00:13:32 · Molly O'Shea
[00:13:32] S1: This episode is brought to you by Brex, my favorite. You become what you spend on. And I refuse to spend my time on work that shouldn't exist. Expense reports, receipt chasing, and manual closes. The companies building what's next from Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic, Granola, and Deepgram all made the same call. They all run on Brex. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that combines cards, expenses, and banking into a single stack with agentic finance built in. AI agents that handle expenses automatically, enforce policy before spend happens, and close your books in minutes. That's why Sourcery runs on Brex, so I can spend time on building and not busy work. It's time to get Brex AF! Learn more at brex.com/sorcery. That's brex.com/sourcery. Bye. From Handshake to Signature Faster, Harvey, the AI platform built for legal work, is trusted by 80% of the Am Law 100 and over 20% of the Fortune five hundred. Learn more today at harvey.ai. That's harvey.ai. AI needs more than chips. It needs power, land, and infrastructure. Zone develops next generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers, and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Zone is building the foundation of the AI frontier. Visit zonefrontier.com to learn more. That's zonefrontier.com to learn more. So Index sits in the bucket of mega funds. You guys are very large. As a fund that is also a bit under the radar, you you guys don't do many interviews, like the brand is like high quality, but it's kind of quiet. How do you think about competition? How are you competing with the likes of these highly marketed funds?
00:15:35 · Shardul Shah, Molly O'Shea
[00:15:35] S0: Thank you, I hope you're going to help us with that. The heart of Index is humble. We really put the emphasis on our founders. They deserve the spotlight. That results in a bit of discomfort with putting the spotlight on ourselves. And in the past, thirty years ago, when we were just getting started as a firm focused on Europe, a market that was underappreciated by, great investors on the West Coast, we had an underdog mentality. I think in light of the returns that we've generated and the relationships we've forged with great entrepreneurs, we're no longer an underdog. But we need to grow out of the discomfort of playing that role. And so, we've got more to do, in our own way, that's authentic. It's not at all guided by competition and how they do or don't participate. I think the core of it is to be authentic to ourselves. [00:16:33] S1: If it's not price, what is the hardest part of winning deals in this crazy market right now? [00:16:39] S0: I think it's always conviction. Can you find belief in an entrepreneur? For [00:16:45] S1: me,
00:16:45 · Molly O'Shea, Shardul Shah
[00:16:45] S1: me, [00:16:47] S0: part of that is related to the connection that I feel. Again, at Index, we're an equal partnership, so there's very little ego, there's very little credit on who led what investment, which is why, again, we're so proud of having so many different partners participate in our outcomes. It's about finding who's going to have the most connection with an entrepreneur to find belief to drive the investment. I'm really idiosyncratic. Not everyone connects with me, nor do I connect with everyone. So, finding that connection is the hardest part. Once we have it, we move fast, we move aggressively at the appropriate price, and we can win. [00:17:22] S1: What's a typical partner meeting like?
00:17:22 · Molly O'Shea, Shardul Shah
[00:17:22] S1: What's a typical partner meeting like? [00:17:25] S0: We Do you have do have partner meetings. I think you're referring to investment committees, but we have partner meetings as well. What entrepreneurs should expect is they present to our group for thirty, forty five minutes, and then we deliberate for thirty, forty five minutes, and we make a decision. Those tend to be conversational. They're highly engaging. We're trying to create an environment that demonstrates to an entrepreneur the intimacy and the relationship they'll have with our entire group. We manage those committees to have high quality but fast decision making. And so, for smaller investments, we might have a smaller quorum for larger investments, we might have a larger quorum. For example, for a million dollar investment that we'd make, it might be three people, for a $100,000,000 plus investment, it might be six plus people, and the objective is, again, to create the best experience for the entrepreneur. [00:18:25] S1: What are the biggest challenges that most of your portfolio companies are facing right now? Is it compute? Is it marketing? Is it just testing? Is it getting their product out? What are they facing the most?
00:18:25 · Molly O'Shea, Shardul Shah
[00:18:25] S1: What are the biggest challenges that most of your portfolio companies are facing right now? Is it compute? Is it marketing? Is it just testing? Is it getting their product out? What are they facing the most? [00:18:38] S0: If you don't mind, just to go back to your prior question, there's another stakeholder that I just want to highlight, because some folks that listen may want to join Index and be mentored as an investor in their careers. So, we also think about how to create a learning environment for individuals. That's actually pretty tricky when you're trying to create intimacy for a founder. And so, not everyone at Index gets to participate in an investment committee, but we make great effort to pre brief, post brief, and collect perspectives for the entire group. And that spirit of mentorship we can come back to is, again, part and parcel of why we've had so much participation as investors in outcomes. Your question that I evaded, I apologize. Could you repeat? [00:19:24] S1: What are the biggest challenges or the biggest problems that you're seeing founders face in your portfolio right now? Is it meeting the expectations of this high growth period? Is it compute? Is it access to that? Is it whether or not they want to decide to become a neo cloud or a coding agent or a personal agent and become like Instinct? Like, What do you find as the biggest problems that they're facing right now in this market?
00:19:50 · Shardul Shah, Molly O'Shea
[00:19:50] S0: Yeah, I think it's expressing oneself. So, I'll give you an example. Karin at Cartesia, Cartesia is building a voice AI business. I joined Karn's board about a year, year and a half ago. Initially, I gave him conventional wisdom, which is like, do very few things and do them with excellence. Then I got to know Karn. And Karin is an explorer. He's an adventurer, and the way for him to express himself is to explore and adventure. Initially, I told him, You shouldn't run this part of your business. In fact, you should shut it down, it's successful, but burn the boats and focus on this. He ignored me. Actually, I think my perspective lit a fire inside him. He got upset with me and wanted to prove me wrong, and he was completely right. In some ways, it was really easy with Karin to disagree, to give him perspective, but then have total belief in him to support any decision that he wanted to make. And I think when entrepreneurs get supported and seen for who they are, all of the other things take care of themselves, whether it's compute, for example, where to focus their business, who to hire when and where, or how to scale with what level of aggression into a crowded or difficult or confusing market. [00:21:13] S1: So, over thirty years, I can imagine that Index has seen a few things. And the place where founders, people, entrepreneurs looking to build businesses learn the most is through mistakes and these really challenging moments. What have been some of those defining ones that you've seen that are really good lessons over and over again?