This has been a really volatile week, not just in terms of markets, but
headlines, markets to the upside, as a say that's just heard all of that from
our program and sat through a week like this.
What's your experience of the week, Ben? What's your takeaway from this week's
news cycle? I mean, you know, NASDAQ is up about 10
percent this year rate. So in some sense this is good news.
But at the end of the day, we invest in early stage technology companies for ISE
Lux Capital. Specifically, we invest in the
intersection of technology and sciences and this is a great time to be building
those companies. Great talent is becoming available
there, starting companies to solve real world problems.
You know, think about physical security. You think about saving lives, all the
shootings and gun detection technology, for example, that we've invested in drug
discovery companies, automation, autonomy, bringing manufacturing back to
the US. So regardless of what sector you look at
right now, there's interesting companies are getting founded and invested in.
And the good thing is that nobody's looking at exits for these companies in
the next year or two. We're just making sure these companies
are fully funded and not able to create great products and take them to market.
Allow Caroline and I were reflecting on our weekly Twitter spaces earlier that
the headlines on layoffs came right at the beginning of this week.
There's been so many stories from the world of technology that you forget
actually throughout it have been some some pretty negative headlines,
especially those around layoffs, IBM, Spotify being examples.
Does that present an opportunity for a venture capitalist that you are you kind
of putting pressure on your portfolio? I found this to say, hey, go out there
and hire these people. They're on the market.
My inbox is filled with regimens that have come in from people who've been
laid off from these companies, and I'm absolutely working hard to get them, you
know, hired some of the best talent hired into our portfolio companies.
This is two years ago that we told our portfolio companies to raise capital
because we sort of knew in some ways that the peak had arrived.
We obviously didn't know exactly when, but we wanted them to raise as much
capital as it good to be able to survive the long term.
And these companies that are sitting on that capital now is not only able to
hire these candidates, but also able to acquire some other companies along the
way to bring more technology into the mix and bring it to their customers.
Let's talk about hype or not. Therefore, because amid some of the
concerns and the and the worries about technology pulling back, valuations
pulling back. People being let go, that feels like
there's another sort of an FTSE crypto vibe around A.I..
Can you tell us about what you're feeling there as to whether you getting
that exuberance? What are we at the dawn of a new
Internet stage? I think there's something called the
gardener's hype cycle, so every new technology comes with its own hype.
And you just have to sort of live through it and know that there will be
ups and downs along the way. And that's OK.
There is a lot of noise around A.I., but it's also real.
I think, you know, there's something unique that happens with these, you
know, Chad, bots and Edelman, other things that have happened that when you
have very large parameters, we're talking about 20 billion parameters or
more, you start to see very interesting results.
And I think people are now starting to figure out how to utilize them to solve
real world problems. So we're seeing, you know, the
applications of A.I. in new industries like health care, like
education, like in construction, in autonomy and automation.
And I think there's going to be a real companies build.
We're super excited about that. At the same time, you know, just like
any other industry, I wouldn't just say that for FTSE or crypto, the same thing
happened in the world of drones and VR. You have to be just very careful that
you've been real world companies that are solving problems and creating real
value for the customers at the end. Yeah.
And real value is something that's now being questioned.
For example, for a big public company like Tesla, which a lot of its big
focus, long term value is about automated driving.
I know that's an area of expertise for you.
I know that somewhere that you've been investing in with some of your portfolio
companies and leading that for Lux Capital.
Where are we in now overall hype cycle that we're just talking through?
I mean, look, there's some level of autonomy available to all of us.
You know, if you can buy a car now, it will do self driving, it will do lane
keeping and another will update news software update more frequently.
But obviously, Tesla's further advanced than most of the other automotive OEMs
out there, but I think automotive and autonomous technologies here.
But I also want to add that AML, similar technology platforms such as autonomous
driving is being applied to other indices as well.
Distributed sense sensors are being used to detect guns and weapons at entrances
to buildings. AML is being applied to looking for
threats in those systems. Completely different industry in a
company like involved technology is focused on that, completely different
than autonomous technology, but using the same paradigms and using some of the
same technologies. And in some ways we call it the peace
dividend of the autonomous wars, that all the technology that's getting
developed from autonomous cars are going to be used in many other industries and
create value elsewhere as well.