It's called Throne Science and it's woop for your.
Throne Oh, like a. Toilet, a toilet gadget.
Yes. And you know you have situations
in California too with Eric Swalwell, like like really like
just don't cheat on your spouses like don't do it with people
that work for you. Like how is that hard?
Have you been sort of quietly doing climate investing at all
in this period where it's sort of out of favour in the
headlines? Yeah, so, Eric, it's no longer
called climate tech, it's called energy.
Tech. Or it's called like the RE
industrialization. Of America.
War against climate change. Does this feellikethe.com boom?
Different. Katie Jacobs Stanton and I were
one of the few voices in the tech industry when ICE was
brutalizing Minnesota. To stand up and say that
something had gone terribly wrong.
Makes sense. She'd worked in the Obama White
House, and like me, we've been deeply troubled by everything
happening in the Trump administration.
She's a former Twitter executive, so we dug into what
Elon Musk has done into Twitter. She's worked at Google, Yahoo
Color and the US State Department.
She was once the person trying to get the government using
Twitter. Now I guess she has some regrets
of how it's panned out. She's a lone VC who says she
still tracks diversity numbers and and wants to think about
recruiting underrepresented founders.
This is the Newcomer podcast. I'm Eric Newcomer.
Please follow along at our substacknewcomer.co and enjoy my
conversation with Katie Jacobson.
Twitter is very different, but also still very much the same.
Like Twitter is still the place for breaking news, it is still
the the place for public discourse.
It is still the place where authenticity and distribution
matter. It's a very different place in
that different voices are louder and more powerful.
Captured looms large. Yeah, like, you know, doge
anything and like, and so like a lot of memes and the product is,
you know, so more well, fine-tuned to different things
to kind of amp you up. And I can feel it like I'm not
following that account. Like where'd that account come
from? And like, why is this, you know,
post making me mad? And so it's a very a different
kind of a product. A lot of people that I used to
follow are no longer there. They're on different platforms.
But I can't live without Twitter.
Do you use? Blue sky and threads too.
Or are you loyal to Twitter? I'm pretty loyal to.
Twitter or you have I. Call Twitter some other call
decks when I'm mad at it. I think Nikita, who you know,
runs product. Who's amazing by the way, Like
big fan. He he refer, he used tweet as a
verb like in the last month or so.
So clearly even people deep in X world can't help but it was such
a good name. Like I I'm shocked that they
abandon it. I mean, you were dealing with
the media specifically, like using Twitter, right?
I mean, I think there was this recent blow up about, you know,
like the New York Times not being sort of, you know, a top,
I don't know, creator account on Twitter despite sort of having a
lot of followers. What do what do you make of
that? I guess, like the Nikita
argument was like they're just doing, they're just like putting
out news headlines and expecting that to go off, which I guess is
out of touch with Twitter, But that's also sort of what they
do. I mean, they I think the
particular fight was that they had this big story on Iran.
It was like exclusive. It was clearly like relevant and
the story wasn't like doing well on Twitter.
So yeah, I guess I would push back on this idea that it's a
great vehicle for news right now.
It's a great vehicle for like angst about things happening in
the world. But is it?
Is it still good for news? I think both of those things are
still true. I still think that the algorithm
has changed quite a bit and has pushed down a lot of, you know,
older, more left-leaning institutions and has pushed up
more right. I definitely believe that is
true. I also believe it's probably
true that the New York Times may not be using it to the best of
its ability. So I think, you know, it's it's
complicated, dedicated. And I also think we have a
general trend of power going from institutions to individuals
like you're probably super successful on Twitter or X or
any of these programs because like you do need.
Substax, so it's a, you know, and, and turning down links like
I think I have a strong Twitter presence, but it's always one of
great anxiety because when I launched, even though I think
when I launched what I probably have like almost 50,000
followers now, maybe when I launched I had 20,000 ish.
But it was enough that like you could be like I'm announcing the
sub stack and people would retweet it and it was like
willing to send people elsewhere.
But now it doesn't feel like Twitter's as eager to, like, let
you use your fame on Twitter to do other things.
Yeah, I I feel that too. And but I can't live without it.
I mean, it's a love hate relationship, right?
And I mean, Twitter's like this cockroach of a product, like it
just can't be defeated, like it is who it is in spite of itself.
No matter who the leader is, right, it's still going to
exist. I mean, Threads, it's fine, it's
good. But I also don't want to go to a
place that this feels very right on Twitter, Threads feels very
left and blue sky, who knows? And.
Like, well, I can't. Yeah.
I feel like both blue Sky and Threads, my mom is like, you
know, is a little bit to the left of me or she'd probably
further to the left of me. She's on blue sky a lot.
I feel like I'm always telling her if I spent a lot of time on
blue sky, it'd probably make me more conservative because you
sort of you, you know, I don't know if you're an independent
minded thinker, you want to react, you know, to the dumb
things you read. And so you see a lot of dumb
conservative things. I think it makes me like, all
right, I'm definitely, you know, not not with those people.
But if I was on Blue sky, I don't know, watching sort of, I
don't know, random cancellation circles now it'd probably, you
know, shift me slightly to the right.
So there can be weird dynamics with having a sort of one sort
of political ideology in charge of a platform.
Exactly. It's not healthy.
And so maybe we just be off all of that, right?
Maybe should talk to each other. Do you delete Twitter from your?
I feel like I occasionally try and delete it and then I'm like,
but I wanna know or I go on vacation.
I'm like, I'm away from the policy is like, I'm gonna use it
only on my computer, but then, you know, I'm away from my
computer and I need it back. Yeah, I haven't deleted Twitter
from my phone, but I've deleted others from my phone and I've
actually moved Twitter from the first page of my phone to like,
I have to really dig for it or search for it.
So. And I think it just becomes a
habit, right? Like when you joy, you get that
dopamine hit and you're getting a lot of engagement, like you're
inspired to do it again. And if you tweet something,
nobody sends anything back. And like, I feel like a loser.
Maybe we'll just take a break from it.
So like I think sort of the reinforcement mechanisms of it
just influence your behavior quite a bit.
So for better, for worse. Right, Yeah, it's built to be
yeah, somewhat addictive. You know, you're investing in
the earliest of early stage companies.
To what extent are you searching for the next Twitter or like,
are you are you looking for a lot of social companies these
days? Do you think there's much
opportunity? What are you seeing on sort of
the yeah, I'm sure everything is AI inflected, but are you
getting any interesting? Like we'll be the next online
sort of discussion platform type pitches.
Yeah, to be honest, I have 0 interest.
You're like run away. It's right.
Don't. Build it patterns like, I don't
know, like obviously I feel like we're due for something new.
Like these things come in waves and there's going to be a
different way. But I also think we have
oversteered things. You know, we have kids who have
your screen addictions and a lot of anxiety and they're anxious
and the entire anxious generation, like having another
social network I can't imagine is gonna make the next
generation better. So I think we almost need to
take a step back. Like how do you were talking
earlier about how do we go outside?
You know, how do we enjoy spring?
How do we enjoy seasons? How do we enjoy each other?
How can we have more humidity? Where's?
The tech money to be made on that, you know, it's a sincere
question, right? How do you, you know, your job
is to sort of make money. You either, I guess you invest
in other categories, but is there an opportunity to, yeah,
find profit and steering people away from being on their phones
too often? Maybe, I mean, I met a founder
recently who's actually trying to invest in that.
Like what are better therapies to help kids with anxiety,
getting them off of their phones?
I think that's really noble and very worthy.
You know, there are some startups helping you find
camping grounds and you know, how do you enjoy the outside
more than there's a question of being venture backable?
Is this a really good business versus like, you know, it's just
the next entropic? Probably not, but there's still
a lot of ways to make money and do good in the world.
Whereas poor business people, you're like, you're at work
already, you're going to be using the Internet, we'll fund
Internet. Are you mostly investing in
enterprise companies right now? Mostly, yeah, there's some that
are, most of them are you know B to B in some capacity, but there
are few that are B to C We invest at Moxie and mostly early
stage companies AI for blah, blah, blah.
You know the vertical applications of AI, everything
is AI right now, right? If you replace AI with software,
that's basically what it is. And, and at least we are
generally investors. For me personally, I love AI and
healthcare. There's so much opportunity,
there's so many challenges. And actually the one, the one
that I will share with you that is a direct to consumer product
and you're not going to see this coming.
So bear with me. It's called Throne Science and
it's woop for your. Throne.
Oh, like a toilet.
A toilet. Gadget yeah, so looking down,
obviously, but you know, now we have this this sort of tailwind
of the personalization of how thick air, right?
Like you have your oar rings, your whoops function, health,
all these different ways that people are starting to change
their behavior based off of data, right?
Like, you know, I stopped drinking like I'd have a glass
of wine and I like, this is all fine.
And then my oar rings were like, don't do that.
Like that's bad. It's gonna affect your sleep.
And so I've made like my own personal changes and we invested
in this company called Throne. And when our team first saw it,
we're like, we'll never do this. What's the Tam of this?
All right, what's the, I mean huge Tam because you know every.
Everybody poops, as many children's books will take.
Yeah, and but, you know, are people comfortable with this?
And it's hardware. Hardware is hard.
You're selling direct to consumer.
That's hard. So we initially said, no, we
never met this founder, Scott Hickel, who is so brilliant, so
smart and so weird. Like you've got to be weird to
like build your business, you know, a shit business.
And like, and, and then also I'm like, he sold me.
Like, this is kind of the future, right?
Like here is data you literally flush away every day.
What does it tell you? So it tells you things like
hydration, how's your gut health?
It can also detect blood. And that's actually the most
important thing, especially with younger Americans.
The only cancer that's actually growing is, is colon cancer.
And you know, statistically, we, you know, live in this
healthcare world, which says like, OK, you turn 40, you
should have your first colonoscopy.
Well, what if you had blood in there and you didn't see it and
you didn't know about it? You wait till 30.
Like how can you do earlier and faster detection?
So that's one of the things that you can test for are.
People paying for the device, yeah, or not.
Not health insurance or. Not health insurance yet and so
you know the next steps are how do you get it to be HSA
reimbursable, maybe get your insurance company pay for it.
So these guys are so well. Hypochondriac first.
It's perfect. It's.
The most anxious, like whoever's really worried every signal
you'll, you know, two St. Yeah, exactly.
Totally, but. What's it called again?
Sir, a throne. Throne.
We'll send you one. Do you want one?
Maybe. What stage business is it?
Seat, seat, Yeah, so. How big is it?
It's like a little camera, just. Yeah, it's a little camera.
It's like this big and obviously points down.
My husband was like, you're not putting out of the house.
I like don't worry. And you know, it goes down and
not up and and you know, when you go in, it's different for
everybody. So it'll just I'll know what you
versus your wife. Versus your kid.
Tell it can tell. Yeah, Bluetooth, because
everyone brings their phone. Oh, I see it.
It's. Kind of weird.
Yeah, fascinating. How long ago did you invest in?
That a little bit less than a year ago and and one of the Co
founders of woop is also a Co founder of throne, which is
great because he has built this before.
You know, he understands hardware, he understands
consumers, He has his own health issue that has made this his
life's mission, which is always so important when you find
founders. So that's the only company we've
done that's in healthcare and direct to consumer, again,
because it's really, really hard, but I think these guys
have a great job. What's your favorite non direct
to consumer health investment right now?
Well, it's like my. Children I don't have.
Not your favorite, but one that's fun to talk about.
I'd say like one that was recently in the news called
Luminae, which is workflows for healthcare systems.
They just announced A partnership with the Cleveland
Clinic. Something like 25 to 30% of all
healthcare system budgets go towards administrivia and you
know, claims, prior auth, referrals, pain doctors, all
these things. Awesome for AI, awesome for
agents. And healthcare systems
understandably are very conservative, right?
They don't want to like let into any of these agents without like
control. And this team is really
incredible. The founder grew up in southern
India coconut farming family gets a Rubik's Cube at the age
of 12 years old, becomes India's national champion.
The sets a Guinness Book of World Records for Rubik's Cube
like becomes this American dream story comes to Silicon Valley.
And he's just great at solving problems, right.
And so this became, you know, his mission.
He was very interested talking to a lot of these customers.
And so he they're just on their way.
So it's really interesting to see, you know, both this founder
grow and solve puzzle and great institutions like the Cleveland
Clinic that are like, we want to be on the forefront of, you
know, if we can improve workflows, we can improve health
outcomes. And so that's a direct
correlation. So they're working with a lot of
these healthcare systems, which is great.
And then one other favorite founder is Pharaoh's health,
which is doing they're really early.
This is maybe the most like charming founder you've ever
met. And having a British accent
helps, but they had worked with hospitals in the UK and the NHS
to use AI, machine learning, to look at patient safety data.
So meaning that if you go in the hospital to deliver a baby, you
don't leave with sepsis. And there are a lot of things
that you know, happen unfortunately, at hospitals.
And so another great thing for healthcare systems to automate
and not have nurses for let nurses work with patients and
let AI work with paperwork. And so, so this team, you know,
again, very, very early, they just signed their first contract
with a major healthcare system. So it's really exciting to see
in the next 5 years, Healthcare is going to dramatically change.
And so seeing like, what is that tech stack going to look like?
It's not just going to be epic, right?
They're going to be all these other systems.
I was watching a TikTok earlier this week and there was an
influencer, John Green, talking about his brother Hank Green.
Is that a lot of like, the good news happened slowly, right?
Like it's like, you know, you make these like incremental
improvements to human health and like over time, we're
drastically reducing the number of infants that die and people
that die and improving life expectancy around the world.
That happens very slowly. And the moment in time headline
is like, Oh my God, a school shooting or something terrible.
And that dichotomy just has a really I don't know how did you
yeah, I mean, you live that sum again from like being in Twitter
world and then also, you know, working in government, you know,
you're helping what the the White House figure out how to
use social media. You're.
Sorry about that. Yeah.
You grew up in a kind of worms. Does it seem innocent?
Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
The media is often blamed for for this phenomenon.
I guess I'm sort of articulating in a way that it's like human
nature and sort of the way things happen.
When you were in government and working on the tech side, did
you see answers to this of ways to make sort of positive moments
resonate? Or do humans just love like
negative moments? Yeah, I mean, you know, from
media, like, if it bleeds, it leads, right?
And unfortunately, people get drawn to this rubber necking of
terrible things that happen, but we have to change that.
Like, I mean, a part of it is human nature, but part of it
does need some intentionality. Like, how do we shine a bright
light on the things that make us great?
I mean, I think we saw that in the past week with Artemis 2.
What a moment, right? Everybody, nobody talk like it's
right, it's left, it's north or South or whatever.
Like that was a great time for all of us to come together and
see like look what happens when we apply our imagination, our
ingenuity, like our resources to learn and to explore and to
celebrate the win of these four amazing astronauts and see their
camaraderie and how the way how they talk to each other, how
they talk to us. Like we need more Artemis
celebrations of what we can do when we just focus on the prize
and the things again that can advance our society and.
Is that a matter of political leadership and you have to
create, I guess, in the real world, these actual moments that
people get excited about? Or is there a level of, I don't
know, social media savvy that can that can do it?
Yeah, it's, I think it's everyone's responsibility,
right? Like, I think we, we expect too
much from our politicians. I think, you know, I get how
people have given up. It's really sad, you know, that
we don't make it easy for good people to run.
And as a result, we don't have a lot of great leaders.
We do have some, which is great. We need to empower them.
But I think it's everybody's responsibility.
It's each of us. It's A tag and.
I agree with that. You're not saying directly, but
nobody wants to blame the electorate or like sometimes it
is like the news consumer and the voter has some culpability
and it's not always productive to like point it back.
And but yeah, sometimes it's like people, you know, people
get the politicians that they they vote for on some level and
get the media that they decide to consume.
Obviously platforms you know can can be regulated and changed,
but. Totally.
I mean, also, like, you know, it's easy to complain and, and,
and inflamed the rhetoric, but how many people who are
complaining actually ever served in office, have ever
volunteered, have served the military, have served their
government, right. Like unless you do it, it's
really like we we all have to step up.
We all have to shine a brighter light.
And it's sometimes it's harder to come up with the ideas to
like fix the world than I think people sometimes think
complaining online because sometimes I'm just like, oh,
what is what is the idea that you that somebody wants?
I don't know, it can be a little abstract.
One thing, you know, we both you, you know, spend time in the
Obama administration. I think both, you know,
democratically aligned. This week, Axios reported that
the DNC was telling its staffers not to use like, Chachi, BT and
Claude. I don't know if you saw this.
They said they can use Gemini. I don't quite get the balance.
But do you worry that there's this like, I mean, America
overall is very concerned about AI.
But then, yeah, I don't know where you see the Democratic
Party going with AI. Do you have a general sense of
like, you know how how you think this technology is being
received outside of Silicon Valley?
I mean, I think the Democratic Party has bigger things to worry
about than AI, honestly. Like, what is the message?
Like, what do you stand for? Like, who's next?
Like, how do we talk normally to the American people and not at
the American people? So I think the Democratic Party
has a lot more, you know, bigger things to, to really work.
On but in some ways populism is very of the moment and like
being anti AI, anti business, like anti tech is a path into
the into populism. I mean, it's not it's not what I
want, but if I were just to like to read the tea leaves and be
like, oh, what's gonna make for a sort of compelling campaign?
Also, if you wanted to attract some of the MAGA people, it's
somewhat bipartisan to hate the tech industry.
I don't know. Do you, do you see sort of a
populist wave? Coming for AI, we're already
seen sort of the data center resistance.
Exactly, I was going to mention that.
So I think you're, I forgot the stats, but there was a survey of
how younger people feel about AI to some like 30 to 40%, like
hate it. Like that's huge.
That's a big, big number. And even, you know, I have kids
who are, you know, in their early 20s and like they're also
even having a mom who like, you know, raised them in Silicon
Valley. They're like, I don't know, like
a little bit nervous and cautious.
And I think it's really interesting you see this in
Indiana where there's a local council and someone shot, you
know, at his house and left a note that said no data centers.
People are mad. And I think we need to listen to
that. And people are nervous.
They're worried about their jobs.
They're worried, I mean, will AI probably take away more jobs and
create them probably. And no one's having a
conversation about that. And I think we need everyone to
kind of have that conversation. Like, what does that future look
like? And also immediately, like, how
do we, we retrain the next generation, you know, to work in
the trades, how to leverage AI, how to be prepared?
I mean, I remember taking like typewriting class at school.
It seems like that's really aging myself.
They're like, obviously no one needs that anymore.
Like everyone grows up in these things.
I was clearly a few years later, but when we'd have what the
typing classes you have to do word puzzles or whatever, you
know you're just supposed to type to get clues.
And I just remember we'd memorized all the answers.
Like we could see right any sequence of blanks I'd like.
I know what the answer to this. I've done the same wrote work
over and over again. But yeah, I don't I don't Well,
like, you know, in New York right now, you know, there's
this fight over self driving cars and Waymo's pilot, I think
was not renewed. I just find, yeah, the the anti
self driving car position to be like abhorrent.
I mean it's. I agree, I love Waymo.
Right. I know it's amazing, but I mean,
if you're sympathetic on the jobs front, then there's this
impulse to slow down any technology that threatens jobs
and you know, other Uber drivers and truck drivers and everything
else that eventually face a threat from self driving cars.
And I just think ultimately, you know, we want to be a culture
that embraces progress. And I, I think anyone who's been
in a self driving car, I mean, especially for like the elderly
and people with mobility issues or, you know, and people just
care about safety and don't want drunk drivers.
Everything Like I, I just feel like it's insane that we've, I
think we're gonna look back and we're gonna be like, it's insane
that for, you know, 100 plus years, we let humans like drive
around in these like sort of big hunks of metal and like ram into
each other and like ingest substances and then get on the
road. I, I don't know, it feels like
it's going to be a weird blip, not the human way of operating.
I agree. I mean, there are these products
that are living and serving in the future, right?
Like same thing with Airbnb. I'm not going to, why would I
ever rent somebody's house? And now it's just part of the
fabric of how we travel. Same with, you know, Uber.
Same with Waymo. Once you're in a Waymo, you
realize it's safer, it's cleaner.
It's about the same cost for the elderly, for, you know, people
who have, you know, sick issues, you know, and need an extra
hand. Like Waymo is incredible.
I'm only in a Waymo when I'm in San Francisco.
I see this with throne. You know, it's early, but like
living in the future, at some point we'll look at the fact
that we sort of flush away all this data and not really analyze
it to inform how we're doing, You know, do we have a food
allergy? Like, you know, do we have blood
going on? Like, so these are the things
that, you know, this has regulation gone a little bit too
far in New York and not really thinking about the benefits to
all New Yorkers, just, you know, a certain category of people who
feel threatened. What what keeps you sort of, I
guess, excited to the extent you are about like the left and
liberal politics in an era where Silicon Valley is swung to the
right? Some of the things we're
touching on, like, you know, Democrats can be more anti
capitalist at times, more resistant to technology,
somewhat more skeptical to some of the company, you know, just
like less inclined to be like, oh, there's there's something
there. I don't know what, what, what,
what do you think is sort of the positive message and what
excites you about like what the American left has to offer right
now? I would say I'm excited.
I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic that that a new
generation of leaders are starting to evolve that are just
normal and sensible and understand the political
realities of what they're dealing with.
Like I look at Daniel Laurie, the mayor of San Francisco.
Amazing what a turn around, right?
Like. We we had him speak at the
Cerebral AI Summit and yeah, he was by far the most popular
speaker. I think we had all these CEO's
and, you know, it's like a sort of a politician that's like, I
appreciate the hard work you're doing in industry, but we need
to bring everybody along with us.
It's such a winning message. Yeah.
So like how is it that position? Like, he's just, he's in it for
the right reasons. He's sensible, he's centrist.
You know, he is very honest and direct about the challenges in
front and when things go wrong, to be straightforward about it.
Americans are just so sick of being, like, spun and lied to.
And, you know, we're gaslighted like nobody's business.
I feel terrible for younger Americans growing up.
And they must think like, this is normal.
Like, this is not normal. This is bad, you know.
What's not like growing up in sort of the Mac a year or people
have only sort of known Trump? Yeah, They've only known Trump
and they've only known this like, kleptocracy, frankly.
And they've only seen like these extremes.
And they're seeing the other side just kind of give up.
Like be like, it's too hard. I'm just going to do my own
thing. I'm not going to pay attention.
Like, you know, we'll wait another couple of years and
that's not healthy either, right?
Like we should encourage debate. Like we should encourage the
transparency and openness and looking at the data to help us
inform, like what is a better outcome for everybody in this
community? We're never going to be able to
please everybody, but at least let's be honest and direct about
it. And, you know, you have
situations in California, too, with Eric Swalwell, like, like,
really, like, just don't cheat on your spouses.
Like, don't do it with people that work for you.
Like, how is that hard? You know, like, no wonder people
are just sick of politics. We had Matt, I had Matt Mahan in
that chair. I don't know, 3 or 4 weeks ago.
I like him. I mean, now he's maybe second,
third place in the primary with Swalwell out.
It's not the most exciting message, like in an era of like
Trump. And, you know, I think Zoram
Amdani is doing like a pretty good job both in what he's
delivering and messaging. And, you know, I'm a built in
sort of mayhem supporter. It's like I like the tech
industry knows a lot of the same people.
I knew him like a decade ago. I it's not the most like flashy
message and it's just like, it's hard to win is a centrist
without some. You know, you literally have Tom
Steyer right now. He's gonna like, I mean, I don't
know why I'm laughing. I'm somewhat sympathetic.
But like, jail, you know, some of the people who worked in ICE
and use like, the power of power of California, you know, to go
after, you know, ICE officers. So I don't know, it's hard.
Have you? I don't know if you've donated
to Mahan or anything. I haven't.
Do you have a view on the race or who's left?
Not really just kind of watching it, but, you know, like, where
are the reasonable people? Like, how do we make it easier
for the reasonable people to serve more of their
constituencies? And, you know, just be honest
and straightforward and honorable.
And yeah, I haven't. I mean, the challenge is, I
mean, this is what I sort of pushed on him about.
I just sort of like kept coming back to Trump that it's, it's
hard to be just sort of like middle of the road when you have
to react to the stuff you described before, which is like
a kleptocracy and sort of just the, I don't know, degradation
of our government and culture. And so I, I don't know, I do
think you sort of need a politician who's pretty upset
about that and says we really need to like work hard to go
back the other way. And so it's hard to strike this
like, I don't know, super chill, like bring everyone together a
message when it we need some. I don't know, we really need to
work to to undo some of the damage that's been done.
Yeah, and especially in tech, right, it's a in California is
very tricky, right. I mean, it's the like the
largest economy in the world. Like I think of ranks like 4th
or 5th, whatever, but but an embrace of tech, but also, you
know, some distance from it too and making sure that, you know,
tech leaders understand their power and their influence.
Like you think about American superpower, but if you fold in
American platform superpower, NVIDIA, alphabet, meta, like
they're in the top GDPS in the world, right?
Like we have such an influence on the world, but we're not
elected. You're like, there needs to be
AI. Think a tougher conversation and
A and a more vibrant conversation with how we work
attack. We saw what happen.
The Biden administration didn't embrace a lot of these leaders
and as a result, they like went another direction and then they
got their feelings or they got mad and they're, you know,
whatever. And they went different
direction because they were just kind of they weren't listened
to. And I think we just need a
leader or set of leaders in California that are just going
to be, again, reasonable, thoughtful, honorable and
attentive to what are the advantages of these new emerging
technologies and what are the implications to, you know,
everyday Americans and and citizens around the world as
they emerge. Yeah.
What do you make of, you know, the lack of backbone, I guess,
in tech? I mean, we both were, you know,
incredulous, I don't know, morally outraged when, you know,
ice was, you know, killing people in the street.
And it really felt like a moment where a lot of people, you know,
in the business community in tech were were too silent.
You know, I I called Tim Cook a quisling at that point in time,
like, I don't know, we sort of moved on.
You know, I think, you know, Trump de escalated somewhat and
I guess the reaction was sufficient to get some change
there. It's not clear.
We're totally out of the woods with ice.
Maybe we've just moved on in terms of our attention.
But yeah, what do you make of sort of the lack of leadership
from, I don't know, the big tech CEOs?
Yeah, it was appalling. Like it was absolutely
appalling. And you know, and I think I, I
forget the timeline, but you know, maybe it was like a week
or a couple weeks earlier all the tech leaders were in DC,
right? And they're all sitting at
President Trump's table and all fanboying him, right?
And so they were all there. They had plenty to say.
And yet two Americans who are exercising their freedom of
speech and protesting against ice in Minnesota.
A poet, Renee Good and Alex Pretty, an ICU nurse who had the
bravery and the courage to protest, got shot and killed in
pure daylight. With all the video surrounding
it. It was clear as day and the
Trump administration calling them terrorists.
And it was one of the most disgusting things I feel like
I'd ever seen in my lifetime. And so, you know, I tweeted
something about like, this is appalling, this terrible and,
you know, these poor families. And and then I think you wrote
the right, you know, this amazing article.
And I wasn't totally paying attention at the time.
So I read your article that Jeff Dean, David Hornick, maybe a
couple other people, and that's it.
And like, everyone was silent. I'm like, how can everyone have
an opinion about, you know, these ridiculous things?
And I don't know, like if you have a platform and you have
this privilege, you have to speak up.
Like, tech is no longer neutral on things.
I mean, even Fast forward to this past weekend where we saw
Sam Altman's house attacked, Molotov cocktail.
Two days later, three days later, someone shot his house.
Terrible. That should never happen.
Nobody should live in fear. You know, no matter what they
do, if they're Sam Altman or, you know, Sam Johnson, like
everyone like needs to be respectful and safe.
And so that was terrible. But also, and everyone Silicon
Valley had an opinion like why that was bad.
They're absolutely right. That was bad and they should
speak out. But why this disparity, right?
Like we should, you know, speak out when we see things that are
wrong and, and we have this, I know we have all this power and
privilege, like we have to use it in the most constructive way.
Yeah, no, that's so well put. I mean, it does feel like they,
well, first of all, that, you know, it's strategic to them to
defend ACEO in the way that sort of being across the Trump
administration doesn't help them.
But I, I also feel like there's this sort of like class defense
where it's like the CEO, like me, I need to defend them.
But yeah, I was it's, it's a very dark contrast.
And you can see how countries slip into fascism.
It's like, oh, the business community does sort of line up.
They they see what they get out of the administration.
They play, they're experts that sort of playing the game on the
field. They're like, oh, these are my
incentives. And people just sort of drift
into it. I mean, yeah, it's, it's a dark
realization about, I mean, that almost gives them too much
forgiveness because it's sort of like, well, that's how these
things go. But yeah, I'd, I'd like to see
more leaders in tech. I mean, how much do you think
just like the political tide shifting will will sort of help
people find their backbones? I mean, if Democrats start to
gain power in like the midterms, do you see movement there or do
you see people starting to try to reposition themselves?
I think so. I think that there are, you
know, I'm on a bunch of tech threads, you know, signals of
people that, you know, are just being like, careful and watching
and are hopeful. I also feel a lot of collective
exhaustion. You know, we just live in this
frenzied world that every day like what is happening.
Right. I mean, the first Trump
administration, there was this sense like, we're going to
resist it, yes. And that will solve everything,
yes. And then I feel like people lost
all the will to, you know, resist, I guess, the second time
around because it's like, oh, it was a lot of complaining that
didn't do much. Right.
But I think you are starting to see, you know, groups like this
is too far, like Marjorie Taylor Green stepping up, this is too
far. Fascinating, right?
Like. Tucker Carlson.
Megyn Kelly. Like, sometimes I listen to
Megyn Kelly now. I agree with her.
Like, wait, what? What is happening?
And like, and so you're seeing people, I mean, the stuff this
past week against the Holy Father, like, really, we're
going to take on the Pope, the beloved Pope.
Like, that's insane. Like, especially with, you know,
you know, Christians and Catholics.
I grew up Catholic and man, would I love to have a family
reunion right now with my representatives and everybody
else. Like, you know, you know, he's
gone too far, like over and over again.
But I think more and more people are starting to feel it.
So you can and there are the cracks in there.
And I think it is a moment in time.
Like, again, how do we bring people more Artemis moments,
right? How do we, you know, who is the
Artemis candidate, you know, to help us, you know, heal some of
these wounds and go back in the world and heal these
relationships that, you know, he is decimated with many of our
allies. We just have a lot of work to
do. This this is a big question,
maybe too much to ask, but like if you had to say what like you
think the positive vision for like America should be like, are
you it's like sort of abundance, like grow, grow, grow.
Does that fully capture it because it allows this sort of
like, I don't know, it's just like build more tech companies
Or do you how how would you put like what we should be sort of
aspiring to and what the message you want to hear?
Yeah, I think, you know, again, because we have this unique and
amazing abundance of technology and resources and innovation,
and, you know, Americans who are the best of their game.
If it's in healthcare, if it's in economics, if it's in
construction, if it's in space, like that's awesome.
How do we leverage that for good?
And how do we make, of course, more Americans benefit?
But it can't just be just Americans.
We live in this global world where we're all interconnected.
How can we use our privilege, our power, our resources to help
you find earlier detection of cancer in treatments?
How can we ensure that we have enough natural resources for
everybody to benefit? How do we ensure that we have a
better, more protected climate? You know, we have a home in
Colorado. It has been 60 to 70° almost all
winter. There is no snowpack, which
means there's no water, which also means there are more fires.
And this is happening all over the world.
This is not just a Colorado or an American problem.
This is a, you know, like global problems.
So how can we leverage all the tools and the, you know, the
tools of the 21st century to address the challenges of the
21st century around the world? So that is my hope.
Well put. Climate is a funny one.
Yeah. I feel like there are two things
we never hear about, like climate and DI.
And I want to touch on both of the OR we don't hear about it.
We haven't heard about them in the last, I don't know, two
years. Climate.
Somebody was making the point to me literally at lunch before
this that because of the war in Iran, it's like you're starting
to hear like at least energy is a concern again.
It's like we need other energy sources.
So even if people because of, you know, the Trump agenda,
don't want to frame it in like environmentalism terms, they're
suddenly oh, yeah, we it's good not to just be dependent on
Middle Eastern oil. But yeah, I mean, are you, do
you seem, have you been like, have you been sort of quietly
doing climate investing at all in this period where it's sort
of out of favor in the headlines?
Yeah, so, Eric, it's no longer called climate tech, it's called
energy. Tech exactly.
Right. Or it's called like the
reindustrialization of America. Yeah.
War against climate change? Kill.
People with their solar panels. Yeah, exactly.
So there is kind of rebranding, right.
And I think that's really important and we have a number
of companies in our portfolio that are in that category and
they're crushing it. We have one company called
Overstory and it's AI for vegetation management that's
addressing that. We have, you know, a heating or,
you know, heating, sorry. Yeah, the heating planet.
And and as a result, we have more fires and utilities cause
something like 50% of fire or no, 11% of fires and 50% of the
economic destruction, right. So it's a huge, huge problem.
We see this certainly in California, Colorado in New York
has had fires like it's crazy. Anyway, so Overstory works with
utilities to help them use AI satellite data, all this other
interesting stuff to be able to get ahead of these things.
So which of their assets need to, you know, cut back trees?
Where should they reinvest things?
So, and utilities have adopted this like crazy.
We, we LED this around a few years ago.
They are now this market leader of grid resilience, So not
climate tech, grid resilience. And, and it is a huge business.
They are growing really fast. They're crushing their numbers
and, and it is so exciting to see.
So here's a great practical use of AI that is going to save a
lot of people's lives. It's going to save businesses a
lot of money. It's the company's actually
based on the Netherlands. The CEO is American.
And it's been we laugh about the words, but there is a degree to
some that is sort of what the Trump people wanted, right?
Like if you look at Dodge, they were literally searching for
particular words. And we're like, we don't like
those words. Like instead of soft words,
please use hard, tough guy words and like that.
So DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, like how much is that
truly gone versus you? You think there are still
efforts going on that just like people don't want to talk about?
Yeah, there are still efforts for sure, which is great, but
people don't use them, right. And people don't talk about
them. People don't report on them.
I do. We send our investor updates
every quarter and I track and I report on how many of our
founders are, you know, black, brown, female, immigrant,
whatever. And so I think it's important.
And you know, we don't invest in companies just because they fit
a certain category, but I do want to make sure that we're
building products and backing founders that reflect the
customers that they serve. And so, you know, it isn't as
widespread as maybe it used to be, but I still think it's
important. It's amazing.
We live in an industry, you know, that loves to think from
first principles. Yes, yet first principles, but
yet they're totally socially reactive.
It's like you were doing not you, but everyone else like
doing DEI before. Now that it's out of favor, you
don't talk about it at all, yet you're a first principles
thinker. Like it's.
Yeah, the herd mentality on this one is pretty gross.
I. Mean ultimately, like do what
you think is right, and if you think it's right, you should do
it. You know, there's obviously a
lot of merit, a lot of data that suggests that, you know, diverse
companies and diverse teams will have better outcomes.
So the data is there, the feeling is there, the outcome is
there. So, you know, for us, we're
still going to do it. The sort of emphasis on it, like
were there any legal, like, I don't know, they've no you, you
feel like safe, safe doing it. I mean, come at me because I
report on that like you're. Just disclosing data around, you
know, yeah. It's just data.
And yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
sunlight is the best disinfectant kind of thing.
Like, you know, have the data, you know, be honest about what
that data means and you know, and hopefully use that data in a
really good positive way. Do you think sort of minority
founders and women are are getting less funding now?
Or what's your sense on how much sort of not talking about DEI is
translating into a lack of funding?
Yeah, it's still bad. Yeah.
Like I don't know where the. It was bad.
It is bad. It's still bad.
Yeah, like it's, I remember, I think it was in 2016, I was a
group in a group called Hashtag Angels, which was a group of
girlfriends. We're still very close to this
day. And we banded together to become
better investors and we started to see the cap tables of these
companies that we're backing. And we're like, look, there's
really not a lot of women and they're really not a lot of
under represented, you know, people in these cap tables.
And we worked with Carta to actually look at the data and
Henry Ward, the CEO and Co founder of Carta was great.
He was like, OK, I'll use our data science team and I forget
the exact stats, but it's something like 6500 cap tables
at the time. And only 9% of the capital went
to women. And that was across founders and
employees, early employees, VC's and, and maybe one or two other
categories. And, and that was terrible.
It's kind of what we thought it was, but at least we knew where
to start. And we get, you know, to always
ask questions going forward. Like, is it better or worse?
And I haven't seen the data since then, but I'm pretty
certain it's not much better sadly.
It is, you know, I program conferences.
You know, we have speakers. We're doing a voice event right
now, and it's like, yeah, we want more female speakers, but
we also want, like, voice company CEOs in it.
Yeah. I mean, it's the classic, you
know you don't. Want to be a great one for?
You, you do daily. Great.
OK, what is it? Tell me.
About it, so it's API for voice and audio, so it's a dev tool,
but you know. This is exactly what I was.
It's like, give me solutions, You know, I'll have people be
like, you need more women. And it's like, all right.
I don't know women. Give me a specific one and like,
we'll think about it. We'll see, You know, how much
money they've raised. I mean, the challenge is, yeah,
you, you want, I want, I don't want to call anyone out.
But one time, you know, we programmed, I mean, we've
programmed. Well, one of the women we
programmed was like, I'm shocked that I get to be included among
these other people. And you're like, you almost want
to be like, no, act like you're, you're supposed to be there.
Like we want, we don't want it to be sort of like you're,
you're the one that didn't sort of make the cut.
You're like, you're in the list, you're on the stage.
I don't know it it's it's it's a funding is somewhat different
than speaking in that we are sort of like tracking, you know,
the people before I don't know this is.
But I I think you're right. Like I remember once Kara
Swisher called me and asked me to be like speak on something.
And my kids were little at the time.
I was like, I can't do it. I'm really busy.
And she called me up and Kara has Kara like, she doesn't mince
words, right. And she was like, what the fuck?
You know, she was like, Katie, you need to take your space.
And I was like, what does that mean?
She's like, I'm giving you this opportunity.
Take it and like, don't sit back because you have to watch the
kids. Find someone else to watch the
kids, like do it. And like, it really stuck with
me. Like 1st, I don't want to be on
Kara's bad side because she could be mean.
She's so. Good at it.
You know what? She's literally I just saw on
the podcast she's. So good.
And like, and, and I respect her and I admire her.
And she has like, been in this arena for a long time.
And she has made such a positive dent.
And so, yeah, when Kara's Swisher asked you to do these
things, like, you do it. But like, she's right.
Like, take your space. And I think a lot of women
especially, you know, you might be early in your career and you
have kids. You have a lot of
responsibilities. Maybe you're caregiving for your
parents, too. And you're like, I can't
possibly do it. But if you're listening, saying
do it. Take your space.
Man, you need to Cara, Cara, you need to internalize this or I
want to ask Cara for advice on how she, like books such great
speakers. She's like, oh, I just, I just
asked them, you know? Yeah, no, there's a lot more to
it. She's so good at being like real
and like, you know, that you remember it and that it stands
out and that she was like sort of pushed through sort of, you
know, it's so easy, just like ask over e-mail and it's like
take whatever the answer. And she's, she's good at that.
Yeah, she might send a hitman after you too, so there's that.
It's like I have a long memory. Yeah.
Any other. So I mean, we talked through
health, we hit a little bit on energy.
Any other sort of interesting startup categories that you're
watching right now? Have you invested in any like I
don't know, foundation model companies?
Are you staying away from that category given all the money
going into Open AI and Anthropic?
Yeah, I think we're mostly staying away from that category.
You know, we're always looking for, you know, great companies
that are solving real problems. And that can be in, again,
healthcare, it can be in finance, it can be in legal
tech. So we have one company called
Spellbook, which is AI for lawyers, like, yeah.
And it's I mean legal tech, the most boring category that you
can imagine like several years ago.
And now it's like this race. It's so sexy.
So we have, you know, spellbook we invested in, which is only
two he. Threw a boy in investors.
He is that's. Funny, that's bridging.
I know two different political ends with the.
Spectrum on this project. I think he talked about it here
too. Oh, good.
Yeah. And he's a great company and
they're crushing it. And you know, this is a great
one. You know, their customers love
them and they're growing very fast.
They're based in Canada, so it's a great Canadian win.
We have another company here in New York City called, which is
an AI native law firm. This founder, I met her here in
New York at a New York tech event and she had just left
Cooley. And this almost never happens
when you're at an event, you talk to somebody and you're
like, this person has just something special.
Like tell me more. I think we're going to invest.
And the more I got to know her, like the more excited I got.
She's the winner. Like she was got in every
college. She she goes to Vanderbilt, she
becomes valedictorian. She was a Marshall Scholar
applies to every law school, gets in every law school, goes
to Harvard, you know, free ride all these things.
And like she just knows how to win.
And she's just so good. And so it's really fun seeing
like, you know, her and, and Scott from Spellbook, just like
grow these businesses that were not in like not in anyone's
imagination like 5 to 6 years ago and you're solving really
hard problems. The The Who, What was the
company of the founder? You were just.
Talking about, I'm sorry, it's called.
Soxton I'm sorry, what's it do? So it's an AI native law firm
and of course they have lawyers on the team, but.
Very involved now. Well, obviously Krosky has
raised a bunch of money in this category.
Yeah, yeah, they have and, and, but what Soxton is doing,
they're working with early stage startups, right?
And I see this all the time. It's such a big problem.
You see the startup and they're spending thousands of dollars
working with any of the major firms on incorporation docs and
thousands of dollars on, you know, their their safes, their,
you know, their price round notes.
That is not what they should be spending their money on, right?
And so they're going to need that money for compute and
everything else. And so Saxon does this at a
fraction of the cost and really fast and and that team is just
off to the races. So another New York winner for
you. So if you're a start up, go to
Saxon dot AI. What a What fund is Moxie on
right now? Fund 3.
So what? That's, that's, so you've made
it. You've made it to Fund 3, which
is always the sort of test for a new manager.
I don't know. We live in this world of venture
capital where Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, General
Catalyst feel like they're sucking up so much of the money,
so much of the attention. Like what?
What have been the lessons you've learned trying to build a
new, smaller, sort of early stage focused firm?
And yeah, how do you sort of survive amidst all the giants?
Yeah, I think #1 is just stay focused, you know, play your
strengths. And so for us, it's, you know,
we look to invest 1.5 on 15,000,000, maybe up a little
bit or down a little bit. That means we also have to get
there really early. Can we compete with these $100
million seeds? Nope.
Like skip it. Like, it's really easy to get
this FOMO and just try to do these things, but the fun math
doesn't work. Like you just have to stay
really focused. You have to stay really early
and you have to be really fast. And so, you know, when I met
Logan Brown at Saxon, I met her that night and I sent her a term
sheet a few days later. And like, I needed to do that
before Andreessen or any of the other bigger guys, you know, saw
her and met her. And that's OK.
I mean, and found her right after this and trying to close
these deals as quickly as possible and also help them get
to the next level. Because if Andreessen and Lights
and all these other great firms like you at seed, I promise you
they're gonna like you even more at a when you have more product
market fit, when you have more revenue, when you have more data
to make a good decision. But it's a very much a
bifurcated market. Are you taking board seats ever?
No, it's too hard to scale. It's too early.
I mean, sometimes we do, we try not to because each fund will
have roughly 30 to 35 companies and that just doesn't scale.
So we always get information, right.
So we have as much information as the board members.
But you know, we're like, it was Spellbook.
We were, we actually sat on the board of Spellbook early.
And then Keith came, we're like great.
Like Keith is a lawyer. He's a very good VC.
Let him help you take it to the next level.
So there's a little bit of a pass the baton that happens.
You're you are on the board of Yahoo, right?
Yes, that one. I said yes too.
I had another like this podcast. I saw that with Jim Lanzone.
He was on this podcast. He's.
The best? How, what what do you make of
sort of the progress they've made and yeah, I don't know,
what do you, what do you think they've been able to do?
It is awesome. So you were talking to earlier.
Yahoo was the first job I ever loved and coming full circle to
work on this and the 1st. Job you ever loved?
It's like I was a banker. Not the first job I ever loved.
Definitely not that. One and then product
manager@yahooin1999yes.com.com. Mania.
Yeah. You know, Webvan, like it was so
great. And and it was funny because I
met Jim when I worked at Google and he was at ask Jeeves and he
was the biggest pain in the ass. Like he asked us the hardest
questions. I was like, oh God.
And nobody at Google knew how to answer.
And they were just, you know, try to push back.
And I was like, you know what, this guy is right?
Like I never want to be in the opposite side of this guy.
Like he is so smart and so thoughtful.
And so we became friends and stayed in touch.
And then when he asked me to join the Yahoo board, I was
like, what an honor. Like even though I never take
board seats, I have to do this and have a front row seat to,
you know, the the reimagination of Yahoo, it's been awesome.
He has up leveled every single part of that team.
He has really refocused the company.
Like what really matters, search mail finance.
So fun to see Yahoo finance still kicking around and it is
still a market leader. Like this is a beloved brand.
Like, and it's funny too. You look at Twitter and X and
it's got like it's been kind of punched in the face, right?
If you're like, I don't trust it.
I don't really like it. And then you see Yahoo, when you
talk to anyone about Yahoo, they're like, I love Yahoo.
It's. Funny, I mean, it has the burden
of like it's old or like people, you know, you know, I don't
know, 30 plus. It's like it's it's old, but
like I think you have a positive.
Yeah, exactly. People don't.
Have a negative association and then once you drill into
specific things that it does like finance, you're like, Oh
yeah, it's probably the best like way to get financial
information. Or obviously some of the like
fantasy draft. I mean, there are lots of
categories where it's still pretty strong.
It's so great. And I don't know if you've tried
Yahoo Scout, which is, you know, yeah.
Obviously he's a prep for. It, it's cool, like it's really
good and, and so you know, it's been really fun.
The Apollo team has been amazing, and seeing how you know
Apollo has, you know, helped contribute to the success of
Yahoo has also been really fun. Do you?
This is probably my last question.
Do you use like AI in venture capital?
Like do you think like how, how is it changing how you do under
capital or perhaps it's? Venture capital, it's great like
for us, and we're a very small team.
My partner Alex, he is the smartest person in the room that
never acts like it. He's a engineer.
He was head of engineering at Twitter, where we suffer
together and built together and he's great.
And he has integrated all these different agents and tools into
how we work so we can just move faster.
You know, how do we prep our day?
How do we diligence companies, how do we look at, you know, the
competitive set, you know, what are like better questions.
So like it has totally helped us just get smarter so we can spend
more time, you know, face to face with founders and really
understand them as human beings and making sure the marketing.
AI is good at like flagging startups that you might want to
invest in, or it's more of the prep once you're sort of
actually in diligence. Not at seed per SE, because
usually it's like the idea. There's like really not a lot of
data to crawl maybe on the industry.
Like what are the signs that the market is pulling an idea like
this forward or a product like this forward?
Why have other companies failed in the past?
Was it the right, you know, the wrong team at the wrong time
with the wrong idea? I don't know.
So it's good at some things, but not necessarily on the history
of the company. OK.
This is my last question. Yeah, does this feellikethe.com
boom. Different.
It feels similar in that there's such a frenzy and the prices are
rising so fast and so high that just don't feel sustainable and
you know it's going to crash and you don't know when and how
badly. So that is true.
But but the crash is coming and the gas is coming.
But like, so you're just kind of bracing but different that the
opportunity is so much bigger. Like it is so huge and nobody
really understands it. And it really has so much
promise, but it's so uncontrolled.
That is a bit scary. And so, you know, everyone's
kind of building on quicksand a little bit.
So how do we just make sure we're prepared for that and
setting it up for success? Katie, Jacob, Stan, thank you so
much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me
so honoured. That's our show.
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