00:55:32 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:55:32] S0: And then my time is not well spent there. Yeah. You know, it's like I have a lot, a long list of [00:55:36] S1: things that And so by the way, I that would be on the list of things where it's like, well, as like a creator CEO, my time is too constrained. I just like, don't really have the budget for this. It's kind of like highly exploratory and it's risky. There's maybe a lot of upside to it, but it's hard for me to underwrite with like, you know, a relatively fixed pool today. I could just basically pay the person out of my own pocket. That's the case where we come in with the creator fund and say like, hey, show us those 10 experiments that you wanna run, and we'll give you the money to run all of them, and like something will work as long as we're like disciplined about choosing and prioritising those experiments, and we find people who are entrepreneurial and ambitious and aspirational enough to actually do them and have the execution ability to pursue them doggedly, that's the business. [00:56:24] S0: And have you stuck to this idea that your investment really needs to be in the person rather than the company? Or you're just worried people will run away from the company, or why?
00:56:24 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:56:24] S0: And have you stuck to this idea that your investment really needs to be in the person rather than the company? Or you're just worried people will run away from the company, or why? [00:56:34] S1: Well, it's because the whole sort of thesis undergirding it is that the distribution is what differentiates it, and you know, like we want to bet on a person to run all of those experiments. I mean MrBeast is a good example of like where this kind of doesn't work, where like Beastburgers didn't work. Beastburgers, like if you would have invested in Beastburgers you would have lost all your money, even though you totally made the right, you know like, this by the way goes back to like weird take on important story. You're like, hey I think this influencer has like a huge amount of reach, gonna like build this really awesome thing. You'd be completely right on a directional basis, and completely wrong about the vector of approach. [00:57:13] S0: Like, he doesn't Keep them all within the same conversation. He might not, [00:57:17] S1: He he's the risk I now does, there's BeastCo. [00:57:21] S0: He run like Jeffrey Hausenbold from Softbank to be a top executive. [00:57:25] S1: If you say so. Yeah. [00:57:28] S0: Chamath, I think, is a big investment. [00:57:30] S1: I would believe, I mean look, we have our issues with MrBeast specifically, like we're more focused on kind of like topic. [00:57:36] S0: Wait, you have your issues or?
00:57:36 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:57:36] S0: Wait, you have your issues or? [00:57:37] S1: Yeah, I mean it's like, challenge that we see with MrBeast is like how much does he have actually like sort of proprietary owned audience, and how much is what he's doing basically like kind of running on a treadmill to like hack an algorithm repeatedly, and like if he stopped doing that how quickly would his audience [00:57:54] S0: go It's media, know, you're on these because your last story, you have to, yeah, consistently. So you don't feel that way about your woodworker, that he still needs to have great woodworking content? He [00:58:05] S1: definitely needs good woodworking content, but we know why people, it's not like for instance stunt based, it's not celebrity. So the answer not like you always need to one up the last thing that you did. That's like a really hard place to get into, and like probably burns out over time. I don't think you grow up with people that way, and then that means you have like a shorter shelf life. [00:58:25] S0: Alright, Yoni, last question. Who is hustling right now? When you look out, when you think of, who's your short list of startup founders that you think they are hungry, that want to win right now? [00:58:39] S1: Start, of startup founders? [00:58:40] S0: Yeah, founders or other people in venture, but startup founders [00:58:43] S1: Yeah, I mean, the startup founders are all of my companies that Yeah, haven't yet announced obviously. Those are the people
00:58:43 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:58:43] S1: Yeah, I mean, the startup founders are all of my companies that Yeah, haven't yet announced obviously. Those are the people [00:58:50] S0: that It are feels like a quieter time for me. Or I don't know if it's like the foundation model's looming looming so so large, large, it just doesn't doesn't feel, like the the new new It just doesn't doesn't feels feel feel like a it's time for if I you spend [00:59:10] S1: time with people who are on one side of the hill. Right. Like the people [00:59:14] S0: who People wanna read about names [00:59:16] S1: that Yes, they've for sure. As a result [00:59:18] S0: They think they wanna read about people they haven't heard of. Yeah. And
00:59:18 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:59:18] S0: They think they wanna read about people they haven't heard of. Yeah. And [00:59:21] S1: the reality is, you spend time at the earliest stages, when companies don't exist yet, when it's just people, when they're in the early phases of building, when they've launched, energy right now is unbelievable. Like for all the posturing about like 996 and blah blah blah, the real people doing the real work, they just fucking show up and do it, and they're not gonna like talk about how hard they're working because they're too busy working. The like level of energy and excitement, I mean we have this company that just announced its eGround in New York couple a weeks ago called Phoebe, which is like a basically building like a network of agents for healthcare labour, and the CEO Justin is like unbelievable, and his team is just like... The energy in the office is insane. They're like they're like very technical, very focused, very heads down, and they're just like winning every day. [01:00:17] S0: They're like, these are the last five years to make... Well, before they're
01:00:17 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[01:00:17] S0: They're like, these are the last five years to make... Well, before they're [01:00:20] S1: eight.... Underclass. Yeah. Like, I think if you... Honestly, I I would just really encourage you to try and spend time around some of the, like, less polished, more just, like, in the thick of it. Basically, when people go from being... You often meet people when they've gone from being founders to being CEOs, and I think if you spend more time around people who are just founders, you will completely reverse course on this idea that like, things are quiet, or people aren't hustling, or there's no energy. Like, the amount of energy within our early stage portfolio is unbelievable when I'm around New York and the founders that I meet who are like, I mean, it's like they're like killing themselves with happiness, you know, because they're so excited about what they're working on. It's like, it's a very, exciting time that feels really different than when I started my career, and people had a level of, like, maybe caution about entrepreneurship, and I can't even imagine what that felt like compared to ten years before that. But like, no, I kind of reject the premise of the question. I think there's lot of people in venture who are lazy for sure, but like Right. [01:01:28] S0: Yoni, thank you for staying on principle, thanks for talking politics, playing pundit next time, I guess, courtside. [01:01:33] S1: Yeah. Alright. Next time courtside.