SPEAKER_03: Welcome back to this week's Liquidity Podcast.This week, we have quite an all-star cast with us.With me today, I have Mamoun Hamid, Managing General Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Thomas Scriven, Managing Director at the University of Pennsylvania Endowment, and of course, none other than Jason Calacanis from the Launch Fund and co-founder of the new Liquidity Conference, which is coming June 2nd to June 4th, liquiditypod.com. I'm your moderator, David Weisberg, co-founder of 10X Capital.Today, we have three topics on the docket.Middle East and sovereigns are setting their eyes on India.Carta has released their data on the 2018 startup class, and there are some surprises there.And the rise of secondaries as a large asset class, is it just something in this market or is it here to stay?And we'll end with everybody's favorite segment, which is the last three investments from each of our guests.Let's dive right in.
TechCrunch is reporting that Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Adia is in talks to lead a new investment in India based pocket FM.This comes on the heel of pocket FM $100 million funding from Lightspeed.This comes as many investors are writing fewer but larger ticket size checks into Indian companies.Mamoon, you're born in Pakistan and are very familiar with the South Asia ecosystem.Are you bullish on India today?
SPEAKER_01: I am.I love India as sort of the next frontier of investment.And it really, frankly, has been for the last 15 years or so.You've got 1.4 billion people.You've got a burgeoning middle class of, I think, close to 500 million.English is a spoken language that kids learn in primary school.It's quite the phenomenon.And I think I'm really bullish on India going forward.
SPEAKER_03: What do you think has been the source of a couple false starts?There's so much potential in India.What has been the false starts?
SPEAKER_01: The last time I went back to India, as you mentioned, born in Pakistan.So after 2008, I haven't been back.I would say my reflections were the infrastructure lacked, roads, bridges, traffic.And I think there's still issues, but My understanding is that there's been tons of infrastructure improvements over the last five years.You go to a city like Hyderabad, and it looks like it could be Silicon Valley or it could be New York City.And so I think there's been a lot that's happened on the infrastructure front.And also having strong leadership matters a lot.And India has had quite a bit of that over the last decade.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, India is a fascinating country.There seems to be a couple of very important trans-Mamoon population is underestimated, I think, by a lot of people.They don't realize now India is larger than China, right?1.4 billion people.And everybody seems to still think that there's a comparison there. China has negative population growth, right, like they're contracting, India still growing.And the really interesting thing, I think, in India is that the number the percentage of the population that is now living in cities, so the urban population now It's getting close to 40% of people are living in cities.To your point, this is where infrastructure, a middle class, all start to emerge.And one in six or seven people, one in 6.5 people live in the world in India.
So this is the giant market of all giant markets.Obviously, they don't have the spending power yet.And a pretty functional democracy, not perfect, but functional enough, certainly more functional than, say, China, which is a communist country.So You know, it has the all the setup there, the education, tremendous English speaking, I think probably the most interesting thing, and I don't know if anybody has the statistics on this is, I've been watching these Android phones in India, and a lot of the richest guys in India now, it seems like their wealth can be traced back now to this, these affordable Android phones and service. So it used to be people just didn't make enough money to have an Android phone.So instead of the population just making more money, which has been slowly happening, they dropped the price of service down to a couple of dollars a month.And my understanding is that's like a $15 to $25 Android phone is available and with unlimited internet.So, you know, you put a cheap Android phone in a billion people's hands, it's going to be quite a market and it's going to be wild to see what happens.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, may I just maybe add to that is India isn't just one homogenous blob.It's, I think, like 20 plus states, almost like 30 different languages, even though Hindi is a predominant.There's like the other 50% is other languages.So it's not a homogenous place.And I would also add that the West India, And the south is where the action is.And the north and the east is where it's still a bit different.So different, you know, GDP per capita, and economic growth, and especially through tech.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and the large deal size, what do we attribute that to?I'm curious.Just people wanting to make safe bets, I guess, that maybe they don't have boots on the ground as much as they would need to, to make earlier stage bets.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think big obvious opportunities in telecommunications, industrials, in education, etc.
SPEAKER_03: Mamoon, do you see Indian startups fundamentally build around different use cases and different startups?Or is it just kind of the US ecosystem translate into India?
SPEAKER_01: I think the most successful Indian startups have been the ones that have addressed the local market.You look at a Flipkart and others.It's what we haven't seen as much, although there are examples like Freshworks of companies that have built for global scale, have built products, software products that sell all across the globe, like any American startup that gets going here.Take a Slack or a Figma, you know, they built for global scale.I would say the first wave of successes has... come through companies that have done providing a digitally enabled product service, Flipkart, grocery delivery, food delivery, Amazon, et cetera, that first wave of internet innovation.But we're seeing a lot more of companies that are going way beyond just serving the Indian population and building software for global consumption.
SPEAKER_03: And Thomas, you literally just came back from India.What are your views on the ecosystem today?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's really interesting.We've been invested for 15 years on both the public and private side.And I would have said until recently, it's really been a tale of two stories.We've done exceedingly well on the public side, where we could take advantage of our duration of capital and the volatility in the stock markets.And And the private side has sort of been a tale of sort of unfulfilled promise.And I would say for the first time, one, I completely agree with Mamoun's comment on infrastructure build-out.You can really feel it, as in Mumbai.And they just opened this new highway along the waterfront that now truly connects southern Mumbai and similar things in Delhi. What gives me sort of hope is, and it has less to do with some recent venture-backed IPOs, because that's still not enough to back a venture ecosystem.
It's really the revenue traction we're seeing in our portfolio companies.I still remember a trip in 2015 to one of our partners, and frankly, I was quite shocked how little revenue traction there was after all of these years of investing I think they had. Two businesses that cracked 100 million net revenue.And then more broadly, in India, even if you hit product market fit, you're sort of plateauing at 20, 30, 50 million of revenue, depending on your business model. Fast forward to today, and that same partner has sort of 40-plus businesses with 100 million net revenue.A third of them are profitable or break-even.And I think it's when you see that sort of change in addressable market, which I think has been one of the big hindrances for India the last few years' change, is what gets us excited about sort of taking a bet on the next decade.And our perspective is we'll put more money to work in India in the next few years.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's going to be a little bit of time, I think.I haven't actually been to India.It's super embarrassing.There's so many places to go in the world.I'm spending a ton of time in the Middle East.But every time I'm in the Middle East, they reference the bridge that, you know, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Riyadh.We're very close to India.And if you look at the populations in those countries, the number one population is typically Indians and Pakistanis.And so there's a lot of... cross-pollinization going on.
And I think a lot of the entrepreneurs are looking at each other's markets, whether it's Egypt and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, and they're kind of thinking of them and the employees as kind of fluid.It's becoming a little bit of a block in that area.And it's been explained that way to me by the capital allocators in the Middle East.So I think that's super interesting.But when you look at the top market cap companies, In India right now, it's oil, you know, oil, gas, steel banks, the very few, you know, technology companies have hit scale there yet, which is probably the opportunity we'll see.But, you know, Infosys, I guess, is one of the top 15 there.But most of them are banks and industrial, right?So it'll be interesting to see the education system is the one thing I'm really interested in.I don't know if anybody has insights.
into the ecosystem for creating entrepreneurs specifically, because it's one thing to create computer scientists, accountants, people who work in business processing.It's another thing, the entrepreneurial spirit.That I don't have enough insight into.And Thomas, I'm curious, what's the entrepreneurial vibes there?Like if you go to Dubai or Riyadh, you know, they're really like championing entrepreneurship.You go to Sydney, you go to Melbourne, it's really active entrepreneurial community.What's the entrepreneurial community like in India?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think top down, the government supports there and you can see it in sort of the public market regulations that are trying to make it easier.And I think they would love to see tech companies not represent this 2% of market cap, but a lot larger.So I think you have to support from that side. I think culturally, it's a big change.Risk-taking, not becoming a doctor is still similar to the process Europe goes through is probably still a hindrance.I think what's really going to help is repeat entrepreneurs and people pointing to real wealth creation coming out of the tech space.And I think we're starting to see that happen.And the more that happens, that becomes sort of the flywheel that it's culturally acceptable to take risks when you're in your 20s and 30s.
SPEAKER_04: It certainly happened, Mamoun, in Australia with Atlassian and then Canva.You have now this diaspora, I guess is the right word, of those founding team members going and starting other companies.Is Flipkart the company in India that's causing other founders or –
SPEAKER_01: That diaspora of founders, I don't have too much insight into where Flipkart founders have gone on.But just to give you a sense, I think the Indian entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.I mean, I just looked at... Almost half of the founders that I work with are of Indian backgrounds or South Asian backgrounds, whether it's Indian or Pakistani, but predominantly Indian.In America.In America.Yeah.But I think if you asked about the educational system or just to talk about that, I mean, the success of the IITs, you know, and that just goes back not just like the last decade or two.We're talking about like... 40 50 years of producing exceptional folks like going back to you know vinod khosla who graduated from iit in the 70s i believe so these are the institutes of technologies right like this is a category or is it specifically iit iit the institute like the institute indian institute of technology across i think seven eight campuses maybe more i don't know exactly but they're spread across the country uh
They're probably harder to get into than MIT or Harvard.And they are just exceptional at producing talented people.And I think it turns out, I think most folks like majority, maybe more than 50%, let's say come to the U S for master's PhDs.So just incredibly talented folks.
SPEAKER_04: Wow.There are 23 Indian institutes of technology.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_04: I didn't realize it was that big.It's incredible. how large it is.I wonder also, you know, since we're on this, if the best entrepreneurs in India leave to come to the U S because the capitals here, you know, and the, and the, and the talents here, I wonder if that's going to change over time.Cause it could be a little bit of selection bias, my moon.Like you're working with the ones who are like, ah, hard to make it work in India, bigger opportunity in America.
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's always the question of the brain drain.So you have these 23 institutes where you have these incredible people leaving their country of birth and coming and building incredible companies here.Great for the US.Is it great for India?What I haven't seen as much is folks from here, the founders that I work with saying, hey, I'm raising my hand.I want to go back to India and build a company there.No boomerangs.So not a lot of reverse brain drains.I've seen that more from the Chinese diaspora than from the Indian diaspora.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.And this is where I think immigration, Thomas, so important for the US to get right.We're putting aside like politics.It's pretty easy to get in the US if you come illegally.Try to come legally and start a company.And man, if you could just pay $5,000 to a technology coyote who would bring you to the US. That would be pretty amazing, but instead, you have to go to Canada first.It's incredibly frustrating, I think, for all of us as capital allocators to not have the immigration easier and more fluid for these talented people.
SPEAKER_02: I think both Mamoun and I are glad we found a way to get to this country.Yeah. We totally agree.All of us.Wow.
SPEAKER_04: This keeps happening to me.Every time I'm in a group of four, I'm the only person born here.I'm like seventh or eighth generation Irish.We were in the five points in lower Manhattan.
SPEAKER_01: So you've got the Swiss, the German, and David, you're the what?
SPEAKER_04: Russian.Russian.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.All right.All European passports.Now American passports.
SPEAKER_04: Welcome to this great country, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: I love this country.
SPEAKER_04: Next topic.
SPEAKER_03: Still a great country.Speaking of great countries, part of that story was around sovereign wealth funds.And Jason, you alluded to it, they're really coming in a big way.Thomas, in many ways, sovereign wealth funds compete with the largest endowments like Penn.How do you look at sovereigns in the space today?And what are they trying to achieve in their strategy?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think we differentiate quite a bit between the sovereign wealth funds.I mean, I think there's those that have been investing in private markets for a long time and specifically venture.And then I think there's a lot of new entrants and probably say it's reflected in the quality of the respective teams and how we think whether they are sort of an enduring part of the venture ecosystem going forward or not.A lot of them are focused a lot more on direct investing into companies.And then there's some that sort of compete with us on the fund side.And I'm not sure competition is actually the right word.They're writing a lot larger checks, right?I think one thing all of these sovereign wealth funds have in common is the sheer size. They have to put a lot of money to work, and they have probably a slightly different cost of capital.
So I think for us, we don't think of them any different than other big pools of capital that have entered the market over the last few years.And if you go back a couple of decades, endowments were a very, very big part of the market. venture funding system and today in absolute terms quite frankly we're quite a lot less meaningful that makes us worry right how do you stay relevant when when your capital alone is not enough and we spend a lot of time just saying how do you be value added in a system like this how how can you differentiate yourself and you know what does that mean in in real life that means when one of our partners is making their first drone investment They should be introduced to Vijay Kumar, the Dean of Engineering at our school, who runs one of the leading drone labs.If you're looking at healthcare software, you should know our CRO, CTO. And then I don't have to tell you guys, you get one or two value-added interactions that are beyond capital provision.It's quite differentiating.And I think that's, in a way, the biggest influence a lot of these pools of capital have had on people like us.We need to redefine ourselves.We can't rely on our historic reputation and just having a lot of capital.
We don't have a lot of capital in sort of the modern context.
SPEAKER_04: So we worry a lot.And Thomas, they are in a way competition because when's the last time you've added a new manager, right?You have so many great managers on your roster that you very rarely add one and what is the minimum check size for a new fund manager?So I guess that's like sort of two questions I'm curious about, like how often do you add a new manager every year, every two years?And then what's the smallest check size you can write given your structure?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.I mean, I think one, we're series A anchored philosophically.So I think it's less about competition.I think your second question, and we feel we have good access in that space.We don't add managers very often.Some years it could be numerous and next year it could be zero, right?And we expect our partners to be conviction investors.We're conviction investors.We find a small group of partners we trust a lot.And
and know incredibly well and don't have to, quite frankly, measure them on quarterly marks.I think in venture, that's especially dangerous.It's a very cyclical business we're in.You want to know your partners well enough that... In a down cycle, you're comfortable with the strategy.In an up cycle, you're comfortable with the strategy.And sometimes good returns are luck, and sometimes good returns are based on a strong philosophy and execution thereof.So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's sort of… It's an interesting bifurcation.
SPEAKER_04: When I'm in the Middle East, I see all the young new managers, and I don't see the Kleiners.I don't see Sequoia.I don't see… And maybe they're there, and I just don't see them. But it tends to be like everybody who's on their second, third, fourth fund is in the typical cities from Riyadh to Doha, Abu Dhabi, especially, and Dubai.And then when I see the existing managers, they're like, yeah, we don't even go to that region that often.And that's, I think, what's happened just as a function of and I'm going to put this out here, I'm curious about Moon's position, as the venture ecosystem has now kind of codified into the legendary brands, the Kleiners, the Sequoias, and then the emerging managers in this new class, what I hear from the folks in the region, family offices in Saudi, you know, and, you know, Doha and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Oman, They're like, yeah, we didn't have a seat at that table, we weren't able to lock in positions in those funds.So we're, we want to meet the new managers, and we're willing to write a five to $25 million check.And they see this as their opportunity, like one, one very, very, very high profile person said, this is our opportunity to get the seat at the table.
So I'm curious when how you think about it, because when you took over Kleiner, like there's a roster of LPs. You don't have to add LPs, right?Because you keep the fun size reasonable.You're probably oversubscribed, I would guess.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.And just on Middle East capital, not only are there sovereign wealth funds, which are massive in scale, which actually have a problem investing in smaller funds because they're so sizable in terms of, we're talking about hundreds of billions, if not trillion dollars.And it's hard for them to invest in a new series A fund that's raising, let's say, $150 million because just their minimum check size might be 100 million.So that's not going to happen. But there are a lot of family offices and other pools of capital associated with families that are in power or have built great companies there.And so I've heard a lot more of those folks who are building relationships with some of the more incumbent firms or the ones that have been around for a long time. but also seeding new firms.Because a lot of folks have been in the asset class also through their work at other places, let's say like the sovereign wealth funds, there's a high level of sophistication, I would say, around our asset class, right?And this is like, I think you've probably encountered it like on the ground.But my sense is that the capital allocators, they are very sophisticated.
And, um, this is not a, uh, in fact, they sort of, when they see someone come over, it's like, well, don't think we're dumb money here.Uh, we see.
SPEAKER_04: They say that you're absolutely right.They, this is, this is sophisticated capital.They've been, they've all been educated in the West.They worked at venture firms here.They worked at fund to funds here.Totally.It's yeah.They're they've done their tours of duty.
SPEAKER_03: Yep. Next up, Carta has released their data on the 2018 startup class broken out by the round of funding.Overall, more than 49% of startups from 2018 are already dead.45% ongoing, 5% acquired, and only 0.2% public.Of course, this is a 2018 vintage.Mamoun, does this data surprise you?
SPEAKER_01: So just to clarify here, so if you started at the seed stage, 50% are dead now?Is that how to read it?
SPEAKER_04: Tracking outcomes for 3000 startups incorporated in 2018.So they were incorporated.Got it.Yeah.So they could have raised a seed or a series A, you know, sometimes if it's zero founders, they might have gone right to series A. It's a funnel of sorts.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.So it sort of makes sense.Yeah.Like, after six years, if you couldn't go from pre seed to seed and series A, I think that probably captures about the right direction in the right way.I mean, I did a quick look. on our own data.And it's, you know, you'd expect us to be lower in terms of what's not, hasn't worked out.But I would say directionally, that makes sense.And the number that surprises me is the M&A a bit, because there's a lot more M&A that happens, at least it's called M&A. and it may not have been a great outcome for investors.
So our own data suggests that the difference between a company that closed and got acquihired or acquired for a small amount is probably about the same, just as many companies get acquired for small amounts and just as many actually end up getting shut down.And maybe that's more reflective of our data where you know, we have relationships with companies, bigger companies, or other startups that are looking to acquire teams or acquire companies.So our data may skew a bit more than that.
SPEAKER_04: It's absolutely correct.I think here it says 5% M&A in year five or six, that means one in 20.And I think the way they should parse this as meaningful M&A versus, you know, window dressing M&A.It's a dark secret in our industry, but you know, and it's not done for, I think nefarious reasons, just sometimes founders like to have like, you know, a graceful exit of their startups.So they have a stop landing, they get sold, it gets put into M&A, but it's not like a big company buying a big company for a big number.It's, maybe the investors get back half their money.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: One X at best.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So yeah, this tracks, we're pre-seed investors.So we expect a much higher rate, you know, probably half of our, you know, baby turtles don't make it to Mamoon Series A, right?And then, you know, this is, I think, one of the things you have to look at when you're assessing venture firms.I'm an LPN 24 and different firms from my family office.And if you're series A to series B, that's one statistic.But pre-seed or accelerator to pre-seed to seed to series A, the attrition rate is like 90%.So you just have to understand which cohort you're sort of tracking between here.That's why this data is not super helpful because... it'd be really good to see how many, you really want to see how many accelerator companies made it to seed, how many seed made it to A, how many A made it to B. Right.
SPEAKER_02: That would tell a better story.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: I think this data skews super early, right?So, so I don't think these are particularly surprising numbers.And I think if we, if you set pre-seed to a proper institutional series A, if you had a graduation rate of 30 to 40%, that'd be pretty good.Um, Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Mamoun, a lot of your peers, some iconoclastic ones like Founders Fund say they don't care as much about loss ratio.They're looking for the next $100 billion company.How important is loss ratio to your portfolio?
SPEAKER_01: Don't dwell on it, actually, at all.I would say you got to make every investment count, especially if you're writing a $10 to $15 million series A check.There's no such thing as like, yeah, one in three of these companies will work out.I think every investment that we make, you go in with conviction. you're on a board of a company, you're trying to make it work.And you've come at it with a prepared mind to actually invest in the company.And most of us, when we lead a Series A, we know something about something to invest in that company.So if we're talking about three years out, it's a shutdown.We've done a few different things when we made the investment. So the graduation rate from where we typically engage at the Series A to a B, I would say is almost like, it's got to be like 90%, if not more, and to Series C. So it is way different than this data would suggest.
And that's why like our funnel looks a bit different.And the mortality rate is just way lower.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and our mortality rate is incredibly high.You know, when you run an accelerator or a pre accelerator, like we have half the companies, I would say that go on to raise money have done a minor or major pivot.So in fact, we came in with a prepared mind, we love the team, we like their product velocity.We like, you know, you know, we have 13 we have 13 qualities we look for in early stage companies the team if they are a serial team have they raised money before is it world-class design are they builder founders product velocity a bunch of different things but the truth is half of them pivot whether it's y combinator or launch or founding universities people are doing a ton of pivots during that period um What I have learned and fixed in my game as a portfolio manager, I'm interested in hearing Thomas's view on this as when you work with managers, what they learn.And after three funds and a couple hundred investments, I realized I had a leak in my game.I always had great affinity for the founders who don't give up. and would always like to give them the financial support of that 100k for their next bridge round or the 50k.And it was really meaningful for them because they could say, Oh, Jake, I'll put 100k and 50k.
And he's still supporting us.And what I realized was, I could put that 100k into another bet.And that would be in the better interest of our fund and our team.And so now, I have tightened the reins on that in the last fund.And I just told our team, we do not do bridge rounds. we, you know, evaluate, we only invest in the top five of our top performers.And these are the specific qualities we're looking for.If they're not in the top 5%, they don't qualify for that.And we'll have 200 names in this last this next fund, which means that's 10 companies. Our job is just, who are the 10 companies out of 200 that are the breakouts, and how can we put another million or $2 million and get to 15% ownership in them?
We are now, I don't want to say cutthroat, but we're very clear about the founders coming in.We are not permanent capital.There are other funds, and we only invest in the top 5% of our portfolio.
SPEAKER_02: I think the reality is the ecosystem is better off.As an investor, you're definitely better off if Businesses fail early and capital concentrates and talent concentrates in the business models that are sustainable.That's, of course, a hard thing to convey to founders.But probably in reality, it's also better for them.If you can't pass the litmus test of convincing third-party capital and another set of investors, you should probably ask yourself some questions.So I completely agree with your philosophies.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so this is the key.You're actually not helping them because they need to prove to another set of investors and they need to underwrite the company and put a value on it.When you come to us constantly for capital, that's really problematic for the founder.They need to prove it with another firm.And yeah, we've become so much better at this.And I look at my first three funds and I'm just like, if I had... just taken, let's say, 10 bets away in each fund and put those 10 bets, which don't seem like a lot, right?When you're a seed fund, 50K, 25K, 100K, it's not a lot of money.But if those 10 had gone into Robinhood, Calm, Density, Superhuman, Uber, Robinhood, like, oh my Lord, if we had put that money into the Series B, instead of being a 5X fund for the first fund, we would have been a 15 to 25X.Just if we had made one more bet
on the next round of superhuman, calm, etc.And we had liquidation events in some of those companies.So you know, it's actually real money that could have happened.And I think that portfolio strategy is the thing that young fund managers don't, there's not enough emphasis on fund strategy.What is your fund strategy and your follow on strategy?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been pretty clearly articulated to our LPs and hopefully Thomas knows about it too.But we tend to actually invest most of our dollars up front in that first round that we do, the Series A. And we try to go in with conviction and write a sizable check to get to the ownership we want, really.Which is what number, ideally?It used to be 20%. Jason, you know, it's come down over time and it's, you know, you'd be pretty happy if you got to 15% these days on a series A, right?
SPEAKER_04: And 10 is typical, right?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes 10 is, yeah.It's like, that's the really low end of where you want to be, but yeah, let's just say 15%. So, and our fallout on strategy is, you know, typically it's a good company.It's getting a lot of interest from other investors and they raise a really good series B. And we actually, in most cases, won't do our full pro rata.We're trying to bring our cost basis down on our overall investment. Or we decide we love this company so much and we'll actually use our growth fund to double down on the company and make an independent and new decision to invest in that company.
SPEAKER_04: With a separate team making that investment decision.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same team, but we're doing new underwriting with a second partner on it to help the underwriting so that you're not going native on your own company. But it isn't a, let's just say, we're not using that to do like prorata decisions on a fund.Like, you know, you own 20% of the company, it's raising $100 million and your prorata is 20 million.You're not just lazily walking into like, oh, let's just do a prorata out of our growth fund.That never happens.It has to be a new decision that's being underwritten to actually like lead the round in a growth stage or even a series B or C stage company. which we do very selectively back to your point of concentrating.If you know you've got something, a winner on your hands, why would you not concentrate more?Because winners tend to follow the power law and series B is still early, series C is still early.But typically on follow-on investments, just to give you, you're looking for leverage from outside or new investors.
When it's a good company, you just don't know if it's going to be an absolute home run.
SPEAKER_04: What about like a WhatsApp situation?Have you ever been in a situation where you've done, and I'm curious, Thomas, your thoughts on when you see a fund manager do this? We did the Series A. We're going to do the Series B because this is so good.And then is there an upper bound to the percentage ownership you think becomes unhealthy?
SPEAKER_01: So Thomas or Mamon, I'm curious.Happy to take it quickly, Thomas.But yeah, we've done it quite a few times.And that's just to give you a sense, our growth fund, almost half or even more of the dollars end up going into our best early stage companies. So we're constantly doing the double down and increasing our ownership in what we believe are our best companies.
SPEAKER_04: Max ownership?
SPEAKER_01: Is there like a point which becomes dysfunctional in your mind?I think these days you're not going to get more than 30%.So yeah, we have a bunch of companies that are in the mid-20s.But I can't think of any where we're over 30%.
SPEAKER_04: What do you think about that strategy, Thomas?
SPEAKER_02: I think there's really two ways to create a top-desk style of fun.One is you have high ownership really early on. and or you double down correctly, right?And so, from our perspective, we're over-diversified.So, what we want to see our partners do is develop conviction, take the closeness they have with these entrepreneurs and the businesses, and pick those winners a little bit ahead of the market.And if they can do that, I think that they can outperform.You didn't ask this specific question, but I couldn't care less if on this 25% in one single company.That's great.That gives me great look through exposure.
And I know my partner is really putting their reputation at stake.That one has to work out.That one has to be an exciting company.So I think we're very much aligned.And I think the later you go, the more high conviction you have to be.You can't talk about loss ratios anymore.So I couldn't agree more.
SPEAKER_03: You're seeing these simulations play across multiple portfolios every year.Do you see a correlation between high ownership and high returns?Are those high ownership percentages significantly more likely to outperform?
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure I can actually run the numbers on high ownership.I think there's not much correlation on high loss ratios and successful funds.I think ultimately, you have to be in big winners.I worry sometimes if you talk too much about ownership. There's some selection bias and you do the deals where you get high ownership.I think business quality and founder quality are the number one through 10 reasons why you should do something.And ownership you earn because you've been there early or you have a reputation in the market and you can't really force that in the same way.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's built over decades.
SPEAKER_03: And hundreds of deals.I agree, you can't force it.And like true investors and operators in the venture market, we have all glossed over exits, M&A and IPO.So maybe Thomas, you get an eagle eye view on the industry.Where do you see M&A from regulatory challenges or IPO windows finally opening up?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I sort of, I wish I knew.We run fully invested and pretty illiquid.You know, I'd say on the IPO front, it doesn't really look like the most IPO-able companies, call it a stripe, or Databricks, are going to go out anytime soon.And so for me, the question is, where is the momentum going to come from? for the broader IPO market.I think we'd be super happy if we had a couple successful big tech IPOs by the end of this year that make 2025 a broader IPO year.I think the backlog's so deep that even that is an upside case.I think it's going to take a few years to digest the backlog and the regulatory front.I mean, it's anybody's guess.
There's some good businesses that, in my view, should have emerged and they're not allowed to and that's been, I think, painful for A number of us.
SPEAKER_04: A number of us on the call.Some rough ones.Man, Lena Kahn has just absolutely, you know, thrown a wrench into the mechanics of what we're doing here in America and the Biden administration.And listen, I voted for Biden.But this is not the way to create a vibrant economic economy. environment.If you if the choices are, you know, go public, or stay private longer, it's super unhealthy.We've seen what happens when founders operate these businesses and management teams operate these businesses for too long privately, they lose this discipline, and there needs to be energy needs to be released.And the public needs to be involved.And you need to bring in that new class of management.
It's just a very stupid approach, we need a much clearer regulatory environment, where companies can get bought.And if the Magnificent Seven are too big, or the, you know, the top four are too big, well, then maybe we should carve this out.And we should come up with a number, you know, hey, things that are under 100 billion, maybe those four companies have a set of rules that they operate by.But the mid tier, you know, the Ubers, the Airbnbs, the Coinbases, you know, companies that are under 250 billion, maybe they can have a more free flowing M&A environment, because what are we trying to accomplish, Mamoun? By blocking all this M&A, you know, we're trying to keep it competitive, stopping Amazon from buying, you know, a vacuum robot.I mean, does this make any sense?Or, you know, obviously, the Figma discussion, which I don't know to what extent you can talk about it.That seems absurd.Like, there's a million different ways to design your app.
Figma is not like got some huge lock on the market.Like, it's not Amazon buying.It's not DoorDash and Uber combining.Yeah. Yeah, Whole Foods, right.But I mean, that got through, right?And that was a tiny, what was Whole Foods?That was a $10 billion or $5 billion?
SPEAKER_01: $13 billion, something like that.
SPEAKER_04: It was $13 billion?Yeah, it was tiny.
SPEAKER_01: Tiny, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know.What are your thoughts on this, having experienced it recently?
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't blame it all on Unicon.This is way beyond just the FTC.It's the DOJ.It's the CMA.It's the European Union.In fact, with Figma, it was the CMA in the UK.That was the reason why the deal fell apart.As startups, you're trying to... uh disrupt the incumbents and the behemoths the the trillion dollar companies the in the case of adobe it's a 250 billion dollar company and so can you set some sort of arbitrary ceilings to what uh sort of market cap can can can buy what sort of private companies um not sure how that all works out plays out uh but there's definitely like everyone's scared to do it of their own shadows right now to even acquire something that's completely unrelated to what their core businesses.
And to your point around like Amazon and vacuums, like their core businesses and vacuums, and if their core businesses are cloud services and they're buying something that even gives them even a further leg up, makes them look more like a monopoly there, then sure.So that's, that seems quite absurd, but I would say that none of the big companies are active right now, which is a problem for our industry, which the VC industry that is at, over the history of time of like of our industries, let's go back to the 70s.We've always relied on early M&A for some of our funds to get early liquidity and DPI, you know, and that hasn't existed In the last few years, and that's pretty, pretty problematic.Then you layer on top that you have IPOs, the average time from a company started today to an IPO or is 12 years.That used to be seven years when I got started in the business.And I remember having to do the analysis at my firm USCP at the time in 05. We're like, oh, it's like, how long does it take now?Oh, it's seven years.
It used to be four years.And so now going from four to seven to 12 years, how do you provide liquidity back to your LPs?And because you want to keep your companies private because they're going to be great public companies, but at what point do you start to provide some liquidity to your investors?And So, I think what's happened on the IPO front is that there's such a high bar for IPOs now that it used to be you can go public with 30, 40 million a quarter of revenue or even less than 25 million a quarter of revenue, 100 million of revenue a year.And now that number is like over half a billion. And so you have to have raised lots of venture capital and scaled globally and be the perfect looking company to go public.And I think the bar has just been set so high.And I think what we need is resetting of what an IPO looks like in our space.And that's the only way to bring down that 12 years to something like seven years.
Because there's lots of companies with hundreds of millions of revenues, 100 million plus, but not a lot of companies that get the half a billion dollar scale until they're 10 years into the journey.
SPEAKER_02: This ties back to the earlier part of the conversation of some big pools of capital that have entered the venture market.I mean, it'd be interesting to see which path entrepreneurs pick when you have an option.Some of them, I think, when you have the option to stay private, because there is capital availability, might... You might not find it so easy to shorten that zero to IPO timeline.
SPEAKER_04: You mean secondary, right?Like the ability to sell 25 million or 50 million of your shares as the founder.You know, what is your goal as a founder?Well, yeah, you want to build your company.And yeah, you might want to buy a house.You might want to buy a ski house and pay off your debt and put your kids tuition away and, you know, maybe get a jet card eventually.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But I wasn't even I wasn't even going down that route.I just think if you can raise capital in private markets at the scale that you used to need to go to the public markets for, there are just two options in today's world.And I don't think that's going to change.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's but I mean, you do have secondary.So that's one of the nice things about being at least the stage where in as a seed fund. I think we repeatedly see ourselves investing in companies that, you know, the valuation of accelerators is 1.7 million, we do a lot of deals between five and 15 million, when they hit 250 500 million, a billion, we do get opportunities to trim our position.And we've taken the philosophy of selling 10%, two or three times before a company goes public is a really wise decision for us. Because we can return our entire fund.I mean, we sold 16 million of one company that hit unicorn status as but one example.I think we had invested 3 million in the company.So we were able to return almost an entire fund just with that one transaction.But you can't do that, right, Mamoun?It's just not possible, the valuations you're coming in at.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: You can.You have the opportunity to sell.But I think when you're on the board of a company and you're telling your founders you're from zero to IPO and beyond, it feels a little weak to come in.I'm going to sell 10% of my position here to get some liquidity from my fund. It may happen, but it hasn't happened.The issue remains that liquidity is tight because of lack of M&A and IPOs.And there is a burgeoning secondaries market right now because of this.And large funds are being raised to come in and buy stakes, both in funds and in companies, so that the industry can get liquidity.
SPEAKER_03: Speaking of secondaries, with private fundraising down 20% 2023, according to PitchBook, one asset class has shown a significant surge, secondaries.Secondaries are up 65% year over year with $78.3 billion raised across only 72 funds, with Blackstone Strategic Partners Fund raising $22.2 billion alone.Thomas, what do you think about the surge in secondaries?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's the natural evolution of a maturing asset class, right?And plus some of the dynamics we just discussed.I think this is a product that's here to stay, right?Because I think the other question that's usually asked is, is this a counter-cyclical product when IPO markets are not available?I just think we have a perpetual capital base.We can stomach... illiquidity, lumpiness of venture.I think for a lot of investors, the ability to shorten the cash cycle, to reduce the J curve, et cetera, is very attractive.And I think that holds true really through the cycle.And so for
For me, maybe the interesting questions will be when we look back, is this a creative new path to liquidity at a time when there's challenging public markets?Or does it end up in review to be a situation where people sold their best businesses too early on the direct side?I think it's very interesting to see what happens with continuation vehicles that are very, very prevalent in the buyout space, whether they enter the venture space. If they do, will they be set up in a GPLP-friendly way or not?So we worry about that.And sort of on the side note, this is actually quite a complicated industry with a lot of nuances.You take direct secondaries of shares from employees, right?That... That's usually common equity that usually sits behind a big prep stack.It is doesn't take much to impair it.
It is very hard to value at that moment in time.So this is this is this is quite a nuanced field.And so what parts are interesting and what are not is I think you have to put a lot of thinking into it.
SPEAKER_03: And Thomas, your endowment has shied mostly away from secondary funds.Why is that?
SPEAKER_02: Probably because it ultimately competes mostly with late-stage venture, and we're very much sort of Series A anchored.And we've been fortunate enough to have access to what we think are some of the most interesting Series A strategies.And so I think if we can do that, we will continue to do that. But like with any new product that enters the market, we spend time thinking about it and understanding it and see if it could make us a better run portfolio.So in no way am I saying would I never spend time on this, but I think for now we are very much still able to build a Series A portfolio.
SPEAKER_04: I hope this is like a transitionary thing or becomes a minor part of the industry and that we have a healthy M&A and IPO market.It is interesting.I've had a couple of people knock on our doors and say, Oh, we can do a strip here.And you know, we can take your five X fund on paper and you know, your one point, whatever X DPI, we can get you like right to that middle point.And I'm like, well, isn't that kind of my job to make that decision as opposed to having you make the decision.I'm closer to the company.So it, it does feel like bottom feeding a little bit.I'm kind of glad it's there to create more liquidity in the market.It's super important for there to be liquidity in the market in some ways.
But one of the great things about venture, I remember this, you know, in talking to Travis with Uber and Chris Saka is like, the fact that people were locked up is a feature, because sometimes humans sell too soon.And they really under appreciate the power law, I still have a large percentage of my Uber position, I have all of my Robin Hood position.And, you know, like, the last triple up in Uber has been more significant than my entire career.And I'm not selling any of my Uber, I think there's gonna be a trillion dollar company.And I'm not selling any of my Robin Hood, I think it's going to be, you know, also, you know, could be a couple $100 billion company.So You got to be really thoughtful about this.And, you know, there's one of the great things about having Sequoia as a mentor and having been, you know, a scout there is watching Moritz and Doug Leone tell me, oh, do you know, like Michael Moritz, like the Google shares have appreciated more since they went public than when we did our initial investment, you know, like it was like, really?And you take out a calculator, like, holy cow, those last double ups really matter.
So I've kind of on a personal basis been trying to understand that as I build my family office of like, If this is a great company, Mamoun, and you underwrote it, when do you actually get off the train ride?Some of these companies are never going away.We're not in our lifetime, certainly.So I worry about these bottom feeders coming in.And I think it's a distraction.And I think what we do is so pure at its essence.You find that great team that is so passionate about building that product and solving that problem. And then you just try to support the hell out of them.And yeah, 90% in our field seed stage go to zero.
And you just treat those founders as good as you can.And then you get defined in your career.Each fund is defined by what two names, three names.And that's a seed stage. our first fund has 109 names, we have four unicorns, and two of them will be the bulk of the returns.Like, that's it.It's a very strange, unique business we're in.And Moon, it's probably one in two out of 30, right?Names in a fund.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the same two to three drive the returns of a fund.
SPEAKER_04: So I wonder what they're coming in and buying with these strips of funds.Are they just buying the strip because they know the two names that are the big ones?And
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, typically buying exactly those two names, that's the base case.If everything else goes to zero, the two names will generate, let's say, a 2x return for them.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.But would you ever even consider that at Kleiner?Are people not going to a Kleiner store to do that?
SPEAKER_01: No, they're not.And we wouldn't consider it.But if you're a fund that needs to provide liquidity to raise its next fund, then I think you'd seriously consider it.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I agree with that.And I do see a lot of my contemporaries.I don't know if you have this in the docket, but the statistics on fund one to fund two, managers getting from fund one to two has just totally collapsed.And I'm seeing that in my own.I have two of the, I think I'm in eight different fund managers.And I think, no, maybe nine different fund managers.I think two of them are not raising their next fund. you know, and I bet on early stage folks, but I was like, whoa, two out of nine are not going to go to, of my nine emerging managers are not doing a next fund. That's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_03: One thing to note here is one of the things that allows top VCs like Mamoon to execute their strategy is actually the strength of their LP base.Their LP base are patient capital, and they support the GPs through multiple cycles.They understand the context of the venture asset class within the portfolio.What do you think about that, Thomas?How do you look at venture within your portfolio?
SPEAKER_02: So I think for us, it has been an asset class that as long as you can tolerate the liquidity, it's been the place where we've made the best returns.It is a really hard asset class to keep faith to.You go through these long periods where you just, you wonder and I'm sure that was the case after the dot-com boom.I was a buyout guy in those years, but I think here again, just the scale of the industry, how can it repeat itself?And you really do have to believe in the advancement of innovation and technology for the next couple of decades.And it's not a natural thing to do for most LPs.I think at least the endowments have the advantage of a long history of success.And a lot of our scaling has come from LPs. from having the courage to be a long-term investor in venture.
And I'm flipping the question a little bit.I think it's really important that someone like Mimoune has investors who actually truly understand venture.It is just not always going to look rosy.And maybe that's actually the most interesting time to be investing.And when the pressure is, well, I'm not going to give you money until you have DPI, that's not healthy for a franchise, right?
SPEAKER_04: Is this peak pessimism, Mamoun, in our careers, do you think?Putting aside the dot-com era, which we both, I think, lived through.Yeah.But if we just take it post-dot-com era... post you know and including the great financial crisis is this the peak pessimism for venture in your mind for as a as a as a manager yeah not not for us in our conviction we're convicted we're going to work every day making bets but just like from the outside lps looking at the industry people looking at the industry does feel to me like this is the most pessimism yeah last two years that this industry so people feel venture is a broken asset class i've been told
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the headlines will make you believe that.And certainly so.If I only read the headlines, I would believe that.But by talking to our partners and our LPs and folks who are looking to be in the asset class, even deeper in the asset class, I think they see a next decade of this AI tidal wave, which we've not talked about, generate trillions of GDP to the world. And I think you just can't miss out on that opportunity.
SPEAKER_04: I'm in so much agreement with you.This is the most exciting time, I think, in our careers.When did you join USVP?
SPEAKER_01: Was that 2000?2005.I came to Silicon Valley in 1997.So, you know, right out of college.And I got to live the dot-com up and down.And yeah, like what it felt like in 1997 is what I feel like today.Like in terms of like, it's all in front of us.
SPEAKER_04: And the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs and their focus level and their dexterity, like their skill level.We're investing in 100 startups per year.I'm investing more in the last two years.I think I've invested more than the first seven, eight, nine years of my career when I was doing one a month, sometimes two investments a month.And I've never seen more focused, more efficient startups. you know, and they use less capital now, which is, I think, like a trend we really need to discuss, because I think that's the setup Thomas for where people will believe in these companies again, and the asset class is people are so capital efficient, I'm seeing three, four person companies get products to market get to a million in ARR.I've never seen that in my career, like the level of efficiency.And then if you get a couple of IPOs, these founders have taken the medicine and cut their companies like Elon did a Twitter like Facebook and Zuckerberg, lesser extent Google, lesser extent Microsoft.I feel like we're set up for these massively money-printing machine companies.
I don't know what you think, Thomas.In keeping faith in the... In keeping faith in venture.
SPEAKER_02: We're keeping faith in... In venture and innovation, I think that the time to traction on the product side is very different than 97.I mean, the ability to be involved with something and take a view a few years in, whether there's something sustainable here or not, I think is very different.And it's hard to compare.I mean, that's 25 years ago, and it was this niche industry.I mean, today, it's a very big industry and quite different.So my concerns come less from a... are there great companies going to be built?Are there great entrepreneurs?Um, I, I agree.
The world's probably more capital efficient in, in, in a lot of areas of venture, but is it, am I, as a, an investor still getting sort of these outsized returns or has something changed about this, the broader ecosystem?Um, the capital in sort of average down the cost of capital for the industry.And, and, and, and does that have any negative consequences, but there's no question in my mind that too big growth area.
SPEAKER_03: When was the first venture investment from Penn?
SPEAKER_02: It is way predates me.And it's actually before Penn, I think even had a, A formal office of investment is probably something like, you know, Horsley Bridge or something like that.But it's probably 25 years ago, roughly.Okay.
SPEAKER_04: The thing that gives me hope is this chart.I think there were so many venture tourists, it was like to the level of annoying that, you know, there were people coming into the space who, you know, I could tell weren't in for the long term.And I knew they would give up immediately.And look at this first time VC managers that raise a second VC fund as a share of all first time VC managers. You know, in the 2013 period, it was like 60% made it to their second fund.And now 13%, 12%.Like, these are non-conviction, you know, folks who are like, I want to start a fund, you know, like, just like they want to start a podcast or a, you know... a blog or a sub stack.Like starting a fund is really hard.Like it's absurdly hard.
And the fact that we're washing out people who just, you know, we're trying it on like the idea of Mamoon people trying on venture is, As like a career?
SPEAKER_01: These are 10-year funds.Remember that.You're supposed to manage people's capital for 10 years.At least.At least, right?And that's what they're set up for.So yeah, it became so easy to raise money five years, six years ago that literally you left your job at an Uber.It's like, I'm going to go raise a fund.And it was possible because you had friends at Uber who put some money in and some other people would put some money in.And before you know it, you had $30 million for a first-time fund and you're off to the races.
And then you realize, oh man, it's really hard to get up around and see revenue from your companies.And then folks decided, you know what, it's just way easier life to go start a company or go work at a company again.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think we completely agree.And I think we put a slightly different lens on it.We spend a lot of time talking to our partners about you're an operating company first and pool of capital second.And if you don't think of yourself as operating company and invest, you might not be hiring hundreds of people, but the people you hire really matter.Your decision making framework really matters. And I think when money comes too easy and you can just treat it as a pool of capital that you're going to spend, you're not going to make the decisions that are needed to really build an institution that deserves to raise for multiple fund cycles.
SPEAKER_04: I really want to see the attrition level to fund four.The amount of effort I've had to put into raising this fourth fund is 10x the first three funds combined.I raised the first three funds at the poker table with an email, just, hey, I'm doing this.And you get your fourth fund, and now you've got a body of work. you've got 21 people in your fund, you've got mistakes, you've got bad strategy, you've got huge wins.And everybody's trying to make sense of like, are you good at this or not, right?And it is incredibly hard to cross that chasm.I think like funds one and two, people give you the benefit of the doubt.When you get to your fourth, now it's like, okay, let's open the book.
Tell me, why didn't you do your prorata here?Tell me about these three losses.And I'm like, oh yeah, that person, we gave them a quarter million dollars and they never returned our emails.They absconded with the money.It was chaos.You know, like the stuff that happens in the seed stage and the early stage of venture is very messy.It's like, It's very convoluted.And you only look smart because of the power law.The other stuff, you look incredibly dumb.
And it really takes a certain mindset to understand portfolio management.And there's no person who pulls you aside and says, hey, here's portfolio construction and how it works.I've had to glean this from just years of talking to other folks on my podcast and then personally.There were only two schools of thought when we came into the business, when it was like, Five-person partnership, do 30 names, or there's this Ron Conway spray and pray thing.That's kind of it.Pick one.And then growth kind of emerged.But you really have to do your first principle thinking of how you architect your... portfolio and how you are going to hit top quartile, three, four, five X cash on cash.
And it is hard.So don't get into this, folks, if you're listening, unless you really want to suffer.This is not the easy path.
SPEAKER_01: Let's end with that.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.I mean, people seem to think this is the easy path.I can assure you, this is not the easy path.It was during the peak, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: So speaking of difficult paths, let's talk about the last couple of investments that each guest has made.We'll start with you, Mamoun, and then we'll talk about some fun strategies from Thomas and we'll end up with Jason.
SPEAKER_01: yeah i'll start with uh we talked about concentrating uh first investment or last investment we made was a company called glean which is an enterprise search and ai assistant uh i just had your ceo on you did this week yeah amazing yeah oh he's awesome arvin's amazing so we actually incubated the company at our office at kp and so um you know did the series a and then we actually just co-led the Series D. So we did a double down out of our growth fund into Glean.Incredible product, incredible company.I use it almost daily for all kinds of workflows that I do inside of KP.It helps me be more productive and just the power of AI really truly at work inside of an enterprise. That's one.Another I could talk about is a company called Ambience. healthcare, which is an AI scribe, really an operating system for healthcare.It captures the conversation that a doctor has with their patient or a clinician has with a patient, either in person or in a telehealth format, and takes that conversation, creates an EMR record, it creates a follow-up note, it figures out the diagnosis even, the It actually even parses through the text and figures out what to bill for.
So coding.So it's sort of kind of magical.And we've seen practices that adopt ambience overnight, flip all their clinicians over to the product because it just works.And it works across all these different specialties.So it has a full understanding of all sorts of specialties.And we actually seeded this company. back in 2019.And we, in the spirit of like, doubling down on things, we just doubled down and led the series B, along with OpenAI, who's a sizable investor here as well.
SPEAKER_02: And have you, have you run them past our healthcare system?It feels like there's a conversation we should have had.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.We're going to make it happen, Thomas.Okay.
SPEAKER_02: We have not.
SPEAKER_03: And we need to get value add live on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01: All right.Thank you, Thomas, for the offer. Those are two.Third one, a company called Harvey.Maybe just to give you a sense on our thesis around investing in AI has been, how do you make the most scarce, skilled workforce more productive?These are the people that get paid the most.They're the top of the salary pyramid.We identified that it was doctors. lawyers and engineers.So our investment in in legal and Harvey works with some very large companies, consulting firms, where their legal teams use it to read contracts for them create contracts, look at cases, look at prior.
Yeah, you know, you know, it goes in legal.Yeah. And then finally, a company called Codium, which goes to the thesis of supercharging developers.And this is a, we think it's a better version of GitHub Copilot and more languages.It does not just autocomplete, but also chat and search inside works within your IDE and supports more languages than Copilot, amazing team here in the Valley.In fact, I believe all four of those companies are based here in Silicon Valley.So maybe that speaks to the renaissance of AI in Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_04: Awesome.Yeah, the AI boom is super real.I'll just go real quick here.Some very early stage startups.We have two programs now.We have our accelerator, launch accelerator, 125K for 7%.Those tend to be people with products in market.We started this new thing, Foundry University. We have 2,000 people apply.We do it three times a year now.
250 people get accepted.Then we wind up investing in the top 10% of that.So still about a 1% investment.This company, Tult, is doing, and we love these boring SaaS businesses.These are folks who mastered affiliate marketing at other SaaS companies, and they made it into a platform. Every affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, but it really works for SaaS.They've got really great early traction and selling into startups is like a great way to test products because startups are resource constrained and they're really tough customers, but they're willing to try new things.Argyle is a really cool company.They are creating AR for the job site.We've been watching AR and VR for a long time, waiting for people to kind of come up with applications that actually save people time and money.
being able to take the blueprints, the floor plans, and actually put on a headset and be able to see where you're supposed to put the rivets, et cetera, on a job site, or when you're walking through with the client, put this on and show them what this new hotel might look like and be able to click the layers on and off.It was like super trippy and, you know, saves a lot of time, reduces errors and will help them do really well. And then the podcasting space, something I love a lot.So we get a lot of folks doing that has become incredibly influential.Nobody's really put together intelligence around this.And so a lot of brands are trying to track their mentions on podcasts or understand you know, how to interact with this ecosystem.And so pod engine is doing research and media monitoring inside that space, which is going to be huge.There are many companies that do this already in other verticals and categories.And so we think that this is, you know, the right timing for this startup.
Three quick ones that I'm excited about.Thomas, do you want to go over your top three new managers?Sure.So we're very three managers we love.
SPEAKER_02: This is where I'm slightly annoying and I'm going to be very confidential.So I'll talk a little bit about what's gotten us excited and where we've backed new managers.One, they've all been early stage focused, all have a concept of capital constraint and really helping us counteract this. pull we've been experiencing with bigger funds being raised and product proliferation.Interestingly, half of them have been essentially are female-led.Life sciences has become way more interesting for us over the last few years, especially sort of capital-efficient incubation models.We took on a second relationship in Europe, and we... We backed a U.S.digital health-focused fund where sort of deep domain expertise and very strong strategic networks have come together in a really interesting way.So that does give you a little bit of a flavor of where we've been spending our time.
SPEAKER_04: Healthcare is really one of those hard, hard categories to crack.I think it's – do you look at that as like – requiring a longer window than 10 years because the sales cycles are so slow.The capital is so intense.The players, every time we've had a health company, if they go direct to the customer, like com.com or FitBot, a fitness application, they do really well because they have a customer.And then when they try to sell into the healthcare industry, it really becomes hard.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.And I think usually we have not gotten comfortable.I think here, just the strategic network that comes along with the strategy sort of unlocks and solve some of those problems, or at least that's what we're hoping.And we'll see how this is a young organization, but it's off to a very good start.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think that's really great to hear that you're taking, you know, those kind of like forward thinking risks and, hey, this person's got a network and they can figure it out because that's just education and health just seem like two verticals that are so ripe for disruption, but it's so hard, both of them.But transportation was hard, right?And we saw that get, you know, disrupted.So it can be done.It's just hard.It's been a great episode.Wrap us up, David.
SPEAKER_03: Well, for Mamoun Hamid, Thomas Scriven, Jason Calacanis, this is your host, David Weisberg.Thanks for listening.
