Another Random Walk interview, this time with Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures. I chose a banger of a thumbnail. Youtube video and highlights below.
Tomasz is a prolific VC and writer about VC (whose charts have appeared variously in Random Walk before).
He’s also one of the more thoughtful people in the industry, with knowledge that is both wide and deep, about capital markets generally, and technology companies specifically, including data, crypto and AI.
Quick hitters to navigate the episode are below (and a transcript is available with this post), but we cover (among other things)
predictions right and wrong,
the challenges of underwriting AI companies,
changes to VC,
the annihilation of legacy SaaS, and
how to compete with the megafunds
As per always, I recommend listening at 1.5X speed.
Living in the future, with Tomasz Tunguz
Highlights:
00:00:31 What Tomasz got most wrong about crypto
00:03:01 What Tomasz got most right about crypto
00:04:02 Greatest revenue turnaround in history, and other thoughts on Ethereum, including ETH v. BTC
00:11:07 ex-consensus views of AI, including rise of Google, power of open source, and the power of smaller models
00:16:35 where does AI monetization come from, especially with rapid commoditization, and are their lessons from history?
00:24:27 second-order effects of AI Capex on the grid, nuclear power, and others
00:27:21 underwriting AI companies is different, the future of AI margins, and what keeps Tomasz up at night
00:32:42 AI is going to put SaaS Cos out of business. ALL of them are vulnerable.
00:36:57 investing around structural advantages to customer acquisition
00:39:28 the VC “value add,” why Mega-funds are not the be-all, end-all, and specialization matters
00:41:48 using machine-learning to improve sourcing, and pattern-matching outside the normal distribution
00:44:10 learning from other asset classes, understanding the best-practices of each, investing in publics and privates
00:49:07 the “enormous” changes to VC, new models emerging, rise of capital-intensive innovation
00:57:15 is there more room for debt in the VC ecosystem?
01:00:30 most exciting thing for 2025, and living in the future
The podcast version
Because I still find these ai-generated podcasts hilarious
Previous episodes include
They’re all pretty good. You should watch ‘em (ideally at 1.5x speed).
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