Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Bennett Siegel, Jack Altman, Kevin Hartz
[00:00:00] S1: I think that’s exactly true. We just haven’t hit the ChatGPT moment for robotics. AI for the physical world should be as large, if not larger, than what we’ve seen for the knowledge world. The challenge is, right now, we haven’t seen much in the way of commercial applications. We don’t care, we’re seed investors. We’re backing robotics companies, we’re backing companies working on sensors and edge AI. But we do think about the number of robotics companies that have raised at huge valuations with very little commercial promise. So we think a lot of this is still to come. [00:00:00] S0: Are there types of companies that you are excited about but, given your fund size, you just can’t engage in? I’m thinking of neolabs, or heavy robotics projects, or things like that that don’t start with a $5-10 million seed round. [00:00:00] S2: Alas, those are tough to see and have them go by us. But with that said, we’ve been able to invest in a lot of scrappy, verticalized robots. We’re in a company, Watney Robotics. It’s data center cabling and robotics. That is a very specific task that’s very high value, and it differs from going after a full horizontal market.
· Kevin Hartz, Bennett Siegel, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: Alas, those are tough to see and have them go by us. But with that said, we’ve been able to invest in a lot of scrappy, verticalized robots. We’re in a company, Watney Robotics. It’s data center cabling and robotics. That is a very specific task that’s very high value, and it differs from going after a full horizontal market. [00:00:00] S1: Or we backed a research team out of Stanford called Simile, which is focused on market research, which went on to raise a hundred million after the seed round. At the time they only needed a little bit of money to prove out and commercialize their research. Those are the rare exceptions as you know. The normal case is they skip that little seed round, despite how hard we try to convince them of the value of it, and they raise $10M, $50M, $100M dollars. By the way, that is where a lot of the multi-stage dollars are going at seed. We can’t really do those rounds. [00:00:00] S0: Makes sense. So you guys have this new fund now. Any changes coming for A* overall, or is it just more of the same. Bigger, better, faster?
· Jack Altman, Bennett Siegel, Kevin Hartz
[00:00:00] S0: Makes sense. So you guys have this new fund now. Any changes coming for A* overall, or is it just more of the same. Bigger, better, faster? [00:00:00] S1: I think it’s more of the same. As you know, there’s inflation in round size. There’s a larger volume of founders flocking to start companies than ever. I think we just need to be playing the game on the field. We need to be meeting founders where they are, moving quickly, and leading seed rounds, and hopefully we can be a bigger and better partner over time as our fund size has grown modestly. We started with a $300 million fund five years ago. Our new fund is not that much larger. We look to a lot of our peers who’ve stayed focused, who’ve become experts at their craft. That’s what we look to emulate, and what we’ll continue to do. [00:00:00] S2: We can also extend out. We’ve shown to be very patient, and we’re not just trying to put capital to work. We wait patiently for those right companies, even if it takes a little longer to deploy. [00:00:00] S0: You guys are moving into this building, right? [00:00:00] S2: We are. [00:00:00] S1: We want our founders to keep moving up the floors when they raise their future rounds. [00:00:00] S0: Fund them, send ‘em over here. It’s beautiful. [00:00:00] S2: We could put in a fire pole. [00:00:00] S0: I love that. I think we dig a little hole somewhere. I don’t know if you’re above or below. [00:00:00] S2: Of course below. It’s a seed thing. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, exactly. All right, thank you guys. This is super fun. I appreciate you both making time for it.
· Jack Altman, Kevin Hartz, Bennett Siegel
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah, exactly. All right, thank you guys. This is super fun. I appreciate you both making time for it. [00:00:00] S2: Thank you, Jack. [00:00:00] S1: Thank you.