Katie Jacobs Stanton on Elon, Trump & Why Silicon Valley Won’t Speak Up

20:03Eric Newcomer:But if I were just like to read the tea leaves and be like, oh, what's going to 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 see sort of a populist wave coming for AI? We're already seeing sort of the data center resistance. Exactly. I was going to mention that. So I think, I forgot the stats, but there was a survey of how younger people feel about AI and it's like 30 to 40 % hate it. That's huge. That's a big, big number. And even I have kids who are in their early 20s and they're also, even having a mom who raised them in Silicon Valley, they're like, I don't know, like a little bit nervous and cautious.

20:45And I think it's really interesting. You see this in Indiana where there's a local councilman and someone shot 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 retrain the next generation, you know, to work in the trades, how to leverage AI, how to be prepared?

21:23I mean, I remember taking like typewriting class at school, which seems like that's really aging myself. They're like, obviously, no one needs that anymore. Like everyone grows up in these things.

21:31Eric Newcomer:I was clearly a few years later, but when we'd have 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 memorize all the answers. Like we could see any sequence of blanks. I'd like, all right, I know what the answer is. I've done the same rote work over and over again. But yeah, 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 anti-self-driving car position to be like abhorrent i mean it's i agree i love wayne 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 uh that threatens jobs and you know other uber drivers and truck drivers and everything else that eventually face a threat um from self-driving cars and i just think ultimately you know we want to be a culture that embraces progress um 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 just feel like it's insane that we've i think we're going to look back and we're going to be like it's insane that for you know a hundred plus years we let humans like drive around in these like Like sort of big hunks of metal and like ram into each other and like ingest substances and then get on the road.

23:02Eric Newcomer: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 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 people who have sick issues and need an extra hand. Waymo is incredible. I'm only in a Waymo when I'm in San Francisco. I see this with Throne.

23:39It's early, but living in the future, at some point, we'll look at the fact that we flush away all this data, not really analyze it to inform how we're doing. Do we have a food allergy? Do we have blood going on? So these are the things that, you know, this is 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.

24:03Eric Newcomer: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 has 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 something there. I don't know. 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 would say I'm cautiously optimistic 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.

24:54Like I look at Daniel Lurie, the mayor of San Francisco. Amazing. What a turnaround, right?

24:59Eric Newcomer:We had him speak at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit. Yeah, he was by far the most popular speaker. I think we had all these CEOs and, you know, it's like 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. Yeah. So like how is it that hard? 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, were gaslighted, like nobody's business.

25:42I 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?

25:51Eric Newcomer:What's not like growing up in sort of the Maccae year or people who've 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. They'll be like, oh, it's too hard. I'm just going to do my own thing. I'm not going to pay attention. We'll wait another couple of years. And that's not healthy either. We should encourage debate. We should encourage the transparency and openness and looking at the data to help us inform what is a better outcome for everybody in this community.

26:24We'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, ugh. 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.

26:43Eric Newcomer:We had Matt. I had Matt Mahan in that chair, I don't know, three or four 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 Zora Mamdani 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. It's not the most like flashy message. And it's just like it's hard to win as a centrist without some – you know, you literally have Tom Steyer right now saying he's going to like – I mean, I don't know why I'm laughing.

27:33Eric Newcomer:I'm somewhat sympathetic. But like jail, you know, some of the people who worked in ice and used like the 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. No. Do you have a view on the race or who's left? Not really. I'm 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.

28:09Eric Newcomer: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 hard to be just sort of like middle the road when you have to react to the stuff you described before, which is like a kleptocracy and sort of just the degradation of our government and culture. And so 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 message when it needs some I don't know we really need to work 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 like the largest economy in the world like I think it ranks like fourth or fifth 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, they're in the top GDPs in the world, right?

29:24We have such an influence on the world, but we're not elected. There needs to be, I think, a tougher conversation and a more vibrant conversation with how we work at tech. We saw what happened. The Biden administration didn't embrace a lot of these leaders. And as a result, they went another direction and then they got their feelings are they got mad and they're you know whatever and they went different direction because they were just kind of um 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

30:09Eric Newcomer:make of, you know, the lack of backbone, I guess, in tech. I mean, we both were, you know, incredulous. I don't know, I'm really 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 too silent. You know, I called Tim Cook a quiz lane 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.

30:45Eric Newcomer:Maybe we've just moved on in terms of our attention. But what do you make of sort of the lack of leadership from the big tech CEOs? Yeah, it was appalling. Like, it was absolutely appalling. And, you know, and I think I forget the timeline, but, you know, maybe it was like a week or a couple of weeks earlier, all the tech leaders were in D.C., 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 were exercising their freedom of speech and protesting against ICE in Minnesota, a poet, Renee Good, and Alex Preddy, an ICU nurse who had the bravery and the courage to protest, got shot and killed in pure daylight with all the videos surrounding it.

31:38It 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 is 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 until I read your article that Jeff Dean, David Hornick, maybe a couple other people, and that's it. Right.

32:06Eric Newcomer:It was terrible. Everyone was silent. I'm like, how can everyone have an opinion about these ridiculous things? And I don't know, if you have a platform and you have this privilege, you have to speak up. 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 needs to be respectful and safe.

32:43And so that was terrible. But all of a sudden, everyone in 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 don't know, we have all this power and privilege like we have to use it in the most constructive way.

33:06Eric Newcomer: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 the CEO in the way that sort of being across the Trump administration doesn't help them. But I also feel like there's this sort of like class defense where it's like, oh, the CEO like me, I need to defend them. But yeah, it's a very dark contrast. I mean, you can see how countries slip into fascism. It's like, oh, the business community does sort of line up. They see what they get out of the administration. They play their experts. It's sort of playing the game on the field.

33:41Eric Newcomer:They're like, oh, these are my incentives. And people just sort of drift into it. I mean, yeah, 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 like to see more leaders in tech. I mean, how much do you think just like the political tide shifting 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? 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 text threads, you know, and signals of people that, you know, are just being like careful and watching and are hopeful.

34:26I also feel a lot of collective exhaustion. You know, we just live in this frenzied world that every day, like, what is happening? Right.

34:36Eric Newcomer:I mean, the first Trump administration, there was this sense like, we're going to resist it and that will solve everything. And then I feel like people lost all the will to 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 groups like this is too far, like Marjorie Taylor Green, stepping up, this is too far. Fascinating. Fascinating, right? Tucker Carlson. Megan Kelly. Like sometimes I listen to Megyn Kelly now. I'm like, I agree with her. Like, wait, 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?

35:17Like, 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, 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 has decimated with many of our allies.

35:58We just have a lot of work to do.

35:59Eric Newcomer:So 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 us sort of like, I don't know, it's just like build more tech companies. Or do you, 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.

36:45How 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 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? We have a home in Colorado. It has been 60 to 70 degrees almost all winter. There is no snowpack, which means there's no water, which also means there are more fires.

37:21And this is happening all over the world. This is not just a Colorado or an American problem. This is a global problem. So how can we leverage all the tools and the tools of the 21st century to address the challenges of the 21st century around the world? So that is my hope.

37:37Eric Newcomer:Well put. Climate is a funny one. I feel like there are two things we never hear about, like climate and DEI. And I want to touch on both of them. Or we don't hear about that. 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 turns right there's suddenly oh yeah we it's good not to just be dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

38:17Eric Newcomer:But yeah, I mean, 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 re-industrialization of America. It's called a warfighter energy, Yeah, Department of War against climate change. We're going to kill people with our 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.

38:53We have one company called Overstory, and it's AI for vegetation management, that's addressing that we have a heating planet.

39:04And as a result, we have more fires. And utilities cause something like 50 % of fire or 11 % of fires and 50 % of the economic destruction. Right. So it's a huge, huge problem. We see this certainly in California, Colorado, 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 cut back trees? Where should they reinvest things? So, and utilities have adopted this like crazy. We led this around a few years ago. They're now this market leader of grid resilience.

39:43So not climate tech, grid resilience. And it is a huge business. They are growing really fast. They're crushing their numbers. 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. The company is actually based in the Netherlands. The CEO is American.

40:02Eric Newcomer: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 Doge, 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, inclusion, like how much is that truly gone versus 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.

40:37I 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.

41:04Eric Newcomer:It's amazing we live in an industry, you know, that loves to think from first principles. Yes. Yet, 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, also, 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.

41:39So the data is there, the feeling is there, the outcome is there. So, you know, for us, we're still going to do it.

41:45Eric Newcomer:The sort of emphasis on it, like, were there any legal, like, I don't know, they've... No. You feel like safe, safe doing it. I mean, come at me because I'm a poor human. You're just disclosing data around, you know. Yeah, it's just data. And yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, sunlight is the best disinfecting 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 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?

42:27Yeah, it's still bad. I don't know where the data is. It was bad.

42:30Eric Newcomer:It is bad. It's still bad. Yeah. I remember, I think it was in 2016, I was 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, huh, look, there's really not a lot of women. And there are really not a lot of underrepresented 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, okay, I'll use our data science team.

43:03And I forget the exact stats, but it's something like 6 ,500 cap tables at the time and only 9 % of the capital went to women and that was across founders and employees early employees VCs 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 always ask questions going forward like is it better 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 you know I program

43:37Eric Newcomer: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. And it, I mean, it's the classic, you know, you don't want to be - I've got a great one for you. Oh, you do? Oh, great. Okay, what is it? Tell me about it. So it's API for voice and audio. So it's a dev tool. But female co-founder. This is exactly what I was, it's like, give me solutions, you know, I'll have people be You're like, you need more women. It's like, all right, tell me, tell me. Give me a specific one. And like, we'll think about it.

44:09Eric Newcomer:We'll see, you know, how much money they've raised. I mean, the challenge is, yeah, 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 supposed to be there. We don't want it to be sort of like, you're the one that didn't sort of make the cut. You're like, you're in the list. You're on this stage. I don't know. Funding is somewhat different than speaking in that we are sort of like tracking the people before.

44:43Eric Newcomer:I don't know. But 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 is Kara. She doesn't mince words, right? She was like, what the fuck? 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 first, I don't want to be on Kara's bad side because she could be mean.

45:14She's so good at it. You know, she's literally,

45:16Eric Newcomer:I just saw the podcast. She's so good. And like, and I respect her and 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 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, ugh, I can't possibly do it. But if you're listening, do it. Take your space. Man, you need to, Kara, you need to internalize this.

45:45Eric Newcomer:I once asked Kara 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 email 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 um the uh any other cat so we 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 and again healthcare it can be in finance it can be and legal tax so we have one company called spell book which is AI for lawyers like yeah and it's I mean legal tech the most boring category that you could 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 selling to he is that's funny that's bridging uh i know different political ends of the spectrum on this podcast you know he talked about it here too oh good yeah and he's a great company and they're crushing it and um you know this is a great one um 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 Soxson, which is an AI native law firm.

47:27This 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 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.

47:59And so it's really fun seeing like, you know, her and Scott from Spellbook, just like grow these businesses that were not like, not in anyone's imagination, like five to six years ago and, you know, solving really hard problems.

48:13Eric Newcomer:The founder, what was the company of the founder you were just talking about? Oh, sorry. It's called Soxton. 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, Yes, very inbogue now. Well, obviously, Crosby has raised a bunch of money in this category. Yeah, they have. But what Soxin 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 a startup, and they're spending thousands of dollars working with any of the major firms on incorporation docs and thousands of dollars on their safes, their price round notes.

48:48That 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 Soxson does this at a fraction of the cost and really fast. And that team is just off to the races. So another New York winner for you. So if you're a startup, go to Soxson.ai.

49:04Eric Newcomer:What fund is Moxie on right now? Fund 3. 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. What have been the lessons you've learned trying to build a new, smaller, early-stage, focused firm? How do you survive amidst all the giants? Yeah, I think number one is just stay focused. Play your strengths. And so for us, it's, you know, we look to invest 1.5 on 15 million, maybe up a little bit or down a little bit.

49:46That 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 when I met Logan Brown at Soxon, I met her that night and I sent her a term sheet a few days later. And I needed to do that before Andreessen or any of the other bigger guys saw her and met her. And that's okay. I mean, I found her right after this and trying to close these deals as quickly as possible and also help them get to the next level.

50:27Because if Andreessen and Lightspeed and all these other great firms like you at Seed, I promise you they're going to 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 very much a bifurcated market.

50:42Eric Newcomer:Are you taking board seats over? No. It's too early. 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 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 are on the board of Yahoo, right? Yes, that one I said yes to.

51:20Eric Newcomer:I had another like this podcast, Small World. I saw that with Jim Lanzone, yes. He was on this podcast. He's the best. What do you make of sort of the progress they've made? And I don't know, what do you think they've been able to do? It is awesome. So you were talking earlier, Yahoo was the first job I ever loved. And coming full circle to work on this in the board. First job you ever loved. It's like, I was a banker. Not the first job I ever loved. Yeah, definitely not that one. And then product manager at Yahoo in 1999. Yes. Yes, dot com. Dot com. Mania. You know, web van. Like, it was so great.

51:52And 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 would just try to push back. And I was like, you know what? This guy is right. I never want to be in the opposite side of this guy. He is so smart and so thoughtful. And so we became friends, stayed in touch. And then when he asked me to join the Yahoo board, I was like, what an honor. Even though I never take board seats, I have to do this and have a front row seat to the re-imagination of Yahoo.

52:26It'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 um 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 people 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 right like it's a trusted place funny i mean it has the burden of like it's all

53:00Eric Newcomer:or like people, you know, you know, I don't know, 30 plus. It's like, it's old, but like I think you have a positive. Yeah, exactly. It's vintage. 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 it's a prep for. It's cool. Like, it's really good.

53:31And 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.

53:43Eric Newcomer:Do you – this is probably my last question. Do you use, like, AI in venture capital? Like, do you think – like, how is it changing how you do venture capital or practice 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 an engineer. He was head of engineering at Twitter where we suffer together and build 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?

54:17How 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 market

54:32Eric Newcomer: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 um 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 okay this is my last question yeah does this feel like the dot-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 the crash is coming but like so you're just kind of bracing but um 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 um that is a bit scary and um so So everyone's kind of building on quicksand a little bit.

55:50So how do we just make sure we're prepared for that and setting it up for success? Katie Jacobs-Stanton, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. So honored.

56:00Eric Newcomer:That's our show. Thanks for listening. Please like, comment, subscribe. We're a new channel and we can use all your support. Go watch some of the old videos. You can follow along on the sub stack, newcomer.co. Or if you've got endless time on your hands, go watch the Cerebral Valley Show, my chat show with Max Child and James Wilserman. Thanks for watching. See you next week.