02:03:38 · Wayne Ting, John Coogan, Nick Grossman
[02:03:38] S9: I want anyone. [02:03:40] S1: Our next guest is in the waiting room. We have Nick Grossman from USV. He's a general partner, and he's here to break down the rebel alliance thesis. [02:03:50] S7: What's up, guys? [02:03:51] S1: How you doing? [02:03:52] S7: I'm doing great. How are you? [02:03:53] S1: So you're fighting against the Death Star. What you first introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your general investing thesis, and then break down the Rebel Alliance thesis. [02:04:03] S7: Yeah. You got it. It's great to be here. [02:04:05] S1: Yeah. Great to you. [02:04:06] S7: I'm Nick. I'm a partner at Union Square Ventures. I've been at USC for about fifteen years. And we've over that time It's my been investing overnight success. Bingo. Been investing up and down the stack and across, you know, moments in time when different sort of layers of technology have have emerged and, you know, open the door to lots of new stuff. And it's I think if there's one thing that's consistent about the way we look at the world, it's like every sort of wave of technology is either kind of expansive or consolidating, and those moments where it starts to feel expansive are just incredible. Right? So back in our history, the first one was like Web two. [02:04:50] S1: Yep. [02:04:50] S7: You know, you had built the the core Internet, and now you could build anything on top of it. The other one, you know, for us, it was, you know, Twitter was probably, like, the big investment from that era. If you look at, like, the crypto era
02:04:50 · Nick Grossman, John Coogan
[02:04:50] S7: You know, you had built the the core Internet, and now you could build anything on top of it. The other one, you know, for us, it was, you know, Twitter was probably, like, the big investment from that era. If you look at, like, the crypto era [02:05:02] S1: Wasn't USB also in, like, Tumblr and Etsy and, a like, bunch of other companies from that era? It was a great portfolio.
02:05:02 · John Coogan, Nick Grossman, Jordi Hays
[02:05:02] S1: Wasn't USB also in, like, Tumblr and Etsy and, a like, bunch of other companies from that era? It was a great portfolio. [02:05:08] S7: Yeah. That was back so the firm was founded in 2004 by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, and the thesis back then was there's been this epic infrastructure build Yeah. In the, you know, fiber and and switches and routers. A first pass at building, you know, mainstream consumer apps, but, like, you know, a big blow up with the .com, you know, pop. And the thesis in 2003, which was pretty contrarian, was there's going to be a big opportunity at the applications layer. Mhmm. And there's going to be a moment, you know, it's time to build, basically. Mhmm. And that was pretty you know, it wasn't the most popular view back then. I think it created an opening to make some really great investments in a lot of early, you know, application layer things. So we did Twitter, Tumblr, Etsy, SoundCloud. You know, Indeed, you know, a whole bunch from that era, and it was all about, you know, the the tools are on the ground, so what can we build with them? And I think those moments when the tools are on the ground, and it's time for people to build with them, and anybody can build anything in any direction, I think those are the moments that have always felt the most exciting to us and that we've been looking for, you know, for twenty some odd years. [02:06:13] S0: Pros and cons of thesis driven investing. Most, I would say, investors now are humble enough to be like, I just try to find the best possible founder
02:06:13 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Mark Pincus
[02:06:13] S0: Pros and cons of thesis driven investing. Most, I would say, investors now are humble enough to be like, I just try to find the best possible founder [02:06:24] S1: The most give him common thesis I hear is is this one buy low sell high. Yeah. [02:06:28] S0: That's also a good But I just feel like, you know, you you guys have done so well like trying to really crystallize your vision of the future. Yeah. And the opportunity in the present and then investing and like actually being like, we know there's a company that should be built here and then taking the time to figure out what the right team is to go and attack that opportunity. But the I'm sure there's like the the other side of it was like sometimes you just like get a little high on your own supply and, you know, back back back an opportunity that that doesn't exist and you kind of forced it because you wanted it to exist. But so so every good strategy has its downsides, but I'm curious. [02:07:06] S6: Yeah. Would say the the
02:07:06 · Mark Pincus, Nick Grossman, John Coogan
[02:07:06] S6: Yeah. Would say the the [02:07:07] S7: two potential downsides of sort of thesis driven are you're wrong. Like, that's the worst one. You're just like, something's gonna happen and it doesn't. That's happened to us. Don't get me wrong. And then the second flavor is like right idea, wrong team, or you know, right idea too early, you know, or whatever. And like we've had our share of those too, and so I think, you know, we're a small fund. We don't need to play a coverage game. We don't need to play momentum. That's just not how we've operated. And so we're sort of set up to be able to pick our moments and take shots and, you know, have a point of view about what we think is gonna happen. And and hopefully, if we're right, we're contrarian and right, you know, and we've we've been that way a bunch of times. And hopefully, if we're wrong, you know, we limit we limit the damage Yeah. On the losses. Yeah. [02:07:54] S1: So take us through the Rebel Alliance. Who's in the alliance? Who's out of the alliance? Break it all down for us.
02:07:54 · John Coogan, Nick Grossman
[02:07:54] S1: So take us through the Rebel Alliance. Who's in the alliance? Who's out of the alliance? Break it all down for us. [02:08:00] S7: Yeah. So the Rebel Alliance, we just put this up in the USV blog last week. It's an idea that's been cooking for some time for us. And it's basically the idea that if you think about AI and now agentic AI Mhmm. The opportunity is so much bigger than any one company. And that there is a a massive ecosystem exploding around these incredible magic core models, and there are layers and components and modules, and we're just beginning to start to see all of those get built out at an ever increasing rate, especially now that model capability is so good. [02:08:34] S1: Yeah.