, because in part, I pay other people to do a lot of things for me. What does that mean? I have less money at the end of the day, right? But I made that choice. Do you buy the notion that it's technology, or is it really fundamentally just about your choices?

A No, I think it's absolutely choices. Like, I choose to work really hard because I like working really hard, and I also have this, like, moment in time where there's so much momentum that I am taking opportunity. I do know that I'm making so many sacrifices. I'm making sacrifices to friends. I'm constantly letting them down because I have to work. I'm making sacrifices to my family. I'm not going to certain events. Like they're very close. They all live in Connecticut. I don't do that much. I have sacrifices for my own personal life, like different decisions, not to go on dates, to just cancel things because I just want to work. And like, I'm constantly traveling between cities. I have a selfish reason of like having my apartment in LA because between all this chaos, I like to go back to there and like have a weekend. And then I like to go run around and like do all my interviews, but I know that's a choice. I know for a fact there are some people that do have access to this technology, and they don't care. Like, they just, they just use it for the day-to-day, and then they, you know, have their leisurely activities, but unfortunately, I'm competitive, and I want to succeed, so I'm like, how can I maximize my opportunities right now in this window?

AI assessment note: “No, I think it's absolutely choices. Like, I choose to work really hard”

Q So Rex is all about spending smarter, moving faster performance. I'm really, really curious about this question because Thrive is like such a stealth fund, a huge fund, and you do a lot of different things from incubations to funding very large rounds of companies. How do you think about performance as a team? And like, how do you think about performance as an investor on a very small team?

A We think about decision processes a lot more than near-term outcomes. I think when I worked at Bridgewater early in my career, Ray Dalio had this very famous line of, you know, focus on the swing, not where the ball goes. And I actually think that's very much how we operate, which is that we want to have the shot on goal with the most exciting companies. We want to have the right conversations around those companies. We want to be, as my partner, Miles likes to say, paranoid, but patient. Always thinking about what could be, but not necessarily rushing into things. But I think that structure is really what we anchor to. We have seen plenty of companies that didn't like, look like they went anywhere for the first few years. You know, if you were an investor in OpenAI and when it was a nonprofit in 2017 and 2018, and even sort of a, uh, capped, uh, nonprofit with profit like shares in 2019 and 20 20, you might've thought, oh my gosh, what, what is this thing gonna do? Is it gonna go anywhere? Um, and of course now, One of the most valuable companies in the world. By contrast, I'm sure we can think of plenty of companies that looked hot coming out of the gates at first, and at some point, uh, looked less good thereafter, which is all to say when we make decisions as a team is that, you know, no matter what performance looks like for this company in the next one to two years, we're…

AI assessment note: “We think about decision processes a lot more than near-term outcomes.”

Q of these marketing campaigns? This is something I talked to Eric Christman from Altimeter about, because they're also investors in Anderle, but it's like, you have a defense company primarily selling to the government. It's enterprise. Why are you creating like this brand halo around it? And it's almost become like a consumer brand, which is, it, by the way, it's like entirely effective and very, very good. Like why?

A Yeah, I think it's important. Like, look, Andrel never loses sight of who their customer is, and they have a ton, like, you know, there's tons of, like, collateral and white papers and documentation for their customers, but at the same time, they're hugely dependent on support from Washington for the work they're doing, and if you want people to believe in transforming the way defense production works in this country, you need the public to come along with you. You need the policy makers to come along with you, and that requires basically a full-fledged, um, you know, marketing effort. And people, also it gets people fired up. It like makes people feel patriotic. And so I think what they do it for a bunch of reasons. One is they're unashamed of who they are. They want to make it very clear to their own employees and the public who they are. They are a defense company that includes making weapons and making systems, um, like that. They want to make sure that policymakers know who they are. They want to attract the best talent. So they create a magnet for talent. And so I think for all of those reasons, it's important that they have this public face. And not just be, like, a shadowy defense company. Um, and I think one of the things that they get away with is, like, you know, people might say, like, I don't want to work at a defense company. That's fine. They can opt out. But, li…

AI assessment note: “if you want people to believe in transforming the way defense production works in this country”

Q How did the capital commitments from the government then bleed into this or like collaborate with these kinds of investments? Because there have been really big Commitments

A Yeah, so I think, you know, people, so the government wants to create a set, like a, uh, a culture of accountability, and that comes with a lot of challenges, actually, and those challenges are better solved with private capital. So an example is, if the government gives you fifty million dollars for an R&D project to go try to create a prototype of something, they want to make sure you're spending the money wisely. So that fifty million dollars comes with a ton of overhead of auditing, accounting, tons of oversight, and as a taxpayer, that Feels totally appropriate, but it's so burdensome for a small company. It's almost impossible for these small companies to cope with that level of oversight. And so that's why most of the time these big contracts just go to the primes and the primes have all this structural, um, kind of systems built up to deal with that. So they love the system. They love the oversight. They love, and by the way, they just charge more for the contracts because they have all this overhead and over in accounting and auditing that happens. And then ultimately results in a poor experience for the taxpayer because We don't get the best products. We don't get them quickly, and we don't get them on budget. Where private capital instead is, I think, a much better alternative is we say, look, if you don't pay for the R&D, you just buy the finished product. All you h…

AI assessment note: “All you have to do is commit to buying the finished product. We'll fund the R&D”

Q What do you think that means for being a founder in a highly Competitive or highly, it could go both ways because they're both, you know, like extreme environments, either highly competitive or highly turbulent. What do you think that means to be a founder? Like what kind of, what do you need to, how do you need to show up?

A I think you show up with a vision and a north star and you, you measure your, uh, speed in, in the right direction. So we don't love the word speed at Sequoia. We love the word velocity. Velocity is a vector. It has a direction and the magnitude, and you want to go in the direction that you want to go in and you want people aligned to that direction. Um, Motion does not equal progress. And you've heard that before from a variety of different people. And getting a company to align and march in the same direction is what is really important during turbulent times. Because it's very easy to run around with as if your head was cut off during a crisis. It's very easy to see every little shiny Penny that pops up because there's so much change in AI and trying to go after a thousand different things. But your leadership as a founder is to make sure the company is focused in the right direction.

AI assessment note: “I think you show up with a vision and a north star”

Q Going to Carta Data, They had a question to the market and to all the companies that are on the platform. Do AI companies command a premium? AI software companies that raised in the first half of 2025 saw 30.9% higher valuation. So this is about a fifty five million dollar valuation versus forty two million dollars.

A It is a hot market for AI. And the one thing that, um, I'm somewhat concerned about is many of these companies that we call AI companies, They're software companies, they're security companies, they're customer service companies. In probably two or three years, we will not call them AI companies. Just the same way that, uh, internet companies over time, yeah, there were native internet companies, but over time, every company became an internet company. Every company became a mobile company. And so we try to think about whether the premium is deserved, um, Or not. And these premiums that are being paid, probably some of it is because we believe that the market and the market sizes are expanding. And if you told people back all the way in the internet that online advertising was going to be as big as it is today, they would laugh at you. And so right now, I think there's a lot higher premiums, 20%, 30%, is because we believe that the market sizes are going to be much, much larger. And we've given some of this data, um, our partner Pat Grady and, and Sony Huang, when they hosted AI Ascent, they showed this map of when SaaS was created, we had a certain size of the software market, and we thought SaaS was going to be A big portion of the size of the software market. It turns out that SaaS is even bigger than all of the software market in the past. We grew the software market. What …

AI assessment note: “right now, I think there's a lot higher premiums, 20%, 30%”

Q I hope I don't get in trouble by saying this. Both Tanay and Tariq said throughout the time you've been very supportive, but now it seems like you understand, okay, we caught something and we have to go hard on it. And so the relationship is much more focused and a little bit more intense. How do you think about that?

A I think I've, I've been pretty intense with them the whole time. They just don't realize it. Um, I think this is a very Sequoia Um, characteristic of board members. We partner with the founders and we know to be shock observers during bad times and to be sparring partners during good times. And so there's no point when the company is down, if something goes wrong, there is no point to beat someone when they're down. You actually, the best thing you can do is roll up your sleeves, pick up the pieces and help the company get through that hardship. And that's what we do at Sequoia. And then when things are going well, you want to be a sparring partner. You want to, you want to take things to the next level. You want to take, you have something that's working. Well, it can work even better. Um, and one of the things I, I always reflect on is companies, when things are going well, they, they get a little arrogant. And the first sign of why companies fail is the hubris of much success that Jim Collins wrote a book There's a small book about why the mighty fall, and the first sign is the hubris of much success, and the second is the undisciplined pursuit of more. Those things, when I see that, I try to nip it in the bud.

AI assessment note: “shock observers during bad times and to be sparring partners during good times”

Q Can you explain experimental revenue a little bit more? Like, are teams aware it's experimental or is it just, we're going to try out different business lines?

A I think the teams are where they hide the fact that it's experimental. Pilot revenue is experimental, right? So would you like to sign up for this pilot? If the pilot goes well, we'll sign a larger contract. That's very standard thing that has happened in enterprise, uh, sales. You go in, it's like, this is a new product. You've never used this before. Why don't you try it? And, uh, And if we can hit a bunch of ROI metrics, then the customer was like, okay, well, you hit a bunch of ROI metrics, I'm going to extend. Um, and so the, Counting pilot revenue and counting it as ARR and annualizing it is kind of a joke, which I think a lot of founders know it's a joke, but they don't have any problems just taking whatever month's revenue is, that's all pilot revenue, and multiplying by 12. But they, you're laughing, you know it's a good joke, but they do it anyway, and they call it ARR, like as if it was recurring.

AI assessment note: “I think the teams are where they hide the fact that it's experimental. Pilot revenue”

Q How do you get his buy-in on a new trade? What's like the process to get through?

A I think there are a lot of people that can pick stocks, but what really matters at Code Two is you have to be able to do the analysis. You have to be able to pick stocks, you know, that bet on longs that go up and Find shorts that go down. But the key piece is how do you then convince Philippe and Thomas, uh, his brother, And the rest of the group that you're right. Ultimately to get that name in the book and then have it play out, right? There's a lot of people who I've seen come through code too. And it was true. It was true at Melvin too. I mean, this is true at any hedge fund where they're really smart. They're really good at picking stocks. They have great ideas, but they were never able to convince the person above them. Who's ultimately the decision maker to put that in the book. Um, So this is a bit of an art, and I think the most important thing is, you know, you spend 95% of your time doing all this deep work and all this deep analysis, but can you take that, you know, thousand line Excel model and all the expert calls and all the nuances around margins and growth rates and sequential growth and all those things, and can you Summarize it and simplify it into a three sentence pitch that when he hears that pitch, he's almost ready to buy the stock before even opening the model because the pitch is so good. And it, that is a skill that I'm still developing. I mean, I, I …

AI assessment note: “Summarize it and simplify it into a three sentence pitch”

Q go back in time and decipher these things. So right now there's a lot of competition in the space and it seems like the hottest thing to look at. Ever since the scale AI Acquisition, investment, whatever you want to call it. There's essentially a billion dollars up for grabs, and I want to know between the three leaders, of which you are one of them, How do you differentiate?

A This market is massive and growing. There's unlimited demand for high quality data, unlimited demand, right? I see two axes that you have to be really good at to win in this market. One axis is finding really smart humans really, really fast, right? And there are a few companies that do a good job at that during being one of them. There's another axis, which is you have to be at the forefront of data research. You have to know what type of data is likely to be helpful to the model for it to advance in coding, STEM, advanced reasoning, etc. Turing's great at that. We are the one company in this category that's not just good at finding people and generating data, but being proactive about figuring out what type of data these models are likely to need, and as the models get Getting smarter and smarter every quarter, you have to innovate on the research side too. So on that two by two, I would say Turing's the one company up and to the right. There are plenty of companies that are good at, okay, we have a large, uh, talent network, we work with university students, or we are good at finding people. Uh, we think that's like, um, that's necessary, that's not sufficient. Uh, you have to ensure that the quality of the data is good, and that it can improve the model's performance.

AI assessment note: “I see two axes that you have to be really good at to win”

Q It's so fascinating and impactful. I'm curious, as you mentioned with this funding, you're gonna be hiring out, but like, what is the process for that? Like, how do you see the next couple milestones that you need to hit? And like, what are the teams underneath it that you have to fill out?

A Yeah. So, I mean, you're standing in front, standing in front of, uh, base factory one, uh, which will be the site of our first custom manufactured, uh, base battery. I mean, it's happening behind you right here. Some of our, our modules going out for testing. Um, so the next phase of the company is really landing our custom hardware, becoming the fastest deployer of battery storage in, in the world at the lowest landed cost in the world, right? Those are really the two kind of operational North stars of the business and every team will be working on that. So on the hardware side, it's, Developing the technology, working on our next generation product, working on some future products that we're not yet ready to talk about, but we'll be able to soon, which is all kind of pointed towards the, the broader North star of affordable, reliable power for all. Uh, on the software side, it's managing the network to, um, make best use of these hundreds of megawatts and very soon gigawatts of capacity that we have on the grid. It's building the consumer facing software. It's managing all the internal processes to make our system more efficient. And then on the, on the go to market demand side, you know, this one is really exciting, I think, which is building the first beloved branded energy, right? I mean, you've never heard someone say, I love my power company and we got to change that, r…

AI assessment note: “the next phase of the company is really landing our custom hardware”

Q You talk a lot about being a product company, and now you're on the second generation. Could you explain how you've built this out and what the second generation brings you?

A Sure thing. Yeah, we just very exciting times. We're announcing officially we're nearly done with our first four systems that we're building in the second generation technology. We've built into that. That second generation technology has, ah, lots of benefits and a lot of features that the previous version didn't. So our generation one, and again, think of it for the viewers that are familiar with engineering that are out there, ah, In Silicon Valley, you typically use a heavy sort of leveraged prototype development system. They call it EVT, DVT, PVT. They stand for Engineering Verification Test Article Development, uh, I'm sorry, Design Verification Test Article and then Production. So you're building basically prototypes at each stage. Now this is in contrast to when I was an engineer at Raytheon, and we would build things through what you call a waterfall method. Which has a lot of policy and procedures and checklists and things like that, and you're slowly building one system to kind of the end game to a set of requirements. You're not iterating with prototypes and iterating with generations. That feels like a product company. And so generation two is our next generation where we've taken in from two deployments now, two, two deployments overseas and four systems, we've taken in all of that data All of that feedback, and we've rolled it in to the generation two system. The…

AI assessment note: “we've rolled it in to the generation two system. The number one thing... is more range”

Q Oh my gosh. That's great. Well, so we're at re-industrialize the heart of this industrialization movement of America. We need to talk about Galvanic. This is what you're building now after your tour of duty in and out of the White House, in and out of service. How did we get here?

A It was the number one problem that kept me up at night when I was in the White House. We have connected the most essential equipment in our world, in our lives, in our economy, uh, to the internet. And that has huge follow on effects, many of them positive and then some of them negative. And so, you know, for four years, I was the guy that had to get the phone call at three AM, um, Do we wake up the president when weird things are happening on our critical infrastructure, strange, you know, digital actors trying to undermine X or Y or, oh, we found someone in this system, very sensitive. And I had a, when I was in the military, I also had some exposure to that problem as well. And so left the White House, took a breather, went out, talked to some friends and figured let's do something at the intersection of cybersecurity, And industry. And this is what we came up with.

AI assessment note: “figured let's do something at the intersection of cybersecurity, And industry.”

Q So let's talk about the full stack of technology. You invest end-to-end semiconductors to applications and software. Could you lay out all of those layers and how do they work together?

A Absolutely. So first and foremost, I would say, as I mentioned earlier, this is the intelligence era. So our belief is humans and AI will work together And take us into this new era of collaborative intelligence. And in this era, AI will enable humans to get to super humans level. And what I mean by that is if AI can help augment me and free up time so that I can go do things which I really want to do. So they can amplify my capability. AI can amplify my capabilities. Give me time to do creative things or do things I could never do. So to enable that, we believe there's a collaborative intelligence stack which is being created, which starts from the hardware layer, which is the semiconductors. The next layer up is the brain, which is the model companies. Once you have models and you have hardware, this gets packaged by a cloud service provider. Or by an inference company. You need to bring your own data, so the data layer becomes important. Once you have data on top of models, on top of hardware, now you need middleware and tooling to do something with this plumbing layer. Once you have that, you build intelligent applications. And then finally, the most exciting layer of this stack is what we call AI teammates, which are built on agentic technologies. And what are they? They're digital companions that work with humans to take us to superhumans level. And that market is a massi…

AI assessment note: “starts from the hardware layer, which is the semiconductors. The next layer up is the brain”

Q What do you think you've learned from watching everyone go on their own path? Like, what are the key lessons that you've taken away from this person went that way? This person went that way? Like, I think more macro of like human behavior.

A Well, macro human behavior is, I think you have to find, and it's advice I give people constantly, probably every week, what people want professional advice, uh, and even people don't want it. And I sort of force them to listen, uh, is you have to find what your comparative advantage is in life and then double and triple down on it. So each of the people that worked at PayPal that was talented had different skills and traits. And I think the reason why they went different directions is they figured out how they wanted to compete with the rest of the world. So I was mentioning, you know, I grew up reading this bio autobiography by Pat Riley. Um, and in the autobiography I read when I was probably a sophomore in high school, I saw this quote that he was quoting Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead and said, You don't want to be the best in the world at what you do. You want to be the only one who does what you do. And so I think that's mostly people who are successful. They figure out how to frame themselves. So they're not just the best. They're the only. So Peter, not many substitutes for Peter. Max, not many substitutes for Max. David Sachs, I think, you know, has found his own roll off. You find your own course and you double and triple and quadruple down on it. And that's how you want to be successful.

AI assessment note: “you have to find what your comparative advantage is in life and then double and triple down”

Q You have employees from Rivian, Tesla, SpaceX. So how do you, I mean, those are really fast timelines. So how do you guys all come together? You use principles from where they worked? Like, how does this work?

A Yeah, there's, there's a balancing act here. We do try to reason a lot from first principles. The founding team was pretty heavy at SpaceX. Um, and, and so that first principles mentality is, is definitely something we're bringing as well. But building is also a craft industry. It's, it's got a long history of these really talented boat builders and naval architecture firms, uh, Designing the vessels themselves. And so we tried to take from both of those. We don't want to ignore that storied history of, of boat building and think that we know better because often we don't, but we are also trying to rethink a lot of the problems that we're solving in the context of an electric powertrain or hybrid electric powertrain.

AI assessment note: “We do try to reason a lot from first principles. The founding team was pretty heavy at SpaceX.”

Q There's a big opportunity here. So what is your long-term vision?

A We want every vessel in the water to be powered by ARC. I mean, we're big believers in this isn't, you could, you could kind of take the environmental aspect out of this. Electric powertrains are better suited to a water environment than these pure diesel or pure gas powertrains are. So we want to modernize, you know, this entire industry around those power trains, layer software in at every level and create this platform that on the consumer side makes for just better boats. They're more performant. They're quieter. Uh, they have software features that aren't anywhere in the industry today, but on the commercial side, there are also these platforms that you can start layering in autonomy or start layering in, uh, added safety features. Um, Yeah. So every, every vessel on the water.

AI assessment note: “We want every vessel in the water to be powered by ARC.”

Q You've raised around a hundred million dollars, um, from some big Silicon Valley names, uh, investors like Eclipse, Andreessen Horowitz, Lower Carbon Capital, Abstract Ventures, and a newer investor, Menlo Ventures. The last round was a Series B. It was like a seventy million dollar Series B in 2023. Why did you go after venture capital?

A This is such an obvious idea. There are probably a million people in the U.S. that have thought somebody should make Tesla for boats, or somebody should make electric boats. Again, in going from gas to electric, it's not a gas car to electric car. Like, it's a gas leaf blower to an electric leaf blower. The percent improvement in the experience is dramatically better. So it's this obvious idea. We're not trying to invent a new category. We're not really taking demand risk. We're just delivering better boats. There's also not a lot of technology risk in what we're doing because the automotive industry has existed for the past 10 years and like has been plowing money into electrification and high voltage power electronics and battery supply chains for 10 plus years now. It's all driven by execution risk. And so when you have a business that is driven by execution risk, that is a great fit for venture capital because you already have all the conviction you need and you just need to hit go and, and actually go attract the team and do that hard work. And it comes with an upfront investment. Like it takes, it's, it's hard to actually go do that. It's hard to go build the battery packs and get them working reliably and, you Safely and fully tested and qualified and ready to go out into the field for, for many years to come. It's hard to go attract that team. It's hard to go spin up a …

AI assessment note: “when you have a business that is driven by execution risk, that is a great fit”

Q Did you have any issues with investors fundraising or at all from the beginning?

A No, it actually probably helps fundraising. I think like you have to be really good at storytelling to like actually do the posting. And I think that translates to storytelling, the vision and the pitch, and even like selling, I fucking, I love sales. It's my favorite thing to do. And so it helps with, I think they kind of get the vibe that you can tell a story to anyone. So it really helps there. Um, funny enough, like during this recent round with scale, they do background checks on all their founders and they go like deep and apparently Jeremy, our lead investor, gets a call from their, like, I don't know if it's their GC or someone. I don't know if I should share this, but whatever. I don't think he'll care. And, um, they were like, did you know Alex has quite an online social presence? And he was like, Yes, I know. He has some posts out there.

AI assessment note: “No, it actually probably helps fundraising.”

Q Talking about, okay, you just reached, reached a new milestone. How do you think about growth within the company? Like, what are the metrics that you've recently hit and how are you measuring them?

A Um, I mean, we're doing, like, tens of thousands of conversations per day. I'd love to get to, like, millions of conversations per day, and that's just a function of how many clinics you can deploy at or how many, like, uh, I guess campaigns you can run on behalf of, um, these healthcare clinics, and so that's really our next twelve-month goal is just to scale to thousands of clinics live with us answering the phone when it comes inbound, us doing all their outbound campaigns. Um, that's really how we, those, those are, it's very clear How we measure success in that regard. If we are having a bunch of resolved conversations independently of a human being involved, then we're doing our job well.

AI assessment note: “we're doing, like, tens of thousands of conversations per day.”

Q If the Teal Fellowship has one, and I'm sure many would argue that it has, and Dropping out is now acceptable. Going your own path is acceptable. What comes next?

A Well, I think in general, just younger people being taken seriously is sort of what comes next, like even younger. Um, so sometimes people will ask me, especially with 1517, where do you want it to be in 15 years and where do you want that to look like? And I tell people I want to be funding eleven-year-olds, um, because I think they're incredibly creative and interesting and can be starting things earlier. Um, so I think it's helping to show people that the barrier to entry on getting started Doesn't need to be even when you're 18 anymore. It can be quite a bit younger than that. Um, I think the fellowship does open up The field for other people to start fellowships. I was talking to, uh, a woman in Brazil who's starting basically an iterative Teal Fellowship project there that actually, uh, she just got 600 applicants in for in Brazil. Like, this is pretty amazing, uh, and is starting a new program, and so I love to see that spreading, like, hey, this is, like, getting really out and really global at this point. Um, so I think it's just giving more people permission, and even today, I ran into someone who's running like a climate, uh, program and they said, uh, like, and we were talking and they were like, oh, your work has influenced so much of what I'm doing because we're bringing in people who are younger, who don't have degrees or people who have maybe gotten their degree…

AI assessment note: “just younger people being taken seriously is sort of what comes next, like even younger.”

Q Yeah. So I'm curious from your, from your point of view, what do you think the biggest impacts are to venture capital and the tech ecosystem in general?

A Well, I mean, certainly younger people are getting taken more seriously. Um, which is something that we always wanted to see. This is why we stepped aside from our roles at the foundation in 2015 and started 1517, because we couldn't find that many investors who would take a young person seriously and say, and at the time, and this has changed over time, there was a lot of lip service to young talent in Silicon Valley, but usually back in like 2010 through 20 15, even, even through 2020, usually what that meant was come work at my portfolio company, not I want to give you money. Um, and so I think the outcomes of the fellows have shown people, hey, this is an investable asset class. Like these people are interesting and deserving of being taken seriously. Um, I do still think that too many people in venture are interested in looking for where, you know, where did you go to school? Where do you have an internship? Things like that. Um, but I'm liking seeing that younger people are getting more access to resources.

AI assessment note: “certainly younger people are getting taken more seriously.”

Q Yeah. I think it's great. Okay. So as we close out, what are you most looking forward to for the next year?

A One of the things that we've come to learn over time is that spending unstructured time with people is a huge, um, value add in terms of getting to know people over time. Um, and just building relationships with people before you end up funding them is a great way to get to know folks. And so We're doing our first, like, larger camp, actually an all ages camp. We're calling it 1517 Unplugged. It's happening in September, and I'm really excited to see what comes out of it, because from past events we used to do at the Teal Foundation and the Teal Summits and things like that, we would hear these outcomes from people like, oh, I met my co-founder at that summit, or, you know, I met my, like, dearest friends at this, and we're still friends to this day, or, like, we've built companies together, and I'm very curious to see what comes out of Putting people in this, like, unplugged sort of nature environment for 36 hours and just getting to actually be with each other instead of sort of the FOMO of running around the city with there's seven things happening tonight, and I'm gonna try to go to all seven and things like that, so I'm, I'm excited to do some, I'm, like, I love programming, like, I love building these types of environments for people and seeing what comes out of them, uh, so that's one thing. I'm really excited seeing younger and younger people working on Uh, sci-fi tech.…

AI assessment note: “We're doing our first, like, larger camp... We're calling it 1517 Unplugged.”

Q all do the roll up strategy. And so that was a trend at some point. And then there was also, you know, Building things in house. Oh, how are we ever going to make venture returns again? Let's build it in house. Um, what is your perspective from having that actually ingrained in the fund of all these other funds doing this and it kind of looking a little touristy?

A Well, I think that there's, I think it's, I think the thing that's underappreciated is how much your organization has to be designed intentionally to make, um, to balance this sort of dichotomy of, of starting companies and investing in them. Um, there, there's, there's definitely some overlap, but I think if you don't intentionally design the incentives, the culture, um, and even like the staffing and the The amount of capacity you have on your investing team, on your finance team, then it's very hard to do both well. Um, but it is possible for sure. It's just that it, it almost has to be like an innate thing and, or it can be by exception. Like I think there always will be ex, you know, exceptions where a firm is an incredible, you know, kind of talent pool and that Someone either gets bored being a, being a partner or, or an associate or something, or they have a really big idea and they do it by exception. Um, I think that's actually probably the second best way to do it. If you're not going to go like all in on integrating the, the incentives and, and frankly, also the, the skill sets that you need to do, you know, great investing and Company building. Um, and so I think that's the, that's the underappreciated part of me. I think most of the firms that are trying it, they have good reason to try it. They have great brands. They have tons of capital. They have insight on th…

AI assessment note: “the thing that's underappreciated is how much your organization has to be designed intentionally”

Q So in terms of your portfolio, what types of companies are you investing in? I know you mentioned software. You're leaning into that. You're looking at early stage. What do you, what's your target zone?

A So ultimately I'm investing in anything I wish I had when I was building my business, right? I started Nasty Gal and The end of 2006. Like I had to have a CTO to have a, you know, but just a shopping website. Right. And so there was no gusto or just works or, I mean, integrations like project management software, creative tools. It was Photoshop, but everything kind of required you to be an expert to cobble it together. And now anybody can start a business. There's all the software that makes being a creative or collaboration or invoicing All of these things so much easier, and I've just, I've watched very enviously as a former founder, these products emerge, and having not had them, I understand what the people, what, why a particular software or product might be needed, and so that's the filter I look at my investments through, um, because you can say that somebody needs something, but if they don't Really needed. It might just sound like a good product, and I don't, you know, I think, ah, investors who don't have operating experience or haven't been founders, I can't really imagine how they would evaluate that opportunity in the same way, because I have it just kind of like, it's like in my DNA to understand that. Um, and it's, you know, it ranges from, you know, agree.com is connecting contracts with payments, so As soon as somebody signs an agreement, they're taken through…

AI assessment note: “I'm investing in anything I wish I had when I was building my business”

Q Plaid trust and use bricks. Start today at brex.com slash sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. Can you share more about America's current industrial beast? Because at Reindustrialize, there were some, like, SMBs there. There were some, like, mom and pop shop manufacturers. Um, but working through this and getting your own hardware and all of that, like, what, what kind of talent do we have on American soil?

A I think people underestimate the talent that we have. When you look at the SMBs, those mom and pop shops that have been doing CNC machining or welding or any other type of metal work for the last 25 years, we have incredibly sophisticated technicians in this country. Uh, we have second, third, fourth generation welders and people who've worked on furnaces, and we have really dense pockets in our country. Uh, when you think about states like North Carolina or Oklahoma, uh, Indiana, Pennsylvania. And so I think what we're seeing is Now you have Silicon Valley thinking about it. You have DC thinking about it. You have more capital flowing to these areas. And what's important is people in high school or people in college or, you know, in their early twenties, they're saying, I can go and build. I can go and use my hands again. Can we go back to 1950? No, we have to be able to understand automation and how AI is going to actually influence next generation factories. But I think that through things like re-industrialization, that conference, and just all of the signaling that DC cares about this, that Silicon Valley cares about this, we're making it sexy again to some fourteen-year-old, some eighteen-year-old who says, I want to go and build and serve this country with my hands. Uh, and the other thing that I would say is never underestimate America's ability to go and train talent. …

AI assessment note: “we have incredibly sophisticated technicians in this country”

Q What's the current state of nuclear in the US? It seems to be laggard, but it seems like there's a lot of energy, no pun intended, around it.

A Yeah. You know, nuclear in the United States has been paused for about 46 years. It's been paused essentially since Three Mile Island. Um, and there's some good reasons for that, some bad reasons for that. The industry sort of took a pause, uh, when Three Mile Island happened to, you know, reevaluate and make sure everything was safe. And unfortunately, when you pause an industry, it's kind of hard to restart it again. The tools atrophy, the labor's not really there anymore. The regulator's not in practice. And so we're really trying to reboot this and start over. But When you reboot an industry, um, you have to make sure that you are designing the reactors in a way that makes sense for the new methods of building things, right? We build things differently in the United States than we used to 50 or 60 years ago. Uh, we don't do as well at like very large scale manufacturing or very large scale construction. We're much better at modular manufacturing. So that's really what we focus on is building a modular reactor that can be manufactured here and that we build thousands of throughout the United States.

AI assessment note: “nuclear in the United States has been paused for about 46 years”

Q That's great. What exactly are the executive orders that he signed?

A So he signed four of them. Um, the one that's most relevant here is revitalizing, uh, nuclear testing at the Department of Energy. So the Department of Energy is a test authority in the United States. It has the authority to basically take a prime contractor and allow them to split an atom, uh, out in, you know, the middle of nowhere, somewhere it's very safe to do that. And, uh, that allows us to gather data, right? And data is the most important piece for a commercial regulatory process. If you want to take a reactor concept and scale it out all over the United States, You really want to have tested that somewhere and made sure that it's safe and make sure that you understand the characteristics. So that's what we're going to be doing. Um, that executive order, you know, essentially takes the legal structure that's there in the DOE and points everybody in the same direction to say, let's do this quickly next year.

AI assessment note: “So he signed four of them. Um, the one that's most relevant here is”