Intro
Jonathan Lacoste, is the founder of SpaceVC, a pre-seed frontier tech fund with at least a 20% unicorn hit rate, this is my observation based on publicly reported valuations of the companies listed on their website.
Before starting his fund, Jonathan was an entrepreneur, he dropped out of college to start his company Jebbit for which he raised for $90m and successfully exited to BlueConic. Their product was similar to a better version of SurveyMonkey or Qualtrix, like a Canva and SurveyMonkey fusion. Highlight of the company was that they sold billions of questions in consumer interactions with customers like NFL, NHL, eBay, NBA, P&G.
Jonathan’s company was part of one of the early Techstars cohorts which is pretty successful and a mafia of its own. His cohort includes people like Nikita Bier, the founders of PillPack (TJ Parker & Elliot Cohen) acquired by Amazon for $750m, their MD Katie Rae is the Cofounder of The Engine at MIT, Kash Razzaghi who is now CCO of Circle ($CRCL) a $25B company.
Highlights of what we cover:
Early investments in Castelion and True Anomaly which just announced a new funding round valuing them at $2.2B alongside friends of the show Colin Greenspon (E9 and E22), Seth Winterroth (E25), Thiel Capital etc
Why concentrated portfolio is a winning strategy
When to run away from a category?
How to identify top-decile founders? (by camping outside SpaceX, Anduril and Pentagon?)
What makes a great cofounding team?
Would SpaceVC ever consider getting acquired by a mega fund?
How the skill of debating is great for cofounding relationships
The State of Accelerators
Approaching venture as a craft business and learning from CJ Reim at Amity
Watch on YouTube:
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:49 - The state of start ups in Austin
05:07 - Why venture capital is concentrating into fewer deals?
07:54 - The founder journey and transitioning to VC
09:59 - Discussing Castalian and True Anomaly
11:17 - How to find top-decile founders at inception?
13:26 - Why small concentrated funds win at pre-seed?
16:17 - What It Takes To Build a Frontier Tech Franchise?
19:42 - Frontier Tech vs. Deep Tech: Engineering execution over science risk
21:14 - Evaluating technical founders without data points
26:11 - The importance of speed and iteration
31:36 - Identifying market forces before they become obvious
36:45 - Finding insights at the edge of the venture lexicon
40:41 - Why now is the time to invest in biotech?
43:25 - Why being a founder is harder than being a VC?
44:54 - The power of a concentrated, hands-on portfolio
47:59 - Talent networks: SpaceX, Tesla, and the cultures of innovation
49:18 - The DNA of a complementary co-founding team
52:20 - The founding journey: From college dropout to multi-hundred million dollar exit
55:37 - Gorilla marketing and the early pivots in his company
1:01:48 - How accelerators have evolved over 15 years?
1:06:27 - Brand degradation in the venture and education ecosystem
1:09:58 - Learning the craft: Mentorship and firm building
1:11:51 - Discipline in deployment: The courage to not do a deal
1:15:15 - Underwriting towards a standard 10-year fund life
1:18:05 - Cross-sector lessons in culture and fundraising
1:22:21 - The role of X and LinkedIn in VC marketing
1:24:42 - Historical influences: From Genghis Khan to Alan Turing
1:28:12 - Book recommendations: Ambition and breakthrough stories
1:32:34 - Closing
