# Aurora Ziv: AI, Contrarian Investing, and VC Strategy

**Podcast:** The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
**Published:** 2026-02-02

## Transcript

I think this notion that only growth matters is sort of a very dangerous one.
And I've seen this movie many, many times.
We humans are not truth seekers.
We are self-validation machines.
In every one of my funds, I'm the biggest LP.
Every single one.
By the way, I pay myself zero.
So I tell LPs I only have one rule.
And that rule is that I have no rules.
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This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings.
And today we have one of the most prominent solo catalysts in Venture, Auron Ziv, who now manages over a billion dollars in AUM.
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He tells LPs exactly what he thinks.
He has zero management fees.
He takes 30% carry.
He's just wonderfully authentic.
And he's done incredible deals like Navan, Audible, House, and he's a brilliant player in this ecosystem.
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Orin, it is so good to have you back on the show, dude.
It's been several years since we last did this.
So thank you so much for joining me, man.
No, it's my pleasure.
I, as you know, I was skeptical that I would be able to uh bring anything new to this conversation.
You insisted, but uh I insisted because uh last time we actually did a show.
I don't think I was a very good interviewer and call it a lack of humility, but I hope that I've improved as an interviewer.
And I think now's quite a hard time to be investing.
Again, I'm gonna use the next hour as an advice session for me as an investor because I think I have a lot to learn from you.
Now is a weird time because a lot is uncertain.
And so when we look at picking investments, that is our job, that's what we're paid to do in a lot of ways.
Why do so many of the best outcomes look wrong or weird at the time where we knew when we invest?
Look, I think if they're long if they if they look weird and they look wrong, then probably there aren't gonna be 15 or 20 or 100 other startups doing it.
So you're probably gonna have two or three years without real competition, and you have a chance of really building something um you know, a real moat.
Now, if you're wrong, it's not gonna help you.
But if you happen to be right, then these are some of the the greatest outcomes.
And and again, this is not this is really some level of contrarian plus being right.
That's the uh ingredients uh typically of great outcomes.
The challenge that we have today is the level of competition has changed so much.
You know, when when we first met, you know, 10 years ago, there was always one or two competitors.
Now, for every company I meet, there's legitimately eight to ten at a minimum.
What do we do when the level of competition has increased to the extent that it is?
Uh I try to avoid it, to be honest.
I'm I'm in the Peter Thiel camp, I guess.
I don't like to go in where everyone else goes and have 10, 20 competitors from the get-go, because I think the chances of building a market.
I I really want every investment to become a market leader, and the more competition there is early on, the the smaller the chance.
So I try to avoid it.
Every now and then I find myself in such a situ a situation, okay, but I don't like it.
So I try to avoid it.
And I try to do things.
To me, if everyone is doing something, it's a reason not to do it, not a reason to do it.
Has what you look for changed in the last 24 months in the dawn wave of AI that we're looking at today?
Not so much, surprisingly, because I think the fundamentals are the same fundamentals.
Yeah, we have, of course, a tsunami wave that changes everything, which I think creates a lot of opportunities because basically every single industry business is going through change.
And whenever there's change, there's opportunity, and there's a lot of value being created, and there's a lot of value being destroyed, and there's a lot of value being shifted.
The one thing maybe you could argue that change, I don't know if it's 24 months or 36 months, is that every investment I have to ask myself, is this company a likely beneficiary of AI or not?
If the answer is that they're a victim of AI, obviously it's an easy answer.
But even if the answer is neutral, still the answer is probably no.
So I just have to ask this question, which is a question I wouldn't ask four years ago, right?
Four years ago, I would look at an opportunity.
I wouldn't ask myself, is this a beneficiary of AI?
But in the past three years, absolutely.
I have to uh ask this question.
If we were to reflect that back on one of your best investments and one of your most concentrated positions, which obviously went public in Navan, would you say that Nirvana is a beneficiary of AI?
100%.
I am not sure that the markets, the public market yet sees it that way, based on the valuation.
This is my theory.
The market feels or believes that some or many of the software companies, the incumbents, are gonna get disrupted by AI.
And I think the market is right about that.
I think that the market is not yet at the point where they discern between the ones who are gonna be negatively impacted and the ones that are gonna be positively impacted.
So I think that most software companies are getting somewhat of a discount because of that justified fear.
As you know, SaaS multiples, for example, are lower than they've been in the past 10, 12 years.
But I think over time, what's gonna happen is that for some companies, the suspicion is gonna materialize.
And in fact, even with a discount, they're gonna, in hindsight, look very expensive today.
And for others, they're gonna be beneficiaries.
Now, specifically with Navan, what which a company I know well, I'm 100% convinced that there is zero chance that we get disrupted by AI, and there is 100% chance that we're huge beneficiaries of AI.
I can go into details, but I feel I just feel very, very uh very, very strongly about it.
Can you?
I'd I'd love to.
I can't get into details in terms of numbers, obviously, but but just but from a cultive perspective, I'll give two examples.
One example is gross margins.
You know, three years ago before AI, our gross margins were around 50%.
It was all the cost of support.
In the past three years, we've invested a lot, and you know, and we're doing more and more with AI.
So uh, and ultimately I believe that almost all the support is going to be done by AI already I think that it's dramatically better already.
I mean this is public information I just don't have it in front of me.
And it continues to improve.
So this is the easy part.
The second part which is even more exciting is think what you can do with AI in terms of the customer experience.
And again I don't I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say and what I'm not supposed to say so I want to leave it to the the the company because I don't want to trip on some uh SEC role or something but the even more exciting thing is how it dramatically improves the customer experience on multiple levels.
And and back to the first thing why am I not worried about being disrupted because if you have a piece of software that's fairly simple then yeah someone can write it quickly and maybe price it uh lower and maybe even have better functionality and have much faster the velocity and those companies are at risk.
But the more operationally complex the business is now I'm not talking about Navan, I'm talking generally, but I think Navan falls in within this uh framework.
The more operationally complex a business is, the more it's about distribution, the more it's about integration with source and with other pieces of software or content in the case of Navan or or part of the ecosystem, the more it's in a regulated.
This is not about Nirvan, but the more it's in a regulated environment where there's a lot of licenses and stuff, the harder it's going to be.
Because you know, the technology, okay.
So someone can develop the technology, but technology is five percent of it.
You know, you have the you have all so many other things.
Data.
Data is so important, especially in the age of AI.
And who has the most data?
The incumbents.
So the bottom line is I think this notion that all the incumbents are gonna die, you know, this notion that is being promoted by some people who who I think whose main motivation is to uh make provocative statements uh and get attention as thought leaders.
I don't buy it.
I think that yeah, some you know, of course, there's a the change of technology and some companies that are not gonna be able to adapt for both objective reasons like the one that I mentioned, and also many and also execution reasons.
I mean, some CEOs are just gonna be faster and more crisp in adapting the c the companies.
Of course, if you continue to do nothing different, you're gonna die.
But that's always been true.
I have specifically with Nirvana, I have zero concern, and I think that in general, many companies are not easy to disrupt, and as long as they don't fall asleep on the wheel, and as long as they you know they adapt, they're gonna be huge beneficiaries of AI.
So I have so many things to unpack that.
Uh the first that I just want to unpack is you mentioned like Nirvana invests, obviously, in support, blah, blah, blah.
Support is a space where everyone is like, duh, AI is gonna replace a huge amount of labor, and it's the most perfect solution for AI.
That would be a consensus company/slash market to invest in with huge amounts of competition.
Does that mean you don't like it?
Because that's the opposite of what you said you like.
Yeah, a new company that they're solving the support problem.
Yeah, one, you know, one of them is gonna be successful, but there's there is a thousand or two, but there's a thousand that are not.
So I'm not at the very early stages.
I don't trust my intuition enough to know which one of the thousand is gonna be successful.
You know, it's something I'm really struggling with, which is like growth rates.
And what I mean by that is I'm meeting companies today, and I'm looking at them and they're going from one to five million in revenue.
And before or on when we met, that was great, that was impressive.
Now it's just not enough to get the great big funds interested at the B or the C.
And I know that actually I'm not gonna get a good next round on the back of that growth.
How do you think about the changing expectations on company growth rates?
And does that impact your investing?
Yeah, so to be honest, I don't buy that either.
Call me old school, but I don't buy that because the math doesn't change.
If you have a company that can double every year for the next five years, it's gonna be 32x what it is today, because two to the power of five was 32 before AI and after AI, that has not changed.
So the real question is, is it sustainable growth and is it healthy growth?
So maybe a company grew from one to five, but you know, it's not necessarily healthy growth, you know, the economics are not very impressive.
And you know, I think that next year they they're not gonna be growing much.
So yeah, so in that case, it's not gonna be enough to grow from one to five.
But if the company grew from one to five and they look like next year is gonna be 20 or 15, and the economics are healthy, absolutely it's a great company that I wanna be, you know, invested in.
So, and I think there is danger in dismissing companies.
They actually have right now a company that's raising, and really and the company is uh is growing at 100%, it's at 20 million today, growing to ARR, growing to 40 million with very healthy uh economics, and I think they should also double the following year.
And one investor said, Oh, you know, we're gonna have a challenge with the growth rate of 100% right.
And I, you know, and I have a lot of respect for this investor personally.
I'm not gonna mention him, I have a love respect for him.
I think he's dead wrong on this one.
And I think why do you think he's wrong?
Because I think he's right.
I think he's wrong because I think this company, again, it's not as if, look, if this company had competitors at the same level growing at 3x, and they're growing 2x, yes, then he would be right.
But they have the market to themselves, they're leading the market, they're growing 2x, they're growing if very I prefer a company that's growing 2x with very healthy economics than a company that's going 3x with unhealthy economics.
You know, as long as I believe that the market is large enough to continue to sustain this kind of growth for the next few years, I'd be at this company all day long.
So um, yeah, I don't think that uh AI changes mathematics, you know, and compounding, compounding is the same compounding before AI and after AI.
When you look at the opportunity costs that large great funds have today when they're investing large amounts of money into the follow-on rounds of our companies, they can be in a cursor that goes to a billion faster than other.
They can be in a Harvey that hits 200 million within two years.
And I I'm in businesses like you are, dude.
So we're on the same side here.
But I'm looking at it going, I get it.
Opportunity cost adjusted, they want to be in Harvey and Cursor, not ours.
I don't think so.
I will tell you, even this day and age, there aren't many 20 million dollar companies that are doubling with you know with very healthy economics.
You know, it just not so many of them.
The other thing, I think this notion that only growth matters is still a very dangerous one.
And I've seen this movie many, many times, you know, because when you only look at growth, it drives companies to do things that are unsustainable and unhealthy.
For example, these um circular deals, you know, I'll buy your product for a million dollars and you buy my product for a million dollars.
It's a win-win, right?
Because we both now have another million dollars of revenues.
Yes, we also have another million dollars of cost, but that doesn't matter because nobody looks at it.
So you'll realize that no value was created in this theoretical transaction, but a perceived value was created.
So you're starting seeing this, and this is not even before I get to fraud, this is really still like within gray area.
And you see other uh manifestations of that, you see things that are clearly not sustainable.
Now, in some cases, the companies will be able to somehow succeed, but in others, you know, it's gonna implode at some point.
So are you telling companies that you're on the board of, don't listen to the hype, don't believe the bullshit on podcasts about growth rates needing to be crazy, build healthy businesses today?
Look, I think growth is super important.
But yes, in general, yes, grow healthy.
Now, there are some rare situations where you have no choice because if you have competitors that are also growing very fast, you don't have the luxury of no, no, I'm gonna grow healthy.
You know, you just have to play the game and hope for the best.
You know, you didn't have the choice of, oh, let's build it slow and make it uh healthy.
You have to go as crazy as possible, whatever the margins are, and ultimately, uh in the case of Uber, come out on top.
But again, I I look for businesses where this is not the dynamic.
And when you have the choice between growing fast in a sustainable manner versus just going crazy and just optimize just for top line, ignore everything else.
Yeah, I think that the latter is a disaster waiting to happen.
Do you worry ever that having a focus on margin and good economics too early hinders the upside opportunity for the companies that you're in?
If you look at a door dash, shit margins for years.
If you look at an open AI or an anthropic, actually shit early margins.
Yeah, do you worry that actually you focus too early on margin optimization?
As I said, in some spaces and area, yes.
It's more important to win the market share, you know, it's more important to win the market, and you don't have the luxury of focusing on margin too early, and you have to make the assumption that you'll take care of margins once you once you win.
But most businesses are not like that necessarily.
Certainly, not all businesses are like that.
And when in the business one you have the option, then again, don't focus on too early.
I still think that the growth is more important.
So I agree with you that focusing too early, absolutely.
But at some point you do want to focus on it again if you can afford it.
And that point really depends on the business and the competitive in the competitive environment.
It's that I don't think there's one solution for or one answer for.
My biggest mistakes have always been when I think that I'm smarter than the market.
Yeah, I turned down deal at the seed round because I was like, payroll, really?
Paychecks, ADP, come on.
This is ridiculous.
With this kid, Alex, who's now a friend, he won't mind that.
Do you give a shit about market given the stage where we invest?
How do you think about that?
I also made mistakes thinking I'm smarter than the market, but but also my biggest ones were when I thought I was smarter than the market.
And it's much more about the winners than about the losers.
So no, I actually this social proof and what other people think, I tried to actually suppress this uh signal, if not ignore it altogether, and and and really invest based on my own conviction.
And you know, sometimes I'm gonna be right and sometimes I'm gonna be wrong.
It's more important to be right about these things because in 50% of the time I'm right and 50% I'm wrong, that's actually a great result because it a winner is so much more important than the loser.
Uh, because you know, as you know, if if we lose something, we only lose one XR money.
If we win, it could be 100 XR money.
It's absolutely true.
What you don't want to do is continuously put money into a loser and you want to reduce that on cost.
When you have done, what did you get wrong?
Or what did you not see?
So, first of all, I don't often get the these double downs that I do, I don't often get them wrong because I really I believe have enough intellectual honesty to look at things, not be biased because I'm already in and not, you know, not uh and I I true maybe because I'm originally an engineer or whatever, even when I was uh in my previous life as an VC with the I saw compared to the other partners, you know, I had a partner who never saw following and never he didn't like.
You know, he always found a reason to justify his his his previous decisions.
And I think one of the strengths of being a good decision maker is actually change your mind when there's new information and not get uh, you know, there's uh a quote I like from um Annie Duke's book.
Uh it's goes something like, 'I'm gonna butcher it,' but it says, 'You know, we humans are not truth seekers, we are self-validation machines,' meaning that, you know, people, most people, when they have an opinion, whatever information now uh arrives, in their mind it's a proof that they were right, right?
And and I don't I don't think this is a good mindset, you know, for a good venture investor.
So I think that you wanna have enough intellectual honesty to change your mind based on the based on the new information.
But I will give you an example, because I, you know, I'm not foolproof, and of course I make just like I make mistakes in in in new investments, I also make mistakes in uh uh in full on.
So I'll give you an example, a company that was in the prop tech space and seemed to be on fire.
You know, it went from 2 million run rate to 30 million the a year after I invested, and the projection was to go from 30 to 100.
Everything looked great.
You know, I doubled down and I thought uh I probably got a discount to what you the founder would have got from the market.
But the timing was just before the uh big rise in um in interest rates in um late 2021 or 22, I forget exactly what it was.
So what did they get wrong?
So first of all, I understood that the business is dependent on interest rates to some degree.
And I even stress tested it, and I actually did assume that interest rates will go up fast.
And I had the worst-case scenario, and I concluded I ran the model and I concluded that the business is gonna be resilient enough and was gonna survive it.
In hindsight, I overestimated the resilience of the business and I underestimated the speed.
Um, what I called the worst case scenario, what I modeled as the worst case scenario, was actually not as bad as the real scenario that happened.
You know, that the rise of interest rate was was too fast, and the company just couldn't did not survive it, and and I lost.
And by the way, this is uh, yeah, so there's an example.
So it happens, you know, you were still in the risk business.
What do you take away from that as a lesson?
I actually don't, not much.
I'll tell you why, because I think that I think some of the bets are not gonna work.
You know, I think it's a mistake to judge a decision by the outcome.
Because when you play poker, you can make the right decision, and the odds are in favor, but you know, the cards that came out, you know, you lost the pot.
Doesn't mean that your decisions were wrong.
And over time, if you make the right decisions, the overtime you're gonna win.
And but in any individual case, luck has a huge role to play.
So you can also learn the wrong lesson.
So, yeah, I took a bet.
In this case, it was wrong.
In hindsight, I wasn't aggressive enough in my as you know, in my stress testing.
But does that mean that I should be overly conservative next time?
Not necessarily, because I could have been right.
In other cases, I was right.
So I just have to be comfortable with losing money, including big pots, every now and then.
Can I be blunt, Orren?
You have massive bulls.
I don't know.
When you when you look at your concentration into Nirvana, okay, which now a public company and it it's been incredible to see all that they've built.
But at times it looked hairy.
COVID, for example, when travel stopped as a travel company as trying.
Do you feel the pressure in those moments?
Actually, in the case of Navan, I never felt pressure.
I, you know, I uh COVID was a big one.
By the way, even before COVID, 2018 or 19, we had uh an existential crisis when uh Delta Airlines decided that they hated us, and you cannot really succeed as uh as a travel company when one of the three major airlines in the US is not willing to work with you in the swing and and all that, and it wasn't, it was not obvious that it would be able to solve it, and luckily we did.
And then COVID happened.
But you know, with COVID, I had complete trust in the leadership of Ariel.
Some people were saying, oh, after COVID, people are gonna just stop traveling for business and just do everything over Zoom.
Never believed it.
So I'd no doubt that at some point COVID will be behind us.
And now Riel was such a CEO that as an investor, I could sleep well at night knowing that he's doing and the leadership is doing everything.
Uh and they did a lot, actually.
Not just on the cost, you know, everything.
They reacted so fast and they adjusted the cost.
They were the first company to let people go.
And they got so much shit for it because they fired people over Zoom as if there was any other way they could have, and they still got a lot of shit from the press.
But who cares, you know?
And changing product priorities, for example, changing pricing models, pricing messaging, prioritizing features that are more relevant in an environment like COVID.
So they did so many things, very quick, bold actions.
But in the end of the day, I think relative to other people, it's easy for me to also let go, I find.
So if I have a company where maybe the founders are not doing the right things and I'm they're not reacting to a crisis in the way that I think they should, I don't get too worked up about it.
And I, you know, at the end of the day, I just uh I'm letting go emotionally.
I mean, I'm I'm still gonna show up to board meetings and be, you know, try to be helpful and and and and positive, but emotionally I'm letting go.
I'm not, you know, I'm I'm gonna at least try not to manifest frustration and uh angst.
LP is often like capital concentration limits for those of us who don't know.
That's like you know, a set amount of capital percentage-wise of a fund that can be in one company.
What capital concentration limit do you find uncomfortable?
I'd say 20% is my limit of a fund in one company.
You know, I think the industry standard is probably 10%, I'm at 20%.
By the way, from the LP perspective, diversification at the level of the GP makes no sense because they have multiple GPs.
So the diversion gives nothing to LPs.
Maybe, maybe the GP feels better, maybe.
But of course, I think it's a mistake.
I'd rather be concentrated than the best deals I can find, because when then when you have a winner, it really makes a difference.
LPs have said to me before about you, forgive me for this, dude.
He deploys too fast.
We love him.
He's smart, he's great.
Too fast, like 12 months, sometimes they'll I know.
I know.
Cam crow diversification is important.
You need to bake different vintages in.
Are they wrong, or do you just respectfully not give a shit because you don't need to?
It's probably the latter.
I'm gonna do my thing, and if it works for them, fine.
And if not, they can opt themselves out, and some of them have, and it's fine.
Good people opted out, and it's fine.
I'm not gonna do things differently.
And then by the way, I'm not investing fast because I want to invest fast.
I'm I'm just seeing opportunities I want to do.
And then by the way, and sometimes looking back, you know, if I look at 2021, I would say I did I invested too fast.
You know, I wish I didn't, okay?
But to answer your your question, yeah, it makes their life a little bit more difficult because it's hard for them.
The thing is, it's not just the speed, it's also the fact that I'm not consistent.
So I make it harder for them to plan, you know, because they're not sure when they put the money, if it's gonna be good for one year or two years or nine months.
So I, you know, so it makes their sizing decision more difficult.
So I, you know, I get it, I get it.
But uh, this is something that, you know, if you ask me of all the things that I do that LPs might like less, I would say this is it.
But honestly, I don't wanna I don't want to not invest in the company when I, you know, when I think it's compelling, just because I just made another invading, you know.
So what makes you say that in 2021 you invested too fast?
And what are your lessons from that?
Well, I think in general in 2021, pretty much every deal that I did, most actually I should have, because these are quality companies, but every single deal I probably paid three or four X, what I should have, because that was the market.
And because of that, I'm now in fund 11, but there's one fund that's gonna be okay, by the way.
It's not gonna lose money, but it's not gonna be great.
You know, the one that really invested the peak of the market, because they honestly, there was no other way to invest.
Now, luckily, I invested in good companies for the most part, and some of them, despite overpaying, they're still gonna be great winners.
But if every single deal you pay three or four times what you should, then even if you have great winners, even if the fund otherwise would have been uh, I don't know, a 5x, it's gonna be one and a half x, right?
Or or whatever.
So, yeah, I too, like everyone else, by the way, I too got carried away because this is the market.
And it really, I the thing is I don't believe in my building or anyone else's, to be honest, to time the market.
In any given market, you want to do the best deals that you can, and some vintages are gonna be better than others.
Now, I don't think that for LPs it should matter.
Because again, the idea is not that they invest in one fund and that's it.
The idea is that the LPs are for the long run.
I'm not interested in in LPs who just want it to come in into one fund.
So they're gonna get the vintage diversification, just not specifically in one within one fund, but across the funds.
You're saying because you do such quick successive funds, they're gonna get vintage diversification by buying.
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah.
So maybe maybe one fund did not have vintage diversification, and everything was invested from that fund at the peak of the market.
Okay, so probably that fund's not gonna be great.
But my typical LP would have been in three or four funds before that, and three and four funds after that.
So they'll have a series of six, seven funds, and one of them is gonna be okay, you know, and not great.
Okay, not the end of the world.
The other thing is not just invested fast, you know.
I think that as you know, I each fund was larger than the previous one.
And I think at some point I overdid it.
I think in and again, I reacted to the market.
There were a lot of rounds, they were frequent, they were big.
And I think that I have two bubble-sized funds.
One of them is gonna be okay, the other one is actually gonna be good despite that.
But I have two funds that were over 500 million from 2021 and 2022.
But my 2024 fund already cut it by about a half, which I think is a more better, better size, uh more conducive to great returns, yeah.
So we're like 250, say.
I have a fund that's 250, and I have a fund that's in the midst of so I had a first clause, so I don't know yet what's gonna be.
So fund 10 is to about 250 and fund 11, I don't know, but I actually I want it to be less than 250.
So when we look at that decision, I think managers are faced with the decision to say you either need to be really freaking big, a la, Andreessen, general catalyst, light speed, a wall of money, or you need to be a real craftsman and boutique.
Do you agree that you have to be one or the other, and that is the future of Vansha and the massy middle will be painfully suffering?
I do agree with it 90% agree with it.
I you know, I think you have to have something special.
Being middle of the road, you know, you want to be differentiated.
So I think that naturally there is a bifurcation.
So either you are, you know, one of these platforms like Andreasin, like Sequoia, like maybe Lightspeed, who are bringing a lot to the table, can do things that smaller VCs cannot, including myself, or you're going in the opposite direction of solo GPs, for example, that you have other advantages, or I have other advantages.
I'm not trying to be better than Andreasen in Andreesin's game.
If it's gonna be Andreessen's game, they're gonna win, you know, beat me every time.
Uh no, I offer something different.
You know, I'm faster than anyone else, for example.
I you know, there are other things.
There's a personal connection, there's I think there's a lot of other things that founders find extremely compelling with uh solo GP and I and I go for companies or founders that this is what they want.
And that's differentiation, or you have something else that differentiates you.
But generally speaking, if you are a traditional five, six person partnership without anything very, very, very unique and special differentiate that you bring to the table, then yes, I think you are uh in trouble because um it's almost like on one hand you're not as agile, you're not, it's not the personal connection.
It still feels as is a corporate to the to the founder.
And on the other hand, you're not Sequoia.
You're not gonna get the very best deals.
So yes, I think that yeah, you don't want to be caught in the middle.
And I think, and and again, unless you position yourself like an amazing brand or or you're just like an amazing expert in some area.
Do you think a lot of funds will go out of business in the next few years, be unable to raise and slowly die?
Yeah.
We're seeing it already.
I think it's much harder to raise in the last couple of years.
I think first of all, there's less money going to venture, but not only that, uh a larger percentage of it is going to the platform.
So if you're not a platform, then it's much harder for you to raise.
And I would say that at least 50% of the funds today, maybe more, either cannot raise or at least are not sure that they can raise, so they're trying to stall and you know not test the market.
And I think many of them are not gonna be able to raise.
That is quite a difference.
First of all, it depends on how the GP reports things, because there's huge latitude in how we can report things.
How do you report things?
You know, I try I try to report things and in the conservative what they're actually worth and not to me it what I always tell LPs, whether or not you can believe numbers from a VC, let is less dependent on the methodology that they use, because with any methodology you can inflate or whatever, it's more a function of the personality or you know the character, but even more so the motivation.
By that what I mean, if you're a fund that's let's let's say Sequoia, for example, they know that they can raise anytime, right?
So they have zero motivation to inflate numbers.
They have all the motivation in the world to uh show things as conservatively as possible, right?
Because they get no benefit from inflating numbers.
However, if you you are a fund that is more middle of the road and you're not sure how easy it's gonna be a raise or not, you're gonna find any excuse to keep the prices up to look good on paper.
So I think just ask yourself as an LP the more secure the the GP that you speak with is, the less likely they are to inflate to inflate numbers.
And it's easy to inflate numbers.
And now the the um accountants are not good um railguards from that perspective, because even if they challenge uh valuations, they always challenge the wrong things, and they always it it's complete lack of understanding what you know, because how why would they know what you know what companies can be?
It's not it's not in the numbers necessarily what companies are worth.
So I think there's a huge latitude, which means that there's a huge challenge for LPs to tell whether the paper values are real or not.
And there are only two ways.
One is impractical, which is to really study every single underlying um position.
It's impractical.
And the other one is just rely on who do they believe and who they don't.
And here it's based on their experience, it's based on the uh personality, and it's also based on the motivation of the how motivated.
They should ask themselves how motivated is the GP to inflate numbers versus be conservative.
You mentioned the first case in fundraising.
Is the attitude mindset, what LPs want different today than what it was in prior years?
Yes.
First of all, in general, they've had little liquidity.
By the way, that might change in 2026 in a big way, because there are a host of huge unprecedented size IPOs in the works now.
You know, companies like SpaceX and and uh and Stripe and uh Databricks and you know, and others.
So there could be there could be a tsunami of uh liquidity in 2026, 2027, and that would reshuffle the cards again, and who knows how it will affect.
But right now, there's been a drought of liquidity for most LPs for a long time, five four or five years.
Add to that the fact that I what I just said that the T VPI, you cannot accept it at face value.
You have to ask yourself because so it's it's challenging to judge based on that.
And because of that, I think there is too much focus, even, but understandably, uh, on DPI, where you know people hardly talked about it three years ago, and now some LPs, oh, it's it's it's just DPI, it's just DPI, we don't believe anything.
So that's it again, that's also an approach.
When you see something that's difficult to understand, one approach can be okay.
I just discount it, I don't know, and I treat everyone the same, I just don't believe anyone.
That's an approach.
I don't think it's it's it's the right approach, but it could be an approach.
So, yes.
So, from that perspective, I do see a change of number one, they have less liquidity, and they're very focused on DPI more than more than two, three years ago.
But by the way, Harry, I do think it's a cycle.
So I do think it will change again.
But right now, there is there is there's this focus here.
The lack of liquidity in large part is down to the extension of private markets, the platforms that are able to have the supply side of cash to fund them for longer.
That means that we either have to hold them for longer or we can sell secondaries.
Yeah.
How do you think about proactively selling secondaries and managing the book pre-going public?
I understand why others do it.
I don't.
Again, the reason is motivation.
So, first of all, in any given moment, anything that I want to sell, I won't be able to, and everything that I can sell, I don't want to sell.
Okay.
The things that I cancel are the best positions, and I want to keep if it works if it makes sense.
You cannot assume that the buyers are stupid.
So they're only gonna buy things that they think they can double or triple within the next two or three years.
Now you know, if it can double or triple in the next two, three years, I'd rather keep it, right?
So almost by definition, to sell anything, it's possible to sell it, but you have to give a significant discount to the buyer.
Otherwise, they're not gonna do it.
They're not stupid either.
So why do people do it?
I think people do it again if they need it for the fundraising.
Sorry for interrupting you.
We sold we sold something earlier this year, and it's like we knew it would be double or triple in a couple of years, for sure.
Yeah.
But dude, there was inherent risk bait into that.
There was a lot of execution risk that was dependent on that.
Then there'd be a lockup on the IPO.
If I'm thinking about IRR for our investor, fuck it.
They'd rather have a three X back now than a four and a half X back in two to three years' time, dependent on a successful IPO and then a good hold.
Okay, but let me go with the numbers because I do still remember my second grade math.
Uh, uh, you said three X versus four and a half X.
That means that you only believed one and a half X over the next three years with a lot of risk.
Yeah.
So on the, you know, if this is what you believe you should have sold.
Absolutely.
But in general, of course, there are some positions that I can justify, yeah, that I can justify a sale.
But in general, uh, if I know that I need to raise, and if I know that in order to raise, I need to show more DPI, then I can understand why a manager would be willing to give up upside in order to show DPI today and help them raise the money.
You know, I never felt that I needed to do it.
And I, first of all, I'm the biggest LP in every uh in every one of my funds, I'm the biggest LP.
Every single one.
Can I be blunt?
How much of a fund generally are you?
10%.
About 13, about 13, 13, 14%.
And I don't have any LP who's more than 10% in the in any given fund.
So I'm always every single fund, I'm the biggest uh LP.
And on top of it, I have 30% carry.
So so really I'm 40 something percent of the economics.
So of course I think as LP, and and I'm trying to maximize the the long-term value.
And I don't want to show change myself as an LP.
So I I believe, by the way, in radical alignment with the LPs.
And this is why I set up, by the way, I pay myself zero.
I don't see anything, which is very unusual.
I don't know any VC in the world, as far as I know, that has uh zero income from the management fees.
Zero.
So you don't take a management fee at all?
First of all, I take a low management fees, but I reinvest 100% of it in the fund.
So I don't have any expenses because you know I don't have an office, I don't have people, I don't have any expenses, and I don't pay myself anything.
So I have I see zero.
Before the investors see the money back, I don't see anything from LPs before they got 100% of the money back.
By the way, even the way the management fee way uh reinvestment works is that the way it works technically is that I don't actually, despite being an LP, I don't actually get paid until the LPs got 100% of the money back.
That's how the it's set up.
So this is radical alignment.
I don't see it a shekel or a dollar before they uh see the money back.
And uh because of that, I'm really, really clearly incentivized to optimize for the for the LPs.
Uh but and but and not you know, remember what I said at the beginning of the call, substance versus appearance.
So I'm 100% substance, 0% appearancy.
What do you think are the biggest misalignments between GEP and LP today and venture?
Look, especially in the larger funds, the compensation that the V that the GPA gets from the management fee, especially if you um account for time value of money, is typically greater than uh than the upside.
So let's say you have 10 billion and you charge 2%.
The minute you close the fund, you already made $2 billion.
Because it's you know, 2% over 10 years, that's 20%.
You already made $2 billion that are by the way, are you're gonna see them over the next 10 years, but starting today.
Now, the carry you'll start seeing maybe in seven, eight years, maybe, you know, because it takes time to return these funds.
So if you double the fund, you you get another, let's say it's 20%, you get another 2 billion, okay?
But you're only seeing this 2 billion in eight years.
So if you did, you know, you take into account what you know, the applied discount rate, you're seeing more from the management fees.
So I think that for many funds, they really want to do well enough to be able to raise the next fund.
And the whole thinking is what do we need to do to raise the next fund?
And if it means selling something early to show DPI, then yeah, of course they'll do it.
You know, and and again, in some cases, it can lead to other things.
So this is one set of maybe misalignment.
The other set of misalignments is actually not between the GP as an entity and the LPs, but within the individual GPs.
Because the larger the partnership is, the investors, not even the GPs, but also the younger partners, they're first and foremost managing their career.
So, you know, if there's a conflict between what is good for the individual manager and the long-term, maybe value of the fund, guess what?
I'll give an example.
You know, if if a partner in a in a in a partnership, especially large partnership with some in with politics and all that, they're much more interested in their investments succeeding than anything else, because that's their career.
If their fund is great, but they didn't get the credit, you know, remember the partner that I mentioned that never saw follow-on deal, he didn't like?
That's part of it, because they have their incentive to admit failure.
You know, they have all the in seven day world to convince their partners to put more money into this company, roll the dice again, and who knows, maybe maybe it's gonna succeed.
And even if not, they bought some time personally, you know.
So I think the larger the partnership is, the more there is not 100% alignment with between the individual partners.
And just like in a company, the guy in sales can have different motivation than the guy in product or the guy in marketing, and you know, and uh in my case, it's just me.
So there's 100%, there's no difference.
And then I'm the biggest LP, so the LPs, and you know, just there's zero confidence in my mind.
One area that's very challenging as we look at the market today, is also about pricing.
I look at series A to say, dude, and I think it's the worst place to be investing.
And so I'd love your thoughts on this.
Yeah, we have 200x ARLs, 150x arross.
There's very little company progression from the seed round, but there's a very steep price increase.
It's a very competitive stage.
How do you advise me, others to navigate this seemingly very bad insertion point today?
Okay, so first of all, I agree, but with a few uh comments.
First of all, scratch the word today.
It's always been the case.
Even 30 years ago, that you know, you have a seed round, basically, founders in the idea, it's priced low, and then a year and a half later, basically they have now 20 people, they have an office, maybe they have a few tiny, you know, small customers, they really haven't proven anything, but it the perception is oh, now it's a company, and we made so much progress.
Now we have a product, now we have this.
You really didn't prove anything, and all of a sudden they jump in value, and this is there's nothing new under the sun.
This has been the case always, okay?
So this is something to be worried about always as an investor.
That's the first comment observing.
The second comment is I agree with you, just watch it not to be confused by the name of the round.
Because calling it A, that's just a name.
You can call it anything, you can call seed one, you can call it A, you know, it's just a name.
And I think people when they talk, it's kind of a shortcut.
You say A, and it's oh, I know what you mean.
You know, actually, no, you know, because we can we can both call something round A, and it would be very, very, very different things.
So I wouldn't be caught up, I don't care if it's called A or B or C or whatever.
Generally speaking, when I look at the second round after the first round, I want to make sure that the progress that I'm seeing is really substantial in terms of in terms of risk reduction, as opposed to the looks of it, the optics of it.
So if the progress is, oh yeah, now we have uh product, and as I said before, and we have a few few logos, but really they didn't really make a commitment, really they haven't renewed yet.
The tough question is for an investor, whether it's me or you, uh, are the indications that I'm seeing, is it a real signal of product market fit, or is it just noise?
Because if it's not real signals of product market fit yet, then nothing has really changed since the seed.
If anything, maybe the opposite.
The very fact that after a year or two they don't have signs of product market fit, maybe it means that it should be worth less than what it was worth at the seed.
Because at the CD, you had the option value of maybe within a year or two you will have it.
So I think that's a thing.
It's not about whether you call it A or not, it's about really exercising judgment if this really represents product market fit or not.
What do you think of the rise of very proactive preemptive rounds where you have a company raise and then a month later, iconic or any of the big platforms come in and shove another 50 million bucks in?
And very little's changed again.
It's still on three million of IRR.
Do preemptive rounds work more often or less often in your experience?
I think my advice to founders, and it's a advice that's harder, hard to follow, actually.
Because I cannot fault a founder for taking 50 million to higher valuation if they're being offered that.
But I often tell them, and they, you know, it's it's hard, but some of them, the more mature ones are able, I believe.
My advice is take the money, but continue to behave as if you didn't.
Don't spend money just because you have it.
You know, companies can be overfunded, and it can lead to loss of focus.
So if the founder is mature enough and strong enough to take the money, put it in the bank, but spend it based on the signals that they get from the market as opposed to the pressure that they're getting in the boardroom.
I think they should take the money because it would be stupid not to.
But Jason Lampkin is a dear friend of mine, very famous SaaS ambassador on Twitter a lot.
And he says, Founders today, they don't want to hear your thoughts, they don't want to hear your opinions.
They they at best will say thank you and ignore you, and at worst will say, God, what a dick, and say bad things about you for giving me advice.
Yeah.
Do you agree with that perspective that founder sentiment has changed towards ambassador advice?
I'm not feeling it personally.
I feel that uh founders that I back, the only reason they speak to me and ask my advice is because they want to hear my advice, because, and I'll tell you why, because I never forced my advice.
So they for them, I'm a safe environment.
You know, it's like going to a sec, you know, to a psychotherapist because they don't, and the other thing is they don't need to convince me because I'm gonna support them even if I think they're wrong.
So when you feel that as a founder that you need to convince someone that then you're not so much in a receptive mode, you're you know, trying to think, okay, what how do I overcome this objection and that objection?
When when I have a conversation with the founder about something, and the founders know before we even start the conversations that no matter what I think I'm gonna support what they want to do, it disarms them.
And then they're much more in receptive mode.
Then because otherwise, why even talk to me unless they really want to hear what I say?
Now, so I'm not personally feeling it.
I think it also depends on the way you deliver the advice.
And there's a famous book about raising children, and I think the title is how to talk to children so that they listen and how to listen so that they talk.
And I think it's very it's very I love that the the name of the title because if when you listen, uh you keep telling whether it's child whether it's your children or founders, you're being judgmental, you're being um you're you're you're accusing, you are uh you're not patient, you know, you think you know better, then of course they're gonna be less receptive to listening to your advice.
So I think it also, by the way, I don't know Lemkin at all.
So it's not uh, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm um bad mouthing him, and I've only heard good things, so it and it's not it's not personal, right?
But in general, I do think that you want to be as an investor, you want to be mindful of how you give the advice.
And if you come from a point of know it all, then I think that most founders would not react well to it.
I wouldn't react well to an LP who would start telling me, even if they're right, by the way.
I remember I remember by the way, an LP of mine who two years ago was very critical of the size of my fund and really pushed me to to take a smaller to do a much smaller fund.
And I didn't like the way they delivered it, and basically uh, and I wasn't you know willing to listen to them, even though in hindsight I think they were right.
But at the time I wasn't real willing to listen to it.
In fact, I told them, listen, there's a very easy way you can help me making it a smaller fund by just not being the next fund.
And uh to my surprise, I was sure that I lost that LP.
To my surprise, they stayed with me today.
We've got great relationship, but um, you know, even I was not listening to advice, which in hindsight was the correct advice.
So I think it's also the delivery is also important.
How have your thoughts on ownership changed over time?
The reason I asked this is because like we could have invested in 11 labs at the seed round, we would have got one percent.
We could invest in Grenola at the C round, we're gonna go one percent.
But we do what we tell LPs or which is we lead rounds and we take double digits ownership, and we are your concentrated ambassador.
How have your thoughts around ownership changed?
And what do they say today?
So, first of all, they haven't changed, and that's exactly why I don't L I don't tell LPs anything in terms of what I'm gonna do.
Because I feel that if I tell I LPs something, I would feel too committed to that specific strategy, which I may have thought it was the right strategy, but then there's a situation that requires being flexible.
So I tell LPs I only have one rule, and that rule is that I have no rules.
I think it all depends on the circumstances.
And in some circumstances, I would um in some cases I would do things that maybe an hour before the meeting, I didn't think I would do.
I'll give an example.
And by the way, which is still an ongoing company, I don't know how where it's gonna end, but you know, there's this AI company called Descartes.
Have you heard of it?
Yeah.
So I I met them a little bit over two years ago.
I met them over Zoom, and when we met, they said they're gonna start.
It was just the two founders, they didn't really have an idea, but they were exceptional.
And they told me, yeah, well, we have three million dollars committed, we're gonna close on it in the you know the next 24 hours from a bunch of really good angels.
I asked them if I wanted to invest, what can you do?
And they said, what we can do is we can cut them back 50% and give you one and a half million of the three million.
By the way, it was gonna be an uncapped safe.
I I normally don't do safes at all.
But in this case, I said, you know what, I'll do it, but I need it to be kept and and and we kept it.
Luckily, because otherwise, uh, for at least for the investors, it was lucky because uh the next round was at much at a very high valuation already.
So I ended up with you know five percent, which is way less my normal uh ownership of one uh one and a half million.
I assumed that I'd be able to increase it later.
It never happened.
The reason it never happened is because they became profitable very, very, very quickly.
So they didn't need more money.
Uh they only took Sequoia money because they wanted Sequoia.
Uh, and they later took benchmark money again because they wanted benchmark, and uh so I you know was able to maintain my ownership, but I I was never able to uh increase it.
So I deviated from my rules.
Again, I don't have rules, you know, I don't have minimum ownership, I don't have rules.
At that point, it made sense to want to do it, and I'm glad I did.
And it helps not telling LPs, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, because then you don't have to later explain why you didn't do what you told them.
Does having Sequoia on your cap table move the needle for a company?
Do you find?
I think it depends on the situation, the the partner, but they're a great firm, and they have uh great, you know.
I've so I've I've partnered with Alfred in one deal, and um, in in the case of the cart, it's uh Sean uh McGuire, and I I think they're great.
And I think there is a chance that it will make a difference.
Can I ask a weird one?
Like Hunter and Satcher at Homebrew have been incredibly successful as of you and decided not to raise more money from LPs, manage their own money, and they can be way more collaborative because they don't manage other people's money and they just invest their own.
Yeah, you could do the same.
I have done the same before.
I, you know, between Apex and doing uh what I do now, I've done what they are doing now for eight years with my own money.
Yeah, yeah, I have done the same.
Why do you not go back to it?
You could be more collaborative, you don't have to have LP management, you don't have to fundraise.
Why do what you do now?
Why would I want to be more collaborative?
Because you can get into more deals.
I don't want to get you know, I want to be the main player, I don't want to get into more deals necessarily.
I want to the ones that I do I want to make it I want them to matter and I want you know to be as meaningful as possible to be the player the main back or one of at least uh so how many companies do you want in a fund?
In the uh early funds it was less but now it's more like 15 but there is a lot of crossover between the funds.
So I'm now in fund 11 and I only have 40 companies.
So if it was exclusive it would be four companies per fund but it's not because you know the same you see the same names in in in different funds.
Can we do a quick fire run?
I'm gonna give you a series of shows that's scary that's scary okay.
No it's not scary at all.
What do people not know or see about having money that they should know and see I find that there is an increasing level of hating the successful hating the rich I see it on Twitter.
I think in Europe it's even worse but it's come to America unfortunately I think many people unfortunately generally believe that rich people are evil or that you cannot become rich without taking advantage of other people, etc.
And the reality is that rich people are as evil and as good as anyone else.
And most rich people that I know actually are looking for ways how they can use leverage their success to make the world a better place.
But you have politicians who are trying to uh you know come up with all sorts of suggestions how to, you know, basically hurt successful people for being successful.
Of course they're not gonna get cooperation from uh and and and big because they feel that they it will make them more popular among people who you know assume that if someone is rich, it's because they uh did something bad.
So I think this is I don't know.
This is I'm this is more about politics than about business, but I I think one of the strengths of the of America, they always always believed in merit and and and and success.
And let's say that I'm not a fan of the movement or the woke movement that is dragging or trying to drag America in the in the other direction.
I didn't mean to be political, actually.
I uh are you concerned by the labor displacement theories of AI?
I'm excited because I'm gonna make a lot of money, but I'm also nervous because I don't know what's gonna happen.
Are you?
I feel exactly the same as you.
Look, I think it's the most powerful transition or or force maybe in history, and just like any powerful force, there are very good reasons to be excited, and there are very good reasons to be worried, and I'm pretty sure that we're gonna be proven right on both sides.
We're gonna our words are gonna be proven right, and our excitement is gonna be proven right, also.
Do you think a lot of people respectfully, and I mean this so respectfully, with your wisdom and years of experience, say, Oh, Harry, it always looks like this, it always takes longer than you think.
It always takes.
And part of me goes, I get that, and I respect your experience and wisdom.
And part of me goes, This feels a bit different.
Yeah, which side are you on?
Yours.
Good.
By the way, yours, but but I hope I'm right.
I I I I very much hope to be proven wrong on the concern side.
Which is the most memorable first founder meeting that you've had.
Okay, you don't, okay, I'll give you one.
A relatively recent investment from a year and a half ago, um, called Sensi, which I think is on fire, is gonna do great.
I love the founder.
She's uh she's a force of nature.
And so I'm cheating a little bit because it's not the first meeting, it's second meeting.
So I I met her a year earlier, and it was the same company.
It was already already had revenues even then.
I find it interesting, I found it interesting but not interesting enough.
I had a lot of concerns.
And a year later, I almost didn't take the meeting, but I uh she told me she's in town, and and then can we have coffee?
And and I meet her, and within five minutes, I realized that number one, all my concerns from a year ago were addressed in flank collars, and number two, she's a different person.
Like she felt so confident, it felt she she she felt so confident because I met her a year earlier, and she didn't convey this confidence.
I knew it was real.
It wasn't like bullshit confidence, it was real because I also saw her less confident.
So within five minutes, the whole conversation changed, and you know, within 24 hours, by the way, she already had a couple of term sheets from big brand names, and I took the deal.
What's your biggest miss?
And how do you reflect on that?
I mentioned deal for me.
Yeah, you know, I don't have too many, which means that I'm not seeing a lot of the great.
To be honest, it's not a good thing.
I'm not proud of it because I didn't see that.
By the way, I love Alex.
This time Alex from Deal.
Now, now the I I do have misses from the Apex days where I saw something that I wanted to do, but I knew that there was no way I could get it approved.
I including Facebook, by the way, in the very early days, you know, I saw it, I could have done it, brought it to the partnership, and it was dead on arrival.
The one that I know I could have done is I try to convince the partnership to buy.
I I made the investment in Audible, was my first big home run, and then it went public and it was a great we sold uh not all the shows, but enough to make it a home run.
And then the stock price dipped, and it was obvious to me that it's temporary, and I wanted to basically take it private, and I couldn't, you know, and and I and I could have because the founder was totally on board because he didn't like being public and I couldn't get it approved.
But this is less of a miss of mine because I I tried and and and then because the the founder already decided they don't want to be public anymore, we we ended up selling it to Amazon, and now it's a huge humongous company, and uh it would have been an amazing deal if we took it private.
But but that's less of a in terms of I'm I'm sure by the way, I'm sure I did, I do have things that I missed, but not one of not one of the really great names, not an open AI or anthropic or any anyone.
Wiz is an interesting story because when I heard that I didn't know what Saf, but when I heard that he was uh leaving Microsoft, I didn't even know he was starting a company.
I asked someone to make an introduction.
I guess he checked with him and and he connected us, but he used the wrong um, but he used the Microsoft email address, which Asaf was not checking.
So I tried two or three times, didn't get an answer, and I moved on.
Now two years later, when I met him for the first time, I asked him why didn't you respond to me?
And then we worked it out back, and it turned out that he was on one hand, he still had this email, otherwise it would have bounced, and on the other hand, he wasn't checking it.
But to be honest with myself, I don't think I would have got the deal anyway, because I think uh uh he was uh you know that he had an amazing cyber investor from his previous company who also led uh you know in I think you know him, Gilly, and you know, it was his deal.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I you know, and he's not much of a just like me, he's not much of a collaborator either.
So I don't think it would have done me any, you know.
I I don't think I would have got into the deal anyways, just because, and and by the way, this is one thing that is consistent fallacy within VCs that they think that just because they saw a deal, they necessarily would have been able to do it.
No, you know, uh with all due respect to anti-portfolio, it it doesn't make sense that the same deal appears in 20 different anti-portfolio because it's not as if the 20 could have done it, you know.
So um no mine I could have done actually.
I've got three 10 billion dollar companies now, yeah.
Where I legitimately could have done that.
No, I'm I by the way, by the way, it's easier when you write a small check because and you have the value that you have, then why would people not let you in, right?
It's harder when you have to be the winner and exclude everyone else.
Uh so yes, I agree.
You could have done.
By the way, Riverside 2, Riverside 2, which is the uh it's not 10 billion yet, but it will be, I believe.
And uh dude, you sent it to me.
Do you remember this?
No, no, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I was like, dude, you're an idiot.
Zoom is gonna continue.
Like I really what are we on now?
Oh, Riverside.
Exactly.
That's pet's just keep sending things, or next time I won't ask, okay?
Um, you mentioned Mickey earlier, and we mentioned Mickey earlier.
Which investor do you most respect and admire?
And why then?
Mickey's definitely very, you know, I I don't want to say the only one, but he's one that I super respect, not just as an investor, but also as a human as a person.
What do you take from your relationship with him?
Like for me, he taught me you've never won or lost, you're only ever ahead or behind.
I always remember that.
Okay, I have to think about it.
No, look, I I've been in this business longer than he has, and actually when he started, he came, you know, also consult with me.
And so it's not it's less of some mentorship, but what I so respect about him is that he just he's so authentic and he speaks his mind, is and he has his, you know, his own way of doing things.
I have mine different, but actually I think it's harder the way he does it, because you know, it's one thing to do things your your own way when you're one person, it's another to be a leader of of uh of a group, which he is.
So it's a much better leader than I ever will be or aspire even to be.
And uh no, I think it's just a great just a great person.
Tell me, final one.
What are you most optimistic about?
I always like to end on a theme of positivity.
We mentioned like being concerned about labor displacement.
What are you most excited for, happy about?
So listen, AI is the biggest change ever in the history of humanity, I believe.
So certainly the history of technology, and it changes everything.
And whenever there's change, there's the opportunity to make things better and to build huge amount of value.
And we're, you know, and we happen to be placed at the very, very, very, you know, that it's the best time in history to be an investor.
It's the best, I'm in the Bay Area, you know, with the best ability to make these investments and be part of these things.
So I'm super bullish about I've never, never had so many companies that are crushing it and building market leaders, you know, in my portfolio that I'm super excited about.
Almost every vertical, right?
There's an opportunity to reinvent with uh with AI.
So I'm super bullish.
Now, the fact that I'm bullish about personally about my investments or about the potential investments, or even about the VC industry in general, doesn't mean that I'm not worried about the political side of things with the political unrest because of people get disenfranchised and things like that.
I think it's very, very, very risky to humanity.
So it's and as I said, it goes together.
If something is powerful, then it's gonna be very exciting and scary at the same time.
And if something is weak and not powerful, it's not gonna be scary and it's not gonna be exciting.
So it it goes hand in hand.
Orren, you've been a friend to me for many years.
I so appreciate it.
I said it at the beginning, it's so funny.
And I I don't know why.
Ten years ago I was 19 and I really had nothing.
And you were so kind to me then, you've been so kind to me since.
I I really appreciate the friendship.
So thank you for being so amazing, dude.
Thank you.
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