Uncapped 2025 Highlight Reel

[00:00] If you're naming your podcast uncapped, like you are the problem. Yeah. Maybe just like medium sized cap. Medium cap. Medium cap. Exactly. Who is the core of the company? Is it the founder or is it the VC firm? It's the VC firm, obviously. [00:13] Break the fourth wall. Yeah. [00:15] This is where we get to talk about Napoleon. I guess this looks like a lot of leisure. But look at you in that beautiful $2,000 little piano sweater and doing like hosting this. This is a regular sweater. [00:28] Yeah. [00:32] You know, my big lesson from technology trends, especially these things that'll last for 10, 20 years, is people always say these things are over, overhyped, and it's still early. It's early for a longer time than you would think. It's always that way. The thing that I think will be the most impactful on that five to 10 year time frame is AI will actually discover new science. And then if I look to the 15 years hence, 2040 and beyond, we're going to be in an era of abundance that's so large. [00:59] It's very hard for people to imagine. The need to work will go away. Yeah. So, you know, there's vibe coding. I think there will be vibe trading. This is the promise of what I call the next Internet, the transition from HTTP to MCP. If MCP allows us to deploy agents that are highly specialized, then the world becomes a collaboration between agents as opposed to one agent to rule them all.

[01:27] Hardware companies are something that, like, if one hardware company doesn't happen, the whole category might not happen. Like, if Elon didn't push SpaceX, who knows where humanity would be with space today? If he didn't push Tesla, who knows where... [01:42] EVs would be. If you had like secret microphones in like robotics labs across the country right now, you'd just be hearing, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Yeah, I always tell defense tech companies this. It's like, this is not the field of dreams. If you build it, they do not come. That's not how it works. Like you go to the Department of War and you say, I have built you a perpetual motion machine and I will sell it to you for a million dollars. They would. OK, we're going to bid this [02:12] to rebuild from white paper your perpetual motion machine. That's how it works. I tend to think the way to do defense tech is you definitely don't just like show up with the best product in the world and say, you know, how do we spend years getting someone to buy this? Because that doesn't work. But rather you develop an information edge where you have some insight into how the budgets are going to evolve in years to come. [02:33] and then you can be developing a product before the [02:36] before the market is really there, right? [02:42] All is fair and love in capitalism. There's no referees in capitalism. Customers are trying to solve the problem. And they don't care if you're first. They care if you're the best thing today. I just cannot lower my bar. I ask on a weekly basis on my team, am I just being too pedantic? But as soon as you lower that bar, everyone becomes more mediocre. People shouldn't seek out a specific moment

[03:06] contrarian but if you're in a position of leadership it will occasionally become necessary for you to do something really difficult which will piss off some large group of people that it's the right thing to do for the company don't get so attached to the chip on your shoulder that you don't work through it [03:21] like [03:22] If you're excited about what you're doing and you like heal a bit, that's okay. Trust me. [03:32] I've created something which I don't think I've shared publicly, but I've run in time for a year. We are breaking the news. Let's call it the venture arrogance score. The thing that you want from your venture firm is power. So the thing is a startup that you want is you want them to fill in all the missing pieces that you don't yet have when you're starting a company that you need to succeed. And so you need power. I sometimes describe it as venture firm is providing a bridge loan of a brand. [03:58] the VC. You're borrowing your VC's brand. Exactly. Part of the core ethos for me about venture is like, I want to understand the new thing. And then like we take risk on it. Like we published our LP letters recently. Some of those beliefs and predictions are going to be wrong and look very stupid. But I think that can be like very grounding of like, well, at least these people have an opinion and I can decide if I have that worldview or not. Okay, there's 40 coding companies and this and that, but there's one person who has this clarity. But then it's clumsy because you're [04:28] it's a relationship. So you want to have a two way, you want to have a, you don't want to just say, Oh my gosh, yes, you had me five minutes in. Because I think the next thing is it's one thing to be extraordinary. It's the other is can you be a amplifier for them? I think for the best founders being a consigliere is like 99% of the value. So it's like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to be someone when everything's a mess who can give you feedback that occasionally is useful. Thanks a ton for making the time. I learned a ton. All right, guys, this is amazingly fun. Great to see you as always. You too. All right, cool.

[05:02] They're watching us. Yeah. This guy's just fucking zipping around. He's just trying to watch that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll post in a couple weeks. Yeah, yeah. [05:09] Dude, I had no idea you had fans like this. That's crazy. Sorry.