Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

All right, well, hopefully AirPods don't screw things up too bad. Can look like humans on air, and if we ever end up in a situation with microphones that are out of frame, it'll be game-changing. It'll be just like we're talking to each other. [laughing]

[upbeat music] Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Hm. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way. Who got the truth?

Welcome to Season Ten, Episode Four of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I am the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco.

And we are your hosts. We've done Sequoia, we've done Andreessen Horowitz, but we have not gone deep on one of the biggest stories in venture right now: crossover investing. We are watching hedge funds like Tiger Global and Coatue come all the way down to seed investing, and we're simultaneously seeing classically early-stage venture capital firms like Sequoia completely reinvent their structure to hold on to their winners longer, even as they become public companies. And today, we wanted to analyze one of the firms that pioneered this dual approach of operating a hedge fund and a venture capital firm simultaneously, Altimeter Capital.

There has been so much change in venture in the last few years. More change, I think, in the last few years than in the decade that I was doing venture, than watching it before. [chuckles]

And listeners, to tell the story right, we are joined today by Brad Gerstner, the founder of the firm, and actually, to tell you the truth, he is joined by us. We actually recorded this episode in person, even with video, stands, microphones, everything, at the Altimeter office on Sand Hill Road. And for those of you who don't know, Brad has had an unbelievable career, starting five companies, so he's got a very different mentality than your sort of classic hedge fund guy. On the investing side, he led the Series C in Snowflake and still owns a massive stake of the company. He's led large investments and sat on the board of companies you know, like MongoDB, and Roblox, and Zillow, and Plaid. He led the SPAC that took Grab public in Southeast Asia, and he is widely known as one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the business of online travel after his involvement in Expedia, Orbitz, Uber, and many others.

And you forgot maybe the most important part: I think he's the number one bestie guestie on our- [laughing] ... friends over at the All-In Pod.

I think that's probably right. It's probably right. Well, listeners, before we dive in, we wanna thank the presenting sponsor for all of Season 10, Vanta, the leader in automated security and compliance. Vanta brings a fascinating approach, truly, to the whole compliance process, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and more. And back with us today to help analyze her own company, we have CEO and co-founder Christina Cacioppo. All right, so Christina, I know from our previous conversations that using Vanta to get SOC 2 certified can actually help startups grow faster than they otherwise would have been able to. What do you mean by that, and do you have an example?