Chris Dixon: Who Will Win the Next Generation of Venture? | E1132

I haven't seen a software movement where a bunch of very smart people were excited about it that hasn't eventually worked. Yeah, I think there's sort of broadly two methods that work in venture: heat-seeking and truffle-hunting. All these different strategies can work but you gotta know what it is and lean into it. The big five companies have 95% plus of the traffic and the money, and AI is, exciting as it is, will very likely accelerate that consolidation.

If you could make one change to the regulation environment today, what would it be?

Look, I just think the main thing is...

Chris, I've been waiting many, many years for this one. I've heard so many great things from especially the team at Founder Collective, but thank you so much for joining me today.

Nice. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Not at all, but I wanna start with a little bit of context. And this is a weird show for many reasons, but I wanna go back to when you were a child. If your parents were to describe you, or your ch- teachers were to describe you, how would they have described the very young Chris?

I think I, I'm kind of just a little bit of a stereotype of tech people, which is I was into, you know, it's, it's sort of a cliche but, uh, I was super into computers, and so that was a clear part of my personality, you know, programming computers. Um, and then, you know, slightly entrepreneurial. Like, I had various jobs and tried to start businesses, (laughs) failed businesses, um. I, you know, I don't know, I, I guess, um, I, I think curious, uh, slightly mischievous maybe, I don't know, or something like... (laughs)

(laughs)

Um, but, uh, you know, I, I don't think I, yeah, I don't know, I was, um, pr- I think pretty normal in some, a lot of ways. I had a nice childhood, I grew up in s- a, kind of a smallish town in Ohio, and, you know, um, generally had a good experience. And so, I, I don't think anything out o- extraordinary.

I heard from a little birdie that you studied philosophy at university, and then have continued to study philosophy. Uh, thanks Alex Rampell. Um, how did studying philosophy impact how you think, both just as a person as an, and as an investor?

So, I got into it from computers, um, a little bit like the current AI stuff, um, I mean it was a long time ago, but in the sense of there's sort of overlap between, for those who've read these kinds of books, there's like Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, and there's sort of this, uh, overlap between, I guess what they su- or the, maybe so-called cognitive science and philosophy of mind and computer and AI and computer science, and so that kind of got me into it. So it was on the more kind of a- analytic, they call it, um, scientific side of philosophy, and, um, I, you know, I just like a lot of people at that age had no idea what I wanted to do. (laughs) And it ultimately, and, um, I thought arrogantly that I knew how to program and didn't have any use for computer science, um, in retrospect, you know, I think I could've taken some interesting theory classes and stuff. Um, the, uh, um, and then I stayed just kind of a through inertia, uh, I got invited to stay, um, for the, for a PhD program. But I, I was in New York, and in New York, you know, you just sort of have to work (laughs) un- you know, if you, you know, unless you have the money, um. And so I was always doing, uh, freelance computer programming, and then that kind of, in New York, in the, like, around the, like, late '90s, 2000, um, if you were doing computer programming, you were, ended up at an internet startup. Um, and so I sort of discovered that world, and for me that was basically since then have been, you know, kind of fell in love with that, um, the idea that you could start a company or, you know, some day invest in companies and work on interesting technology, work with interesting people, um, uh, build products. You know, I like the kind of real world aspect of it, you know, acad- academia you're very kind of cloistered.