- Duration: 23 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01KKHZPBBPSA8D3BY3V8N1K3WQ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01KKHZPBBPSA8D3BY3V8N1K3WQ)
Transcript
[Jeffrey Evans]: And then did you send the content batch? michael: I sent the content calendar over. michael: I don’t think we sent a batch yet this week, but I’ll check with Austin on that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: OK. [Jeffrey Evans]: OK. michael: We have a couple of questions we can talk through, but, um, can you top of mind for you to start with? [Jeffrey Evans]: Are these sitting in a content batch? These next ones coming up? michael: They should be. Yeah. Anything that’s scheduled went through the content, went through a content batch. [Jeffrey Evans]: Right. But I mean, no, so I can look at them one more time. michael: Um, I can see this one is in, uh, access is everything. [Jeffrey Evans]: It’s sitting in a different content batch than the other ones. michael: Yeah, I mean, the calendar is anything that is from a past batch that hasn’t gone out yet. So it’ll probably be from a couple of different ones together, because we were ahead of Uh, like it, you know, it’s positive. We have a backlog of posts that we’ve completed. [Jeffrey Evans]: We, uh, we need a picture for access is everything. michael: Okay. [Jeffrey Evans]: The access to everything is a super, it’s like, it’s the sales pitch of mantis at this point, you know? Um, uh, so. Let me just see if I can think about what we can do here. [Jeffrey Evans]: Okay, sorry, keep going. michael: No, you’re fine. I think always best to start these with whatever’s top of mind for you. So before we dive into the questions on our side, just like, Where’s your head been at? What topics have been sort of percolating on your end? What do you want to get out there, basically? [Jeffrey Evans]: I think the pace of change, you know, I mean, what am I dealing with every day? The pace of change is insane. [Jeffrey Evans]: Maybe there’s some series of posts that could be interesting about the idea that founders have to be more agile than they’ve ever had to be because the pace of change in technology and therefore the pain point for the customer is changing more rapidly than it’s ever done in history. And therefore, founders need to constantly be thinking about where things are going, because it’s definitely going a different place than you thought it was going six months ago or six weeks ago. michael: That is absolutely true. [Jeffrey Evans]: Maybe that’s a skating to where the puck is going kind of post. michael: What should founders do? To ensure they are, like if it’s moving so fast, how do founders get the right information and separate the signal from the noise? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Jeffrey Evans]: I think that’s one. That’s certainly one route to go with. Yeah. michael: Is there any, is there any more. michael: more just like off the cuff thoughts about the topic that he can [Jeffrey Evans]: About the topic of the pace of change? michael: Yeah, just the pace of change and sort of how founders need to be different, like what should they be doing differently than they were doing before, basically. [Jeffrey Evans]: They need to be learning and adjusting faster than they ever have. [Jeffrey Evans#+#michael]: What? michael: Just like minimizing the distance between, because I think like normally, you know, you build a company in the early days as the founder, you’re in the trenches with the customer. You’re, you’re, you know, they’re in your Slack, you know, you’re super close with them. You’re trying to learn their pain points. You’re trying to stay in touch with them. But as you grow, that gets harder to do because you have to people manage. Right. And so it’s like, maybe there’s something to using AI to, do less people management and let you instead spend more of your time with the customer? [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, doing more with less. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I don’t know the best way to sort of say this. I mean, I don’t know. Give sort of analogies on it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Part of it is that instead of having you go for a few years and then you pivot, you’ve got to be constantly ready to pivot. [Jeffrey Evans]: The pivot comes from learning what people actually need, learning what the pain point is now, and learning what pain point you’re solving. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, I agree. michael: I agree. Especially michael: I don’t know. Do you feel like this is going to lead to companies that are more like multi-product companies rather than single product? Getting to a unicorn valuation Is it harder to do that with a single product anymore? [Jeffrey Evans]: I don’t know the answer to that. I think it’s too early to tell. michael: OK. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: All right, let’s see. Anything else, any other top of mind post we want to make? [Jeffrey Evans]: Going back on the cost of AI, the concept of generic AI is actually interesting now. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: We’re and I don’t know the answer. It’s very scary. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Hmm. [Jeffrey Evans]: I think what would be an interesting subject is this of frontier AI is super expensive to build, but it’s becoming cheap to copy. michael: Because building products No, no, no, no. [Jeffrey Evans]: Because doing that super hard groundwork that OpenAI and Anthropic are doing is expensive. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: But just trying to now use that framework. You can use DeepSea for 10% of the cost. [Jeffrey Evans]: And it’s good enough to do almost everything, which is basically a copy. michael: It’s a generic version. Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that, because we actually had a question about that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: We were reading Thomas Tungus’s newsletter, and I think he just wrote about this. He was talking about it in the concept of drugs. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, right. He wrote about it and said, if you want, you know, Kirkland, Kirkland painkillers, the same as I broke is the same as that bill, right? michael: pay a third of the price. [Jeffrey Evans]: That’s what’s going on. Yeah, Thomas is the best, by the way. michael: Yeah, his stuff is great. It’s very interesting. [Jeffrey Evans]: So posts like that, I don’t want to use the drug one since Thomas did that. It’s the same. It’s but it’s that same concept, general concept. michael: How, What like other areas do you see this impacting? [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, it’s impacting the startups. [Jeffrey Evans]: Does that make sense or no? michael: I guess just like, again, I ask these questions for Austin. I wanna make sure that he has full context. So the more detail we can give him the better. [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, I don’t know what to move, what other areas. I mean, this is about, this is about, are you like as a firm, do you need the most cutting edge model or can you cut your costs by 90% on inference by going with a generic model that’s certainly not gonna be exactly as good, but if you’re building a product, you typically don’t need the most cutting edge, whatever the edge case is, you need the core case. And the core case you can get a lot cheaper if you go with these other companies that are kind of bullshit. michael: Yeah, I agree. I agree. So, okay. So that makes sense. We’ll see more companies move to that. Is that a risk for OpenAI and Anthropic or does Are they going to be resilient regardless? It’s a risk for sure. michael: If you want to take a really strong stance on this, and maybe you do, maybe you don’t, you let me know. But if you did, would you say like, I wouldn’t invest or I would invest or not in open AI today? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: No. [Jeffrey Evans]: I wouldn’t say that. [Jeffrey Evans]: I think OpenAI and Anthropic will become part of the Mag 7. michael: Yeah, I think they have a good shot. Okay, anything maybe, this wasn’t on our list, but just came to mind to talk about Anthropic. Obviously, they just went through the big, and they’re still going through the big issue with the Trump admin. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I just think it’s a lightning rod. [Jeffrey Evans#+#michael]: Yeah, it is. [Jeffrey Evans]: I’m not sure I want to chime in. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. michael: Let’s see. Here’s another question. michael: Okay, so anything from the portfolio in the last quarter or so that they’ve hit some milestone that you guys are sort of you have the ability to talk about and share that you’re excited about? [Jeffrey Evans]: I’m particularly excited about company-wise, you mean? michael: Well, just like any major, like particular milestone that some port co has hit recently. [Jeffrey Evans]: Now, I’m about to do a whole thing about that. We’re working on kind of a press release on all these announcements that happen in Q1. I’m going to do a post around but I gotta figure that out next week. michael: Okay, I’ll have Austin follow up about that then after it’s by the end of next week or something. Yep. [Jeffrey Evans]: Let’s see. michael: Okay, another one could be, Is there a particular deal that you or just the team as a whole passed on that you like regret? And if so, like, why did you pass on it? What did you miss? How do you think about that going forward? [Jeffrey Evans]: I don’t want, but that’s not something I want to point out out there. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I mean, sometimes you turn it into like a, you know, it’s something I know there’s, there’s a lot of people who, who push things like that. It’s, it’s not going to like make you. michael: bad or anything, but that’s okay. We don’t need to do it. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. In the midst of fundraising, I’d rather not be bringing that out as an attention point. michael: All right. How about let’s, let’s flip it then. What about a deal that everyone sort of wanted to do? A lot of other investors did put in money, but you like correctly passed on it. What did you see that they didn’t? You don’t need to name the investors or anything like that, but just let’s highlight your, your thoughtfulness. On it? [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, the only problem with that is that it shows it’s calling out the founders and that company too is failing. And then we know where the investors are. [Jeffrey Evans]: I’m just not sure. And a lot of it’s too early to know. michael: Yeah, I mean, I don’t like this route. Okay. Okay. We can go a different, different way. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. michael: Okay. How about this? How about, you know, what is the sort of pathway? Like, you know, a lot of people complain, a lot of founders complain that it’s hard to get in front of the right VCs. It’s hard to get their attention, you know, cold outbound doesn’t work, et cetera, et cetera. So like, what is the like typical investment path for a founder to get to you? Like the actual deals that you do, where do the majority of them come from [Jeffrey Evans]: I think it’s hard to get to the right VCs if you’re not connected and don’t have a path to connection. It’s just like any other network. I would tell people that if you have an idea and you think it’s strong and you can find some other people that think it might be strong as well, then you need to utilize to get to the next level of potential investors. So there’s nothing like ending a call saying, who do you think are the investors that would add the most value to this idea? And then those VCs will say, oh, this would be great with Slow Ventures. You should talk to Mantis VC, whatever the case may be. michael: They’re going to know people that do that kind of stuff. [Jeffrey Evans]: But I think it’s just a process. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Part of the skill of being a good founder is the ability to raise money. michael: Maybe that’s the thing. [Jeffrey Evans]: Your first go-to-market motion is fundraising. Oh, I like that. [Jeffrey Evans]: That’s good. [Jeffrey Evans]: And you need to figure out that process and run that process well so that you find the right partners, because if you’ve got a good idea, capital will be available. And that’s your go-to-market, and then your next go-to-market is your customers, and you need to run that even better than you ran the first one. michael: I like that a lot. There’s a lot we can riff on there. Yeah. Okay, another one. michael: Andrew Chen just had a really interesting that my buddy sent me, it was like a couple of weeks ago at this point, I guess. But he was saying how a lot of people are talking about, okay, what’s going to happen after all these AI layoffs that are coming, right? And a lot of people are saying, you know, oh, we need UBI. And then on the other side, you have people saying, oh, these people should just become entrepreneurs, right? And standard was that a lot of people will become entrepreneurs, but that’s going to create this environment where there are, there’s a lot more people building companies that are not venture scale. And there’s a lot more people building companies that maybe could be venture scale. And so the actual skill, the actual bottleneck in the ecosystem, even more than it is now, let’s say if it is, but the actual bottleneck that’s going to emerge is capital availability of capital, because there’s gonna be more people building interesting things on the same amount of capital available. So it’s like a call to LPs to put more allocate more their funds into venture. Do you have any thoughts on that? [Jeffrey Evans]: It’s pretty self-serving bullshit. [Jeffrey Evans]: I love Andrew. But I mean, more capital has gone into venture in the last few years than ever in history. michael: Yeah. I mean, shit, you know, OpenAI just raised $110 billion round. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yep. [Jeffrey Evans]: And by the way, if you're an entrepreneur building, like if you're building more of a lifestyle business, like I think I can build a 20 30 or $50 company, it’s not venture backable, then that needs the appropriate capital source. [Jeffrey Evans]: I don’t know who that is. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I would run the flip and say, trying to be capital efficient actually matters more than ever now. michael: Interesting. [Jeffrey Evans]: So needs to be more capital because there’s more companies to back because there’s going to be more failures is how I read that. I don’t agree with that. michael: We’ll use that lightly. We won’t say that it’s self-serving bullshit because we like Andrew too. I love Andrew. [Jeffrey Evans]: I love Andrew. He’s a dear friend. I just meant like, you know, I don’t know, some of May be like, we need more capital in the ecosystem or deals to do. [Jeffrey Evans#+#michael]: That’s a fair point. OK. OK, then last one for today. michael: Any particular time first couple of funds where you’ve had a portcode sort of go through, you know, difficult period or a bad moment or something, um, where you and the team sort of help them navigate that as much as you can share, like, what did you guys do? And, you know, how did you approach that with the founder. [Jeffrey Evans]: Here’s the thing. We do a lot to help people, but when we talk about things that are really difficult, especially at the stages that we’re investing in, typically when things are difficult for these companies, they don’t make it. michael: Yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: And I’ve always said that your VCs are not going to take an idea and a company that’s not working and make it work. It’s just not real. michael: If it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work. [Jeffrey Evans]: So the question becomes, where has there been strategy decisions or pivots that are interesting? And I’d have to think if there were any really good stories about that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: And companies would be willing to talk about them. michael: Cool. I don’t know. [Jeffrey Evans]: There’s not one in particular that kind of stands out to me. [Jeffrey Evans]: Most of the best companies are the best companies. michael: Yeah. I mean, what do you even tell a founder in that scenario, you know? [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, I mean, all the time we tell them, you know, like right now you need to control your burn. You need to figure out you need to figure out product market fit, period. michael: it. [Jeffrey Evans]: And, you know, you can’t, you shouldn’t be pushing through on something if you don’t have PMF. So if you’re, you know, if your CAC is more than your, you know, your ACV, you’re done. And so why is that? Well, you know, how do you get your turn down? What are you learning? michael: Yeah, I wrote a very small, it was like one or two K angel check a while ago into this one company that I won’t name. They’re still And I get the investor updates every month and I’ve just seen it for the last six months. Six months ago, they had like 900K left and they’re burning 120, 130K a month and fit, there’s no growth, there’s no monetization. And so now they have like two months of capital left and the investor update even says like our goal is to raise more than we burn, which is crazy. That’s like a very stressful scenario to be in. [Jeffrey Evans]: Our goal is to what? michael: Raise more than they burn. [Jeffrey Evans]: Oh, okay. michael: Rather than cut burn like that’s insanity. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, you better have a pretty good argument for that. Yeah. michael: Cool. Okay. Well, that’s all we had for today. michael: We’ll take these and we’ll get to work. I’ll have Austin follow up on the major milestone thing after next week. michael: Anything else on your side? No, man. [Jeffrey Evans]: Keeping it going. It’s working well. All right, brother. michael: Good to see you.