Identifying Generational Managers with Jordan Nel

Join José as he hosts the first episode of the Emerging Manager series, sitting down with Jordan from Nomads—the fund-of-funds arm of the legendary VC firm Hummingbird. Together, they break down what truly separates elite venture investors from the rest of the market and how small, nimble emerging managers can outmaneuver multi-billion dollar tech funds.

They dive into the concept of "pre-consensus" versus non-consensus investing, the art of tracking down hidden talent pools, and the unique psychological traits of great capital allocators. From Lord of the Rings analogies to the mechanics of a total South African real estate wipeout, Jordan shares raw, unfiltered insights into the reality of picking the ultimate GPs

🎯 Key Highlights

▸ The Great Man vs. The Hobbit: Why Jordan favors a humble, distributed approach to venture over the over-indexed "will to power" archetype.
▸ Venture Beta vs. Outlier Exploitation: Questioning whether index venture returns justify the illiquidity premium, and why Nomads focuses strictly bottoms-up on outlier funds.
▸ Pre-Consensus vs. Non-Consensus: Defining how the best pre-seed funds spot massive paradigm shifts and outlier founders well before the consensus forms.
▸ How Emerging Managers Beat Giants: Why nimble, high-trust partnerships can act as a high-signal filter for multi-billion dollar funds like Andreessen and Sequoia.
▸ The Staging Strategy: How legendary founders utilize early angel tables and small pre-seed funds as structural signal boosters before demanding massive institutional valuations.
▸ Evaluating GPs via Decisional Taste: Moving away from static profile-matching to deeply mapping how a general partner makes decisions and who they spend their time with.
▸ The Venture Archetypes: Dissecting the "Bad Cop Meta-Thinker" vs. the "Charismatic Relationship Driver" and how they balance one another in a fund partnership.
▸ The Paradox of Curiosity: Balancing the driving emotion of raw curiosity with the essential risk management of market fear to avoid chasing every shiny new thing.

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🧠 Follow the Alpha

▸ Jose: @ZeMariaMacedo
▸ Jordan's Twitter: @jordsnel


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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/62PR1RigLG2YN5Pelq6UY9?si=18ac7ccf36ab4753
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-delphi-podcast/id1438148082
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q


Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction to the Emerging Manager series
02:40 — Challenging venture beta vs. public equities
04:50 — Deconstructing the source-pick-win scheme and identifying real edge
06:45 — How small managers out-discover the multi-billion dollar funds
09:20 — Bridging the gap: Storytelling, storytelling calibrators, and making founders legible
10:45 — From Bridget Mendler to Nigerian tech rebels
14:00 — The Bay Area talent cluster signal vs. picking in disinterested cycles
19:00 — How Nomads evaluates the decisional mechanics of a GP
22:30 — Avoiding the mid-curve trap of over-indexing on explicit thesis articulation
24:00 — Mapping the research ecosystems: Spotting early talent in tech-bio and frontier tech
27:15 — Dissecting intensity, spotting obsession, and separating LARPs
29:15 — The structural resonance between specific GP types and outlier founders
32:45 — The art of referencing general partners and mitigating competitive biases
34:30 — Good cop, bad cop, and the dynamic pairing of the meta-thinker with the executor
37:30 — Why venture edge requires constantly reinventing yourself
41:15 — The shift in price discipline from high ownership demands to unique structuring edge
43:10 — Hunting for investment signals in the world's most obscure markets
48:20 — Convexity, concentration rules, and strict asset selectivity
51:00 — The cutting process: Meritocratic arguments, structural hypotheses, and surface-level traps
56:00 — Why George Soros makes a far better venture proxy than Warren Buffett
01:00:30 — From South African public equities to joining the Hummingbird ecosystem
01:03:00 — Advice to a younger self: Taming the pendulum between fear and deep curiosity
01:06:00 — Moral frameworks in fantasy: Lord of the Rings, Dune, and the Great Man Theory
01:15:00 — Unreliability vs. the grind: Mapping oneself to Da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Raphael
01:17:40 — A lesson in debt covenants: Jordan's biggest early market wipeout scenario 


Disclaimer

This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host and members at Delphi Ventures may personally own tokens or art that are mentioned on the podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I have this debate often with this guy, the you know, great man theory of venture writer. I don't want to live in a world that is like solely a great man theory of venture world. Like I I don't like this like Nietzschean will to power thing. I think it's it's hard to invest because sometimes you have to believe in this in people. But like I far prefer the world of the hobbits.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Why isn't Frodo the great man?

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Because he was a hobbit? No, I mean like an Aragorn's not the great man. Like I think if you look at the story, like Baromir was supposed to be the great man. This is like the son of Gondol.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

And he tries to take the ring and he has the will to power and it's like it's his downfall.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yes. Hi guys, I'm Jose, and I'll be hosting this episode of Delphi Podcast. This is actually the first episode of the Emerging Manager series where we're going to be hosting uh really promising emerging managers that we've come across in the last few months doing our fund of funds. So I'm really happy to have you, Jordan, as the first as the first guest, because you have a really unique um perspective on this stuff. Because you were at Hummingbird uh at nomads at the Fund of Funds arm, but Hummingbird itself is one of the most legendary VC firms out there, getting more legendary. I think Mario Gabriela didn't have to be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

There was like a distinct like before Mario and after Mario period. Yeah. After Mario period was like so much interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I feel like there was like Mario, yeah. So Mario Gabriela from the General List, amazing writer. He wrote this uh Hummingbird, the best VC firm you've never heard of. And it was an incredible profile. It covered you guys, it covered Barent and Fred and all those guys, um, and and talked about your results, which are insane. Uh, and also like some of the things you're famous for, right? The looking where others don't, you know, Turkey, crypto, um, the deep sort of psychology psychology, founder DD, and also the concentration and and things like this. Um and what's interesting is you were at nomads, which is the Hummingbird Fund of Funds arm. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I mean, we we inherited all that, like the hummingbird, the brand, like all that stuff basically. Like they'd done it before we came, and then we came to nomads and was like, okay, cool, blank slate on investing in funds.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah. Um which is pretty cool because you're you're trying to find the next hummingbird to some extent. Yeah. Or like what the what does the best, what does the new best GP look like? And so I want to spend a lot of time on that today, because you have this perspective where you've seen inside an elite VC and you've tried to recreate that to some extent with the with the fund of funds. So like I want to talk about what makes a great VC, basically, what what makes a great GP and and and just venture more generally from your from your lens. Um so the the first question I wanted to start with is why even do venture? You know, like when you look at the these like Cambridge Analytica, Cambridge Analytica, or like most of the sort of research on ventures, the results have been pretty underwhelming overall. Like it's sort of underperformed public equities indices, uh, especially the large funds, for pretty much the last 20 years or so. Um and you know, Roloff was it was famously said that it's uh a return-free risk, right? Venture, and it's not an asset class. So why even do venture? Like, why why invest in venture?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yeah, and then got taken over by Pat Grady and yeah, the issue a week later.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

I I think um I I don't know, man, if I can answer for like why people should allocate to venture broadly. Like, I I'm not sure that like venture beta justifies the illiquidity premium. I don't also think that's how we think about it. Like, sure there are like strategic elements being you know front at the coal face of like the next paradigm shifts, you can definitely draw insights from that. But mostly we think about it super bottoms up. It's like if there are, if for every outlier company, there are at least three outlier funds. For every outlier company that comes, every Coinbase, there is a Ribbit, there is a USV, there are like a dozen companies around Coinbase that return multiples of their fund because of this company. And so like the way we think about it is just super, super why this founder in particular, why this company, why this GP, why this market? Not really, you know, how to time venture cyclically. Do we think venture beta fits into a whole portfolio? I'll leave that to the smarter allocators in me. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

But there is some that like if entry prices got really crazy, or like there are some conditions under which you'd say there are no bottoms-up opportunities in venture, no?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Or or at least I don't I don't I don't think you've got examples of that. Like 2021, yeah, you can look at the entirety of the market and say, okay, like this is all crazy. But actually, even to 2021, it's not. Like even in 2021, if you were fishing in like Indian life sciences, probably you'd be like the only guy fishing in Indian life sciences. And I think there's always these little pockets of arbitrage that happen. And I think as as LPs and GPs, like the job is to find that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Okay. Which leads us nicely actually to the to the next question was where does edge come from in in venture? You you have a nice sort of scheme of this that you put put together for some of your posts. But I'm curious, like, yeah, what are the sources of edge in venture? How how do you win as a venture investor?

SPEAKER_02 5:00

I think framing it like how do you win is also a specific framing. I I think the broad, like you're supposed to source pick, win, like everybody knows, right? You source pick win and like portfolio cost. Source deals, pick the right ones, win them, get the access to them, and then like put that into a portfolio that's like convex mathematically. I think um the last decade of venture has built a like it's a you know, tons of capital slides in, like tons of people are trained in these big firms, like they are sourcing machines, they're like business development machines. Um, but also because like uh rising boat, rising short, rising tide lifts all boats, you have this dynamic where like the hot gets hotter and people are trained to like source more and more consensus. And so most of the time, these are elite sources, but like the picking element, and maybe they're elite winners too if access, but like the elite picking element is maybe a bit lacking. Um it's very rare if you're gonna be able to do that. You're saying that in the big name. Well, other yeah, more consensus, the guys who are doing multi-stage stuff. Okay, um, I think that game is just a fundamentally different game. So, like most pre-seed funds, most seed funds. Um, I think the how you win things then a function of like what is your capital availability. Like if you are Andreessen, the way you win is very different to like if you're Haystack or if you are Mukka or if you're like any one of these other funds that has done like exceptional performance at seed, your brand, the like style, the people you hang around, like that's very distinct. Uh whereas Andreessen, like it's a very different game. Andreessen I'm using as a proxy, it could be any of the big funds, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah. Um and those funds, like, how do you think the small emerging managers beat those funds? Because from my perspective, uh, and obviously I have the same thesis as you that they will beat them, but it seems kind of harder than ever in some sense because those funds have have crushed it, right? Especially recently. There's been big funds. The big funds. Yeah. I mean, especially recently, there's been a bunch of exits, right, that have that have materially improved the numbers on on some of those funds. But they also just have like um insane reputations, like having them on the cap table can actually materially help with hiring and partnerships and and also just like sourcing you more capital down the line. Um I mean their platform teams, it sort of remains to be to be seen whether that's super valuable, but it's it's it's gonna be more value than you get from a one-man show. Yeah, right. Or a two-man show. Sometimes I think so like how yeah, how how do you how do you win?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

I think it's a like if you start with the heuristics that the heuristic that the big funds will see everything uh and will be in every multi-billion dollar company. Like every multi-billion dollar company will have uh Andresen, Sequoia, like GC insight, something like that. Then like you change the question a little bit because you're not trying to beat the bigger funds, you're trying to like see the companies before the bigger funds. Yes. And act as signal to the bigger funds such that they will eventually follow on from you. Yeah. Um, a lot of the time the bigger funds are just not looking in the weird places. Like the GPs, they're like you know, 20-man investment teams, they're not incentivized to go fishing in really strange places to find like a five mil post-cap founder in the backwaters of like Kabuki Lam. Like I think generally you have guys who are sitting there, they have multi-billion dollar funds, they're incentivized to try and deploy 30 to 100 mil tickets. That's like how they drive their carry. Um, and so for the little funds, a lot of it is just discovery. Like all of these big funds, they have fund the funds programs, they have, you know, little pockets from which they see these emerging managers, they use them as deal flow. Like, I think it's not an either or and I think that's oftentimes the discussion that like people get wrong. It's a the products are very different to LPs. Um, and if you are looking for taking part of that like discovery, more fringe, more like finding the signal ecosystem, I think pre-seed funds are where you have to look.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Interesting. So, and how important is it to be contrarian then? Is these I guess for the pre-seed funds, it's life or death, right? Yeah, you have to have some kind of differentiated view or differentiated picking pool that you're looking at. You tell me, man, you were the one that did thought chain when it was and there's nobody, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think the smaller you are, uh, the more important it is to be contrarian, for sure. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Um I don't know if I'd agree.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Being devil's advocate. I think I think you have to be able to bridge the non-consensus to consensus gap. And you can do that by being incredibly a capital efficient, like Hummingbird did like Turkish gaming companies back in the day, just super capital efficient business models. I think you can also do it by being a fantastic storyteller. Like there's a GP we both know and love who is able to take a founder and rebrand the story ever so slightly that it is suddenly a lot more palatable to conviction, benchmark, Sequoia, et cetera. And I think that that ability to kind of make somebody legible to capital is quite an art form that a lot of the pre-sea angels do really well. If I'm a smart founder, like one of the reasons why I'm not going to target Andrewsen and Sequoia and stuff off the bat is because I want to sequence the capital world. I want somebody who's going to be able to come on my cap table and say, like, I'm Signal.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

But if you could, wouldn't you? Like if if a if as a founder you have access to Sequoia or Andrewsen or someone at CS.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Yeah, say I'm Brad Taylor, like I'd 100% do that. But I'm not Brad Taylor. And I think most founders can't, right? Um for the repeat extra.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

But the fact that if you could, you would means there's like some kind of there's an echelon.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, well, actually interesting. Like, so Bridget Mendler, do you know Bridget Mendler? No. Um she's a Disney star as a child, then went to get a PhD. She's now founded a company called Northwood Rockets, Northwood, uh, Northwood Space. A rocket company. A rocket company, yeah, like a super, she's a legend. Um, and like incredibly intelligent, like multidisciplinary talent, like outstanding lady. And she did her pre-seed entirely, like she probably could have raised from all of these big funds, is the profile that would resonate, this outlier, individual, well known, like if she pings you, you're gonna pick up the phone. Really interesting sector. But she's like specifically built her cap table with all these pre-seed angels for the early stages. So she very quickly like graduated into like a bigger fund that can demand higher valuation. But I think that that staging is is super important. There's a there's another example of a guy that um I'm an advisor to like he's this guy from Abuja in Nigeria, could not get a term sheet for like six months. Um, nobody would speak to him, nobody would pick up the phone, but clearly an exceptional guy, like a very, very, you know, N of N of maybe a hundred in San Francisco, N of like absolutely one in Africa. And he I introduced him to one of the GPs because I thought, okay, this GP would be pre-seed, he would take the bet, he's a risk-on guy. Uh, and he would also act as signal within this like hard tech ecosystem in San Francisco. And I I think that I mean that's played out very well. Um but you have to stage it as a founder if you're not Brad Taylor.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Okay. Interesting. Because the generally those the bigger funds can also afford to pay higher valuations for C, because it's like a loss leader for them. So it's also so yeah, it's interesting that some founders would would choose that. Um like the Bridget example specifically. Because I guess your your your friend or the the the guy you're advising from Nigeria would have had a hard time raising straight from Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

You did have a hard time. You spoke to them all, but it's tough.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah. I mean that's the sense because if you're a big fund, you can just if you talk to someone, you're probably gonna win the deal, right? And that's the sense in which you can wait for consensus to to form or for consensus to be clearer and then win, right? Yeah. Um whereas if you're a smaller fund, you have to be there before the consensus is there when no one's looking at it and you have no competition. So you can kind of and that's why I think you have to be a bit more contrarian.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Yeah, but I don't know if it's contrarian or if it's pre-consensus. Like maybe those are the it's just like a term. Pre-consensus. But I think pre-consensus is different to non-consensus.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Like non-consensus. I know what you mean, yeah. It helps to know the flavor profile of people who will be following capital to you. Like, like not their firm, but like in the individuals. Like it helps to know their taste, what they like, what they index on.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Um But if it's right, non-consensus ends up as consensus eventually.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

No? Yeah. Sure. But I think you can be right. It can be like a long-term.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah, it can be easier. So pre-consensus is like if they knew about this, they would be interested in it.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Yes. But but I think if they knew about this and had it presented to them in such and such a light.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Okay. It would be interesting to them, yeah. Okay. And maybe that's the broader question of like, do you think it matters to be contrarian in venture? I I don't know if you answered it before.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

I I don't know. I'm not sure if that's the right framing either. Like I I think um like if you think about what Corey Levy does as Z Fellows, like would you call that consensus or pre-consensus or contrarian?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, I don't I don't think I know enough about his investment style. Um The reason that I bring it up is because I'm like, that is I think his sourcing and like his his hustling is not is is sort of um contrarian somehow.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Interesting. I would have said it's like total coverage of a really hot consensus talent pool, but like well before everybody else. Like to some extent he is the same. I guess that's true.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

That's definitely true now. Yeah. It's it's definitely become consensus.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah, and I I would say like Josh Brad is the same. Like these guys in this like you know, mini teal verse, like I think there's an archetype of person that gets a lot of attention in the Bay Area now.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

And I think like Which is the young Wonder Kid, Teal Fellow. Yeah. Okay. And what what do you think of that actually? Do you think that's that's signal?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah. I mean for sure it's signal. Uh I whether it's priced in now or not, I can't tell.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Like for some kinds of companies, that the average founder profile is much older, right? Like for the deep tech, which is a lot of what these kids are founding, is like deep tech companies.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

And in general, the founder profile, the winning founder profile there is is older and has like a few years' work experience and stuff like that, right? And in So I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Maybe I'm interrupting you, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

No, no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

I think um like there's deep tech as in like Frontier, and then there's deep tech as in like commercial sell-in build sort of stuff. Like I would say for instance, like a space company or like uh, you know, something selling to government, like these guys are very commercial typically. Like um, even if you like if you look at like the like uh Saronic, like true anomaly, like any of the sort of emergent primes, like these are guys who have been practiced at selling to government, they have the networks to sell to government, like Castellian, they know the guys, uh and they're like very pedigree backgrounds, but they're commercial guys, they're not like wonder kid, tech kid, front of the tech, right? But if you look at like you know frontier, you know, BCIs or like frontier, like almost the neo labs, like Merkel kid. So like this is a very young, yeah, at the at the cutting edge, at the coal face of like what is happening. I think that there's not a commercial first business, yeah. That is a uh product first business.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Okay, that's fair. Um and you you also mentioned like there's some some extent to which the edge that you need to have in venture changes based on the on the market cycle, right? Like in a bull cycle, money isn't worth that much. I think your quote is when money's worth little, it's easier to get it from LPs and tougher to sell it to founders. Here, GPs who win will win. Um, who like win will win. When money's worth a lot, it's tougher to raise, but it's easier to sell it, and the GPs who pick will win, right? So like in a bull market, it's uh it's a winner's market, and in a bear market, it's a it's a picker's market.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

So isn't that bad for emerging managers right now? Like we're in a we're in a bull market. Yeah, like yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

I yeah, it's always funny hearing your stuff like Rin back to you, man. I uh I I tend to think that is true in like Bay Area AI. Like I think there's creatation because the water's hot, right? And like Bay Area AI is like like frontier AI is like super hot. So like there, yeah, you're not trying to like pick super well, you're trying to like win.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah. Um because it's obvious. Because it's obvious, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

And and it's the talent clusters so quickly, like the markups happen so quickly, like the big funds come in, more talent joins. It's like such a virtuous flywheel.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

And are you interested in in like a GP who would have access to that?

SPEAKER_02 17:29

If they're able to win very, very early, yeah, sure, of course. Yeah. Um but I I think I think you have to make the valuations make sense, uh, and that's very hard for most people to do. Like most funds, like if Sequoia and Conviction and Benchmark are trying to bid you up, um, it's very hard to compete. Uh and I think that if you can find a way to compete, yeah, sure. Like that's very interesting. Um, but most most funds can't find a way to compete, and so probably like shouldn't play. Um I think there's also like subsets of the market that are like a lot less hard, right? Like look like life science right now. Like life science is absolutely a pickest market. That's why like so many uh institutional LBs were interested in giving money to Dimension because in some sense they're like the only game in town. What is Dimension? Um Zav and Nan and Adam, they spun out of um Lux several years back. It's a it's like a Series B, Series A, multi-stage bio fund. Yeah, like tech bio stuff. Okay. Super smart guys. Um and like were some of the few that had like the credible proven ability to be able to raise the money to deploy this at like such a you know disinterested cycle time.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yeah. And let's get to the good to the good shit. Um picking GPs. So this is really hard, I think. I've been doing we've we've been doing it for the last seven months, and I don't know yet that that we have a good model, but we've definitely thought about it a lot, and you've been doing it for the last four years, so I'm really curious what your what your takes are. It feels like there's really good models for picking founders, right? People kind of know what they look like. Uh I mean, especially nowadays, it's become popular, like the spiky, sort of neurodivergent, uh, you know, very driven sort of archetype, very smart. Do you think the GP archetype is the same? Because that's like that's how we initially approached it, and we sort of don't think so anymore.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Funny.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

I think we had a similar learning curve. Yeah. I think it's like you can try to use you you can try to like extrapolate that archetype on the GPs, and like maybe you'll have some success. But I think that it's actually hard to have a GP archetype at all. Um we kind of gave up trying to come up with a precise one. And it's it's interesting, like with the founder, you can kind of say to them, hey guys, um you gotta read them, get in the room, understand why they're doing what they're doing, and that's your assessment. Uh with a GP, you can just ask why did you do your last five companies? And the more that you ask why, that like the more granular that they get. Sometimes, like for them, you they bump up to like a it became a gut rationale, or like sometimes it became a very structured thesis, or like they begin to tell you why they do what they do. And you can get a sense of like, okay, this is how the guy makes decisions. And I think the the way that we look at GPs now, rather than like a profile-centric way, is just like how do they make decisions and who do they hang around, who do they spend time with. Um, and if we can get conviction on either of those, this is very often like a founder-centric way of seeing the world. It's like, you know, you look over their shoulder, you see who they're hanging around, you like do the references. Hopefully, you have to know them and you have to know everybody in the ecosystem around them to be able to get that like read accurate. But this you can you can do if you've spent time with founders.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

This one you do if you're like a professional LP. Like most reading. What's it this one? What is it too? Uh how they who they hang out with and how they make decisions. I think most LPs are fairly practiced at how they make decisions. I think most of the LPs that are like part of the big funds, like you know, the guys who run Sequoia's program or like Andreessen's program or what like they're generally also indexing this. They have a good read of like what the general ecosystem is, and so they can look at your portfolio quickly and get a flavor of like, oh, this is the person that you like.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Um, and I think generally we find these to be the most predictive things. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Okay. So how you make decisions and who you hang around with. And on the because yeah. I guess there's a specific archetype I can think of in a few people we've spoken to where how they make decisions is sort of unclear. Like you bump up against gut instinct to some extent, yeah. And to and just like pure taste. They're like um uh and and then they hang around in the right circles, like it's clear, but also again, they're they're not like peers in the sense of they're they're like these spiky, they're not a branch people themselves. They're like kind of like social, affable, um uh great BD guys. Uh huh. Like great B D guys, yeah, yeah, like great BD guys.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

So like, and that's a a profile that you don't really see as a founder as much.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Do you do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 22:16

I think um I think the like we we were at risk of mid-curving it, I think, for a while, like on articulation and like on the can the guy this is on your comments around like gut instinct, right? Like can the GP say their thesis and rationale in a very like hyper-articulate, explicit way. And I think that like we did that for a while and we indexed on that, and I think it was a mistake. I think actually um sometimes if somebody says this is the best founder I've met this year, like actually that's a ton of signal, and you have to just back up the truck. But knowing when it's signal and when it's not signal is hard. Because and that's generally it comes into like how have they calibrated their taste of people a little bit along. And so, like, how have they have they seen greatness before? Like, how close are they to it? How that's a big one. You know what I mean? Like how yeah how do they understand how to pass signal from noise as to what that greatness is?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

And I think if they say it's just the best founder I've met this year, you can ask, okay, well, who else did you meet this year?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Okay, who else did you meet this year is an interesting question. Yeah. I haven't I hadn't considered that. That is an interesting question. Because uh Yeah, because you you guys I think you're still very founder centric. And so that's one of the things I'm interested in is is like how um how much do you care that VCs that the the GPs you you you invest in are really founder-centric?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Oh yeah, this is top.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Because some of them, yeah, I know you guys famously invested in in Michael from from Compound, who's obviously an amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Um, but he's very like thesis driven, right? He writes these like long, really articulate theses on a on a market, and then he's looking for those companies. Um so yeah, how do you think about that? And how much do you care? Do they yeah?

SPEAKER_02 23:56

So I so I think um if you think about like okay, uh, how did they who do they hang out with, how do they make decisions, right? Like Mike is very explicit with how he makes decisions, and I think many LPs who are underwriting him will look at this and you can backday, you can read okay, the runaway ML stuff, you can read like the wave thesis, all of which he did very early, and you can understand, okay, this guy is like trying to time infection points, and he's doing so in a very sophisticated way. He is very early to these new domains, he understands how like the tech disseminates across the research groups, he understands how adoption looks. But I think the thing that people miss with Mike is that like actually what he's doing, like who he's hanging around is an incredible group. Okay. He's got a very, very good nose for who to listen to, uh, both on the researcher's side and on the other VC's side. And he's got a very good calibration of what talent looks like in a particular field. So, like, if you know a hundred groups want to do uh open AI for bio or like foundation models in life science or anything like that. And I think very few guys can. Going back to dimension, dimension and Mike actually did a company together called Akiram. I think this is one of the best proxies. I mean, the best people currently working on that problem. Whether or not they will be successful, uh, I can't, I don't know. I don't know what, but but the fact that Mike was able to spot them, see them, and say, okay, like of all of the groups who are looking at open AI for power, like foundation models for life science, these are the guys. That is because of like benchmarking the ecosystem for years.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting because the the levels thing is is something because I feel like people's discussions with founders are generally really not very nuanced, right? It's like this an animal, yeah, yeah, this person's innovating or whatever, and there's no scratchy. Yeah, and you even when I think of I don't know, and anything that I've been uh remotely good at, like even jujitsu, right? Like I've I've I've competed, I've done well at uh at international level, and there's maybe like three levels above me, you know, and like the the highest level will make me look like someone who's never trained, like I would make looking at the train.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

You go against like Andre Galval or Mickey Galv Mike Galval, yeah, yeah. Dude, you'll get wiped.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

They'll make me look like I've never trained before, right? And I think with the levels thing is really interesting because when you're good at something, you can see all the levels below how good you are, and maybe you can see like one level above or or two, but once it once it starts getting more than that, I think you can't really tell the difference, right? Um and that's why for me it's always really important that someone has been good at something, and ideally something where it's not um sort of like grades-based or or or very like uh a path that has a very clear that has a very clear steps to it.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Are you saying this means that VCs have to have built great companies? Because the inference can be that VCs have to have built great companies to be able to speak for all founders.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

I don't think they have to build great companies, but I think they have to have been great at something. And I'm not sure, like uh again, because there's this archetype of person that that hasn't, yeah. Really. Um but in general, I do think it's hard to spot like obsession and talent if you haven't uh either seen a lot of it or I get or been there or or or been at some level yourself.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

I think I think for VCs it's more of a calibration of benchmarks game than it is like a I have to do it myself game. Like I think there's this really great podcast where you listen to um Sean Maguire talking about like math gradations, and yeah, it's the same point, yeah. And he's like, you know, okay, like the various levels, and like I can see some of them, and but like I I think that this doesn't really translate to a generic picking of founders at pre-seed, and most of the time you're not looking for very specific like businesses that you're trying to pattern match to. Um as an LP, like I if I'm looking at a jet- So you're more pattern matching the person, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Like, is this person yeah, because when I when I think about different things I've done with poker jujitsu and stuff, the people that are really good have some stuff in common between them, you know? There's there's some commonalities, huh?

SPEAKER_02 28:03

And poker?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Poker, jujitsu, investing. Um there's a level of like intensity and like certain things that are that are common between them. Um and there are also like certain things that are common among like uh there's like LARPs, right? There's there's people that can act really, really good, and if you don't know what you're talking about, you'll you'll kind of invest in them. Like a lot of that happened in crypto in 2020 and 2021, where really good investors came in from the outside and made bets on what they thought like a good founder looked like turned out to be like terrible. Yeah, you know, and there's like many examples of companies that they got a bunch of capital but pumped into them, and that's always my worry, I guess. Yeah that you you end up making that mistake if you don't know what great looks yeah, I don't know. In your domain? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Yeah. I think that in your domain thing is quite important because I mean going back to that whole discussion we had around like the guys from SpaceX and Andrew and like they look very different and they resonate with a different VC archetype than like the Bay Area kids. I think the resonance of like GP founder really matters. Um you both we we both know Vata, a good guy. So he's he's had this equipped that you said for years, which is like if you look at um if you look at uh Doug Leone, Doug Leone, like scrappy immigrant guy. You look at his founders, you go like David Valerz, like scrappy immigrant guys. That was like you go look at so true. You go look at like uh Mike Moritz, like super erudite journalist, you look at like the Collision Brothers who he did is like super erudite, like you know, more polymathic types. I think Jim Goodz, like a very broy guy, does like Yamkum of WhatsApp, like a very broy guy. Like I think I think the the the vibe fit with GP archetype and founder like matters more than the ability that the GP has in a particular domain that the founder will then be executing in.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Interesting. So you think you invest in people that look like you to some extent?

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Uh I think pe I think you attract people that look like you.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

I don't know if you necessarily pick it. And also like they have to pick it up. Yeah, that makes sense actually. It makes sense to to me too, with uh with the people I pick, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

And I I think also like to your point around like can you judge that talent? Like I think you don't have to necessarily judge that talent. Like I think you can ask people who can judge that talent. So like if I'm coming into jujitsu, like I'll ask somebody who's really good at jujitsu to calibrate you. Like I can't calibrate you, but somebody else can. Uh and I think like you have that perk as a VC, as an LP and as a GP, to like you can network calibrate around something. Even you'll have someone talk to you or yeah, you've got to have like a guide.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Within each vertical. Yeah. Okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

So like when when we went into India or like Latam or something, like the first couple things you do is just like try to find a guide. Like try to find people who are really smart, really credible, like provably credible people. Um, maybe their talent vortexes themselves, but like they're also just people who have like in a very like structured, simple way of seeing the world and like they can help you navigate that equally.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

For sure. The that makes sense, but but are you having like if you meet a biotech founder or a biotech GP, um, will you have someone that's gonna like judge how good they are at at bio, like uh an industry expert or um I think saying industry expert but domain expert, probably like saying domain expert is like saying um like I I think the inference would be like that I pick some PhD guy.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Yeah. It's not what I'm saying. Okay. I'm saying like I want to, I'll call up like the dimension class, or I'll call up like Dempsey, or I'll call up like um, you know, like there's a couple of guys who we've worked with in the past who have like varying viewpoints on like like one of them is a very big, you know, multi-asset platform, like tech bio guy. And then another guy is like, no way, it's totally can't do that, doesn't work. It's like you actually just have to put stuff through the clinic. Okay. And they'll have varying viewpoints, and I think they're both high- And you'll ask them about the idea. I'll ask them both about well, not not necessarily the idea, but like either the founder or the or the GP or like, I'll go try to like get an ecosystem read on that.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. Because the PhD thing I think can work really poorly.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

I think you can end up listening to the wrong people.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Yeah, and you can overindex on like expertise.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yes, exactly, yeah. Because expertise in in these fields are so narrow, yeah. And and they often are very opinionated. Yeah. And so uh because again, um everyone sort of is is um generalizing from small sample size, but in in crypto, like it would have really if you'd hired a cryptographer or something, like you would have missed the entire uh money, you would have missed most of it.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

It's funny, man. And I think I think founders are especially prone to this. Like if you're really good, you can become somewhat competitive. And like not like intentionally, but like I I don't think you see people as threats, but like you're just like he's not as good as me. You know, you have like a bit of a chip on your shoulder, like I'm the best. Yeah. And so if you if I ask a founder friend who's like really good, like I was talking about Indian life science, if I ask an Indian guy, life science guy, like I'm thinking of somebody specific, like, why would you pick this founder? And he will be like, he's not as good as me. Like, I why would I put money in his company and not my own? Yeah. And I'm like, that's not helpful for me at all. Um, I think you have to also like the referencing is a bit of an art as well.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah, it is. And now how do these people generally reference? Do they reference well? The GPs? Yeah, because founders can be polarized, right? That's a good question. How do GPs reference? Are they are people saying, like, yeah, this person's great, or that's a very good question.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Hey, so maybe I'll give a storied answer. Um there were two guys who ultimately ended up joining a fund together. The one referenced as incredible, like everybody loves him. This guy's everybody's best friend, he knows all the founders, he's like super, super early. Um, and if you like meet the guy, that's his vibe. He's like the king of BD. He is like to this day, of the whatever, 5,000 plus GPs that I've made, he is like the most charismatic. 5,000 GPs? Yeah, the last four years. He is like, he is the most charismatic, bro. Um his counterpart in.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

I'm very curious who this is. I think I probably know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

I can the counterpart is like a very not charismatic guy. Yeah. Very like um like think boy, writes pieces, but like super, super aggressive, super, super like um, you know, we use the word commercially intense. Like he's a very commercial intensity, heavy guy.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

And I'd say he's charismatic actually in his own way. Now, yeah. Talking about the same guy. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

I don't I'll say I wouldn't say he's charismatic. May maybe maybe he's like aura, yeah, yeah. But but uh you put him in a room for five minutes, like you I don't know if he's yeah, for sure he's a bit spiky, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

I get what you mean.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Yeah, and I I think so he references very differently. He references everyone's like, this guy's super aggressive, like he's super transactional, like and and to some extent you actually want that. To some extent you want this, like, I don't know if I want to share a deal with him because like he's probably gonna move on it. And that combo is very unique. Um this is a bit of a tangent, but like actually, I think that combo works really well for most like pairings of VCs. You have one guy who's like the face, the vibes guy, very good. Good cop, bad cop. Good cop, bad comp. You have one guy who's like, I think you actually we were texting well back, you described him as like um we described this combo as like uh the like the executor and then like the lazy meta thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I still think this is one of the best descriptions I've heard because you need somebody to set the rails who's like commercial beast, and then you need someone who's like everybody's best friend.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Yeah, yeah. That's really cool. That's yeah, that's interesting. Uh well, I have a few directions I want to take this. I mean, maybe one of them, since since we're on the the GPs, like uh how would you describe yourself in the if you were looking at yourself uh as a as a GP for a fund you wanted to invest in, what would be your like uh you know, maybe in the in the founder lens that you like to use, how would you how would you look at yourself?

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Um no, I don't think the founder lens works man. I think like it has to the G that's a GP lens. GP lens, yeah, GP lens. I don't know, man. Like I don't have like a sob story, like I don't have like a crazy sad background, like chip on shoulder, nothing. I think like clock speed, sure, but like the rest, I think um probably on the face, the pretty vibes guy, the like finger guns, nice, and then like probably my partner is like the commercially aggressive, bad cop, like super intense brains meta thinker.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

So he's aggressive, he's he's he's aggressive on.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

He's aggressive, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Okay, cool. But I think it's very nice as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

No, no, he's easy.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

I think it's all it's also, yeah. I mean, these things are tropes, man. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's a very fluid, like you change it all up.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

I think it's yeah, and people are and ruthlessness is like uh yeah, it's you don't it's unpredictable.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Yeah, I think it's easy to also box and like when you spend time with people for a longer time period, you start to understand, okay, actually like I think this person is not what I originally had the version of them.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

Yeah, this stuff's really hard. Um and how do you deal with the fact that the edges in venture just like aren't really durable, right? Or or do you think about when you back someone because yeah, um people have edge in a certain space of time, they're looking in the right they're they're sourcing from the right place or they're in the right industry. Um they were there before, they're in the right place at the right time. There's like with venture, you definitely have to reinvent yourself. Yeah. I think it's impossible to keep winning if you don't reinvent yourself almost constantly. And so yeah, how do you think about that? Are you trying to back people that that you think will succeed forever? Are you doing a uh a point in time? No, I I think it's it's it's a point-in-time thing.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Uh, and it's behooven on the GP that they adapt. Yeah. I think is behoven a word. I think behoven's a word. It's behooven on the GP that they adapt. Um the like some guys that I think have done really well, to Boris at version one, if you know him, Boris Fertz.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah. He I saw your post.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Yeah, he's like, he's done, he was early to like SaaS in in uh Canada for a while, then he was doing like marketplaces for a while, then he moved to crypto, then he moved to India, then deep tech. It's like a very fluid adaptation, and I think um very sophisticated way around like entering these markets as well. Like a little bit going back to the whole finding a guide comment. I think it's easy for people to sit and like try to find a market from a top-down perspective, but I I think Boris does it bottoms-up really well, just like being led by the right people. And going back to like who you hang around, I think he has a very good nose of who to listen to when he goes into a new market. Um I think even like Mickey Melker doing like the whole rib of like fintech is dead thing, Mickey did that African guy that I mentioned, the Abuja guy. Um and this guy's building like drones in Africa, like it's the least fintech thing you could possibly think of. I think you've got to be pretty fluid to be able to keep the edge. Um for for some that's different. Like going back to cost of capital, like I think if you have the ability to raise a ton, you can just raise a ton. And then like you have ops platform, you've got multi-strategy, multi-assets, you maybe have like different funds per vertical. Like, I think this is you you your age is different, yeah. Your age is not picking based.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Makes sense. Um yeah, that's pretty much what I what I figured. On the on the picking GPs, actually, I have another another question, is like a cultural thing when you're looking around the world, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

It's a really interesting one that we've been faced with because when you speak to like an SF GP, even a European GP now, they can they can talk the talk. Yeah, they know the talking points, and like uh it sounds really good and they they they know to think big and stuff like this. But and and like let's say a 21-year-old SF kid who grew up in SF is gonna be very different from a 21-year-old Indian you know kid, like in terms of the level of like maturity of how they speak, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on their talent. In fact, like it it it often doesn't. So, how do you think about that calibration? Like, how do you get yeah?

SPEAKER_02 40:20

It was tough, man. Like when we went into when we went into Brazil, um, you try to take the same, like we were speaking about commercial intensity and like you want to see a bit of an aggression sometimes. Um people are so friendly in Brazil, it's like they're so warm and they just love you, and it's it makes it very hard to be like, okay, you can't pattern match the same signals. Um fortunately with GPs, unlike necessarily with founders, you have to you can just look at what they've done. Yeah, and that's like a super predictive thing. So, like, do like how did they negotiate with founders on Facebook?

SPEAKER_01 40:53

So you wouldn't back someone who it's their first fund and they haven't done much investing before?

SPEAKER_02 40:57

We we would absolutely, and we have, but they have to be angel investors. Okay. Like I I I can't back somebody that has never done anything, you know. Um if you've never written a check before, like I I I have no data points to move on.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Interesting. And on the and maybe a few more things on the GP. How important is the price discipline? Like people being really worried about what rounds to like what to pay for rounds. This is an issue, then yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

I think we learnt it also. This was like a learning curve for us. Like I think in the beginning we were fairly undisciplined with it. Then I think we moved to becoming like overly disciplined, that we were maybe the pendulum swung too much. We indexed very hard on GPs who were like very aggressive, like high, you know, low ownership, I mean high ownership, like low, low valuations, etc. I think um we've calibrated the other way recently. I think there's been a lot of times where people can move in on incredibly like priced rounds, but maybe you can structure the deal in such a way that you get like slightly lower terms than everybody else at the table and it's like a clearly good deal, and you've got the best deal of everybody at the table. Yeah, like that's a great opportunity. That's I look at that and I'm like, I actually admire that. It's a good muscle, it's a well-trained muscle. I think you can generate incredible returns that way. What matters to me is that you're like you've got the best terms at the table, um, more than like the absolute value of living. Um it's also So like they generated some kind of advisory and stuff on top, or it's could it could be advisory, could also just be like you came in at the discount, you you wrote like a safe before anybody else priced around, like you moved a month earlier, like something like that. Um could be the founder just likes you more. But it's it's more indicative of like the mentality of the GP than it is purely the returns. I think the returns follow the mentality of the GP. Um as for like absolute value or not, I think we're still pretty absolute value bent. Like we look in a lot of fringe places and there you necessarily get cheap stuff.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Yeah. Um I want to dig into that actually, because you have this. I I love this bit you wrote, and I'm sorry I'm gonna read something else now get back to you that you wrote. The great fortunes have all been made in chaos. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, the railroad scale, railroad scale production of the rubber barons made the money hand over fist, boot over neck, anything to capitalize the regime shift. The Medici financed emerging powers, the Welsers bet on conquistadors, Trump rode the wild rise of New York real estate, and Slim and Dangoti feudalized their emerging markets. Most of the Ford 500 didn't squirrel their way to wealth over the course of a prudent and stuffy lifetime. I really like that. Uh and what's the and I have crypto to this too, by the way. Yeah, for sure. The biggest portions that have made yeah. Um and how does what is the market now that you think is the the equivalent? Like what are what are the places? Wow, like forward looking. Yeah, forward looking. Or just right now. Like where would you look to find those kinds of uh Where do you think the smartest, the the the trumps or uh the the medices and stuff are looking right now?

SPEAKER_02 44:05

I think um I man, it's so hard forward looking, right? I think the the most interesting GPs, in fact, there's a GP who we both know, neither of us invested in, but uh both look up to, who's like an incredibly non-competitive guy, and like he just avoids competition like the plague. And he will go and spend like a month in Rwanda and then like a month in Vietnam. And it's like the most obscure places. And I think like that mentality of just being incredibly competition averse leads you into these very nascent, sort of murky domains. And the way that I kind of think about it is less okay, can I be predictive over what trend is gonna come next? And more like, can I hang out in these weird places that and maybe bump into really interesting GPs? Yeah. Um, because probably they'll navigate to weird places as well. Um, like if you go to India and speak about life science, like you're one of like two people who's gonna write checks in Indian life science. You go to Brazil and you talk like pre-seed, there are so few VCs actually writing pre-seed checks in Brazil. It sounds crazy, but there's not. China was like super capital dearthy, like a year back. I think if you're global, it still is, I think. It still is. So if you're global, you can really you have like you can go to all these places as long as you keep the bar global maxima. Yeah. And you don't try to get cute on trend level stuff. You just global maxima stuff. But like you have to have SF benchmarks for that, both for GPs and farmers.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Um I don't know if that's it probably doesn't answer your question, like what's forward-looking. I think China is uh you you China would you put would you put China in there? Yeah. I mean you're you're you're asking the Baba if you hack up like 100% but put China there.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Yeah, I'd put China there. I think India is interesting too, but yeah, but uh um and Africa you guys have done some stuff in too, both on the Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

One one company, two bees.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

This was this was back at nomads.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Yeah, sorry, yeah, at nomads. Yeah. And and how how how is that? Like, how's that market kind of? How's Africa? Yeah. It's tough. How's Africa? How's Africa How's Africa?

SPEAKER_03 46:12

How's Africa?

SPEAKER_02 46:13

You you joke that I get a guy, like he a friend of mine lives in Lesotho, and I ask him, like, how's Lesotho? He's like, bro, I don't know, how's Cape Town? Okay, yeah. It's such a random question. Yeah. I I am. How's Africa? I think it's really hard to be non-consensus in Africa. Like if you're in Africa, you kind of like two things. One, you either have to be in incredibly capital-efficient businesses, um, or you have to be because there's not a ton of like downstream capital available. And so like you have to be prepared for that. And a lot of like business selection matters more than just like pure play founder selection. But conversely, you can also just like if you're signaled to downstream funds, play the geo arb thing really well in Africa because I think there's not a lot of local investors who have like the calibration that guys do elsewhere. And still have unfortunately like a very heavy, like, I look for investment banking backgrounds, I look for like MBAs, I look for like this sort of pedigree suite of guys. Um, they get funded. Whereas like the the Teal Fellowship.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

The rebels doesn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

They don't get that.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Yeah, I heard I was spoken to a fund manager recently. He did like an energy utility company out of out of Africa.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Is this the same fund manager that's doing an LBO now?

SPEAKER_01 47:29

I think it might be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Um it's a great company, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Apparently it's an insane company. Yeah, that is put a bunch of money into it. Yeah, I don't remember the name of it now.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Um, but yeah, it seems like there's some interesting businesses, but they probably looked at it.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

But you gotta you gotta cherry pick a lot.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Yeah. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

I actually I actually maybe controversially think like a lot of the tier ones, like the really good tier ones, have actually done a really good job covering Africa. Like so selective, but they've been in really good businesses, like yeah, uh like Stitch or Wave or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

I think the cherry picking has been good, and and that's one of the harder parts for local VCs is like the US guys can come and pick the best deals and command the best terms, and founders just have to take it.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Yeah. And um concentration is like yeah, I think two more questions on investment, then we'll move on to to some different stuff. But concentration is really important to you, as it is to us too, like having or maybe maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, is concentration really important to you? Is it a rule that you like every fund has to have X amount of positions? Like, because I know um uh sort of Hummingbird, I think, takes a pretty stream approach to this, right? It's like 10 to 12 positions or something per fund. Uh, and one of the funds I like the most in our in our portfolio too that does this too. Yeah, I'm curious how how how you think about that.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

I I think it's like concentration is like downstream of convexity, and maybe that sounds like you're mid-curving it, but I think you can also have like a very diversified and very convex portfolio, right? Like it just matters of what's your strategy. Yeah, and how are you able to price these companies? Can you move the amount of money that you think you can? Like can you do so without paying a ton? Like there's guys who can write, you know, 40 companies, 40 checks at two mil posts. Those are basically free call options. Um, I think that's such a rare fund that can do that. It's it's all yeah, but like if you can, sure, do it. Like that's way more convenient. And avoid adverse selection. And avoid adverse selection still, like it's way more adverse, I mean it's way more convenient. Um, like a good example is like Silicon Valley Angel, like they they pay up a fair bit, but like they're still really early to all these companies. And so even though you pay up, it's very diversified, like it's a convex portfolio, but most like nine, like I don't know any other fund actually that has Silicon Valley Angel type networks is unique to them.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

I think that the other thing about concentration is it's sort of a correlate to other good qualities. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Like conviction, yeah, right, and and just like and the best founders often want to work with like sort of a a GP, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Conviction and also just like you're early enough that you can put in a big check, right? And you're fun. It's like I think all these things are important signals too that conviction is sort of like a a symptom. Yeah. Or most of these other things that are good.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

I think like if you think about the people, this is a bit contrary to what I was saying earlier, but like if you think about the people who you want to work with, they're generally very selective people. Like they're generally very like picky about their taste, like very specific, you know. And that sort of person is generally more concentrated.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Yeah, that's true. And on your investment process, how how do you come to a decision? Because like I remember we spoke about this briefly.

SPEAKER_03 50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

I think I'm more of a gut like uh instinct person. Like I I kind of feel it, and then uh I'll I'll go and try and disprove it, basically. And and and sometimes I do. But uh and I think you are more of uh process driven, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Or is that maybe the wrong No, I I think I'm more like you actually. Okay. I think my partner's more he he's like very structured. Okay. He's I'm like a lot more intuitive with like, oh, I just think this is interesting, I'm gonna spend time here. Yeah. I think like uh fortunately he counterbalances me with a lot of like process-centric, like very, you know, granular rationale. Okay. Very like, and it's so substantiated that when you get to a decision, it's like, man, that's that's the right decision. Yeah, both sides. Yeah, but he also doesn't really make wrong decisions, like he's just generally right on this stuff. Okay. Uh and that's cool. Yeah, and I I think I am I am in I'm good and I'm getting there like to be good enough. Uh he takes it from like good enough to like this is the one of the three.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Okay. Yeah. So you'll you you'll you'll pick and then he he will like filter from there, kind of you'll get generally, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Generally that's I I get excited probably a lot more than he does. Okay. I get excited like six, eight times a year. He's probably like three.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Okay. And then how many do you invest, would you say, of the six to eight times? Four. But probably one more than he is and like two less than I am. Okay. So he cuts like two, two, like a third of your typically, yeah. Yeah, typically. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. I I have a similar we have a similar setup, actually. Is it? Yeah. So we were just talking about your process. Um, and I think you mentioned, yeah, you you are the you get excited earlier, you're like more instinctive. Yeah. And then your partner is the one that narrows it down and makes sure that you like, yeah. And what does the narrowing down look like? Is it like a very structured process?

SPEAKER_02 52:27

And what is the structure of the it's like a yeah, I can't remember how much we s like spoke off camera now.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

I I think um the the like cutting process is super meritocratic. It's like best argument wins. Okay. Generally he has better arguments than me. So generally I'm just like, yeah, the vibes, and he's like, yeah, okay, but like substantiate that.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

And then and how do you how does he substantiate his positions? Like, is there an example that you you could obviously you don't have to name the company, but it'd be cool to yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:53

Or the GP rather.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

I think I think oftentimes you you build little hypotheses as you test, right? So like say there's a GP that um I mean this was a good one. Like there was this guy that we really liked, team we we really liked, um, and they were in a very appealing sector, very good entry valuations for your companies prior. Um this was actually, I was cutting in a stone, and he was he was really optimistic. And we kind of um I I thought that the GP was not didn't really understand what they were investing in. Uh, and I thought they were like, I think the word is like filibustering, like a little bit, you know, just like speaking around what they're actually talking about, like they don't actually know what they're talking about at an underlying company level. And like, even if you have a good founder lane, it's like you have to have an understanding of the companies.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Uh I I think, you know, we we pushed, we pushed, and this was basically just like I arrived at the thought that this guy didn't know what he was doing after speaking to him about two, three times. Um, my partner was still quite excited. Okay. Uh, and I think he was optically excited because there was a ton of good data points in favor of this guy. Um, but we took, you know, like several companies that we were trying to understand and we just really drilled into okay, like, how does he understand the business models of the companies? And that was the only question that we wanted answered. And if he if he was like very, you know, fluent and able to explain these, um, could we have been happy? But it quickly became apparent, or quickly, like after like three or four calls, became apparent that actually like the level of nuance that he understood about this was very surface level.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Yeah. Um, and so we thought, okay, like we So it is important that they understand the the companies very well.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Yeah, for sure. You have to. I mean, I think if you're like a good investor, you have to know at least. You don't have like I can't tell you, okay, like the ASEC is structured and this and this way, this is how they improve die yield and like whatever. That's a very technical process that I can't explain. But if it's like they this is how they make money, you need to know that. Yeah. Uh and I he was struggling a little bit around that.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Yeah. What about the investors that just know that something is gonna be big? Uh like narrative, sort of good narrative spotters or something, something along these lines that don't necessarily have a like the sort of left curve.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Yeah. So like an interesting example of this is like uh historically Fred at USV, right? So like everybody was sitting there telling um Twitter that they had to monetize in such and such a way, adverts and stuff, and Fred was like, don't monetize. And that was ultimately his his view was just if this gets big, you will figure out how to make money. Yeah. Um, I think that's a lot rarer than the stories make them sound. I think most of the time people know. Most some firms know. Uh and like in four years I haven't found an instance where a GP doesn't have a good answer to this, and there's like still a really good GP. Most of the time I found like not having an answer to it, it's just like lazy thinking.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Interesting. Because I think you would have you it would have been hard to get your head around Bitcoin, right? With with uh or like a GPU who invests in Bitcoin would have been. Did we see the Rubbit memo though? The original Bitcoin memo, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

No, no, no, the Ruby memo for Twitter. Tokens one? Um they wrote a bit a memo on Bitcoin in 2012. Oh no, I didn't read that. If you go read it, I mean this is 2012 Bitcoin. It's like it's early, it's super early. Okay. Um I think it was actually like it returned their fund 50x, depending on when they sold it. But this is it's like a really structured rational. Uh, and it's like a really clever rational. And like you can look at it and maybe people moved on Bitcoin in a hunch, but like if you are Mickey Malcolm, probably you didn't move on Bitcoin in a hunch.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, it's interesting because our biggest mistakes of omission, I think, were were ones where we we sort of worry too much about how they would make money. And um and ended up sort of mid-curving it to some extent. Interesting. But it's it's tough. Crypto's a different market, you know. Sometimes sometimes you can feel like you made the right decision and still uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:58

I think it also depends on the business model, right? Like what you're describing is like a very nascent, like yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, murky space, like business models not super figured out, like for most of the space.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

Like I'd I'd say like maybe Frontier AI right now is a little bit the same. Yes. But um like most businesses are not that. And so I think for most businesses, like you should know.

SPEAKER_01 57:17

Yeah, that's fair. Um yeah, is there anything else on process that you that you're that you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_02 57:25

Something you guys do differently or that you've learned over the years, or I think it's it's uh like we just debate a ton of them, like it's all the time, like constant WhatsApp back and forth. And I think that's super additive. Like rather than sit down and have an IC on a regular day where you have a prepared memo, like you're just constantly debating stuff. Yeah. And I think that like that very live, very fluent dynamic is a lot more conducive to like I understand how he thinks, he understands how I think. I think you know um where to move, you know, with the other person's asking, you know, what you're asking, you understand like the implication behind the questions. I think like this is easier than having a very structured process to a degree I actually don't want like a you know, we have three meetings and then I write a memo and then I do this and then we send the decision.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Okay. Makes sense. And on we touched a bit on your personal stuff with your with kind of like asking your Oh, sorry to interrupt you.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

So actually I think like that memo part is quite important because the vast bulk of like teams, when they scale past like four or five people, can't do that sort of like small team, fluid decision making. And that's one of the reasons why I think going all the way back to the start of the discussion about like how emerging managers can beat bigger funds, it's because you're just like a far more nimble, far more high trust partnership where you can have like independent conviction on stuff, but rather than like everything's got to take a box and aggregate towards a specific thing. So you don't need a memo. I think you can make the investment before the memo, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

Yeah, yeah. I agree. Memos are useful for me to to think through things. Super useful. Um but I definitely think they can get a bit performative.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Yeah, I think I think we have memos for everything, like it's super structured, but but I think if it's fast moving and if you have the conviction, like you have to just trust yourself.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

For sure. Um Yeah, and we we touched a bit on your on the personal side with you talking about a bit of your background and stuff, you don't have a big sob story, this kind of thing. Um I'm curious, like, what's the thing you're most proud of in your life that isn't sort of investment related?

SPEAKER_02 59:30

Oh, that's marrying my wife.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

Oh, for sure, man. It's marrying my wife. I mean, I can't give you another answer. I she is she's the better off.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

How did you how did you how did you meet? How did you How did we meet? Um when did you when did you get married actually? About two years ago.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

No, yeah, actually November was my wedding. We dated for like a year. Okay. Uh I proposed after like six months, and then we got married after like Nice. Like high conviction and desktop. Yeah, of course. He moved, bro. All in, you just go.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

That's nice.

SPEAKER_02 59:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

You? Uh well the pro the thing I'm proudest of outside of probably the the European. Not that's super worth it, bro. I but uh I admire to that. But but hopefully my girlfriend doesn't listen to this. Definitely my girlfriend too. Yeah. Did you ever I know we're not married yet, so I think I'm in I'm in the clear.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

Did you ever think about CJI or any of the other comps?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Um I got invited once to do uh something on it, but yeah, it's just really hard training here in Portugal, like uh doing the camps and stuff. Yeah. It's it's not easy. Um that's a good answer though, I like that. Um and you you started investing. I I was reading like your early blogs, like value invest. It's funny because I when I started investing, I had the same, I was like Buffett, yeah, manga manger, Seth Klarman, like uh This is a subreddit R security analysis.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man, I devoured that stuff. That's like you could read like every investor letter. I think it's I think it's better training actually than like reading margin of safety or one up on Wall Street or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

But so you were looking at like South African value stocks, yeah. Uh and like you had a little fund, right? You put together like your own money. I need to. Yeah. And how how did it go? Like, what did you learn? And yeah, what did you learn? How did you get to venture from that?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:19

Yeah, um, what I learned. I mean, I I learned I think if you're the only guy looking at something, actually, this is probably an informing venture. Like if you're the only guy looking at something, like you can find really good, really good prices. Um, there was like a lot of emerging market equity that was like super underbid at the time. There were several bets that were like in hindsight, it was like a lot of beta and luck. Um, but there were several bets that did like 5, 6x in the public markets in the span of like two years. Got a lot of attention from like local public investors because of that, and that was like what spiraled the thing into like an actual bill fund. Um then, yeah, I was writing some pieces. I wrote one on Tencent, and I think the the Hummingbird guys reached out. Uh at the time they had just they had, I think, divested a bunch of crack and steak, or or they were setting up nomads, and they were like, you know, they were thinking about doing public, and so they read my stuff and wanted to be an LP. And I, you know, reversed and said, can I join you guys instead? And they were like, yeah, come on in.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

Yeah, that's dope. Yeah. So so you hadn't done any venture before then? Never. And isn't it? Isn't value investing like a really bad way of thinking about venture? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

I think it's been helpful then. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think it's I I think hedge fund guys, uh, and I'm not saying I'm a hedge fund guy, but like hedge fund guys have like an alpha beta mentality, right? Like there's like you stack little bits of alpha, and then like you you're very distinctly aware of like what is beta. I think a venture guys don't really often think like that. It's just like if something is consensus, it's good. If like everybody likes this deal, it's hard time to get into the deal. And like there's merit in that, like we've discussed, but I I think coming from like a value lens, I think you're just a little bit more aware of like if you want to go and look in places that other people are not.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:00

That's fair. Yeah. Um and if you had to give yourself some advice back then, what would be the one thing you'd say to sort of uh early 20s Jordan?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

Probably that you will it take time operating from a place of like fear and operating from a place of like curiosity, and like it's it's okay and good, and you should use both of those, and when you feel the one, it can be a very strong motivator. I think the first time I started to feel like a lot of fear in the markets, like I didn't know what I was doing. And I think that like that was so you make some mistakes. I think that curiosity is like a very nice emotion, you feel very positive when you're doing it, but like it can also lead you down pretty bad rabbit holes, and like you need to temper that with a bit of fear. And I think probably I would tell myself this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

Because you were what what were you wh wh which were you over-indexing to? Fear.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

In the beginning, and then curiosity, too late.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

So you you you are a lot of fear? Yeah, a pendulum between the two a bit. Okay, and what do you mean by fear? Like insecurity or or just like fear of losing money?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

Fear of fear of uh not having money, yeah. Fear of like you just you need cash. So Okay, yeah. Uh I that was like in the beginning. And then I think you get some cash and then you go too curious, and then you actually need to fear losing money a bit. Okay. And then you have to and I think you have to tame the two. Um interesting. Yeah. Okay. We spoke a bit about this, but I'm putting words in your mouth, but like you said, if you don't mind, no, you're glad that you blew up in poker a couple times because it gives you burnt fingers going into crypto.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

I think it is a little bit the same. It's like I'm I'm glad, but I I didn't know it is like a painful thing to go through.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:46

Uh but once you've gone through it, okay, like yeah, I think you're more cautious.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

Yeah. Yeah, it feels really interesting in investment because you you definitely need some of it, but um, I think it can also be very poisonous, and it's also just not a nice way to live if you're constantly scared, kind of thing. Yeah, um, but I agree curiosity is not like not necessarily better because sometimes um curiosity is just like takes you down rabbit holes because it's like a novel, you know, like this something this thing is new, yeah. I wanna I wanna die down the rabbit hole. Whereas the old thing uh got a bit boring, right? And it's like, but actually like the should have stuck with the old thing. Yeah, and like and and also like in a bigger way, if if you know like what your kind of purpose is or what you want to do, uh then I think curiosity can sometimes be sort of something that takes you away from it, you know, if you because I'm I'm also very curious and I tend to get like really excited about the the shiny new thing, and I find that sometimes it takes me away from uh the thing I kind of committed to and sort of should be doing. And and it's an escape of some sort too. But uh yeah. And hobbies, we see yeah, when you read your stuff, there's like Shackleton in there, there's like Lord of the Rings, there are historical references, you you you like reading. I'm a huge fantasy fan.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:01

Lord of the Rings, I love it. Dune? Dude, big time. But uh someone described it as like a hard-boiled Lord of the Rings. Hard-boiled what? Lord of the Rings. Yeah. I actually I had this like long debate with a friend the other day. Like, I think What's wrong with hard-boiled? Uh I think you have to pick a side. I think that like you if you look at like Tolkien, right? So the world, like Frodo throws the ring into the fire, not because he threw the ring into the fire, but because Gollum bit it. And Frodo spake because Golem bit his finger. And Frodo spake Gollum not because but because of pity. And there was all these little incidents that happened along the way that culminates the big ending. And it's like in Lord of the Rings, the world, it's not up to you. It's not about a messianic figure. It's not like Frodo's a hobbit. Yeah. It's like little people matter, right? I like that world. I want to live in that world.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:47

Although he is the desert mouse, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

The the More Deep. Yeah, yeah. But but he's the messianic figure, like the Benedicturate, like the entire world was built around Paul the Treaties. Yeah. And it's like he's the guy. And I don't want to live in a world of like I mean, I have this debate often with this guy, the you know, great man theory adventure writer.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:06

Um I I don't want to live in a world that is like solely a great man theory adventure world. Like I I don't like this like Nietzschean will-to-power thing. I think it's it's hard to invest because sometimes you have to believe in this in people, but like I far prefer the world of the hobbits, and I would rather that be the world that's why isn't Frodo the great man? I mean, do you think he is? Because he was a hobbit. No, I mean like an Aragon's not the great man. Like I think if you look at the story, like Boromir was supposed to be the great man. This is like the son of Gondal.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

And he tries to take the ring and he has the will to power, and it's like it's his downfall.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:39

Yes. Okay. So the the sort of Dune is too like overdetermined to use a teal is.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Not just overdetermined. I think it's just like I just don't like it. Like I think it's not a moral story. It's like Paul is it it's a very realistic story, maybe, but it's not aspirational. And like if you're gonna read to your kids, like would you rather read them the very realistic, like amoral story about Paul Atreides, the messianic figure who like ends up causing havoc? Or like you know, C.S. Lewis has this great quote where he's like, uh, since it is so likely that children will face uh villains and enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Yeah. And I'm like, that's Lord of the Rings to me. Like you you you learn to pattern match like moral people.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

Um that's cool. Yeah, I can see that, yeah. I love the the messianic. You a gym fan? I I yeah, I I I think potentially uh but but I for me it's like the point is you want to be Paul the trade. Like, he's the guy, yeah, yeah. I Kanye has this really good quote back in the day because he did like his Yeezus album. Yeah, and he's like everyone's telling me the Jesus Christ story, and like for me, the point is like I want to be Jesus Christ, you know, like it's not like uh the sacrifice for my sins, like I want to be him. Yeah, and I I kind of think like that's what you would say about uh June is just you learn from yeah, you want to be Politrade's to some extent. Like, and can everyone be Politradies? Like go through the yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

Did you ever watch Avatar, The Last Day Bender?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

Yeah. The anime? Uh no, I didn't actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

Okay, okay. I heard it's really good. It's super good. Uncle Iro, uh for those who have watched it, is my favorite character by far. He's like this old, wise, sage dude who like was previously this like military general and then like failed and his son died, and he had to like reconcile that. He came back and he's basically just like he has this line where he's like, um uh I think power and and protection are are overrated, and I think you're very wise to choose love. And I love that line.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

Yeah, I love that line too. I think that's you know the line? That's no, I don't, but I but I love the line. It's a good line, right? Yeah, it's a good line. Um very cool. So Lord of the Rings is your favorite? By far. And and any hobbies outside of reading?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:56

I mean, I'm I'm nowhere near European Jiu Jitsu Nogi champion, but aspirational blue belt.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

Oh, blue belt aspirational. Cool. That's cool. Yeah. Um asked you the advice thing. Yeah, dude, what about mentors and and influences? There's Buffett and stuff early on. Is there someone else that you like who who's your um or do you have someone now?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

I don't know, man. I like I think I think there's like personal, like close guys who I look up to for like idiosyncratic parts of their lives. I don't think there's anybody that I look up to and I'm like, as a whole, I want my life to fit that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:28

That's that's healthy, I think. What what about the the idiosyncratic uh parts?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:32

Yeah, I I I really admire the Hummingbird guys. I think Wouter and Farratt uh and Barnd have done like a fantastic job. I think um I Valter specifically is like a very good guy at like believing in people when they're young. I really like Wouter. Uh and I I love that about him, and I think he's a you know, I I I admire also the opportunism. I think it's good to be, you know, um very flexible in your mandate. I think he's good at that mentally. Um there's another guy, Pogo Sidon, who runs Greyhound, who's like the exact opposite, and he's like hyper structured and everything, it's like everything is like very breakdown, and I enjoy like he's a very curious guy, and you can see when he's speaking, he like totally doesn't have a founder lens, great investor, but is really really really good at finding like the very simple reason why something will or won't work. And I think like that ability to tear something apart to like at the core, Elon calls it like the physics of the problem. Like, I think that that's hard to do. So I admire him for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:28

That's cool. Yeah, you influences, yeah. Um damn, good question. I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't ready. You asked it to me, man. Yeah, yeah. Good question, man. Um who do I look like? I I in investment-wise, I really like uh Soros. Yeah, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:47

I know he has like a he's somehow become like You're a crypto guy, man you have to like source.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

Yeah, exactly. He's somehow become like the devil, you know, like everyone just blames him for everything that's going on in the world, but like I read it's a legend. Yeah, and when you read I I think he's just the most the best investor of all time in terms of like the number of things that he was successful at. Like the number of different uh sort of you know commodities, like single stock picking, like all over the stuff all over the world, long, short. Um yeah, I I think he's like the virtuoso kind of um I like the reflexivity stuff. I think it's a bit over uh over indexed on and overplayed, like people people talk about it a lot, but I think when he came up with it, it's like and I think the the sort of ontology of it is really interesting, right? That there is no equilibrium or like fair market value, right? These things are all just like the the the fundamentals reflect people's views and people's views affect the fundamentals and like it all Which is going back to your point on like should you be consensus, should you not be consensus?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:47

I think consensus has like a huge reflexivity going for it because if something's consensus, yeah benefit from it a ton.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:54

It's true. Um yeah, that that was his thing, right? If if I see a bubble forming I rush to buy it, yeah, yeah. Like uh yeah, that's that's that's one way to to do it. And it's it's so much the opposite of like a Buffett, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:06

Yeah. Who's like I think Buffett would make a terrible venture investor.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:09

Yeah, I think it'd be absolutely terrible. Like the whole like scroll their will to weight, scroll, squirrel their way to wealth over prudence and stuffy lifetime. The original writing of that, which I took it out because like I absolutely did not want to like offend Buff Fen Buffett, not that he reads it, but like it was like like Buffett. Like I wouldn't I think you did hadn't I got in there by it?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Did I keep it in there? Yeah, it wasn't it. It was it said you you said you said something nice. What would you think so impressive that Buffett? Yeah, which was so special that Buffett did that's a titter a little bit. Yeah, that's better it was it was nicer. Yeah, I like Soros as as in as an investor. Yeah. Um I do think it's nice to believe that you can know the world and like have a differentiated view on someone or something, yeah, and not have to worry about what everyone else thinks. I think there's a bit of like in crypto, I definitely think right now it's like a crisis of confidence because no one believes in anything, yeah, right. And so like everyone's just doing TA and like trying to figure out what the next person is gonna believe, and like whatever everyone believes is the truth, you know. And I find that very like nihilistic and hard to I I wouldn't be able to invest like that purely, but I think combining both, like the best spots are when it's both, and like I think Jan from on our on our team is uh coined it originally, but I think the best spots is where it's both a good trade and a good investment. You know, when you find stuff like that, that's when you you really want to sort of size in. You get I like that, you get everything aligned.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:29

I really like that. Yeah, I think I might steal that quote.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:31

That's yeah, it's a good one. And there's only a few spots like that you do you do you come across.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

Um there's definitely other mentors, but I can't quite recall anyone. Definitely characters in books I really like, like similar to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:44

Yeah, but I think I think we're both Talib's fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:46

I think uh if I yeah, probably like if there's one author that I like really admire, and even just like hasback probably shaped my way of thinking about adventure the most, it's Talib.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:54

Yeah, I do think fooled by randomness fucked me up a bit for a bit. Emotionally, uh just like in my view of the world, because I was like I just saw randomness everywhere, and I'm like, you know, I just didn't. It's super hard, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Once you see it, you're like, ah shucks. Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:09

Yeah, and I think it's hard to live with that. Yeah. Um which incidentally I like that you're not a lottery ticket, like the teal thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:17

Yeah, that's true. Um I find it easier to have the token view of the world and put up with randomness because it's a little bit beneficial. I feel like if you believe you're Paul Atreides and it's hard to put up with randomness.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:31

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:32

Um arbitration for you. Um if you don't mind, just throwing up. No, go on. Yeah. So there was this archetype. So I was discussing with um Sachil, my partner's wife. Um if you look at like Leonardo da Vinci, you look at like Raphael, and you look at um who is the other one? Michelangelo. So Michelangelo is uh this like wonder kid, very moody, tells the Pope to go suck it because he doesn't want to go travel to Rome, but like produces you know obscenely good works of art. Leonardo is like curious about everything, like super good at everything he touches, like does never finish anything completely unreliable, but like pure play genius. Raphael, at least according to Sachil, who knows this better than I do, is a like we would call him a great BD guy. Like he's he's clearly talented, but um not maybe to the level of others and can just like orchestrate like the you know like the popes and the monarchy at the time to like display his art and puts out lots of art and works very hard and like you know. Are you gonna ask me which one I own? You think oh for fuck's sake, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

Um I think I'm a mix, probably. Between? So the first one he was he he was like a rebel that told people to fuck off and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:54

Yeah, Michelangelo.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:55

Uh because I I don't really tell people to to fuck off. I think I'm more like unreliable, like the first one. Yeah. Um a mixture between that one and the grinder baby guy. Yeah, I think so. Funny. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

I'd say that sounds simple. I think like I have the unreliability of Da Vinci, yeah, and like the grinder bv guy of uh Raphael.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:20

Yeah, and the and the unreliability comes with some like double-edged like code of intuition and um yeah, like sort of inspiration.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

And but then there's a lot of grind, yeah. I'd say mixture between those two.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:33

And I have one last question, which I was I was figuring, I was trying to think how I want to end these, because it you did the first one. And I think a good one is like, what was your biggest investing mistake? Wow. And uh I got yeah. And yeah, like what did you learn from it uh as well?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:49

Uh when I was managing those tiny small sums of money back in the day, I went along a um airline company, like a local airline company, going into COVID. And I thought to myself, um, okay, this is like a proper deep value player. I knew that they had um assets if they're sort of like people paid them what they were owed, that would be worth you know multiples of where the stock was trading, probably like if even half of that is settled, like okay, you make many times of your money. Um what I didn't look at is who the counterparty was, which was like the South African government, and they just like completely wiped the debt. And I was like, okay, sharks, I actually really need to look at debt covenants, and like things can go really wrong that you don't think.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:31

What do you mean they wiped the debt? Like they just didn't pay.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:33

They were just like, no, okay, this business is bankrupt, like we're just not gonna pay money. Damn.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:37

It was like super nothing.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:38

You can't sue the government.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:39

Consist government. Yeah, that'll that'll do it. Yeah, and so like I lost all my money in that thing. And I So what did you learn? Like, look at debt covenants, like what can go wrong? Like downside protection matters, but like not in like a because I think it was a convex bet, right? If I understood the death covenants, if I I thought it was a convex bet, if I understood the debt covenants properly and thought that okay, maybe the government could wipe it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:59

You would have wanted it cheaper, probably.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:01

I would have what I don't know if I would have bought it. Yeah. I I think probably then there's no price. Yeah. Because if I had thought properly about who the counterparty was, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:08

Yeah. How does that apply to do you ever use that?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:13

Yeah. Um I don't know if it does. I I think I'm sure it will apply. I think it's more like a tacit thing. Like you go around thinking about it a little bit more. Like I really like it was like my first, it was such a small amount of money in hindsight, but it was like my first total wipeout, and I was like, I never want that to happen again.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:33

Uh and I think more than like, how does it apply to venture practically? It's just like how does it apply to venture emotionally? Like, I just don't want to lose the money.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:40

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I really enjoyed this, man. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming here and doing it in the in the first live one in the office.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:49

And we've got the sun setting now.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:51

Yeah, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:52

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:53

Yeah, can't see can't see much, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. Dude, of course. Thank you very much. Pleasure to have you. Cool.