Ben and David on "Capital Allocators"

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

Hello, Acquired LPs. At the end of last year, Ted Seides was gracious enough to have David and I on his show, Capital Allocators, to kick off their mini-series on Venture Capital. We wanted to make it available to all of you who aren't subscribed to that podcast, since one, it's a great podcast and you should check it out, and two, a lot of what we talk about on the show is what we talk about on Acquired 2, and it was a little bit of a deep dive into the current venture landscape.

Well, listeners, this is the perfect opportunity to introduce a new sponsor here on ACQ2, Quartr. Their new product, Quartr Pro, launched about a year ago and is already adopted by several Fortune 500 companies and some of the world's largest hedge funds and equity research departments.

David Rosenthal (0:47)

Yeah, this research platform is transforming the way qualitative public market research is conducted. Here's how Quartr Pro works.

You can get every piece of first-party information from public companies all in one single place. That's live earnings calls with real-time transcripts, company filings, slide decks and more. Quartr Pro has built a world-class user interface for this.

Ben Gilbert (1:09)

Let's say you're an investor or a podcaster and you've got the use case where you need to look up a company such as Novo Nordisk, Hermes or Visa. You can open their platform and search guidance or market outlook.

Quartr Pro then immediately identifies all instances where a company has historically mentioned and discussed these topics in all of their IR-related communications.

David Rosenthal (1:31)

Or here's another pretty crazy thing they've done that's difficult to get anywhere else.

You can actually search through literally every individual slide in Quartr's database covering 9,000 public companies and millions of slides for any keyword mentioned based on Quartr's AI capabilities.

This truly makes it easier than ever to conduct qualitative analysis of entire industry value chains and specific companies.

Ben Gilbert (1:55)

So whether you're an equity research analyst, an asset manager, or an investor relations professional, this platform will help you increase your productivity through their live call, transcript components, AI-powered summaries, and a feature allowing you to visualize the entire timeline and changes of specific slides throughout Quartr's.

David Rosenthal (2:13)

Quartr also offers their database as an API solution. This enables other companies such as trading and research platforms, as well as AI and LLM companies to build custom solutions and integrate this database into their offerings or add functionality on top of the data.

Ben Gilbert (2:28)

Yep. To find out why leading companies globally are choosing Quartr Pro in their day-to-day work, and to experience the platform firsthand, request a personal demo by visiting quartr.com/acquired. That's Q-U-A-R-T-R, no E, quartr.com/acquired. Or click the link in the show notes to get the personal demo from the Quartr team. Our thanks to Quartr.

Quick reminder that this is not investment advice. We may have an interest in the things we discuss on this show. Do your own research.

And with that, on to our episode with Ted from Capital Allocators.

Ted Seides (3:10)

Hello, I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation. Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can join our mailing list and access premium content at capitalallocators.com.

Mark Andreessen from AD16Z famously proclaimed a decade ago that software is eating the world. His prophecy has proved prescient. Cloud computing enabled the rapid cost-effective deployment of software, startups flourished, and venture capital returns have been phenomenal. Venture capital is a fascinating investment area whose many days in the sun shine brightest this year. Institutional portfolios with large venture allocations soared to their best year in history. And yet parts of venture are unique in being both efficient and unactionable. Many believe that Sequoia or Benchmark will produce returns at the top of the pack, but there's not much action anyone can take to participate. This mini-series explores the industry, focusing on some favorites of institutional investors who are still investible to those in the loop. Each has a great differentiated story to share and something to prove. That said, this field moves quickly, so as the disclaimer goes, past accessibility is not a guarantee of future capacity.

My guests on the first episode of Venture is Eating the Investment World are David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert, venture capitalists and hosts of the Acquired podcast. Acquired is one of my favorite shows. In it, David and Ben tell stories of great companies and technology with thorough research and a fun, engaging style. Our conversation kicks off the mini-series with their respective backgrounds in venture, the creation of Acquired and their research process for the show. We then dive into the origins of the cottage venture capital industry, inflection point after the tech bubble, rise of an abundance of capital, firms investing across stages, the competitive response of others, the mass introduction of angel investors, businesses staying private for longer, and the potential for crypto to change the game once more.