December 19, 2024 • 42 mins
The world of startup investing has undergone massive transformations amid the AI boom, changing capital markets, and an intense degree of competition from new entrants into the space. So what does it take to succeed in venture capital? How does an investor know if they have what it takes? On this episode, recorded in San Francisco, we speak with Nina Achadjian, a partner at Index Ventures. She talks about her career, how she differentiates herself from other investors, and the sectors she's most excited about, including what areas are poised to benefit from AI.
Become a Bloomberg.com subscriber using our special intro offer at bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. You’ll get episodes of this podcast ad-free and exclusive access to our daily Odd Lots newsletter. Already a subscriber? Connect your account on the Bloomberg channel page in Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Laws podcast.
I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tracy, I love being out on the West Coast. I
love being in San Francisco. We did a live episode
last night. I love coming out here.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's been fun. We also had some really good Chinese
food afterwards.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We had really good Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Oh and I woke up to the dulcet tones of
the San Francisco parakeets this morning. That was fun.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
There's wee protests happening. I don't know what, so I've
been waking up to the sound of protests. It seems fitting.
I think I've mentioned it in a million tweets and
another episode. I've taken a few way Moo rides, which
is amazing. I love that. But you know, we talked
to a lot of I guess traditional normy investors most
(01:03):
of the time, and when we're out on the West Coast,
we have to talk to vcs because that's a it's
certainly in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Our VC is not normis well, humans.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Different, you know, their offices feel different. They invest in
sort of wildly uncertain markets in the way that say,
someone investing in the treasury market is not. It's fun,
it's different. It's always eye opening from my perspective.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The interesting thing is, I think like ten or twenty
years ago, I think a lot of people would have
expected the VC world to move more towards the traditional
investment world, and instead it feels like the traditional investment
world has moved more towards VC.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, I think that's completely right. Actually, I mean, I
think like all of culture has kind of become VC
of five because everyone is just looking for, you know,
the lottery ticket. The lottery ticket in various ways, big
high conviction bets, and you sort of hope that one
of them, whether it's a bet on a presidential election,
in a sports game, a cryptocurrency, one's career, et cetera.
(02:04):
You want to find that right tail outlier, which has
been the VC mentality since the beginning of the industry.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Right, everyone is a VC now, so we should talk
more about the industry.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
We should you if everyone is a VC, we should
talk about what a VC actually actually does in doing
now in your twenty twenty four I'm very excited. We
do have the perfect guest. We are here in the
offices of Index Ventures and we're going to be speaking
to Index Ventures partner Nina A Shadyn. Nina, thank you
so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
chat with you guys today.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What does a partner at Index Ventures do?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, our job is to find exceptional entrepreneurs, really build
trust with them and be part of their journey in
building a generational company.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Setting aside what a partner does or investor, you know
there's a lot of VC firms. Does Index Ventures have
like a specific sort of differentiator or mission or raison
debt lived different than anyone else?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, well, I think to answer that, it's helpful to
know a little bit about the history of Index. So
Index started in Europe almost thirty years ago and was
one of the first VC funds to really believe that
entrepreneurship could come from anywhere, not just Stanford's Silicon Valley.
And we've really had a global mindset, and so today
we have offices in New York, San Francisco and in London.
(03:23):
And the way that we think about investing is first
and foremost, it is truly all about the people. So
when we hear a pitch, we actually spend a ton
of time diligencing the entrepreneur and trying to build a
foundation of trust to understand what motivates this person, what
is truly this person's spike, And we try to see
(03:44):
them in many different settings in our office, in their office,
in a comfortable situation, in an uncomfortable situation, in a
professional setting, or you know, having dinner at a restaurant,
And so we spend a lot of time really getting
to know the individual, because at the end of the day,
when you're investing in capital, you're really taking a bet
on the trajectory of someone, which oftentimes is really hard
(04:05):
to see when you're talking to a very young, first
time founder.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
This gets into something that I've always wanted to ask
a VC person, but what are you doing for founders
besides writing checks? Because I hear a lot about the relationship,
and the pitch is always, well, we have great relationships
with our founders and we really build them up as
both people and businesses. What does that actually mean?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, well, I can tell you. At Index we don't
pride ourselves on being the cheerleader for a founder. Many
of v school of many vcs, they show up to
board meetings and they're the cheerleaders, which is an important role,
right you want to have that positive energy in the
board meeting. For us, we really want to be business
builders along with the founder. So what does that mean Exactly?
(04:48):
Number one, we try to be a mirror to the entrepreneur.
So that could mean in a board meeting if they
have a blind spot on let's say, like an executive
that they've had around that has been incredibly loyal to
them for years. It's often hard to see, you know,
because we are going to all of these board meetings
in the quarter, we can kind of calibrate, hey, this
cro is excellent, or hey maybe you've outgrown this particular
(05:11):
person and you need to think about, you know, augmenting
them or putting them into a different role. So being
a mirror is difficult because oftentimes you have to share
with the entrepreneurs something that they don't want to hear
or maybe they don't see yet. And so that's one
thing that we definitely think about. Second, you know, I
think being able to know exactly what is going on
(05:32):
at a company and not feeling like a lot of founders,
I didn't appreciate this for a long time. They would
have so much anxiety preparing for a board meeting. You know,
they would tell me, like the night before they wouldn't sleep,
They'd be all worried about what's going to come up
in a board meeting. A lot of founders have a
fear of getting fired by their board that I never,
you know, really thought about or appreciated, because for us,
(05:53):
we're like, it's all about the founder. We're here to
back you and your vision. And so I think being
able to have a conversation that kind of transcends the
board meeting, where for example, on the first company that
I took a board seat of, I wou'd actually fly
down the day before the board meeting and spend a
ton of time with everyone who is going to speak
in the board meeting. Plus they're like minus ones to
(06:14):
really get a good sense of what's going on in
the company, what are they worried about, what are some topics,
And then before the board meeting, I talk to the
CEO and say like, hey, these are some of the
things that are on my mind. Just so they didn't
feel like they were blindsided. So taking that extra effort
to feel like an extension of the company, not just
like I show up, I grill you at the board meeting,
(06:35):
and then I go away.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Like a sort of neutral Greek chorus almost right, that
can spot the blind spots that the founders might not
necessarily see and be like, hey guys, this is happening.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, you really want to be that mirror.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So it's interesting because in my mind when I think
about public company boards, I always think of them as well,
there's a cliche, there's a stereotype that many of them
are rubber stamps, Yeah, for the chairman, the rubber stampds
for the CEO, particularly on questions like compensation. And there's
a lot of criticism of governance of public company boards.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
My dream job is to have sixteen board an enormous
amount of money.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, well, you don't even need enormous If you have sixteen,
you just rack them up. What is it actually, I've
never asked this. What happens in a private company board meeting? Typically?
What's the agenda?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah? So typically, if it's a well run board meeting,
the materials will get out, be sent out twenty four
hours in advance, and usually it's in a memo format.
Actually a lot of our founders write a CEO letter
where they say here's what's on my mind, and it's
like stream of consciousness, like what went well, what didn't
go well, What they're struggling with, things that they want
the board's view on. And then the ideal board meeting.
(07:44):
As you come in, everybody has looked at what happens
in the past quarter. What are the open questions? We
collect some data to help the entrepreneur. If they're like, hey,
I'm thinking about changing my usage from seat based or
my pricing from seat based to more like usage base,
how has that gone? What other companies have done this?
You know, what should I be thinking about? And it's
more of a discussion versus like a report. Those are
(08:05):
the best meetings in boards.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So one other thing I always wanted to ask a
VC person is how much technical expertise do you actually
need in this job? Does it get as granular as
you're looking at someone's like source code and saying this
looks really elegant or is it more about the business
case and sort of refining the business model itself.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Well, it probably depends on what you're investing in. Generally,
we would do a lot of that technical diligence at
the time of investing, to make sure that you know
what the founder is saying is built the way that
they're presenting it, and that there's no loopholes, and that
we feel really good about the engineering team. So we
will often bring in also deeply technical experts to help
(08:48):
with that diligence, But in general, i'd say going forward,
it's much more on the business building and also giving
feedback on the team. Like you know, at the end
of the day, because these companies start so small, the
people that they are bringing around the table and what
the bar of excellence is for the entrepreneur is really
important because that's the foundation of who's going to build
(09:10):
that next source code or that next product or that
next go to market motion, And so that's where we
spend the majority of the time, the business and the talent.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
How much of your success would be attributable to perhaps
going out into the world and identifying promising founders or
promising companies that are going to be the next big thing,
And how much would it be there is a promising
founder and a promising company that's the next big thing,
and they want to call you. You are one of
(09:40):
the first calls that they placed. This actually came up
in another conversation we did recently about wanting to be
a first call, which strikes me as slightly different than
you bang the one to.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Call that that, by the way, that was what the
credit got. Yeah, but Nino also has a background in credit.
Amazing to be a bond trader.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Right, amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But I'm curious about like that dynamic, the importance of
being a first call or a second call as opposed
to an eighth call for certain types of deals, and
like thinking about that sort of like that ranking for
potential opportunities.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah, so maybe it's taking a step back. So the
job of a VC is number one sourcing, which means
being able to find interesting opportunities or having those entrepreneurs
come to you.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Number two is of course doing the diligence, where you're
making sure that you know the market thesis is right,
the product is great, the team is excellent. Number three
is winning, which I don't think a lot of people
actually talk about. So people think that you know, you
sit in this room in San Francisco, in this nice
office and people just come to you, and you know,
you say, oh yeah, this is a great idea, where
do I sign the check? But that's not actually the case.
(10:46):
Usually when you identify a great entrepreneur, chances are somebody
else has also recognized this person is spectacular, and so
actually being able to convince the entrepreneur that you are
the person in the firm that is going to work
the hardest, be there for the founder, and also that
you have a really specific investment vision and thesis that
(11:07):
aligns with their vision, I think is really important. So
the process of you know, once you know you want
to invest in this company, actually getting that founder to
choose you is actually quite quite difficult and takes a
lot of time. And then there's of course being a
board member and then finally exiting the company IPO or acquisition.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
When it comes to winning, can you talk about the
difference in twenty twenty four versus twenty twenty one, when
the perception was that there were a handful of really
large firms that would write a check within an hour
that or maybe two hours or maybe a day. But
I think in many cases like yep, this looks good,
We're going to write your big check. I've never never
going to talk to you again, but the check's there,
(11:47):
et cetera. How real was that for you as a competitor,
and what is that like? In twenty twenty four that competition.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Also, Sorry just to tack onto it, but if you
can't write the big check, what do you do instead?
Do you send like red baskets and nicely written letters?
What's your edge in that case?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Okay, happy to give you an example there. So in
twenty twenty one, yes, absolutely, that's accurate. It was crazy.
We'd meet a company at nine am and by four
pm they would send us a text or an email saying, hey,
we have four term sheets, what's your decision? And you know,
we sat a lot of those out for a couple
of reasons. One, we didn't feel like we did our
(12:26):
fiduciary duty by actually doing the diligence. And number two,
it felt extremely transactional, you know, And I think that
there were some players that had very large funds that
could afford to do that kind of investing that have
really exited the VC game today because they realized that again,
unless you are getting the real, unfiltered view of what's
(12:47):
going on in the company, it becomes very difficult to
actually know. Like in these private companies, you know, what
are the challenges, what's going well? Being able to have
that authentic conversation with the entrepreneur. Now, you know a
lot of those people have eggs did A lot of
the smaller funds have not been able to raise a
second time fund. I think that the players have consolidated
back to a lot of these enduring platforms and institutions
(13:10):
that have kind of gone through a lot of these cycles.
And by the way, I think founders realize that those
who took the money from those firms that were more
like I think someone else through this phrase out like ATM,
like VCATM. When times got tough, those players were not
around because they weren't on the board. They had totally
set expectation of that and the founders realized they really
(13:31):
needed someone to help them walk through how to do
their first riff, or how to restructure the company, or
what to do take a down round or take debt.
So I think less players now and then also founders
have really re centered on the original value proposition of
venture capital, which is having someone along your side who
can really help you build this business.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And then how do you compete? Do you have any
interesting instances of I guess being really creative when pitching
to a potential founder.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah, I want to share all my secrets, but okay, okay,
So look, I think winning is this incredible art where
you have to really try to get as many data
porns about the entrepreneur as you can. So, for example,
even before I meet a founder, let's say that I'm
really excited about and I have a thesis about I
(14:19):
will watch every single podcast video Twitter LinkedIn post to
try to gauge, like, what is this person like? Are
they going to respond to a super aggressive Hey, I'm leaning,
let's do this, let's go Which some founders love that?
Or are they more like, I want to get to
know you. Maybe I invite them over to my house,
they get to meet my husband and my kids. Maybe
(14:41):
we bond over our love for Formula one, or maybe
they want to hear about my values as a board member.
So I try to custom tailor the interaction with the
founder based on the data that I can get outside
in and of course that means talking to other people
that know them and try to understand what they care about.
And then in terms of the winning, you know, I
think the heart is part that a lot of people
don't share is once you've issued a term sheet to
(15:03):
someone and you know that they have term sheets from
other VC firms, like, what happens in that gap of
time until they sign? And so I try to map
out the entire process of Okay, if they're going to
sign by X date and most likely we're going to
give them a term sheet on this date, what needs
to happen in that gap of time And it could
be like this touch point, this thoughtful note, this special
(15:27):
you know event that we're going to invite them to.
And so I map that all out ahead of time,
and as the conversation goes, I'm continuously like tweaking what
I do in which order.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Joe, you kind of did that to me when you
were trying to get me to go to Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
I remember that, and it was successful.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yes, it was successful, which.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Actually dovetails into a question, which is that we have
listeners who many of them you know, some of them
in college, and maybe one of the things they think
about is venture capital and it looks pretty cool, like
you really do seem to meet a lot of very
interesting people, if nothing else. In this industry, some people
make a lot of money. Your offices are a lot
(16:05):
nicer than say other offices where people might go into
the investing realm. But like, you don't know if you're
good at So if I were in college and I
was like, I want to be VC, but I don't
know if I'm good at it, what would like you
have to know about yourself to know if like, oh,
this is a path I want to pursue.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, so first, you know, it goes without saying for
me at least that I think this is one of
the most incredible jobs in the entire world because you
are getting to be on the front row seat of
technology and innovation and the people you interact with. I mean,
every day I have to pinch myself that I'm getting
to meet.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
These concentrations that, by the way, about our jobs.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, it's incredible, right, Like you get to meet these
incredible people who are putting their life on the line
to pursue something because they think, you know, this business
or this product or this broken system needs to be fixed.
And so you know, if even and that sentence inspires you,
you know, I would certainly encourage you to think about
venture capital. The beauty is right now, there's so much
(17:07):
information about VC. When I tried to get into venture
capital back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, there was nothing
like VC. Firms didn't have websites, there was no YouTube, videos, podcasts.
So the first thing I would say is try to
determine if you get excited listening to invest like the
best or some of these you know a lot of
(17:28):
these vcs that share their journey and how they think
about their day to day and what the trade offs
are of investing, you know at this stage. Second, I
would say, in order to be good at this job,
you kind of have to have some raw ingredients. One
of them is definitely thriving in ambiguity. So when you
show up at a VC fund, usually you're given a
(17:51):
laptop with a blank calendar and a lot of type
A people try to get into VC myself included, right
like where it's like give me the milestones, tell me
what the goalposts, and I'm just going to like crush them. Well,
when you get to VC, you don't really have that.
It's like make magic, make money, find great entrepreneurs, and
you're like where do I start? So you really need
(18:12):
to love thriving in ambiguity and kind of breaking.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Down your job to fill up that calendar. It's your job,
and no one else is going to tell you like
how to No one is.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Going to tell you how to spend your time. Of course,
like you get some guidance on like hey, find a market,
go deep, find the founders. So that's one thrive in ambiguity.
The second thing is being able to take the ball.
So oftentimes VC firms are pretty lean. That means a
lot of responsibility for a young person. So that means, hey,
(18:40):
you met a great founder at a conference, Like it's
on you to figure out, like how we get a
second meeting? You know, do you write them a really
thoughtful email? Do you invite them to this dinner? Follow up?
Follow up?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Fall up?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And then the third thing that I don't think a
lot of people really appreciate is these very long feedback cycles. Right,
So again type A people are usually like very you know,
driven by positive affirmation because you know, you do something,
you do well, great, next thing, next.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Thing, you get the sort of immediate feedback.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, exactly, the dopamine hit of like I'm good at
this at VC. Like in VC, you really don't get
that because it's like years before you know, and you know,
anyone that tells you like any company has only been
like good news and up into the right is lying
to you because it is such an emotional rollercoaster. Things
go wrong, you know, things go right. You think you're
a genius one day, and then the next day it's
(19:30):
it's very humbling. So I think, like those are core
attributes that you should have. And then finally, of course,
you need to be able to sell yourself. And that's
where a lot of people, I think feel very uncomfortable,
you know, because it's one thing if you can sell
a product. It's another thing if you can convince someone
to take a bet on you as a board member.
(19:50):
And you know, being able to articulate like your personal
pitch and why you I think is really important.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So you mentioned trying to get into VCS circa twenty fifteen.
Can you talk a little bit more about your previous
job history, because I was saying earlier before we started
the podcast, but honestly, one of the most eclectic bios
I have ever read. So in addition to being a
high old bond trader at City, you also worked at
a bakery in Istanbul for unknown reasons.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, yes, sure, so I grew up in the Bay Area.
I'm Armenian. My parents moved to US from Iraq. Actually
we're part of the Armenians that originally lived in the
southern part of Turkey before the Armenian Genocide. And basically
my parents raised me with this philosophy that I was
so lucky to have the right to work in the US.
(20:57):
My dad, who had the equivalent of a PhD in
electrical engineering, when he moved here, he had to wait
seven years for a green card, and so, you know,
I grew up with this perspective that, wow, I'm so
lucky to be able to even work in the United
States and of course speak English, and so that really
always drove me, and of course my Armenian heritage. And
so when I got to college, as many immigrant kids do,
(21:20):
it was either like become a lawyer or a doctor,
and I thought, you know, I'd love to be a lawyer.
So I originally decided to study pre law, and then
I interned at a law firm one summer and I
was like, this.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Is just terrible. It was.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It was just like I knew that it would take
so long for me to like actually do what I
thought a lawyer did based on what I saw on TV.
So I asked a couple of my friends who had
done some finance internships what their experience was like, and
most of them were investment banking, which honestly sounded very
similar to doing the you know, lawyer path of just
sitting and doing spreadsheets and power points. But a few
(21:53):
of my friends had done trading, and I just it
just struck me as wow, like here's something where you
can like form conviction very quickly. You have an opportunity
to put your money where your mouth is. And I
was like, this seems like the most intense job I
could possibly do after college. So if I do this
as like a training ground worst case scenario, any other
(22:14):
job after this would be like a cake walk. And
so I was really fortunate to get this offer at City,
and I really wanted to be on the high old
bond desk because the number one trader, this guy Scott Goodwin,
who now runs an incredible fund himself called Diameter, was
running that desk, and I really wanted to learn from him. However,
I had this terrible timing of graduating college in two
(22:35):
thousand and eight cool and so a lot of the
funds called individuals and were like, hey, would you defer
your offer for a year? And I had like my
apartment in New York, setup, roommate, the whole thing. So
long story short, I applied for a Rockefeller Fellowship, which
asks you, if you could go anywhere in the world,
where would you go and what would you do? And
I decided to write a proposal to work at a
(22:56):
baklava bakery because food is the perfect intersection between Armenian
and Turkish culture. And so yeah, when I got it,
call my parents they were like, are you serious? And
I worked at a baklava bakery per year in Turkey.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's amazing. Okay, So here's my other question. What is
the ven diagram overlap between baklava baking and venture capital?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Okay, I thought you were gonna ask me about trading
and venture capital the.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Harder one, which I think is baking.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I mean, I think the analogy is probably number one,
like you're serving customers at the end of the day,
and for us, we're serving our LPs and entrepreneurs. Number two,
you actually have to be like quite collaborative because one
person is like making the layers and the dough, like
super thin. Someone else is perfecting like the pistachio like
mixture that's like perfect, somebody else is doing like the
(23:46):
sugar syrup, and you know, to bring it all together,
it really does take a village. And I think the
analogy is to build an amazing company, it takes a village.
And then third, you just got to like roll with
the punches, like you know, the oven goes down, or
somebody it doesn't you know, show up to work or
whatever it is. You just got to roll up your
sleeves and help. Those things I think have been good
(24:06):
training ground for being a VC.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To use a line that we may say over and
over on the podcast, I imagine that baking back lava
is kind of like investing in bonds in the sense
that you want to repeat the exact same process over
and over again and avoid the screw ups more than
you're trying to at any given moment, make you know,
the one out of ten batches that's transcendent, right, Like,
(24:31):
you just want to keep that consistent process.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
That was a stretch, Joe, I think, I think I think.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I got there in the end. Let's talk a little
bit about investing right now. Ai, Yeah, no, it's probably
going to be a big deal. I'm curious though, Within
AI there are various views on what it's going to
do and how it's going to change the world, and
who will be the winners, and who will accrue and
let a crew to legacy companies or startups or the
models of the chip company whatever to be successful right now?
(25:02):
Do you have to have a view on some of
these questions, because there's obviously the point about, yeah, you
want to find people who have for some reason likely
to be good founders, good operators, et cetera. Do you
also have to have a view on tech debates that
are happening right now?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I mean yes and no. For example, I think you
do need to have a view on foundation models right
These are the models that power chat Ept and Claude
and Gemini and some of these others, because there's still
many many entrepreneurs that are coming out and saying, hey,
I want to build like a better, faster model and
I'm going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, And
I think having a view on okay, has it already consolidated?
(25:42):
Have we kind of already reached like the horizontal model
penetration with these four or five players, Like, that's definitely
a market view that you need to take.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What is your view on this question?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah? My view is kind of does this settling on
and consolidating with these players, and I think it's really
hard to catch up. I think what's been really interesting, however,
is these smaller models that are very domain specific, so
they're really good at one particular industry or one problem
they solve, and their value proposition is not we're going
(26:14):
to be better than the underlying models. It's actually, hey,
as the underlying models get better and AI generally gets better,
our technology also improves. It's like rising tide lifts all boats,
and they've figured out how to incorporate AI not to
just be this feature but actually something that solves a
real workflow problem for their end customers and has a
(26:35):
real ROI. And so I think that's the areas that
we're really excited about.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And this is actually something I wanted to ask you
about because in all our conversations with VC people in
San Francisco or VC adjacent people, this kind of comes up.
There's enthusiasm about building more specific applications on top of
those large language foundational models and I'm kind of curious,
like how much of a moat is there for those businesses,
(27:00):
because it feels like, you know, if the essential technology
is the thing that you're borrowing from Microsoft or Google
or whatever, it feels like the customization is almost the
easy part there.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
So I guess, like, how.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Easy is it to replicate a specific use case for
AI if you're not you know, developing the foundational model yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, so I think actually history teaches us a lot
about this. If you think about sas software as a service,
there's no technical mode to SaaS. If somebody wanted to rebuild,
you know, there was always this question that a lot
of vcs would ask. It's like if Google through ten
engineers at this, would they build it? And like an
honest founder would be like, yeah, you know, if they
(27:41):
threw one hundred you know, engineers, they'd build it in
this amount of time. But I think finding one white
spaces that have been ignored, which I like to invest
in a lot of what I call like the forgotten
functions and forgotten industries which we can talk about. Yeah,
and then second, you really have to take a view
of where's your user spending time. You have to really
understand their day to day and just throwing an AI
(28:03):
feature that reads, for example, like legal contracts is not enough.
You either got to be like, okay, this is the
version control, or you're going to get like so much
more information, or it's just such a more delightful tool
that you, as a lawyer spend your entire day in.
That's the companies that we're excited about, because otherwise it's
really a race to the bottom of how much you
can charge on top of these foundation models, what.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Are some of those white spaces? I mean, law is
intuitively a big area because we know how much time
lawyer spend reading and yeah, documents of tech. But what
some white spaces that exciting?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Okay, so let's think about the physical world. So this table,
these chairs we're sitting on, the sneakers you're wearing, all
of the items that you see in the physical world
have been designed by an industrial designer. So an industrial
designer usually starts with a sketch like zero to one.
They draw the next air Jordan's Ferrari, whatever it is,
(28:58):
and then they have to do this painful of taking
this sketch and turning it into something that can actually
be manufactured. The textures, the color library, the specific way
that the shoe shows up, or the materials that they
can use, and that is a very manual process. So
almost a year ago I invested in this company called Viscom.
The founder, Jordan, worked as a car designer for Honda
(29:22):
and then he worked at Nvidia for a couple of years,
and he saw the power of AI, and instead of
replacing the human creativity of drawing that next incredible ikea
chair or H and M dress or whatever it was,
he was like, let's preserve the human creativity and then
just use AI to automate all the painful tasks of
taking that sketch into something that can be totally manufactured.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
The other big topic in San Francisco seems to be
valuations and the inevitable Gartman style hype cycle that we
will probably encounter in this space. Where are we in
terms of enthusiasm and inevitable disappointment with AI?
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah? So could not be a bigger difference between AI
company valuations and non AI company evaluations. Like, for example,
if you are just a regular SaaS company and you're
making a million dollars of revenue, it's really hard to
raise over one hundred million dollar valuation, which would be
one hundred x multiple.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
But even if I put out a press release saying
that I am now using AI in my SaaS business,
which seems to be the new strategy.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
That does seem to be a strategy. But I mean,
if your core function is not you know, AI native,
and then within AI, valuations range from you know, even
half a billion dollars for some new seed companies because
they're run by incredible technologists. So I think there's a
broad sense that this is real. The market is huge,
and people want to have the right ships on the table.
(31:02):
There's also a lot of demand for these limited amount
of individuals that have very specific AI talents and experience.
There's not that many of them in the world, and
most of them are in San Francisco, where all the
vcs are. So basically, I think it's a combination of
limited talent, supply for people going out to solve really
really hard problems within AI, and then also capital that's
(31:26):
kind of flocking to those types of individuals, and supply
drives demand, and supplies is what drives valuations, and so
that's why we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
That Tracey mentioned the whole phenomenon of we're an AI company.
Now we're doing something with AI. Are there good companies
out there that are not AI adjacent, but good SaaS
businesses whose valuations are too low just because they're not
sexy right now?
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Oh yeah, there's so many of them. I mean, I've
focused a lot on vertical software, which is software for
one particular industry, so software for architects, software for car
mechanic shops to run their business, software for HVAC, electrical
and plumbing to run their business. And these are incredibly important,
mission critical industries that you know, I think AI will
(32:11):
certainly be a feature for. But fundamentally there are things
that people need software to run their everyday business, like
dispatch or customer CRM, or figuring out procurement and supply
you know, supply chain type of problems, and so I
think that there is a huge opportunity. The challenge is,
though a lot of those companies raise at very high prices,
(32:31):
then they cut burn They laid off a bunch of
people in twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three, and
as a result, their growth rate has stalled. And so
I think there's like fourteen hundred SaaS companies that were
unicorns in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty that haven't
fundraised in the last like eighteen to twenty four months,
and that's because they have extended their cash runway. I
expect those to come to market. I also expect a
(32:53):
lot of consolidation to happen amongst startups. There are so
many companies going after the same space and just kind
of like race to the bottom in terms of unit
economics to like undercut one another. I think if they're
not success, if one of them is not successful in
breaking out as the clear winner, I could see startups
starting to join forces and go after the space together.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned that
Index had roots in Europe, or at least it looked
in Europe for potential opportunities, and I think there is
a sense nowadays that Europe is lagging behind when it comes.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
To stuff like AI.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I guess I have multiple questions on this topic, but
a why is that or why does that sense exist?
And then secondly, have you seen good opportunities in Europe lately?
Are people doing interesting things there potentially beginning to catch up?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah? Well, I think again it all comes back to
the density of talent, which I know everybody was talking
about like the doom loop in San Francisco and all
of that. But I have to tell you I was
at a conference a block away from here yesterday, Eric
Newcomers Cerebral Value Conference, and literally it was like probably
the top fifteen minds in AI that all o their
offices are within a five to ten minute you know,
(34:03):
drive of where this conference was. Everyone you know, from
Dario at Anthropic to you know, Ali from Data Bricks,
and the list goes on and on and on like fantastic.
So I think the density of talent still in San Francisco.
But you know, Google had a huge deep Mind presence
in Europe, for example, and we've been seeing a lot
of companies spin out of deep Mind and meta there.
I think Mistral is a great example. They're one of
(34:25):
the fastest grown you know, open source models. So there's
definitely talent there because a lot of these big tech
labs have had presence, you know, in Europe for a
while in AI.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
You know, when you mentioned the types of industries that
you're interested in, like Europe may not have a booming
AI economy the same way San France, it's got it.
It probably has a lot of companies that would benefit
from them. So there's sort of like productivity problems. Whether
we're talking about like industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical areas, areas that
people are hopeful that AI can be a big solution.
(34:57):
Do you look at those companies as potential big customers
if nothing else for the types of technologies that you're
investing in.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Absolutely, I'd say like time to Europe as like a
market for US based companies is getting shorter and shorter.
And that's also one of the reasons why people Index,
you know, pick Index, because they want a VC fund
that kind of has one team across Europe and the
US that can help these entrepreneurs expand from being only
US customers to then of course a huge market in Europe.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah. I've been asking this question a lot while we're
in San Francisco, But what's the coolest application of AI
that you've seen? I know you mentioned the product design aspect,
but is there anything else?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Well, we have an unannounced seed investment that I'll talk about.
It's in the agent space. So everyone is talking about agents,
right like agent for this, agent for that, you know,
want agent to rule them all.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
This is an agent, is an AI that can actually
go and do things exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It's not like a sales AI agent. Let's put that aside.
It's basically like a command box where you say, okay,
please book my trip to Italy, and here are some
broad parameters, and here's my credit card. Go. So a
lot of companies are building agents, but not a lot
of people are thinking about the infrastructure or operating system
for these agents to interact with one another. You know,
if you think about it, probably an agent will have
(36:15):
to take your credit card and then interact with another
agent that is doing the hotel or flight booking, et cetera.
And being able to share you know, personal data or
financial transactions is really a complex problem. And so one
of the investments that we're excited about is building the
operating system for these agents to be able to interact
with one another.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I just have one last question. I think, you know,
as the time, at the time we're recording this, the
Nasdaq is a roughly all time highs I think, and
you know, I more or less think that when the
stock market is up, that's probably good for exit opportunities.
Either via IPO or the valuation of companies that would
buy your portfolio companies eventually, et cetera. I'm not going
(36:57):
to ask the Lena Khan if you see a question,
because I think the answer is kind of obvious that
there will be a more liberal environment for mergers and
deals in the next administration. That we could be wrong,
but from a IPO standpoint, stocks are up, but also
very heavily concentrated in a few gigantic companies. What does
that window look like to you these days?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, well, I think everyone's been holding their breath to
see what happened with the election, as well as how
the stock market performs given the question around interest rates
and inflation and what's the real strength of the underlying economy.
You know, I think that there are a ton of
companies that are having these conversations in boardrooms saying, okay,
you know, when the IPO market opens, are we ready?
(37:38):
And they're getting their systems, their CFO, their IR person
all ramped up.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Why isn't it open with stocks of all time high?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Well, again, I think that there were some big things
that folks were waiting for, potentially, you know, the election,
and again like what's going on with rates. I think
those are really important and so hopefully we'll see the
IPO market open up very soon.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Nina Sha Yam, thank you so much for coming on
to our lives. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That was really fun, really.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Fun, Tracy, I really enjoyed that. First of all, I
really enjoyed how much of the conversation we got to
spend about what the job of VC actually is, because
(38:24):
I mean, I understand the broad perimeters. You talk to
a lot of entrepreneurs and most of them are going
to fail, and then hopefully you get a one hundred
x return in one of them. But hearing some of
the things like, Okay, it's not enough to meet them,
you also have to win, and what it takes to win,
I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
We probably should have asked, now that I'm thinking about it,
we should ask what happens to the failed founders because
there is there's a huge survivorship bias same VC, right,
and we're talking about identifying the winners and what it's
like when you actually find one. But I wonder what
happens to people who don't succeed on their first try.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I've always wondered about that too, and you know the
degree to which a good VC can I'm totally speculating
here find a good home for that entrepreneur. Yeah, is
that one of the services that's like, okay, we have
a network. I don't know. Actually, I'm just totally spitballing here,
but I've always wondered if one of the pitches from
VC is like, you're probably gonna fail because most of our.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Investments we have a place to put here.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, you know, residents.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
The other thing I was thinking about, just in the
context of Europe US competition and AI. To your point,
it is kind of interesting to think of Europe like
not necessarily as a hotbed of AI activity, although as
Nina pointed out, there are some companies, but maybe as
a prime beneficiary of some of the product boosts.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Right, this is a story of our time, productivity boost
This is a story of our time that there is
the still important industrial giants of Europe and the fear
is that they're unproductive. Yeah, and there's huge pharmaceutical and
there's huge chemical companies in Germany and so forth. And
so if you actually think AI is going to lead
(40:07):
to some breakthrough, perhaps these are the big winners. Because
of the buyers of the technology, not the sellers of
the technologyrarian.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Approach to Europe's future.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I think I'm going to invest in Basf as an
AI player whatever. I'm not actually suggesting that, but that
would be.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
A good I think this is actually an interesting investment.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Theaters good enough take for Twitter.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, okay, shall.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
We leave it there.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Nina Asha John She's at Nina A Shadyan.
Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbout and kel Brooks at kel Brooks. Thank
you to our producer Moses Ondam. From our odd Laws content.
Go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Loss, where we
have transcripts, a blog and a new daily newsletter and
(40:56):
you could chat about all of these topics, including VC tech,
AI all that stuff in our discord with fellow listeners
twenty four to seven Discord dot gg slash od lots.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
And if you enjoy Odd Lots. If you like it
when we ask vcs what they actually do, then please
leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, in addition
to getting our new daily newsletter, you can listen to
all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need
to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts
(41:27):
and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Laws podcast.
I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tracy, I love being out on the West Coast. I
love being in San Francisco. We did a live episode
last night. I love coming out here.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's been fun. We also had some really good Chinese
food afterwards.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We had really good Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Oh and I woke up to the dulcet tones of
the San Francisco parakeets this morning. That was fun.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
There's wee protests happening. I don't know what, so I've
been waking up to the sound of protests. It seems fitting.
I think I've mentioned it in a million tweets and
another episode. I've taken a few way Moo rides, which
is amazing. I love that. But you know, we talked
to a lot of I guess traditional normy investors most
(01:03):
of the time, and when we're out on the West Coast,
we have to talk to vcs because that's a it's
certainly in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Our VC is not normis well, humans.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Different, you know, their offices feel different. They invest in
sort of wildly uncertain markets in the way that say,
someone investing in the treasury market is not. It's fun,
it's different. It's always eye opening from my perspective.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The interesting thing is, I think like ten or twenty
years ago, I think a lot of people would have
expected the VC world to move more towards the traditional
investment world, and instead it feels like the traditional investment
world has moved more towards VC.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, I think that's completely right. Actually, I mean, I
think like all of culture has kind of become VC
of five because everyone is just looking for, you know,
the lottery ticket. The lottery ticket in various ways, big
high conviction bets, and you sort of hope that one
of them, whether it's a bet on a presidential election,
in a sports game, a cryptocurrency, one's career, et cetera.
(02:04):
You want to find that right tail outlier, which has
been the VC mentality since the beginning of the industry.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Right, everyone is a VC now, so we should talk
more about the industry.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
We should you if everyone is a VC, we should
talk about what a VC actually actually does in doing
now in your twenty twenty four I'm very excited. We
do have the perfect guest. We are here in the
offices of Index Ventures and we're going to be speaking
to Index Ventures partner Nina A Shadyn. Nina, thank you
so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
chat with you guys today.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What does a partner at Index Ventures do?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, our job is to find exceptional entrepreneurs, really build
trust with them and be part of their journey in
building a generational company.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Setting aside what a partner does or investor, you know
there's a lot of VC firms. Does Index Ventures have
like a specific sort of differentiator or mission or raison
debt lived different than anyone else?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, well, I think to answer that, it's helpful to
know a little bit about the history of Index. So
Index started in Europe almost thirty years ago and was
one of the first VC funds to really believe that
entrepreneurship could come from anywhere, not just Stanford's Silicon Valley.
And we've really had a global mindset, and so today
we have offices in New York, San Francisco and in London.
(03:23):
And the way that we think about investing is first
and foremost, it is truly all about the people. So
when we hear a pitch, we actually spend a ton
of time diligencing the entrepreneur and trying to build a
foundation of trust to understand what motivates this person, what
is truly this person's spike, And we try to see
(03:44):
them in many different settings in our office, in their office,
in a comfortable situation, in an uncomfortable situation, in a
professional setting, or you know, having dinner at a restaurant,
And so we spend a lot of time really getting
to know the individual, because at the end of the day,
when you're investing in capital, you're really taking a bet
on the trajectory of someone, which oftentimes is really hard
(04:05):
to see when you're talking to a very young, first
time founder.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
This gets into something that I've always wanted to ask
a VC person, but what are you doing for founders
besides writing checks? Because I hear a lot about the relationship,
and the pitch is always, well, we have great relationships
with our founders and we really build them up as
both people and businesses. What does that actually mean?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, well, I can tell you. At Index we don't
pride ourselves on being the cheerleader for a founder. Many
of v school of many vcs, they show up to
board meetings and they're the cheerleaders, which is an important role,
right you want to have that positive energy in the
board meeting. For us, we really want to be business
builders along with the founder. So what does that mean Exactly?
(04:48):
Number one, we try to be a mirror to the entrepreneur.
So that could mean in a board meeting if they
have a blind spot on let's say, like an executive
that they've had around that has been incredibly loyal to
them for years. It's often hard to see, you know,
because we are going to all of these board meetings
in the quarter, we can kind of calibrate, hey, this
cro is excellent, or hey maybe you've outgrown this particular
(05:11):
person and you need to think about, you know, augmenting
them or putting them into a different role. So being
a mirror is difficult because oftentimes you have to share
with the entrepreneurs something that they don't want to hear
or maybe they don't see yet. And so that's one
thing that we definitely think about. Second, you know, I
think being able to know exactly what is going on
(05:32):
at a company and not feeling like a lot of founders,
I didn't appreciate this for a long time. They would
have so much anxiety preparing for a board meeting. You know,
they would tell me, like the night before they wouldn't sleep,
They'd be all worried about what's going to come up
in a board meeting. A lot of founders have a
fear of getting fired by their board that I never,
you know, really thought about or appreciated, because for us,
(05:53):
we're like, it's all about the founder. We're here to
back you and your vision. And so I think being
able to have a conversation that kind of transcends the
board meeting, where for example, on the first company that
I took a board seat of, I wou'd actually fly
down the day before the board meeting and spend a
ton of time with everyone who is going to speak
in the board meeting. Plus they're like minus ones to
(06:14):
really get a good sense of what's going on in
the company, what are they worried about, what are some topics,
And then before the board meeting, I talk to the
CEO and say like, hey, these are some of the
things that are on my mind. Just so they didn't
feel like they were blindsided. So taking that extra effort
to feel like an extension of the company, not just
like I show up, I grill you at the board meeting,
(06:35):
and then I go away.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Like a sort of neutral Greek chorus almost right, that
can spot the blind spots that the founders might not
necessarily see and be like, hey guys, this is happening.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, you really want to be that mirror.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So it's interesting because in my mind when I think
about public company boards, I always think of them as well,
there's a cliche, there's a stereotype that many of them
are rubber stamps, Yeah, for the chairman, the rubber stampds
for the CEO, particularly on questions like compensation. And there's
a lot of criticism of governance of public company boards.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
My dream job is to have sixteen board an enormous
amount of money.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, well, you don't even need enormous If you have sixteen,
you just rack them up. What is it actually, I've
never asked this. What happens in a private company board meeting? Typically?
What's the agenda?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah? So typically, if it's a well run board meeting,
the materials will get out, be sent out twenty four
hours in advance, and usually it's in a memo format.
Actually a lot of our founders write a CEO letter
where they say here's what's on my mind, and it's
like stream of consciousness, like what went well, what didn't
go well, What they're struggling with, things that they want
the board's view on. And then the ideal board meeting.
(07:44):
As you come in, everybody has looked at what happens
in the past quarter. What are the open questions? We
collect some data to help the entrepreneur. If they're like, hey,
I'm thinking about changing my usage from seat based or
my pricing from seat based to more like usage base,
how has that gone? What other companies have done this?
You know, what should I be thinking about? And it's
more of a discussion versus like a report. Those are
(08:05):
the best meetings in boards.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
So one other thing I always wanted to ask a
VC person is how much technical expertise do you actually
need in this job? Does it get as granular as
you're looking at someone's like source code and saying this
looks really elegant or is it more about the business
case and sort of refining the business model itself.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Well, it probably depends on what you're investing in. Generally,
we would do a lot of that technical diligence at
the time of investing, to make sure that you know
what the founder is saying is built the way that
they're presenting it, and that there's no loopholes, and that
we feel really good about the engineering team. So we
will often bring in also deeply technical experts to help
(08:48):
with that diligence, But in general, i'd say going forward,
it's much more on the business building and also giving
feedback on the team. Like you know, at the end
of the day, because these companies start so small, the
people that they are bringing around the table and what
the bar of excellence is for the entrepreneur is really
important because that's the foundation of who's going to build
(09:10):
that next source code or that next product or that
next go to market motion, And so that's where we
spend the majority of the time, the business and the talent.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
How much of your success would be attributable to perhaps
going out into the world and identifying promising founders or
promising companies that are going to be the next big thing,
And how much would it be there is a promising
founder and a promising company that's the next big thing,
and they want to call you. You are one of
(09:40):
the first calls that they placed. This actually came up
in another conversation we did recently about wanting to be
a first call, which strikes me as slightly different than
you bang the one to.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Call that that, by the way, that was what the
credit got. Yeah, but Nino also has a background in credit.
Amazing to be a bond trader.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Right, amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But I'm curious about like that dynamic, the importance of
being a first call or a second call as opposed
to an eighth call for certain types of deals, and
like thinking about that sort of like that ranking for
potential opportunities.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah, so maybe it's taking a step back. So the
job of a VC is number one sourcing, which means
being able to find interesting opportunities or having those entrepreneurs
come to you.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Number two is of course doing the diligence, where you're
making sure that you know the market thesis is right,
the product is great, the team is excellent. Number three
is winning, which I don't think a lot of people
actually talk about. So people think that you know, you
sit in this room in San Francisco, in this nice
office and people just come to you, and you know,
you say, oh yeah, this is a great idea, where
do I sign the check? But that's not actually the case.
(10:46):
Usually when you identify a great entrepreneur, chances are somebody
else has also recognized this person is spectacular, and so
actually being able to convince the entrepreneur that you are
the person in the firm that is going to work
the hardest, be there for the founder, and also that
you have a really specific investment vision and thesis that
(11:07):
aligns with their vision, I think is really important. So
the process of you know, once you know you want
to invest in this company, actually getting that founder to
choose you is actually quite quite difficult and takes a
lot of time. And then there's of course being a
board member and then finally exiting the company IPO or acquisition.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
When it comes to winning, can you talk about the
difference in twenty twenty four versus twenty twenty one, when
the perception was that there were a handful of really
large firms that would write a check within an hour
that or maybe two hours or maybe a day. But
I think in many cases like yep, this looks good,
We're going to write your big check. I've never never
going to talk to you again, but the check's there,
(11:47):
et cetera. How real was that for you as a competitor,
and what is that like? In twenty twenty four that competition.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Also, Sorry just to tack onto it, but if you
can't write the big check, what do you do instead?
Do you send like red baskets and nicely written letters?
What's your edge in that case?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Okay, happy to give you an example there. So in
twenty twenty one, yes, absolutely, that's accurate. It was crazy.
We'd meet a company at nine am and by four
pm they would send us a text or an email saying, hey,
we have four term sheets, what's your decision? And you know,
we sat a lot of those out for a couple
of reasons. One, we didn't feel like we did our
(12:26):
fiduciary duty by actually doing the diligence. And number two,
it felt extremely transactional, you know, And I think that
there were some players that had very large funds that
could afford to do that kind of investing that have
really exited the VC game today because they realized that again,
unless you are getting the real, unfiltered view of what's
(12:47):
going on in the company, it becomes very difficult to
actually know. Like in these private companies, you know, what
are the challenges, what's going well? Being able to have
that authentic conversation with the entrepreneur. Now, you know a
lot of those people have eggs did A lot of
the smaller funds have not been able to raise a
second time fund. I think that the players have consolidated
back to a lot of these enduring platforms and institutions
(13:10):
that have kind of gone through a lot of these cycles.
And by the way, I think founders realize that those
who took the money from those firms that were more
like I think someone else through this phrase out like ATM,
like VCATM. When times got tough, those players were not
around because they weren't on the board. They had totally
set expectation of that and the founders realized they really
(13:31):
needed someone to help them walk through how to do
their first riff, or how to restructure the company, or
what to do take a down round or take debt.
So I think less players now and then also founders
have really re centered on the original value proposition of
venture capital, which is having someone along your side who
can really help you build this business.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And then how do you compete? Do you have any
interesting instances of I guess being really creative when pitching
to a potential founder.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah, I want to share all my secrets, but okay, okay,
So look, I think winning is this incredible art where
you have to really try to get as many data
porns about the entrepreneur as you can. So, for example,
even before I meet a founder, let's say that I'm
really excited about and I have a thesis about I
(14:19):
will watch every single podcast video Twitter LinkedIn post to
try to gauge, like, what is this person like? Are
they going to respond to a super aggressive Hey, I'm leaning,
let's do this, let's go Which some founders love that?
Or are they more like, I want to get to
know you. Maybe I invite them over to my house,
they get to meet my husband and my kids. Maybe
(14:41):
we bond over our love for Formula one, or maybe
they want to hear about my values as a board member.
So I try to custom tailor the interaction with the
founder based on the data that I can get outside
in and of course that means talking to other people
that know them and try to understand what they care about.
And then in terms of the winning, you know, I
think the heart is part that a lot of people
don't share is once you've issued a term sheet to
(15:03):
someone and you know that they have term sheets from
other VC firms, like, what happens in that gap of
time until they sign? And so I try to map
out the entire process of Okay, if they're going to
sign by X date and most likely we're going to
give them a term sheet on this date, what needs
to happen in that gap of time And it could
be like this touch point, this thoughtful note, this special
(15:27):
you know event that we're going to invite them to.
And so I map that all out ahead of time,
and as the conversation goes, I'm continuously like tweaking what
I do in which order.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Joe, you kind of did that to me when you
were trying to get me to go to Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
I remember that, and it was successful.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yes, it was successful, which.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Actually dovetails into a question, which is that we have
listeners who many of them you know, some of them
in college, and maybe one of the things they think
about is venture capital and it looks pretty cool, like
you really do seem to meet a lot of very
interesting people, if nothing else. In this industry, some people
make a lot of money. Your offices are a lot
(16:05):
nicer than say other offices where people might go into
the investing realm. But like, you don't know if you're
good at So if I were in college and I
was like, I want to be VC, but I don't
know if I'm good at it, what would like you
have to know about yourself to know if like, oh,
this is a path I want to pursue.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, so first, you know, it goes without saying for
me at least that I think this is one of
the most incredible jobs in the entire world because you
are getting to be on the front row seat of
technology and innovation and the people you interact with. I mean,
every day I have to pinch myself that I'm getting
to meet.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
These concentrations that, by the way, about our jobs.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, it's incredible, right, Like you get to meet these
incredible people who are putting their life on the line
to pursue something because they think, you know, this business
or this product or this broken system needs to be fixed.
And so you know, if even and that sentence inspires you,
you know, I would certainly encourage you to think about
venture capital. The beauty is right now, there's so much
(17:07):
information about VC. When I tried to get into venture
capital back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, there was nothing
like VC. Firms didn't have websites, there was no YouTube, videos, podcasts.
So the first thing I would say is try to
determine if you get excited listening to invest like the
best or some of these you know a lot of
(17:28):
these vcs that share their journey and how they think
about their day to day and what the trade offs
are of investing, you know at this stage. Second, I
would say, in order to be good at this job,
you kind of have to have some raw ingredients. One
of them is definitely thriving in ambiguity. So when you
show up at a VC fund, usually you're given a
(17:51):
laptop with a blank calendar and a lot of type
A people try to get into VC myself included, right
like where it's like give me the milestones, tell me
what the goalposts, and I'm just going to like crush them. Well,
when you get to VC, you don't really have that.
It's like make magic, make money, find great entrepreneurs, and
you're like where do I start? So you really need
(18:12):
to love thriving in ambiguity and kind of breaking.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Down your job to fill up that calendar. It's your job,
and no one else is going to tell you like
how to No one is.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Going to tell you how to spend your time. Of course,
like you get some guidance on like hey, find a market,
go deep, find the founders. So that's one thrive in ambiguity.
The second thing is being able to take the ball.
So oftentimes VC firms are pretty lean. That means a
lot of responsibility for a young person. So that means, hey,
(18:40):
you met a great founder at a conference, Like it's
on you to figure out, like how we get a
second meeting? You know, do you write them a really
thoughtful email? Do you invite them to this dinner? Follow up?
Follow up?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Fall up?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And then the third thing that I don't think a
lot of people really appreciate is these very long feedback cycles. Right,
So again type A people are usually like very you know,
driven by positive affirmation because you know, you do something,
you do well, great, next thing, next.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Thing, you get the sort of immediate feedback.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, exactly, the dopamine hit of like I'm good at
this at VC. Like in VC, you really don't get
that because it's like years before you know, and you know,
anyone that tells you like any company has only been
like good news and up into the right is lying
to you because it is such an emotional rollercoaster. Things
go wrong, you know, things go right. You think you're
a genius one day, and then the next day it's
(19:30):
it's very humbling. So I think, like those are core
attributes that you should have. And then finally, of course,
you need to be able to sell yourself. And that's
where a lot of people, I think feel very uncomfortable,
you know, because it's one thing if you can sell
a product. It's another thing if you can convince someone
to take a bet on you as a board member.
(19:50):
And you know, being able to articulate like your personal
pitch and why you I think is really important.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So you mentioned trying to get into VCS circa twenty fifteen.
Can you talk a little bit more about your previous
job history, because I was saying earlier before we started
the podcast, but honestly, one of the most eclectic bios
I have ever read. So in addition to being a
high old bond trader at City, you also worked at
a bakery in Istanbul for unknown reasons.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, yes, sure, so I grew up in the Bay Area.
I'm Armenian. My parents moved to US from Iraq. Actually
we're part of the Armenians that originally lived in the
southern part of Turkey before the Armenian Genocide. And basically
my parents raised me with this philosophy that I was
so lucky to have the right to work in the US.
(20:57):
My dad, who had the equivalent of a PhD in
electrical engineering, when he moved here, he had to wait
seven years for a green card, and so, you know,
I grew up with this perspective that, wow, I'm so
lucky to be able to even work in the United
States and of course speak English, and so that really
always drove me, and of course my Armenian heritage. And
so when I got to college, as many immigrant kids do,
(21:20):
it was either like become a lawyer or a doctor,
and I thought, you know, I'd love to be a lawyer.
So I originally decided to study pre law, and then
I interned at a law firm one summer and I
was like, this.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Is just terrible. It was.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It was just like I knew that it would take
so long for me to like actually do what I
thought a lawyer did based on what I saw on TV.
So I asked a couple of my friends who had
done some finance internships what their experience was like, and
most of them were investment banking, which honestly sounded very
similar to doing the you know, lawyer path of just
sitting and doing spreadsheets and power points. But a few
(21:53):
of my friends had done trading, and I just it
just struck me as wow, like here's something where you
can like form conviction very quickly. You have an opportunity
to put your money where your mouth is. And I
was like, this seems like the most intense job I
could possibly do after college. So if I do this
as like a training ground worst case scenario, any other
(22:14):
job after this would be like a cake walk. And
so I was really fortunate to get this offer at City,
and I really wanted to be on the high old
bond desk because the number one trader, this guy Scott Goodwin,
who now runs an incredible fund himself called Diameter, was
running that desk, and I really wanted to learn from him. However,
I had this terrible timing of graduating college in two
(22:35):
thousand and eight cool and so a lot of the
funds called individuals and were like, hey, would you defer
your offer for a year? And I had like my
apartment in New York, setup, roommate, the whole thing. So
long story short, I applied for a Rockefeller Fellowship, which
asks you, if you could go anywhere in the world,
where would you go and what would you do? And
I decided to write a proposal to work at a
(22:56):
baklava bakery because food is the perfect intersection between Armenian
and Turkish culture. And so yeah, when I got it,
call my parents they were like, are you serious? And
I worked at a baklava bakery per year in Turkey.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's amazing. Okay, So here's my other question. What is
the ven diagram overlap between baklava baking and venture capital?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Okay, I thought you were gonna ask me about trading
and venture capital the.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Harder one, which I think is baking.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I mean, I think the analogy is probably number one,
like you're serving customers at the end of the day,
and for us, we're serving our LPs and entrepreneurs. Number two,
you actually have to be like quite collaborative because one
person is like making the layers and the dough, like
super thin. Someone else is perfecting like the pistachio like
mixture that's like perfect, somebody else is doing like the
(23:46):
sugar syrup, and you know, to bring it all together,
it really does take a village. And I think the
analogy is to build an amazing company, it takes a village.
And then third, you just got to like roll with
the punches, like you know, the oven goes down, or
somebody it doesn't you know, show up to work or
whatever it is. You just got to roll up your
sleeves and help. Those things I think have been good
(24:06):
training ground for being a VC.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To use a line that we may say over and
over on the podcast, I imagine that baking back lava
is kind of like investing in bonds in the sense
that you want to repeat the exact same process over
and over again and avoid the screw ups more than
you're trying to at any given moment, make you know,
the one out of ten batches that's transcendent, right, Like,
(24:31):
you just want to keep that consistent process.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
That was a stretch, Joe, I think, I think I think.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I got there in the end. Let's talk a little
bit about investing right now. Ai, Yeah, no, it's probably
going to be a big deal. I'm curious though, Within
AI there are various views on what it's going to
do and how it's going to change the world, and
who will be the winners, and who will accrue and
let a crew to legacy companies or startups or the
models of the chip company whatever to be successful right now?
(25:02):
Do you have to have a view on some of
these questions, because there's obviously the point about, yeah, you
want to find people who have for some reason likely
to be good founders, good operators, et cetera. Do you
also have to have a view on tech debates that
are happening right now?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I mean yes and no. For example, I think you
do need to have a view on foundation models right
These are the models that power chat Ept and Claude
and Gemini and some of these others, because there's still
many many entrepreneurs that are coming out and saying, hey,
I want to build like a better, faster model and
I'm going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, And
I think having a view on okay, has it already consolidated?
(25:42):
Have we kind of already reached like the horizontal model
penetration with these four or five players, Like, that's definitely
a market view that you need to take.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What is your view on this question?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah? My view is kind of does this settling on
and consolidating with these players, and I think it's really
hard to catch up. I think what's been really interesting, however,
is these smaller models that are very domain specific, so
they're really good at one particular industry or one problem
they solve, and their value proposition is not we're going
(26:14):
to be better than the underlying models. It's actually, hey,
as the underlying models get better and AI generally gets better,
our technology also improves. It's like rising tide lifts all boats,
and they've figured out how to incorporate AI not to
just be this feature but actually something that solves a
real workflow problem for their end customers and has a
(26:35):
real ROI. And so I think that's the areas that
we're really excited about.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And this is actually something I wanted to ask you
about because in all our conversations with VC people in
San Francisco or VC adjacent people, this kind of comes up.
There's enthusiasm about building more specific applications on top of
those large language foundational models and I'm kind of curious,
like how much of a moat is there for those businesses,
(27:00):
because it feels like, you know, if the essential technology
is the thing that you're borrowing from Microsoft or Google
or whatever, it feels like the customization is almost the
easy part there.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
So I guess, like, how.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Easy is it to replicate a specific use case for
AI if you're not you know, developing the foundational model yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, so I think actually history teaches us a lot
about this. If you think about sas software as a service,
there's no technical mode to SaaS. If somebody wanted to rebuild,
you know, there was always this question that a lot
of vcs would ask. It's like if Google through ten
engineers at this, would they build it? And like an
honest founder would be like, yeah, you know, if they
(27:41):
threw one hundred you know, engineers, they'd build it in
this amount of time. But I think finding one white
spaces that have been ignored, which I like to invest
in a lot of what I call like the forgotten
functions and forgotten industries which we can talk about. Yeah,
and then second, you really have to take a view
of where's your user spending time. You have to really
understand their day to day and just throwing an AI
(28:03):
feature that reads, for example, like legal contracts is not enough.
You either got to be like, okay, this is the
version control, or you're going to get like so much
more information, or it's just such a more delightful tool
that you, as a lawyer spend your entire day in.
That's the companies that we're excited about, because otherwise it's
really a race to the bottom of how much you
can charge on top of these foundation models, what.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Are some of those white spaces? I mean, law is
intuitively a big area because we know how much time
lawyer spend reading and yeah, documents of tech. But what
some white spaces that exciting?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Okay, so let's think about the physical world. So this table,
these chairs we're sitting on, the sneakers you're wearing, all
of the items that you see in the physical world
have been designed by an industrial designer. So an industrial
designer usually starts with a sketch like zero to one.
They draw the next air Jordan's Ferrari, whatever it is,
(28:58):
and then they have to do this painful of taking
this sketch and turning it into something that can actually
be manufactured. The textures, the color library, the specific way
that the shoe shows up, or the materials that they
can use, and that is a very manual process. So
almost a year ago I invested in this company called Viscom.
The founder, Jordan, worked as a car designer for Honda
(29:22):
and then he worked at Nvidia for a couple of years,
and he saw the power of AI, and instead of
replacing the human creativity of drawing that next incredible ikea
chair or H and M dress or whatever it was,
he was like, let's preserve the human creativity and then
just use AI to automate all the painful tasks of
taking that sketch into something that can be totally manufactured.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
The other big topic in San Francisco seems to be
valuations and the inevitable Gartman style hype cycle that we
will probably encounter in this space. Where are we in
terms of enthusiasm and inevitable disappointment with AI?
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah? So could not be a bigger difference between AI
company valuations and non AI company evaluations. Like, for example,
if you are just a regular SaaS company and you're
making a million dollars of revenue, it's really hard to
raise over one hundred million dollar valuation, which would be
one hundred x multiple.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
But even if I put out a press release saying
that I am now using AI in my SaaS business,
which seems to be the new strategy.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
That does seem to be a strategy. But I mean,
if your core function is not you know, AI native,
and then within AI, valuations range from you know, even
half a billion dollars for some new seed companies because
they're run by incredible technologists. So I think there's a
broad sense that this is real. The market is huge,
and people want to have the right ships on the table.
(31:02):
There's also a lot of demand for these limited amount
of individuals that have very specific AI talents and experience.
There's not that many of them in the world, and
most of them are in San Francisco, where all the
vcs are. So basically, I think it's a combination of
limited talent, supply for people going out to solve really
really hard problems within AI, and then also capital that's
(31:26):
kind of flocking to those types of individuals, and supply
drives demand, and supplies is what drives valuations, and so
that's why we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
That Tracey mentioned the whole phenomenon of we're an AI company.
Now we're doing something with AI. Are there good companies
out there that are not AI adjacent, but good SaaS
businesses whose valuations are too low just because they're not
sexy right now?
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Oh yeah, there's so many of them. I mean, I've
focused a lot on vertical software, which is software for
one particular industry, so software for architects, software for car
mechanic shops to run their business, software for HVAC, electrical
and plumbing to run their business. And these are incredibly important,
mission critical industries that you know, I think AI will
(32:11):
certainly be a feature for. But fundamentally there are things
that people need software to run their everyday business, like
dispatch or customer CRM, or figuring out procurement and supply
you know, supply chain type of problems, and so I
think that there is a huge opportunity. The challenge is,
though a lot of those companies raise at very high prices,
(32:31):
then they cut burn They laid off a bunch of
people in twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three, and
as a result, their growth rate has stalled. And so
I think there's like fourteen hundred SaaS companies that were
unicorns in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty that haven't
fundraised in the last like eighteen to twenty four months,
and that's because they have extended their cash runway. I
expect those to come to market. I also expect a
(32:53):
lot of consolidation to happen amongst startups. There are so
many companies going after the same space and just kind
of like race to the bottom in terms of unit
economics to like undercut one another. I think if they're
not success, if one of them is not successful in
breaking out as the clear winner, I could see startups
starting to join forces and go after the space together.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned that
Index had roots in Europe, or at least it looked
in Europe for potential opportunities, and I think there is
a sense nowadays that Europe is lagging behind when it comes.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
To stuff like AI.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I guess I have multiple questions on this topic, but
a why is that or why does that sense exist?
And then secondly, have you seen good opportunities in Europe lately?
Are people doing interesting things there potentially beginning to catch up?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah? Well, I think again it all comes back to
the density of talent, which I know everybody was talking
about like the doom loop in San Francisco and all
of that. But I have to tell you I was
at a conference a block away from here yesterday, Eric
Newcomers Cerebral Value Conference, and literally it was like probably
the top fifteen minds in AI that all o their
offices are within a five to ten minute you know,
(34:03):
drive of where this conference was. Everyone you know, from
Dario at Anthropic to you know, Ali from Data Bricks,
and the list goes on and on and on like fantastic.
So I think the density of talent still in San Francisco.
But you know, Google had a huge deep Mind presence
in Europe, for example, and we've been seeing a lot
of companies spin out of deep Mind and meta there.
I think Mistral is a great example. They're one of
(34:25):
the fastest grown you know, open source models. So there's
definitely talent there because a lot of these big tech
labs have had presence, you know, in Europe for a
while in AI.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
You know, when you mentioned the types of industries that
you're interested in, like Europe may not have a booming
AI economy the same way San France, it's got it.
It probably has a lot of companies that would benefit
from them. So there's sort of like productivity problems. Whether
we're talking about like industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical areas, areas that
people are hopeful that AI can be a big solution.
(34:57):
Do you look at those companies as potential big customers
if nothing else for the types of technologies that you're
investing in.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Absolutely, I'd say like time to Europe as like a
market for US based companies is getting shorter and shorter.
And that's also one of the reasons why people Index,
you know, pick Index, because they want a VC fund
that kind of has one team across Europe and the
US that can help these entrepreneurs expand from being only
US customers to then of course a huge market in Europe.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah. I've been asking this question a lot while we're
in San Francisco, But what's the coolest application of AI
that you've seen? I know you mentioned the product design aspect,
but is there anything else?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Well, we have an unannounced seed investment that I'll talk about.
It's in the agent space. So everyone is talking about agents,
right like agent for this, agent for that, you know,
want agent to rule them all.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
This is an agent, is an AI that can actually
go and do things exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
It's not like a sales AI agent. Let's put that aside.
It's basically like a command box where you say, okay,
please book my trip to Italy, and here are some
broad parameters, and here's my credit card. Go. So a
lot of companies are building agents, but not a lot
of people are thinking about the infrastructure or operating system
for these agents to interact with one another. You know,
if you think about it, probably an agent will have
(36:15):
to take your credit card and then interact with another
agent that is doing the hotel or flight booking, et cetera.
And being able to share you know, personal data or
financial transactions is really a complex problem. And so one
of the investments that we're excited about is building the
operating system for these agents to be able to interact
with one another.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I just have one last question. I think, you know,
as the time, at the time we're recording this, the
Nasdaq is a roughly all time highs I think, and
you know, I more or less think that when the
stock market is up, that's probably good for exit opportunities.
Either via IPO or the valuation of companies that would
buy your portfolio companies eventually, et cetera. I'm not going
(36:57):
to ask the Lena Khan if you see a question,
because I think the answer is kind of obvious that
there will be a more liberal environment for mergers and
deals in the next administration. That we could be wrong,
but from a IPO standpoint, stocks are up, but also
very heavily concentrated in a few gigantic companies. What does
that window look like to you these days?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, well, I think everyone's been holding their breath to
see what happened with the election, as well as how
the stock market performs given the question around interest rates
and inflation and what's the real strength of the underlying economy.
You know, I think that there are a ton of
companies that are having these conversations in boardrooms saying, okay,
you know, when the IPO market opens, are we ready?
(37:38):
And they're getting their systems, their CFO, their IR person
all ramped up.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Why isn't it open with stocks of all time high?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Well, again, I think that there were some big things
that folks were waiting for, potentially, you know, the election,
and again like what's going on with rates. I think
those are really important and so hopefully we'll see the
IPO market open up very soon.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Nina Sha Yam, thank you so much for coming on
to our lives. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That was really fun, really.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Fun, Tracy, I really enjoyed that. First of all, I
really enjoyed how much of the conversation we got to
spend about what the job of VC actually is, because
(38:24):
I mean, I understand the broad perimeters. You talk to
a lot of entrepreneurs and most of them are going
to fail, and then hopefully you get a one hundred
x return in one of them. But hearing some of
the things like, Okay, it's not enough to meet them,
you also have to win, and what it takes to win,
I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
We probably should have asked, now that I'm thinking about it,
we should ask what happens to the failed founders because
there is there's a huge survivorship bias same VC, right,
and we're talking about identifying the winners and what it's
like when you actually find one. But I wonder what
happens to people who don't succeed on their first try.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I've always wondered about that too, and you know the
degree to which a good VC can I'm totally speculating
here find a good home for that entrepreneur. Yeah, is
that one of the services that's like, okay, we have
a network. I don't know. Actually, I'm just totally spitballing here,
but I've always wondered if one of the pitches from
VC is like, you're probably gonna fail because most of our.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Investments we have a place to put here.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, you know, residents.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
The other thing I was thinking about, just in the
context of Europe US competition and AI. To your point,
it is kind of interesting to think of Europe like
not necessarily as a hotbed of AI activity, although as
Nina pointed out, there are some companies, but maybe as
a prime beneficiary of some of the product boosts.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Right, this is a story of our time, productivity boost
This is a story of our time that there is
the still important industrial giants of Europe and the fear
is that they're unproductive. Yeah, and there's huge pharmaceutical and
there's huge chemical companies in Germany and so forth. And
so if you actually think AI is going to lead
(40:07):
to some breakthrough, perhaps these are the big winners. Because
of the buyers of the technology, not the sellers of
the technologyrarian.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Approach to Europe's future.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I think I'm going to invest in Basf as an
AI player whatever. I'm not actually suggesting that, but that
would be.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
A good I think this is actually an interesting investment.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Theaters good enough take for Twitter.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, okay, shall.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
We leave it there.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Nina Asha John She's at Nina A Shadyan.
Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbout and kel Brooks at kel Brooks. Thank
you to our producer Moses Ondam. From our odd Laws content.
Go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Loss, where we
have transcripts, a blog and a new daily newsletter and
(40:56):
you could chat about all of these topics, including VC tech,
AI all that stuff in our discord with fellow listeners
twenty four to seven Discord dot gg slash od lots.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
And if you enjoy Odd Lots. If you like it
when we ask vcs what they actually do, then please
leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, in addition
to getting our new daily newsletter, you can listen to
all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need
to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts
(41:27):
and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.