Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:17:52 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:17:52] S0: Amazing. And then you were about to mention the second one. [00:17:55] S1: The second one, Delivery Hero. And Delivery Hero, first of all, know, being probably one of the biggest success stories to come out of Europe, but almost completely immigrant founded. The idea and the main founding team came out of a Berlin based group that was founded by a guy called Lukas Gudovsky, who was a very well known German entrepreneur. Lukas is an immigrant himself, a first generation immigrant, and brings a lot of that passion and a lot of these qualities that I talk about in the book. And then the company is managed by Niklas Ostabergo, was managed by Niklas Ostaberg, who was an immigrant from Sweden. So again, this is, you know, sort of a different kind of immigration because it's from one western nation to another, but again, the cultural flexibility, moving to Berlin, building a team of thousands of employees in Berlin, and building one of the biggest unicorns in Europe out of the city that you didn't grow in is exactly with that flexibility that I'm talking about.
00:18:47 · James Pringle
[00:18:47] S0: Yeah. It's absolutely fascinating. And I guess it points to that idea that you have that it's not just about moving across continents. It can literally just be, entering an ecosystem that isn't native to you so that you see things from a different angle, which is key that we're trying to unlock here. So very, very interesting. And Yaron, the current venture market is in a state of a very bullish market. Let's say, AI has reenergized an industry that probably was at the end of a cycle, but then got re pumped up by the exciting new AI development. ChatGeePity came out almost four years ago, so it's still relatively early. What do you think that has changed about the industry, and what do you think is the sort of opportunities going forwards from your perspective of managing a large fund?
00:19:36 · Yaron Valler, James Pringle
[00:19:36] S1: What's happening with AI is very interesting. You know, obviously, we are seeing some investments that will yield credible results, whether it's investments in inference or in LLMs or in other foundation areas. At the same time, we're seeing lots and lots of investments in utility models around AI, which are gonna be more challenging because it's more challenging to create and mold with these companies. And I think many of these investments are coming out of the sentiment that many of us investors have towards utility models, towards, you know, which was very evident in the investments that we made as an industry into software. We tried to solve real world problems that we understand, whereas if you're looking today, most of the return and most of the investment is going into the nuts and bolts of the industry. So it's interesting how this will develop. [00:20:26] S0: Yeah. And have you adjusted kind of how you look at the industry? Have you started to look into spaces that maybe were too difficult previously or that you wouldn't have explored, but now it's like everything has come slightly more into view, like robotics, space tech, etcetera. Have you kind of evolved what you're looking at or has it been just more of the same but deeper into this AI vertical?
00:20:26 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:20:26] S0: Yeah. And have you adjusted kind of how you look at the industry? Have you started to look into spaces that maybe were too difficult previously or that you wouldn't have explored, but now it's like everything has come slightly more into view, like robotics, space tech, etcetera. Have you kind of evolved what you're looking at or has it been just more of the same but deeper into this AI vertical? [00:20:51] S1: It has definitely evolved in the sense of what I'm not doing. So, you know, if I was very keen on enterprise applications, I almost stopped investing in the other. So I don't know what will happen. I don't know how the market will shut down. I am spending an inordinate amount of time, immense amount of time, really, almost every night on trying to study and understand what's happening on the nuts and bolts level and what is going to be the next advancement. Because one of the things that's very evident about NLMs is that LLMs are statistical approximation of intelligence. They're not really intelligent, right? They're mimicking intelligence with statistics, which to think about it as a human being is a little bit insulting that you can have something that is as close to intelligence that is just statistics. But the next wave, think, is going to be more than a statistical inference. And we're already starting to see it. You know, I'm invested in a few companies that are challenging this paradigm of statistical approximation of intelligence and trying to do things a bit differently. [00:21:46] S0: Is there a category name for that?
00:21:46 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:21:46] S0: Is there a category name for that? [00:21:48] S1: Interesting companies that are doing weird shit in AI. [00:21:53] S0: Frontier AI, probably. Yeah. [00:21:56] S1: Frontier AI. Yeah. You know? [00:21:58] S0: Okay. Awesome. So it's been so interesting, Yaron, to hear about not only your firsthand investment experience, but also this link to this sort of immigration as a thesis. I've really loved it, and we have only really scratched the surface, but it's clearly a super interesting topic that I've really loved discussing. We're gonna just move on to our final two questions. So we ask all of our guests these and they're just a bit of a fun way to end the show. So the first one is our future unicorn prediction. So this is a company that you may know well or have just seen out in the market that you think could go all the way. The earlier, the better, but really, it can be anyone. Who do you think could also be a unicorn?
00:21:58 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:21:58] S0: Okay. Awesome. So it's been so interesting, Yaron, to hear about not only your firsthand investment experience, but also this link to this sort of immigration as a thesis. I've really loved it, and we have only really scratched the surface, but it's clearly a super interesting topic that I've really loved discussing. We're gonna just move on to our final two questions. So we ask all of our guests these and they're just a bit of a fun way to end the show. So the first one is our future unicorn prediction. So this is a company that you may know well or have just seen out in the market that you think could go all the way. The earlier, the better, but really, it can be anyone. Who do you think could also be a unicorn? [00:22:43] S1: Well, since their name was leaked flu press first time yesterday, I think they're still quite unknown. It's actually a company in... Out of Israel, London, and Germany that is doing a brain inspired inference, semiconductors. The company is called Axonica Labs, and this is one of the ideas that I was talking, trying to mimic the way the brain behaves and move it away from inference models that are purely statistical. Really, really cool company. The founder is called the Softibul. Brain researchers out of, Imperial College, VLSI engineers out of Meta and Qualcomm. A really, really cool team. 20 employees, 12 of which are, PhDs with advanced degrees in math and brain research. Really, really cool company. [00:23:29] S0: Amazing. Any immigrants?