How I Invest with David Weisburd
00:15:18 · David Weisburd, Jack Selby
[00:15:18] S0: And Mark Andreessen from University of [00:15:20] S1: The list goes on and on and on. Again, there are tons and tons of world class universities in these noncoastal places, but if there was more capital there, like one of my... I I've been an investor in Cleveland, for example. I won't mention his name, but he's very involved in the community. So the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Foundation, Case Western is his alma mater, and so my pitch to him and said, okay, if you participate as an LP in my fund, what percentage of your beloved alma mater, Case Western, what percentage of that graduating class can we keep in Cleveland? I'm not saying it's a 100%, but it's definitely not 0%. [00:15:50] S0: You're trying to prove the counterfactual, which is if there's a lot of brain drain going on in the area, what would happen if [00:15:56] S1: you were problem because otherwise, we can go back and forth, and it becomes a circular discussion. It's very difficult to disprove, which I would concede. So I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I guarantee you the number is not zero in terms of the number of the Case Western graduating class that I could keep in Cleveland if there's more venture capital in Cleveland.
00:16:10 · David Weisburd
[00:16:10] S0: I'll give you a case study. So very first company. I was, inadvertently, did the entire Pre round before Pre Seed, exists, and, actually, they were they were backed by Founders Fund, for for their for their seed round. And, it was two guys, John Ramey and Zach Hassanein. I connected the two cofounders. They're both from Indiana. One went to Indiana University. One went to Purdue University. Yep. And they tried to raise money in Indiana. They tried to move... Raise money in Chicago. And then they moved to San Francisco out of desperation, to Burlingame, actually, to to the Peninsula. And then they raised from, you know, the best of the best, Founders Fund, TFJ, Brad Feld, all all these people. So this is a very specific case study where they clearly were talented, clearly were ambitious, but they couldn't raise in their homegrown talent. Perhaps a much better example of that is Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to stay in Boston. He actually had an affinity towards Boston. He went to Harvard. And venture capitalists in Boston, which Peter Thiel has opined on, for whatever reason, would not fund them, and he had to move to to Palo Alto and and the rest is history, as I say. There are quite few of counterfactuals of what would happen if those entrepreneurs had stayed.
00:17:18 · Jack Selby, David Weisburd
[00:17:18] S1: Yep. I mean, your example of the entrepreneurs that had to move out to Burlingame is is spot on, and I see that all the time. And this goes back to my point earlier that it's a it's a... It's not a human capital network effect. It's a financial network effect that is drawing. It is the magnet that is bringing all these people to Silicon Valley. [00:17:33] S0: So this strategy has been around in different forms, for probably twelve, thirteen years, I think. Originally, Steve Case from Rise of the Rest, I believe, 2014, tried to solve this problem. What did he get wrong? [00:17:48] S1: So I don't wanna speak negatively about anyone. Steve's a friend. He's a... An... Another luminary fellow. [00:17:54] S0: What was the... What was wrong with the concept as it was?
00:17:54 · David Weisburd, Jack Selby
[00:17:54] S0: What was the... What was wrong with the concept as it was? [00:17:57] S1: What I would have done differently is I think having connectivity back to Silicon Valley is really important. And so to put it differently, if you're trying to operate on an island in one of these noncoastal places without that connectivity, I think it makes the probability of success really, really low, if not impossible. So having that bridge... And I'm talking my own book, but I believe this to be true, and this is why we have the strategy the way that we do. You have to have that connectivity. It's like I sit down with an entrepreneur, and I give them a blank piece of paper that is effectively like an a la carte menu. And I'm like, here are the different options that I can bring to bear for you to help you with your company. You can choose out however many items you like off the a la carte menu. You can choose zero. Choose your own adventure, but I wanna help you with your business, and oftentimes, it would require bridging back to Silicon Valley. And I think in the early days of a lot of the noncoastal venture capital op... Activities, that bridge was not sufficiently established. [00:18:49] S0: Empirically, in terms of valuations, do you have any data in terms of different geographies within The United States and and what the valuations are today?
00:18:49 · David Weisburd, Jack Selby
[00:18:49] S0: Empirically, in terms of valuations, do you have any data in terms of different geographies within The United States and and what the valuations are today? [00:18:58] S1: What we saw with our first fund is that we could usually invest, at about between... Let's see. About one tenth of the average series a valuation of what you would see in Silicon Valley. One tenth. One tenth. Yes. So, yeah, essentially, 10¢ on the dollar. [00:19:15] S0: And how does that translate into portfolio strategy and and how you think about portfolio construction? Construction?
00:19:21 · Jack Selby
[00:19:21] S1: So this is the core of it, and so I don't care about what what type of investing you do, but entry price matters. And if you can invest at 10¢ on the dollar versus what's going on in Powell today, that makes a huge difference versus, if you're investing in thinking machines in a pre series a round at a $14,000,000,000 valuation, how does that work? How does that math work? Is thinking machines going to be the next SpaceX? I don't know. Maybe. But it has to be for the venture math to work. Full stop. And people don't talk about this. So my math is very, very, very different because my entry point is so much less expensive. I can usually buy between 1020% equity in a noncoastal series a deal for an average ticket of $3,000,000. Those are the brass tacks. I think that is something I can do with relatively good probability compared to Silicon Valley, BC today, and very importantly, because I was lucky enough to be a series a investor in SpaceX, which by the way was almost nineteen years ago. So so much of Silicon Valley, the pitch today is like, I'm gonna go find you the next Elon Musk at age 24. That is a terrible pitch because the probability of that is basically zero. Peter can find the next Elon. Marc Andreessen can go find the next Elon, but the handful of folks that can do that in terms of true access is very, very, very limited. That's one. Two, you pair that with an outrageously long extended duration. That's a poor parent. So what I think I can do is I have better odds because my minimum bar that I need to cross, that $500,000,000 threshold, is easier. It's more realistic, and importantly, I can get there more quickly than telling you I'm gonna find you the next Elon, and by the way, that's gonna take two two decades from a gestation perspective.