The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:49:58 · Harry Stebbings, Chase Lochmiller
[00:49:58] S1: I'm not saying there's not, but you're looking at your Harvey's and your Ram's and your... You name it. And you're an investor in McCall, we're an investor in Fireworks. And both of those enable ads. They propagate that as a marketing message for sure. And I'm just wondering, is that true? [00:50:13] S0: I do think that the model capabilities today, I think there's massive room for improvement by incorporating more private repositories of data. You can do that with the frontier models that are closed source. You can also do that with open source and own the model yourself. I think it's gonna be some combination of those things in the future. I don't think it's gonna be like one approach is gonna be the dominant approach. I I know I know there's a lot of exciting stuff happening between folks like Cognition post training their own model, you know, with a lot of their own data. You know, Harvey kinda maybe trying to take a similar approach, you know, from a legal perspective. There are a lot of these amazing, you know, domain specific model, you know, approaches to things. The Frontier Labs are also doing that as well. Right? So they're also looking that, and they're trying to basically increase the surface of of knowledge. [00:51:02] S1: What does the managed inference market look like in five years?
00:51:02 · Harry Stebbings, Chase Lochmiller
[00:51:02] S1: What does the managed inference market look like in five years? [00:51:05] S0: The key aspect is that you want to provide an easy way for companies to access intelligence. You know, it could be their own intelligence. Right? It it is hosting these custom bespoke models that are very domain specific for their specific use case, and it may be train... Post trained on a lot of their, you know, own private data. But, you know, the key aspect to managed inference is like it abstracts away a lot of the infrastructure complexity of managing this service across a lot of different GPUs, a lot of different data repositories, a lot of different models in terms of like how the queries get routed and which models they use. [00:51:46] S1: I would love to do a quick fire round with you because there's many questions that I want to ask that I'm also aware that you have to get on with your life. Okay. So if we start with one, parenting. I heard from so many of your friends and investors, you're an unbelievable dad as well. You were to advise me on like, how do I crush it at work and be a great dad? Very important. What are the must dos? What are the must not dos? [00:52:09] S0: It's really about prioritizing it. Spending times with my kids is like one of my greatest joys in life. Is such [00:52:16] S1: a cliche. Can't, you're raising $3,900,000,000.
00:52:16 · Harry Stebbings, Chase Lochmiller
[00:52:16] S1: a cliche. Can't, you're raising $3,900,000,000. [00:52:20] S0: Oh, sure. It's such a cliche, but having kids is the best thing in the entire world. And, you know, I have a very busy schedule. I have a very challenging... You know, I have a lot of commitments at work. I'm on the road a lot, but it's about prioritizing things. Oftentimes, what that means is like, I end up taking worse flights, Right? I take a lot of red eyes just so I don't miss a bedtime with my kids. I'm home almost every weekend. You know, those weekends are very committed to coaching soccer or helping with swim or, you know, whatever activity that my kids are very passionate about. And then I think carving out very specific times that, you know, people at the company know I'm very unreachable. Right? So if I'm home in the Bay Area, everybody knows that I'm unreachable from seven to 8AM. It's like I'm not taking any meetings at that point because I'm making my kids breakfast, I'm getting them ready for school, getting them pumped up for the day, and, you know, I'm just unreachable in days when I'm when I'm home. [00:53:15] S1: What do you believe that many people disagree with you on and makes you unpopular?
00:53:15 · Harry Stebbings, Chase Lochmiller
[00:53:15] S1: What do you believe that many people disagree with you on and makes you unpopular? [00:53:20] S0: I guess right now that data centers are a good asset for communities, and they should be celebrated in the communities where we build them. And again, this comes down to all of these benefits that we feel like we can provide, whether it's, you know, economic, whether it's energy, whether it's the investments we're making in communities from a school perspective, from society [00:53:40] S1: income inequality and the wealth inequality that we're seeing? [00:53:43] S0: No. I don't worry about income inequality or wealth inequality because I think there's something inherently human about like, hey, I have this and that other person has that and, you know, why don't I have that? There is like a a bit of like a a jealous neighbor type thing. But I do think that it's natural when you have these huge things that are driving economic progress where everybody's actually benefiting far more than if we if we didn't have this investment happening. [00:54:13] S1: They are, but three three IPOs are the cumulative value of forty five years of IPOs. The concentration of value is is unprecedented. Right. [00:54:22] S0: But think about all the value that's being created for the world. The the market cap of the company is one is one thing. But actually, you look at the value that's being created by, you know, abundant intelligence that is gonna drive massive productivity gains for the global economy, it's many fold of the market cap that's being created.
00:54:22 · Chase Lochmiller, Harry Stebbings
[00:54:22] S0: But think about all the value that's being created for the world. The the market cap of the company is one is one thing. But actually, you look at the value that's being created by, you know, abundant intelligence that is gonna drive massive productivity gains for the global economy, it's many fold of the market cap that's being created. [00:54:38] S1: What have you changed your mind on in the last twelve months? [00:54:41] S0: I think maybe something that I've changed my mind on is what creates ingrained long term competitive advantages. I think a lot of... You know, we try to think of... VCs love to ask about what's remote. Like, what's your, you know, what's your long term moat? What's gonna create, you know, sustained above market returns for for you? I think what I've changed my mind on is like most moats are illusion. Most moats don't exist. Most of them are ephemeral. And especially during a moment of accelerating technological progress and capabilities of these models, I think a lot of it just comes down to being able to move quickly and adapt efficiently to the ever changing chessboard that's in front of us. [00:55:23] S1: I think everything starts off as a moteless wrapper, and it's the value that you build on top of it in segments. Yeah. Will Crusoe be public by the end of twenty twenty eight?
00:55:23 · Harry Stebbings, Chase Lochmiller
[00:55:23] S1: I think everything starts off as a moteless wrapper, and it's the value that you build on top of it in segments. Yeah. Will Crusoe be public by the end of twenty twenty eight? [00:55:33] S0: I'm not sure. The company itself is... Requires a lot of capital to build data centers, to build AI factories, to deploy large scale clusters of GPUs, to build out that infrastructure layer of intelligence upon which, you know, so much global economic value is gonna be created. That requires a lot of capital. Being being public, there's a lot of advantages to to being public and being able to access, you know, scaled capital resources. So we do think that ultimately the company is probably better off in the public markets. It's just a matter of, like, when when does that make sense for us. [00:56:04] S1: Who do you not have on your board that you would love to have on your board? Good question. I would love to have Zuck. [00:56:13] S0: Yeah. I would say Michael Dell. He's not gonna join my board. I just have tremendous admiration for Michael just as a human being. I think he's an incredible person. He's built an incredible business. He's very... He's got incredible business instincts. He's a great family man. I just really look up to him a lot. [00:56:30] S1: I spoke to Zach before this. Zach's an awesome guy. I told him you're a douche. Oh, bugger. Sorry. That was anonymous. I didn't see that. Yeah. That's so funny. Totally get that. Final one. What would the chase of 2018 find most unbelievable about the Crusoe of today?