Rob Toews, Radical Ventures Partner on Investing in Frontier AI

**Grace Gong** (0:05)
One sec, I don't know why. Is there like a tech news? Oh, we're live. Okay. Hi, Rob. Welcome to Venture with Grace.

**Rob Toews** (0:13)
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

**Grace Gong** (0:15)
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Before we start, I want to say I believe Jay from Twelve Labs said amazing things about you guys on our show. That's when I first heard about you and Radical Venture, and then it was so amazing to meet in person at Human Acts.
I want to start with you started your career, I believe it was at Highland Capital and in the Bay Area, and before that you were in consulting. Maybe we can start with what were some core lessons that you've learned early on in your career, and that shape you into who you are today.

**Rob Toews** (1:19)
Yeah, totally. First of all, it's great to be here, and we love JD and Twelve Labs. They're the best. It's been a privilege to partner with them from their very earliest days. Maybe just as a quick background context, I started my career at Bain & Company in consulting for a few years. I did grad school at Harvard, I did the JD MBA there, so Law School and Business School, and then I worked in autonomous vehicles for a few years. I worked at Zoox, which was an autonomous vehicle startup. I spent a little bit of time on the policy side of things. I worked in the White House during President Obama's administration working on autonomous vehicle policy. Then for the last eight years or so, I've been at BC, totally focused on AI. As you mentioned, I started my BC career at Highland, where I was the point person for AI. Then for the past five years or so, I've been at Radical, where I lead their San Francisco office and have led a number of our investments.
To your question around big picture lessons, I would say, it's been a diverse multi-layered set of career stops from consulting to policy, to startups, to VC, and I like, there's a lot that's different about those different roles, but there are also some core fundamental consistencies and insights. I think one, and these all, to some extent sound cliche, but I think also have profound truth to them.
One is just that people matter more than anything, and the quality of people matter more than anything. And I think I saw that in the world of startups, like the reason Zoox was so incredibly successful in the window that I was there was it was just such a talent magnet, and like the very best people came there. And I think if, you know, looking at talent flows in startups is so informative, because at the end of the day, wherever the best people are going is going to be successful. And I certainly, it's true today in Venture, like I feel like the more years that I spend in Venture, the more I come to appreciate the like, really matter, what matters so much more than anything else is just the quality of the people, the founders. If you back the best people, good things will happen. And like, you can get caught up in the TAM and the gross margins and the growth and the competitive landscape. And of course, all those things are relevant and you should pay attention to them. But at the end of the day, like, it really is just people, people, people. And if you just, actually, I saw quote Arthur Rock, who's one of the, like, the original venture capitalists, early investor in Apple and Intel and others.
He summed up, like, the lesson of venture capital and forward, which is back the right people, which I think it's just like completely, completely true. So anyway, I think that's one of the most important lessons. And then a second lesson that I would share that I think I've come to appreciate more and more is like, intellectual curiosity pays such huge dividends over time. And if you put yourself in a role where you genuinely, you genuinely enjoy what you're doing and you are, like, excited and kind of internally motivated to learn more and to dig in and ask questions, like, you just are going to be successful versus doing something that you don't feel that internal passion about. And so I think, like, yeah, aligning your genuine internal interests with what you're doing day to day just is such a recipe for success.