YouSaid · the spoken record

Yuli O'Donnell

lines on the record: 84
first: 2025-09-04
most recent: 2025-09-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I'm not really counting like sometimes it was like, oh, this series Anvestor did a 50K check in the YC round or something. I mean, like, actually took half the round or more. So most of them still were seed only or like seed funds dominated the early round. And then they went to multistage very quickly after that. So my experience, like I think there's a subset of seed where I don't know if I'd say multistage funds won, but they have like a very strong advantage, right? Where if it is a founder that previously built a business that exited for 100 million and they're like in the space that they know super well, that's going to get done at like 40 instead of 20 or 80 instead of 20 post. And chances are it's going to be a multi-stage and not like a boutique seed firm. So I think for that segment, like multi-stage hasn't won, but I think it's probably the predominant, like the majority of the time they have a big leg up. I think for the other ones where it's less obvious, it tends to be much more seed dominated or seed fund dominant.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, I have looked at, I haven't rigorously analyzed the $10 billion, $50 billion outcomes for over the course of SUSE, I think we've invested in like 10 or 12 unicorns roughly. Maybe like a third of those or a quarter of those had Series A”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was definitely something I was thinking about, which is, I think, if every check you write has to be at least 100 million, I think it's actually very hard to do non-consensus. Because there's not a lot of companies that hit a stage where you'd invest 100 million, but it's still not clear if it's a good company or not. And I think the earlier you go, if it's like $30 million checks, 10, 5, 1, I think you get more and more of a category. We're like, you have the option and you could do their one and assuming you have access to the consensus opportunities.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, as we go through this conversation, it does strike me that I think a lot of this is honestly just we have a bit different perspectives. I have to deploy a lot more money than you do, right? Like I'm a series A investor who needs to basically cap out 30 to 40 million in order to have a significant position. And so I may have to be a bit more concerned about this than you do at the early stage. And I'm sure Stage does call her this conversation quite a bit. Everything you're saying is totally sensible to me, so I don't think there's any disagreement.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that sounds fair. I definitely agree with not looking for a price arbitrage because I will say for me personally, my best investments have been ones on average that took a while to raise their seed round. A lot of people didn't get or didn't like it. But on the flip side, some of the biggest misses are also the ones where it's like, oh, we liked everything except the price. And like we thought it should be up 10 and some, you know, some big fun gave him a term sheet at 20 and we passed. And then now it's a $10 billion company. So maybe that was like maybe that was not a good pass.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the returns from companies that were on average high priced or not. And I think these two numbers will give us a sense to whether the market is actually pretty smart about the value and the price. You should not look for price arbitrage if you're looking for returns. Does that sound fair”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And more money goes into VC and we invest in companies. And as And I think VCZ is trying to straddle sort of LP incentives, founder incentives, their own incentives. And there is some overlap and there's magic there, but it's also just worth acknowledging that not every individual person is aligned and that's okay. I also do still very much believe in the barbell that there will be these big massive funds that continue to win and invest in compound value and also these smaller focus concentrated expertiques who absolutely crush it. And we all work together.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is how we solve cancer, man. More money goes into VC and we invest in companies, and as opposed to investing in dying companies' ability to retain their place 100%. Like all the finance needs to change.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do want to build Martino on your point because I think it's so interesting just to comment on how not everyone's incentives are totally aligned here, especially between sort of what's good for the individual and what's good for the ecosystem. And so in the sense that, yeah, if you're an individual VC, you don't want more capital or if you're a founder, you don't want more founders in your space. But to your point, like competition is, and so people were saying competition is bad. You don't want competition, but competition is what fuels incredible product. It's like the Darwinian process. Like this is how, you know, we get a bigger startup outcomes startup ecosystem having more value, incredible products for customers and users.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is so critical. I'm glad you brought it out. I really believe the best companies themselves are non-consensus to customers. I just think that the investing market is different than that. They kind of understand that. And therefore, a comment on investors being consensus is very different than a product or being consensus. Does that make sense? Investor sentiment, I think, is actually much smarter than people think. Like, I think the adage is VCs are dumb. You know, they just chase trends and all of that is true. But the reality is, is as a group, we have identified a cohort of companies that are quite disruptive and invested in them and priced them. And the companies themselves tend to be actually quite non-consensus to the actual consumer or to the market.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so maybe on that front, I think that's a really interesting perspective. I feel like a lot of the, more from a company perspective than an investor perspective, I feel like a lot of the most disruptive products were maybe non-consensus at the time. Where you start with no buttons on the iPhone, or you got like Uber instead of taxi, it's a stranger driving. And those are the ones where I think if you were like, I'm going to build a taxi company, but it's like 20% more efficient, like probably can be a big business, but not quite the same level of disruption and growth as you take a big bet and you might very high chance you're wrong, but if you're right, like you're going to be, you know, in a really good position.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This negative force on progress and innovation. And I don't want to be too dramatic about it, but I just feel like I'll bet if you draw a dollar at random that gets invested, 90 cents of that dollar goes into keeping incumbents alive and or predictability. Ventra as an asset class getting more efficient. And I love the idea of more money going into it because the entire thesis is gross. You never invest, I don't. I mean, I'm sure you don't. I never invest on downside loss. I don't care, right? You only invest on upside. And so to me, more dollars going into venture is only a positive for humanity. And again, I don't mean to sound too grandiose, but I do feel it's just a net positive.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean it. I'll get a little bit philosophical on this, but like the thing that I've always That's always bugged me about PE investing and public market investing is it just doesn't care about productivity really. I mean, it does to some degree, but I just like, you know, if you're in a large public company like I was, you realize that the public markets really care about predictability over innovation for sure. I mean, and so innovation has stifled so much. And in fact, it kind of... Kind of causes large companies to protect themselves through a kind of incumbency and monopolistic practices and everything else just because they're not allowed to be aggressive on growth, right? So I feel like it's almost”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think I saw the same quote. Probably somewhere in between, I don't think Venture is dead. I think it gets a lot more fun if it's purely consensus. The reason is I think in a purely consensus world, like it all just comes down to the cost of capital, right? And so if my OPs want 5x and yours want 2x, you could pay two and a half times higher prices. And the company's not better. It's just like, oh, like your cost of capital is lower. So you're going to win all the time. But also it's like we all see the same value. Everyone sees the same value of just like who wants the smallest return that gets in business? And that just feels less exciting to me.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not competitive. And I think another way of framing that, it's not perfect is the company working or is the company not working at the point of investment? And let me add some nuance to it, which is if something is working, then it's okay. It's like, you know, what is the price and what is sort of the potential return multiple and how does that work with your threshold, et cetera, there's some things that are competitive and not working, but have an incredible founder or people, you know, whatever it's early enough that people believe the vision. And so you're still paying that price based on what you think. And then there's lots of things that are not working or are not obviously working. But we've chosen to do less, I believe, consumer things that are pre-tracted. It's basically like, do you want to invest in things out of traction or no traction? And there's failure modes with both, but it's not every”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to make a few related points here. One is, I remember someone tweeted Martine's tweet and said, this is a sign that the asset class is dead or the idea of a more efficient market. And I think what that really means is more that individual's firm is, if an individual firm can't compete and win deals in an efficient market, they're going to lose. And so my second point, which is I think there's a lot of venture capitalist identity is tied in being non-consensus, in being able to see things that others can't see because it's hard to win against all these other much bigger, much more well-funded players. And for that reason, I less want to use the terms consensus and non-consensus because it's so core to people's identity and more want to use the term like either it's a hot round or it's not a hot round. It was competitive round or”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I will say there's like multiple ways to play it, right? Which is. If the outcomes are 10x bigger, you can have a 10x bigger fun and basically run the same playbook, keep the same ownership and like a big outcome still returns the same amount of the fund. You could also do more investments at like, you know, a fraction of the ownership and then each investment maybe moves the needle less, but you have a higher chance of hitting like, you know, this pipe of the year, the Uber of the year.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And on the face of it, that would argue for an order of magnitude higher fund size. If you want to play the strategy of being in the winner, I mean, there's clearly multiple strategies. But if you want to, again, I don't know, for me, the key question, I don't know the answer. I want to run the numbers is if you take a dollar of earnings, like a dollar of earnings for a venture capitalist, did that come from a company that raised at high prices or not? And I would guess the answer is yes, just because the winners are so outsized.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, 20 billion plus there's a lot, and that used to be so, and enterprise software, it used to be an adage that nobody ever broke, you know, 20 billion or 10 billion, right? And Paul Alta Networks was at 15, and we were like, this is crazy. And now there's so many of them that have. And so maybe with 100 billion, you're right, but in the world that I live in, the amount of like decans, probably in order of magnitude more than what it was 10 years ago.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you need the fun size to run that strategy. This is why I think a lot of this comes back to fun size. I mean, even in the Andrewson portfolio, I was just thinking off the top of my head, we have three companies that are at the four companies at the $100 billion mark, right? I mean, there's Stripe, Databricks, Coinbase, OpenAI. And so they're not that rare.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that's, I mean, I generally agree, right? Like, if you're in the best company of the year, I don't think ownership matters that much. I don't think the price matters that much. If it's going to be the best company like 10 years forward, I guess to your earlier point where if venture funds had more money, they'd like do higher valuations. I mean, I mean, it sounds like then you could do the higher valuation today too, though, right? Because you could just be like, hey, if we just want to get in this one, we'll pay twice the price and get half the ownership or something, right?”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also just kind of suggests purely by the numbers that the most important thing is just being in one of those and not if you can the most important thing is being in one of those independent of price. I mean that's the hired bit.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's just because companies stay private longer, too. But I think the actual number of $100 billion plus companies in the last 20 years is pretty small. I don't know the exact number, but I bet it's like 10 or 15 or maybe 20 or something. So it's like you're really betting you can get like the one every year or two that gets there. If you're, you know, let's say you're doing a series A at like a billion posts or something, right? And you want 100x, even ignoring dilution.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we did think a few years ago that there'd be a great contraction in the asset class. That 2021 was a blip and that it would sort of right size back to where it used to be. And it doesn't seem to... More capital is just going to keep entering.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And put it differently lately, Leo. It's like a seed fund may say, Oh, I'm not going to invest in something at 50 post or 100 posts because I don't think there's a thousand X potential. I don't think Anthropic is going to be $100 billion company or OpenAI is going to be a $100 billion company or whatever it is. But it turns out it is. What we used to think.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Venture capital has been a top returning asset class, and you can look at individual investments. If you just take the top 10 percentile of funds, you know, they return so much money. So there is an argument that even with these high prices, they're still underpriced.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It just could be that this is just the market being efficient. Actually, the reason that more money is going into this and the funds are getting larger is because the opportunity set is larger and this is just a market working its way out. But Leo, you're very quiet. This is actually pretty controversial statement. So I want to make sure that.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some ways, the failure cases to some degree, but in some way, I mean, Thrive raised bigger funds, founders fund raised bigger funds, we raise bigger funds. The winners have also multi-state raised bigger funds.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do suggest the prices are too low. So the question is why are the prices too low? And I think the answer is we just don't have the dollars to place all of those bets. And a number of people have actually questioned exactly this very famously. Softbank questioned this. Tiger questioned this. And so they raised these, you know, raised these insight questions. They raised these huge funds and they'd deploy a lot of capital. And those experiments had very mixed success. But it's not obvious to me that the reason they had mixed success is because the prices were too high. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why those could not have worked, including kind of macrocycles and also the fact that none of them were Silicon Valley insiders. None of them were traditional early stage investors, et cetera. So there's a very reasonable question, which is, you know, maybe someone should just go run the Tiger strategy again, but as a Silicon Valley insider.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem with that is I just think that that would mean fun sizes would be too large and you'd have to unlock different pools of capital, which by the way did start to happen during the SoftBank and the Tiger in the Code 2 era. So you could argue that all of their theses were correct, right? Like Softbank was actually right and Tiger was right and it was actually a macro issue that caused all the pullback and that's going to come back again. I mean, that's, I think, a very legitimate thesis. But I really feel the reason that prices don't continue to go up is more just access to LP capital. So Leo Lee, let me just try to make this a bit more concrete, which is I think what Eric said is correct, which is the outcomes are so big. It suggests that high prices, like the prices are too low that we actually pay. I think the prices, you know, the fact that we get the return.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a very interesting question because you actually do run into fun mechanics as an actual Price modulator in this discussion, right? So you're exactly right. So again, I'll go back to my company. So, my company was acquired for $1.2 billion. We had, let's call it, less than $10 million in ARR, right? So does that make any sense? No. And a lot of people are like, this is totally crazy. This makes no sense. Except for when I left, you know, the run rate of the three and a half years later, like the run rate was $600 million within VMware who acquired the company. And then right now it's, you know, let's call it $2 billion, right? It was actually at one point in time, I think it was 40% of the growth of VMware, like the business unit that I ran that was part of the acquisition. So clearly it made sense to VMware. So as a result, you should say all the check sizes should be high for the winners because the outcome was so good. And this was, you know, this actually returned a lot of money to a lot of investors.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors in the world. I just mean to say that I brought the example to say that Caster's round was almost an order of magnitude more expensive. And I think what people have been late to really internalize and what ACNZ was super early to internalize was just the outcomes, our order of magnitude bigger, maybe two orders of magnitude bigger. And so you can get seed-like returns at order of magnitude or even two orders of magnitude more expensive. I mean, remember YouTube, Instagram were considered very expensive acquisitions at just a few billion dollars and in a few years we're going to have more trillion dollar companies. And so once we truly internalize sort of the outcome expansion in the order of magnitude, I think it makes sense to Leo's earlier point that then it would beg the argument of like, okay, but can you have 1,000 X like returns at not just what we used to consider seed-like pricing, but maybe at Series A or maybe even series B?”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I look at my portfolio, I see both. There were some of the winners pave and scale were non-consensus, non-competitive, unproven, but very talented founders. And then on the more consensus competitive, Jack Altman and Kasser were”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you're either playing for this is a great company that got acquired, which a lot of that happened, and people made good money, but like that's, again, that's not saying that, you know, the startup or you're building picks and shovels, like applied intuition, where like you're building software for this market. But I do think that a lot of investment dollars do follow these spaces where there really is no thesis on the ultimate unit economics. And I think you're exactly right. I just think that there's this kind of market tam sloppiness that says, well, if the market's infitted, then the expected payout is high.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Software founder is going to bend the laws of physics, but yeah, I think I totally agree. I also feel like I don't want to harp on this too much, but like unit economics is so important. I mean, like, what is the story for autonomous vehicles, right? The story for autonomous vehicles is that even after the industry has put $100 billion in it, a hundred billion, the unit economics are still, you know, let's call it on par with Uber. Let's just call it that, right? And so does that make sense for venture investment? It's really...”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most boneheaded partner meetings were like, well, yes, it is cold fusion, but this is the largest market ever. So on the off chance it works like, this is an engineering man. This is like laws of physics. I'm not sure that like, you know, a good...”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me justify a seed price. If the market's like $5 trillion of human labor or something, any price makes sense, right? But then I think that really just starts of like how much value is there in the seed.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. Sort of an aside here on the humanoid stuff. I think what I've seen over the last 10, 15 years is if the market is big enough, it really distorts VC investing because everyone, you know, it used to be that you look at a market and you're like, oh, it's a 2 billion a year market if there's a 1% chance they could capture it, they'll be worth this much.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know we should all just follow the common consensus around areas to invest in. But I do think that like there's going to be a pool of capital and it's going to want companies to look a certain way. And if you don't consider that when you're investing, I think life will be a lot more difficult.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the way that I tend to view these things, I mean, like for AI, for better or for worse, like you actually have great unit economics. I mean, everybody knows kind of like, and we always talk about the open AIs and the anthropics, but if you talk like the 11 labs, for example, or mid journey, I mean, these are just famously model companies where the internet economics are great. They grow very quickly. And so I understand that. I think there's kind of been this weird. And this happens a lot where people take the example of these model companies and they apply it to totally different spaces where you don't have the proof points, you don't have the economic case, and they kind of apply it. And that's one thing I don't know how to do. So certainly I don't believe.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's totally legitimate, but that's not how I think at all. For me, the company has to make sense as a standalone business at scale. So things like humanoids are tough for that just because unit economics right now are just so unknown. Like competing with a human body is a very, very hard thing to do. And then, of course, you can be like, okay, well, you know, we'll put it where human beings can't go like a car factory. But then all of a sudden now, you know, you're building a manufacturing company, you know, so you verticalize heavily and the company has to look at kind of whatever sector that the robot's going into and is more constrained and I don't understand the competitive set and yada yada yada. So I just feel like from my standpoint, the idea that this is very buzzy and hot, you know, in the industry for big companies and it may have an M&A, I don't know how to invest that way. I just don't know how to handicap that.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. You know, it's interesting when you do the humanoid. So I think there's all sorts of types of investing, and they're all pretty valid. One type of investing is humanoids are clearly interesting. Big companies are clearly interested in it. So why don't you back a bunch of good teams? In worst case, they get acquired.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say, like, for the consensus areas, like humanoids, we end up not explicitly, but implicitly avoiding them because once you have a few companies that are raised like hundreds of millions, whether they end up being great outcomes or not, I think it's pretty hard for someone to start something new with like, you know, near zero resources and team.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the Deep Tech side, I definitely see areas with a lot of hype from time to time. Like, for example, we invest in defense a lot three, four years ago, and then we kept looking, but basically paused for a year and a half or two because after Ukraine and Israel prices just went up like two, three, four times. But the company fundamentals didn't change. And then it started being an opportunity cost of like, should I invest in this defense company at 40 when there's this really great energy company at 15? And so I think defense was kind of like that. I think Bio has had a lot of ups and downs. I think in robotics, like humanoids are probably like one of the most hyped areas where the valuations just get crazy before there's any revenue. So I think actually I feel like it kind of lost a thread in the original question.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think on the flip side, the kind of the endurance, like how long those companies endure and last and grow feels like much more of a question mark because in the triple, triple, double, double, double era, like if you hit 100 million ARR and there was no one close to you, you probably just keep growing. And now it feels like you could hit 100 and then you drop to 50 because someone else came out with a better product. So I think there's like. The growth is amazing, and then the modes are weaker. And so I think there's a counterbalance there, and I'm not sure how to evaluate it because I haven't invested that much of that stuff.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, maybe on the AI side, and I'll touch Deep Tech next. I think AI is interesting to me because, on the one hand, I've never seen faster growth, right? Like people talked about the triple, triple, double, double, double thing for a while of getting from a millionaire to 105 years. And that seems so antiquated now, right? Like the best companies are doing like one or two years.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably a bad person to ask. I actually haven't invested much in AI because of the deep tech angle Maybe like 10 15% of my companies are pure AI. Others obviously use it in some way, but that's not the product.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I would say the consensus piece is part of it in that. I definitely meet companies where they're like, we're raising three right now. It'll help us do these milestones, and then we think we can raise 10. And then there's other ones where it's like we're raising three now. We're going to hit these milestones. And then we want to raise like a 50 to $100 million Series A. And that's actually a much harder bet, right? Because you're saying like you have to assume they're going to be consensus by the time they raise the next round and it's going to be like a top five percent series A. And that's a hard bet to take for the companies where the capital needs are more modest or they have like a more tranched roadmap planned. I think it's a little bit easier to predict like, hey, would these milestones be enough to raise 10? Like a lot of times, I don't know if it'll be enough to raise 100. Like probably not, but 10 feels like pretty feasible if you do the things you think you're going to do with this three.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say it's off in the latter. I would say, and it's especially true these days, I'm investing more in deep tech companies. And so at seed, it's very, rare to see like, oh, there's an asset that's going to be working here at the Series A because usually the asset's still going to be being developed at the Series A or maybe Series B. I think what I'm looking for is maybe not enough here for somebody to write a five or ten or twenty million dollar check, but the company has milestones that I think if they hit them, then it would become sort of consensus enough to merit a check of that size. And then I'm basically trying to evaluate like, okay, the company has these milestones. Do I think they could hit them or not? And also, if they hit them, are they compelling enough? But I think that's sort of the big investment wager.”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've got a question for you, Yulio, because I think that you play a bit of a different game than we do, which is so if you have a seed, which is, let's call it non-consensus, and again, we're using this very vague definition of a consensus, but like, you know, they're having a tough time raising, you're the only person putting money in. Do you have a theory on how it will be consensus, or is your belief that the underlying productive asset is going to do very well and that by definition is consensus? Do you see the question? So, the question is that this is just true belief in the underlying business of success is just the business is really working. So are you like, for the next raise, the business will definitely be working? Or do you have some other theory on what will attract the investors?”
2025-09-04 · a16z Podcast · Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source