Investment Theses

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

All right, David, you wanna talk about some investment theses, or really theses in general about what is gonna happen in the world, and what companies we should start, invest in, do whatever to sort of surf that wave.

David Rosenthal (0:17)

Yeah, I like what you did there. I like what you did there.

Ben Gilbert (0:22)

Well, dude, you named your venture capital firm after a very common trope in the industry. It's not like.

David Rosenthal (0:29)

Well, so actually, the name, we took the name specifically from Greg McAdoo, who I've probably talked about a bunch on the show, and his advisor to us was a long-time partner at Sequoia. He, among other things, he did Sequoia's investment in Y Combinator, and I think this was at either the very first startup school that YC did, or first or second.

He gave a talk, it's online on YouTube. We'll see, I'll find the link, I'll put it in the show notes, where he has this whole analogy about how starting a company is like riding a wave as a surfer, and so that's where we were inspired from, took our name.

Ben Gilbert (1:13)

It is an excellent, excellent talk. All right, LPs, welcome to the show. Dave and I were talking last night about what we wanted to cover today, and I thought it'd be interesting.

David threw out the idea, why don't we talk a little bit about what the process is at PSL, and I was like, yeah, the process is interesting, and I think there'll be lots of opportunities to get to that in different LP shows, but I think one of the questions we get a lot is, how do you come up with the startup ideas? And I think the question that David gets a lot is, how do you pick what startup ideas you should invest in, and how do you, you'll see oftentimes on a lot of venture firms' websites, here's the categories that we invest in, or the theses that we have. And I think it's interesting for folks that are thinking about starting companies or joining early stage companies to take the lens of like, what do you have to believe to be true that the world is turning into for this new concept to be interesting? And we're gonna spend some time on the show today kind of discussing and really BS-ing about things we think that could become true, waves we think we're in the middle of now, and then maybe a more meta conversation about all that.

Great. Is all that true, David?

David Rosenthal (2:33)

Is all that true? Yes, of course that's true.

Actually, and probably later in the episode, per usual, we'll get into meta stuff here, but I think it's so important as an investor, and really as a founder and employee at startups too, to you can't just be focused on opportunities as they present themselves to you. You have to also have theses that you're pursuing, and the best investors, the best VCs do both of those things, and I think so do the best founders and operators.

Ben Gilbert (3:14)

Yeah, and even at a more meta level in life, it feels like one of these things, it's been my New Year's resolution for like four or five years now, be more intentional and less reactive, and I feel like if left unchecked, you wake up every morning, you see what's in all your feeds, be it email or social media, and then what ended up on your calendar, and then you just go and robotically let that steer you, and it's sort of like getting in a river with no motor, and you're just like, sweet, like the currents will just land me somewhere, and of course, that's gonna land it where it's probably not the optimal place for you to land, and so with a little bit more forethought about what would success look like, what do I actually wanna do, I think we all have a little bit more control than we think. Actually, there's an LP whose grandmother, I'm ripping off when I say that we all have more control over our lives than we think.

David Rosenthal (4:18)

I love it. The LP show has taken us deeper than we ever would have thought.

Ben Gilbert (4:25)

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