Alex is a fascinating guy, who worked at Palantir and Google, before joining Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as a macro investor, and then later Venture Capital with Joe Lonsdale at 8VC.
The original prompt for the conversation was this essay that Alex wrote on Tariffs, Tech and Tactics: The Era of Strategic Competition with China, but we expanded the mission.
Show notes below
Catch up on everything you missed
The best way to catch up on everything you missed is to skim the archive
There’s a lot of goodies. You don’t want to miss ‘em.
Competition with China, tariff policy that would actually make sense, the Adapt-or-Die moment for Biotech, and Dumb Money in VC
00:00 Intro and Bio for Alex Kolicich of 8VC
01:38 How did predictions about China perform?
06:28 Investing in China going forward (or not)
09:37 Consumption Patterns and Government Policies in China
11:09 China's Strategic Economic Decisions
13:23 A Tariff Policy That Would Actually Make Sense
18:52 China's Biotech Industry and Fast Follower Strategy
22:02 US Biotech Industry Must Adapt or Die
28:14 What really matters in AI development and competition, the DeepSeek Moment, and Inference is Where It's At
31:21 Where Nvidia's moat ends, and where AMD and Huawei go next
35:52 Current Venture Capital Landscape, Not All Liquidity Issues are Created Equal, Roles for SMID-Cap Investors
37:55 Revenue Multiples and Market Dynamics
40:29 The Case for Going Public
43:34 What's really going on in Secondary Markets?
47:18 Who is to blame for companies staying private longer
49:49 A class of non-hyper growth companies has emerged, but investors have no plan
53:26 Dumb Money in Venture Capital, in AI, and the Correction Hasn't Even Started, Yet
56:27 Venture going forward, the bifurcation, challenges for Emerging Managers, etc.
59:50 Will new VC-Adjacent Strategies Emerge, What made Clarium Capital different
01:04:22 Silicon Valley has a deep ignorance of finance, and other opportunities for Cross-Pollination between the asset classes
01:05:40 The Advantages of Being a Generalist
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