00:00:00 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:00:00] S0: Is Silicon Valley finally starting to feel embarrassed about their embrace of Trump? Today's guest is Yoni Rechtman, venture capitalist as Slow Ventures and one of the spiciest up and coming voices in the tech community. We try to make sense of Silicon Valley's political psychotic break, dig into Slow Ventures' weird predictions about the future, including why they feel they need to own creators outright and not just their businesses. And finally, we talk about why they're betting that a parking lot company is the next AI juggernaut. This is the Newcomer Podcast. Alright. Welcome to the Newcomer Podcast. Yoni Rechtman, great to have you here. [00:00:41] S1: Thank you so much for having me. We... I feel like But a long time coming. I feel like maybe like two years too late, frankly. [00:00:49] S0: Well, was looking through and you have a How to Work With Me and number three on it is like, give visibility, get me promotions. To be [00:00:56] S1: clear, number one on it is courtside tickets to an NBA game. I have been brought to a Nets game yet to... Not yet to a Nets game. Number two on it is bring me cool places. FJ Labs put me on a jet ski, which Wow. Is Alright. We've done a lot of business together since then. Number three, podcast. Counts for something. When the newcomer branded, you know, suite at the Knicks happens, calm [00:01:18] S0: That it will be the next level. [00:01:19] S1: Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:19 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:01:19] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:01:20] S0: Yeah. So a lot to talk about. I mean, you're... Now you were promoted to be a partner at Slow Ventures in October. One, want have you on because I was honestly thinking to myself this month, just like, who's hustling right now? Like, who is like... Feels like people aren't hungry, and I look at you and you're like, oh, you're really making it right now. Think you're someone who's making moves, thinking about what's happening in venture. So I wanted to talk to you about that and like what's going on. You know, Slow is a firm that almost annoyingly wants to differentiate itself from everybody else. So it's like, whatever everybody else thinks, we think the opposite, which Sam Lessin gets My some credit [00:02:03] S1: partner Sam is certainly the spirit animal of the firm. [00:02:05] S0: Who, you know, when I was at the information worked out of his department, spent some time with him. Cool. But before we get into all that and, like, do our classic venture stuff and I think, you know, everything you guys are in deep in the creator economy, some of the AI roll up themes, figuring out how to invest alongside of the foundation models or with all the funding flowing into the foundation models without that being your investment, we are going to talk politics first. Yeah, yeah, Which, I don't know, both comes naturally and not. So the political moment, obviously terrible, I guess. Yeah. We both agree. First, the murder of Renee Good, and then a second shooting that sort of broke our brains. Yeah. You tweeted
00:02:05 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:02:05] S0: Who, you know, when I was at the information worked out of his department, spent some time with him. Cool. But before we get into all that and, like, do our classic venture stuff and I think, you know, everything you guys are in deep in the creator economy, some of the AI roll up themes, figuring out how to invest alongside of the foundation models or with all the funding flowing into the foundation models without that being your investment, we are going to talk politics first. Yeah, yeah, Which, I don't know, both comes naturally and not. So the political moment, obviously terrible, I guess. Yeah. We both agree. First, the murder of Renee Good, and then a second shooting that sort of broke our brains. Yeah. You tweeted [00:02:49] S1: Alex Pretti. We can [00:02:50] S0: call Alex Pretti. Yes. His name [00:02:51] S1: Say his name, and we can say it was murder. [00:02:53] S0: Right. You tweeted, Trump is unleashing brown shirts in our cities and murder... Murdering Americans in the streets. The silence, complicity, enthusiasm from our industry is appalling. No tax cut or M and A approval will ever be worth it, and no amount of campus protests or annoying HR meetings could ever equal it. Yeah. Well put. I mean, I don't know
00:02:53 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:02:53] S0: Right. You tweeted, Trump is unleashing brown shirts in our cities and murder... Murdering Americans in the streets. The silence, complicity, enthusiasm from our industry is appalling. No tax cut or M and A approval will ever be worth it, and no amount of campus protests or annoying HR meetings could ever equal it. Yeah. Well put. I mean, I don't know [00:03:17] S1: if there's a question there, but, like, the reality on the ground feels very self evident. I've had these conversations with people where they'll tell me, like, well, like, you know, Alex Pretti had a gun. He shouldn't have had a gun. He's a left wing agitator. He's in this signal group. He shouldn't have. I can actually even accept all of those premises. I can accept the, like, legalistic arguments. I I don't, but I could accept all of those arguments. The fact of the matter is so many things had to go so terribly wrong for this, like, overly militarised, poorly trained, you know, poorly vetted Right. Paramilitary group to be conducting operations like that in an American city on a false premise. Like, the specifics of what happened... Right. I feel like we're being gaslit if we have to argue about it. [00:04:09] S0: Yes. It was terrible. Like, these are guys wearing masks, pinning him down. They've taken his gun. Yes. They shoot him 10 times. Many times. [00:04:17] S1: Think they fired 10 times. They hit him
00:04:17 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:04:17] S1: Think they fired 10 times. They hit him [00:04:19] S0: since then. And the guy is an ICU nurse. You know, literally a hero among us. So, yeah, so I don't think we need to get into the facts of that. Yeah. It's just I wanna talk about where Yeah. [00:04:29] S1: We're talking about the venture capital of it all. [00:04:31] S0: Exactly. Exactly. How the industry is processing it. I mean, my attitude in the newsletter was you know, when Trump got reelected was the classic, like, you know, leopards are gonna eat your face off Yeah. Sort of situation. I had Parker Conrad at Rippling, who's sort of another kindred spirit who's like, this is terrible, but I, you know, I exist in the tech industry. Nonetheless, being like, man, he said something like, I'm surrounded by a bunch of smart people who think this is gonna be great, but I... It feels like no way. It's insane. And so then I think more left wing members of tech community sort of chilled out. I mean, my retweets would occasionally flare up. But for the most part, we tried to note in the newsletter crazy moments but not go wild. What's been your approach sort of in the sort of like give Trump a year to sort of see
00:05:29 · Yoni Rechtman
[00:05:29] S1: what I this didn't give Trump a I mean, I remember finding myself at a sort of tech event among some, you know, really cool, fancy, interesting people shortly after the inauguration, and got into like a really heated argument about Doge, you know, which like that was the first thing, was gonna be the thing, and this is how we're gonna bring tech into government, and we're gonna take this like entrepreneurial mindset government. And and I... It was very clear to me that this was not a sincere effort, that this was not being undertaken with, you know, seriousness. I I do believe that there are, like, plenty of the people that volunteered for that effort and that mission, like, wanted to contribute to the government in a serious way, and, like, were civically minded about it. But it was very clear from the onset to me that, like, all of... That Trump two is gonna be much worse than Trump Any of the, you know, guardrails and constraints in Trump one were gone. My interest from, you know, shortly after the election was, for one, trying to think about what can we do at a more, like, local level. I believe that, you know, blue cities and states can either be a real, like, strong point for, you know, Democrats in the midterms and in 2028, or they can be an albatross around our necks. And so, like, when, you know, New York, California, etcetera, are, like, run well, thriving, flourishing, think it's a huge benefit to our argument that like we actually can do this, and government can be a force for good in people's lives, and What do you, and I wanna get into New York