Instagram Italian or Neighborhood Italian?
Many new restaurants have mid-food, and are designed for people who discovered the word "aesthetic" in 2022.
Good morning everyone. I hope you all had a nice weekend.
I got kale blossoms at the farmer’s market yesterday and made this pasta that looks like fairy food:
Today’s letter is a very good one, which is why the paywall is up high. It includes:
Our Guest Lecture interview with a16z’s David Ulevitch, where he answers questions from paid Feed Me readers. Some standout quotes include:
“People treat a middle manager at Bain & Co with more respect than an owner or operator at a small manufacturing plant, even if the owner/operator is making substantially more money!”
“My observation as a board member in a lot of companies is that the entirely-remote teams always seem way more stressed out.”
“I’m sure the seed round investors in Tory Burch are very happy with their amazing financial return.”
Breaking news from the Park Slope restaurant universe
An impressive $6mm seed round from a sex startup I can get behind
There are some new roles on the Feed Me job board. I don’t know how to manage this thing going forward, so enjoy it while you can.
NEWS:
Alex Cooper added another blonde to her roster at Unwell. I don’t know a lot about Hallie Batchelder, but I’ve seen her Tiktoks about partying at Zero Bond and her unhinged dating life and I think she’s pretty quick-witted and funny (she has one bit where she does a sea shanty that I laughed very hard at). According to her Instagram bio, she’s already signed with UTA which is a good sign. They should put in her contract that she can’t get a boyfriend because everyone knows the crazy single hosts are the most fun to listen to!!!!! And if Olaplex doesn’t throw an ad on this entire network, I will no longer respect them!!!!
Met Gala gossip: a source close to a big celebrity PR firm told me that many attendees are nervous about attending tonight because of protestors – “for optics and safety reasons.”
The Condé Nast union has reached a tentative agreement with management. Apparently bargaining ended at 3am. If no agreement was made, there would’ve been a work stoppage tonight through tomorrow, when all the writers (and editors, and social media managers…) would be covering the Met Gala.
Lastly, this guy got fired from being a greeter at the Met Gala because he’s too hot. He got the news over the weekend, just days before the big night.
“The general consensus is that it is Park Slope's version of the Times Square Olive Garden.” You guys know I’ve lived in my Park Slope apartment for 6 years. You guys know I love Park Slope. The gossip in this neighborhood is low-stakes and entertaining to all. I know where the guy at my regular takeout place owner plays poker, I know which bodegas sell kids booze. For the record, my favorite places in the hood are Double Windsor and Un Posto Italiano, and I also like Dog Day Afternoon. But back to the bolded headline we have here: let’s dive into the heated debate over an Instagram Italian (new restaurant category a friend coined) spot in the neighborhood.
On Saturday, someone posted in a neighborhood subreddit asking what everyone thinks of Pasta Louise, a restaurant that opened in 2021. Personally, I don’t really like the place. But it’s always slammed so I assumed everyone else loved it! Here’s where it gets twisted: a few weeks ago, Ladybird Bakery (my favorite bakery), which is located next to Pasta Louise and has been there since 1992!!!, announced that they’re closing due to a rent raise. According to the subreddit, Pasta Louise was involved in the rent raise. One commenter wrote, “Oh it’s a long story but I have a friend that works for the landlord. Pasta Louise basically told the landlord that when [the] Ladybird lease was up, they would pay whatever he wanted for the space. So when the lease was up, the landlord refused to negotiate with the Ladybird.” Another commenter said, “We got sucked into Pasta Louise during the pandemic as we tried to support local restaurants but after a few months, we couldn't justify it. The food is terrible, and it continues to amaze me when people post online calling it the best Italian food. It is closer to Olive Garden than a legit nyc Italian restaurant. It isnt even close to the best within a 10 to 20 block radius. We prefer Terre on 5th Ave, and Piccoli on 6th ave is far superior. I would also put Fausto over on Flatbush on the list. I am sure there are few others, but you get the point.” Anyway, the original poster knew it would be a divisive thread because the entire subreddit talks about this place every few days – excellent feather ruffling right on the brink of outdoor dining season. I hope Ladybird finds a new home.
Sweden has experienced a boom in the super rich over the last three decades. In 1996, there were just 28 people with a net worth of a billion kronor or more (around $91mm at today's exchange rate). Most of them came from families that had been rich for generations. By 2021, there were 542 "kronor billionaires". Now I think I need to plan a trip there.
Paramount has officially started talking to Sony about acquiring the company. A special committee of Paramount’s board of directors met Saturday and signed off on beginning deal talks with Sony and Apollo, which last week submitted a nonbinding letter of interest offering to buy the company for around $26B in cash.
Hope Hicks quietly founded a small communications firm. Fast-fashion giant SHEIN is one of her clients!! Per Politico, SHEIN “has attracted recent attention in Washington for its ties to China”…
Testmate Health, an STI at-home test company, just closed a $6mm seed round. Unusually high seed round for a consumer brand! The round was led by women’s health fund RH Capital (just heard of this fund, going to try to reach out to them to talk about some of their other portfolio companies), and the capital is slated for product development, clinical trials and market validation for Testmate’s first-of-its-kind, low-cost, over-the-counter at-home diagnostic urine test for STIs, starting with chlamydia and gonorrhea. The company doesn’t anticipate regulatory approvals until next year. Other sexual health and wellness brands like Dame, Daye and Evvy offer at-home STI tests, but test takers have to mail self-collected specimens to receive results, a process that can take days. With Testmate’s urine STI tests, test takers can expect to receive reliable results at home in under 30 minutes. Testmate’s tests are slated to be available OTC without a prescription.
Meta “mistakenly” blocked R.F.K. Jr.’s recent ad on their platforms for a few hours. Tony Lyons, a founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC that paid for the ad, said that the group planned to sue Meta in federal court, accusing the company of censorship and of violating First Amendment rights to free speech.
The king of YouTube, MrBeast, is cutting ties with his management company. Jimmy Donaldson –– aka MrBeast –– is taking increasingly personal control of his business, which brings in over $600mm in annual revenue. The move is a mark of the growing power of giant creators across the entertainment industry. Donaldson recently made his first major Hollywood deal, selling the series Beast Games to Amazon’s Prime Video. I’m personally interested in moves like this because I have had several management companies (really good ones that some of your favorite creators use) reach out to me, and I always feel like I’d lose a part of me if I signed, but I’m learning more about the whole relationship and its benefits.
Last year, East Hampton’s Maidstone Inn sold for $17mm. This summer, Italian restaurant group LDV Hospitality is opening a restaurant in the inn.
This morning, the Israeli military asked tens of thousands of Gazans to temporarily evacuate to what it described as a humanitarian zone. The move is a sign that Israel is inching closer to invading the city in defiance of international pressure.
Who are the “scary New York businessmen” that Bella Hadid is referencing? In a video from her launch event that Nylon posted, she said five years ago she met them to pitch her new fragrance brand, Orebella. I need to talk to them.
Would anyone like to go to Staten Island with me to try the new espresso martini at Chili’s? The ads for the new menu addition feature Scheana and Katie from Vanderpump Rules. 10/10 commercial, I’m unironically curious.
Wait a second… these fruit-shaped Coach bags are kind of cute. Loewe also made a cute lemon one.
Endless videos about the economy and consumerism are giving 20-somethings ‘money dysmorphia.’ What happens when your main source of news tells you that no one in your generation will be able to buy a house, food prices are spinning out of control and credit-card debt is unavoidable—but also that $2,500 Louis Vuitton bags and $70 moisturizers are, as many videos say, “a must”?
Ivanka’s legs. And Jared is looking much better. He looked stressed in the White House. Like a junior banker pulling all-nighters on a deal
I would like to have a word with the New York City Ballet. Last year, they did a collaboration with Reformation, which was great for Ref, but dilutive for the ballet in my opinion. This weekend, the NYC Ballet launched a collection with Marc Jacobs and Sandy Liang which is not appealing to me, but I’m sure if it launched over the holidays during peak-bow, it would’ve done well to some. I’m not sure what the return on investment is for the NYC Ballet with all these collabs, but if they want to get more young people in the audience, they should just put Tate McRae in The Nutcracker this year.
22 women suffered adverse reactions from counterfeit Botox, which landed half of them in the hospital. None of the women underwent the procedure in a medical setting - instead describing getting Botox in spas and at home (what the fuck).
GUEST LECTURE: David Ulevitch, entrepreneur and GP at Andreessen Horowitz
This interview is part of a new Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture.
In this series, I’ll introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to submit questions to them. Later in the week, I’ll then publish their answers, and additional observations that I’ve picked up after spending some time with them. I wanted to capture the spirit of that (sometimes unhinged) guest lecturer who would come into your class on a Friday, drop more knowledge than you learned all year, maybe hit on a student, and then leave forever.
David Ulevitch sold his last company to Cisco for $635mm. Now, he's an investor at Andreessen Horowitz and leads the venture capital firm’s “American Dynamism” project (which just got $600mm from the fund’s recent $7.2B raise) aimed at boosting production and innovation in America — Ulevitch and a16z are vocal about their investments, and claim they help drive manufacturing, innovation, and progress in the United States
“Does the new fund have goals around industries of strategic value to the US? eg defense, shipbuilding, onshoring drone capabilities? As you envision a future where US manufacturing is reinvigorated, what does that actually look like in terms of industry focus or core capabilities?” - Annalee
This will be a long answer as this is our primary focus.
Our American Dynamism team invests in companies that (as my partner Katherine says) “serve the national interest.” That’s broadly phrased but is primarily oriented around Defense, Energy, Aerospace / Space, Manufacturing, and Public Safety. Let me share some examples: I’ve invested in many public safety companies, so that’s an area I know a lot about. We have a company like Prepared that uses AI to help 911 operators translate calls in real-time since a lot of 911 callers don’t actually speak English, and allows for a Facetime-like experience if the caller wants to have the emergency scene streamed to first-responders who are en-route (“How bad is the accident?”, “How big is the fire?”), etc. We have companies like Aerodome and Skydio that coordinate drones-as-first-responders for emergencies to provide situational awareness to first responders rapidly and safely. If emergency drones sound weird, it’s a lot less weird than a city spending tens of millions of dollars on a few helicopters that respond to a shockingly low number of calls and are very dangerous. We have a company like Flock Safety that is solving a meaningful amount of crime in America now on a daily basis by leveraging computer vision, gunshot detection microphones, and more. These are incredible companies that are transforming public safety in the US rapidly. Cities like Las Vegas and Atlanta are at the cutting edge of deploying these technologies and they are just incredible. Community engagement is a huge part of these efforts and we’re seeing amazing results in creating safer communities and saving lives.
On the defense side, the United States Military is the strongest in the world, but we have near-peer adversaries who have really invested heavily in advancing their capabilities while we have largely focused elsewhere. Just as Covid showed us how brittle the supply chain is, the war in Ukraine has highlighted how unprepared we (America and her allies) are for the fight of the future. For people under the age of 50, the last 25 years in the Middle East is their only real datapoint of a US war – a war where we largely controlled the fight and used our large platforms (aircraft carriers, bases) to manage the conflicts with troops on the ground dealing with insurgents. That’s not the case for future conflicts that may be against nation-states who are much better prepared and bring new technology to the fight. The US is used to using a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier carrying a billion-dollar jet with a million-dollar missile to shoot at something. That doesn’t work when you’re fighting someone launching 300 low-cost drones your way. Not only is it technically hard to shoot 300 things at once, but the economic asymmetry of shooting down a $50,000 drone with a $1,000,000 missile quickly causes you to run out of both money and missiles. The war in Ukraine is a drone war and electronic warfare fight. The weapons are cheap and attritable. The US has had anemic investment relative to Iran on low-cost advanced drones. Iran has now taught Russia how to make Shahed drones and Russia is manufacturing them rapidly. There are over a dozen different kinds of drones (quadcopter, fixed-wing, kamikaze, intelligence-search-reconnaissance, etc.) in the daily fight over Ukraine. So, back to investments – The US is woefully behind in many of these categories but is learning in real time, and it’s defense startups in the US who are quickly mobilizing and providing drones to be tested out in Ukraine. So we’ve invested in incredible drone companies like Skydio, Anduril, Shield AI, and others. We’ve also invested in companies rapidly lowering the cost of manufacturing weapons. Companies like Castelion and Hadrian are manufacturing companies applying advanced software and manufacturing techniques to change the economics of warfare. New innovations are needed, too, like our investment in a company called Astro Mechanica who hopes to deliver a much more advanced jet engine that can usher in our hypersonic era.
Space and Energy are just as important to the future of America as Defense and Public Safety. We have an insatiable thirst for electricity and we cannot power our AI future or EV future without plentiful clean energy. Our investments in companies like Radiant Nuclear (building nuclear reactors that fit in a shipping container and can be moved around the world) and Exowatt (shipping-container-sized solar-powered batteries) are focused on helping to drive a clean and plentiful energy future. Space is important for defense and for humanity, and our investment in Apex Space makes it dramatically easier for anyone to put a satellite into space. I like to think of it as AWS for Satellites – a customer brings their satellite idea but no deep expertise in building satellites, and Apex will get you into space with it.
“I'm interested in employment rates and if you think we have too many employees in companies these days.” - Tim
Anyone who works in a 10,000+ person or larger white-collar job company knows that a bunch of the people can probably be let go tomorrow and the company wouldn’t really feel the difference, maybe it’d even improve with less people inserting themselves into things. The classic essay on this and why it happens is here, and of course it is true.
As we (society / our economy) prioritize conglomerates and megacorps, irrelevant jobs proliferate. There are many, many consequences of this but one that I think about most often is the decline of small businesses that power America's industrial and manufacturing base. We're aging out of an entire generation of makers (tool and die, smithing, textile makers, etc.) partially because we have outsourced much of their work overseas, increasingly to countries we are getting less and less friendly with (China) but also because we've just made those jobs seem less desirable. People treat a middle manager at Bain & Co with more respect than an owner or operator at a small manufacturing plant, even if the owner/operator is making substantially more money!
More tactically, there are real concerns, too – as we reinvigorate America’s industrial base and develop advanced technologies (cars and drones and more) in America, it doesn't help much if all the motors, gears, and components are coming from overseas and would come to a standstill in a real global conflict. There’s a lot of opportunity here for startups. It would really diverge into a philosophical discussion but since it’s related I’ll mention that the growing professional managerial class in America, and more importantly, the societal perception that those jobs are “really important”, is a weaknesses, not a strength.I should note, I have been a part of this class in my career, and it’s great – people really treated me like I was very impressive and important when I was an SVP at Cisco, and so naturally I thought I was, too. This dynamic is endemic across corporations and is lame.
Another issue with all the “BS” jobs in large corporations is that it takes profits away from shareholders who are most often the pensioners and retirement accounts of the rest of America. So those people aren't just being useless (and being coddled to think useless jobs actually matter – they don’t), but they are also taking money away from the rest of the workforce's retirement programs. Google is an amazing example of this. I don’t think it’s crazy to believe that half the white-collar staff at Google probably does no real work. The company has spent billions and billions of dollars per year on projects that go nowhere for over a decade, and all that money could have been returned to shareholders who have retirement accounts. So real people actually lose out when BS jobs exist. I’m actually afraid to share my third issue with BS jobs so maybe I’ll share it in the comments later. I just mixed a lot of causality into my answer, but directionally I think it's correct. :-)
“Given the increased feasibility of remote work, do you foresee second-tier cities with low costs of living and strong universities retaining graduates who are priced out of NY/SF/etc., and potentially becoming micro-valleys? My hometown of Syracuse, where Micron is building a $1B chip fab plant, for instance - but Columbus could be another analogue.” - Ben
Covid was terrible for a lot of reasons, but it delivered a real-time social experiment with a lot of important takeaways. I always tell people, ‘If you enjoyed remote work during Covid when you had to rapidly get your home office put together (read: corner of your tiny apartment or while also caring for children who can’t go to school), then you’ll really love remote work when you actually plan for it and pick a place to live where you can do your best work and live your best life.’ People who left cities during Covid realized that living in their college town, or hometown, or other smaller city was actually pretty good. For those already living there, it wasn’t always ideal as NY and SF-salaried people came in and bought up all the inventory and caused prices to skyrocket, but that was a largely temporary issue. The quality of life, as most define it, is really good.
Companies realized this, too. Plus, land is cheaper for companies that set up shop in these cities, and the talent base, counterintuitively, often improves. So I definitely think this is a permanent fixture of the future of some work but not all work. That said, lots of companies do better when people come together, and I think a lot of people do better when they actually spend time with their coworkers. My observation as a board member in a lot of companies is that the entirely-remote teams always seem way more stressed out. Commitment to work tends to also fall off when the only work dynamic is toiling away alone and then being on zoom for meetings – no laughing at jokes during lunch, or taking a walk around the office with coworkers to brainstorm. Offsites help, but aren’t everything. My observation is that the people who do best working remotely are the people who aren’t alone and have a healthy life outside of work – they have a family, or are part of a community or religious group (church, Crossfit group, etc.).
The second part of the question mentions manufacturing and that’s just a no-brainer yes. It takes time to become a “micro valley” but we have lots of examples of this happening. El Segundo, CA (which I know is LA, but also not LA) is having an explosion of startups right now because alumni from SpaceX and other established companies are leaving the company, but staying nearby to create startups. And some people who worked at Snap nearby want to spend time building for American Dynamism instead of social media apps. Miami has tried to do this, and while there are investors there, it’s too early to tell if it works – I’m generally skeptical of a place where the weather is too perfect, and the people too pretty, to be that great of a place to start a tech company in. 🙂
“I’m interested to know how you see the allure of joining the ranks of the financializers as it relates to American Dynamism. Every few months, I’ll read a piece lamenting that many of our best technical minds - engineers, physicists, researchers on the cutting edges, people who authors suggest could be building the next big idea - are kept in eight/nine figure golden cages with their brains mined to reap profit in the capital markets.
From your view, do you believe we’re actually in a position where a meaningful portion of our builders are diverted off that path to get the bag in a “safe” way?” - AKG
I find myself pretty unimpressed with the people who make money trading money, and often question how smart they really are, with some exceptions, but I also think we lump a lot of people who work “in finance” in that category who are actually entrepreneurs.
Take a company like Atlas Holdings for example. It’s really a company of operators and entrepreneurs that manage and transform a huge number of businesses across America but they are categorized as a finance company. If you’re Dan Loeb or Bill Ackman, you’re an entrepreneur who uses finance as a tool. If you’re a high frequency trader at Jane Street, you’re just like a programmer at Google but you get paid a bit more. For the same reason a lot of engineers at Google don’t quit to start companies, I don’t expect these folks to do it either. Sure, the allure of high paying jobs may take people away from other things, but if these people wanted to start companies, they would.
A part of my job is reminding people of all the opportunities in American Dynamism that may make one special person look up from their cushy desk and say “Yes, I want to give up my free lunch and big paycheck to suffer for years building something that really matters for America and maybe it’ll be huge, or maybe it’ll just be miserable for a decade.” And, it’s important to remember that there really aren’t that many people working in these tech finance jobs and there’s way more people who work at Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, and many other startups or tech companies who are excited about building for the national interest.
“What is the number one thing a young person in 2024 can do today to better their future lives?” - Major
The high-level advice never changes – you need to enjoy what you do, and if you don’t enjoy it, you need to stop and do something else.
Fundamentally, the most important thing we ALL need to do is figure out how to get back to having some shared ground truth on what is real and what is not real, and prioritizing education and critical thinking skills. We all know a 10-second clip on social media of an incident never captures what really happened, and yet our society will amplify these things incessantly which stokes outrage and divisiveness. But since part two of the question was for people entering the workforce and the impact of AI I’ll actually try to answer that part. First, AI is going to remarkably and positively change so many aspects of our lives. Driving will become many times safer, medical research will be accelerated through simulation and generative AI research, mundane tasks will be automated from crop harvesting to warehouse jobs and more, and yes, it’s possible that entire categories of jobs will be replaced by machines like call center answering services. But there are a lot of jobs where AI won’t replace the role of a person, or will simply assist, and there will be a tremendous number of not-yet-known new jobs that will be created as a result of the AI revolution. This has happened in every major jobs revolution. Nobody sits in an elevator pressing the buttons anymore, nobody operates the telephone switchboard. One thing people may not know is that AI (currently) is always a derivative in some form of past work, so we still need a creative class to come up with new ideas, we still need leaders, lawyers, and more. Many sophisticated tradeskills will not be replaced – carpentry, mechanics, electricians, etc.
But in the end, the advice for people entering the workforce is simply to do what you find most satisfying. That said, while I don’t think everyone needs to learn to code or have a CS degree, it’s definitely worth having technical skills of some sort so you can better communicate with our future AI overlords. 🙂
“Andreessen Horowitz has invested in some of the most successful tech companies world wide. It’s clear they don’t invest in any other industries. Would you ever dabble as a hobby into consumer goods or beauty? Or is that way too foreign for you?” - Sophie
Investing is hard enough when you think you know the categories and go-to-market dynamics really well, and I simply do not know anything about consumer goods or beauty. A lot of firms talk endlessly about areas they won’t invest, which seems dumb to me when an open mind is probably the most important trait required to find the next big thing, so I’ll just say “maybe!”
“Apart from the standard items (strong financials and track record, customer stickiness, why you’re able to beat competitors, etc) what does David look for when diligencing potential companies / brands into which to invest? Does he have any advice for how to take a brand from a good idea to a company that will garner investors?” - Mary Kate
Extraordinarily positive references on the founders along with customer references are two of the most important things I care about. Customers need to say the product is transformative for how they run their business and they can’t live without it. If the product doesn’t exist yet, they need to say that it would be transformative (and they often are skeptical that it could exist).
People in NYC often forget how miserable it was to get a taxi in other cities before you could just open an app and call an Uber. Sure, Uber started out as a black car service, but the real convenience was having a remote control in your pocket for getting picked up! That was such a life-changing experience. Venture-backed companies need to be focused on that level of transformation. There are lots of other great companies to be created, but to get venture financing, the outcomes need to be very large to make the investment risk worth it.
“According to Carta, 50-70% of startups that had raised at least $1mm in venture capital between 2017-2023 went out of business in 2023… and more went out of business in Q1 2024 than any of the previous 4 quarters.
How does his portfolio look these days? Everything going out of business/ bad returns or is he seeing something different? Does he think VC/startups are in a recession? If so, as bad or worse than 2008?” - Elizabeth
I always joke with founders that everyone forgets the number one reason why a company fails – it runs out of money. And the reality is that most venture-backed companies do fail, that’s part of the model of venture capital.
The biggest shift between 2017 and 2024 is that companies have entered an area where progress expectations between fundraises have increased (you have to be doing better for the same amount of burn than you were previously) and round dynamics have gotten more challenging (less companies are being funded). Most companies that have a great product and strong team have been able to navigate that shift very well, either by raising a lot more money or cutting costs, and the companies that never got real market traction would have failed anyways. The painful companies to work with are the ones where the product is great and has traction but the CEO never adjusted the burn of the company or raised enough money to rapidly adapt to the new financing environment. There were a lot of layoffs in 2022 and 2023 not because companies were running out of money but because they recognized they would never be able to fundraise at their current level of burn as the zero interest rate environment disappeared. It’s no fun to do layoffs, but the companies that had market traction but didn’t do those cost-cutting measures are the ones going out of business now, and that is even less fun than a layoff.
As someone who has been working in startups since 1998, today is not nearly as bad as 2008, which wasn’t nearly as bad as 2000. And if people look back, they’ll note that amazing companies were started in the low points of 2001-2004 (Facebook) and 2008-2011 (Uber), so I think this is a pretty exciting time to start a company.
“What does the fake meat boom and bust and slide to slight irrelevance teach us?” - Matt
I think people realized that fake meat (not to be confused with lab-grown meat) doesn’t seem to be particularly healthier for you than just eating lean meat. With that realization, the addressable market really shifted back toward vegetarians and that’s just not a huge market. So I think it teaches us that if we’re going to market something as “better” we should be pretty clear on what “better” means and not imply something that people will quickly shine a light on as being untrue. This is particularly true in consumer goods.
Separately, I don’t know what to think about lab grown meat other than I think it’s funny Ron DeSantis felt compelled to ban it and for John Fetterman to agree with him on that decision. Lobbying efforts can result in some strange bedfellows, I guess.
“I’m reading this book by Steven Kurutz, American Flannel, about the effort to restart textile manufacturing in the US. I wonder if you’ve invested in some of the firms mentioned in this book like American Giant, Raincourt, etc, and what you see as their prospects. And if not, why not?” - Chantress
I’m not invested in any of those companies – really for two reasons, first, while I think they are really important efforts, they simply fall too far outside my bailiwick of expertise, particularly their consumer-directed go-to-market. I don’t know what consumers want, that’s why I read Feed Me! Second, there are a tremendous number of businesses that are great businesses, and even great investments, but aren’t great investments for my type of fund. Our risk profile is much more moonshot oriented – We have a lot of companies that simply do not work out, we lose all our money on them, which means we need our great returns to be extraordinarily outsized. There are lots of Family Offices, Private Equity firms, and other sources of capital where a more modest return on investment is terrific (and in consumer textiles, I think that’s a more reasonable expectation), but for us, it doesn’t pencil out enough.
There’s always exceptions, and I’m sure the seed round investors in Tory Burch are very happy with their amazing financial return. Consumer investors know a lot more about this category though, and probably have a much more prepared mind to get excited in these areas.
David's compliance overlords requested we add the following: None of the information discussed should be taken as investment advice; please see a16z for more information.
See you tomorrow!
I am SO fascinated by the WSJ article about TikTok influencing financial feelings of dread- not only that, but as a graduating senior in college, I have seen this weird and completely unrealistic mindset that all graduates should be thriving immediately postgrad, with enough money from their first jobs ever to buy expensive drinks to instagram, expensive apartments to instagram, expensive Revolve dresses to instagram... you get the drift. TikTok and IG IMO have almost made "the struggle/grind" an unflattering, not-to-be-spoken-of thing. I was so shocked to learn that so many of the girls I've seen seemingly living it up postgrad have DEBT from SHOPPING. I don't have TikTok, so I largely see this play out on Instagram, but nonetheless this is a conversation I have had with my parents and friends and I think it ties in perfectly with the fact that todays day and age is the best and most safe time to live in history, and yet social media portrays the exact opposite. Social media has constantly been said to be fake and not real, but what it's doing is creating a false reality that people begin to live in as opposed to the real world. So interesting (and scary)!
Great interview - David’s comments on BS jobs and career advancement. A lot of people I know are going through this existential crisis of advancement isn’t really what I want/this isn’t really advancement/this is BS but I still need a paycheck/this is BS and I need life fulfillment conundrum cycle and it’s insightful to read it written about in this framework. Also appreciate the commentary on importance of social life outside of work.