Katherine Boyle: commitment

Transcript context

…It totally has. Oh my gosh, but we'll get all into that later. But let's start off with the most important, most interesting things going on right now for you and in the whole technology landscape, which is what you and Andreessen call this a thesis of American Dynamism. It brings me back to our Berkshire Hathaway episodes, lik believe in America, believe in the power that makes things better. There's a lot of the opposite side out there right now. So maybe to start, could you tell us what the American Dynamism thesis means to you and to Andreessen? Sure, so the most simple definition is, it's companies that support the national interest. It's everything from companies that sell directly to the government, like aerospace and defense. These classic industrial sectors that have been supporting the government since the mid-20th century, but also things that every citizen cares about and takes part in, like education, housing, transportation, infrastructure. These really big categories that when we look back through the history of technology, there's been so much technological innovation, but at the same time, the last 30 years of software really hasn't touched a lot of these physical spaces. What we noticed through our portfolio is that some of the most important companies, some of the largest companies actually fall into this category that's outside of consumer technology and it's outside of enterprise technology. It's outside of these categories that venture capital has found themselves creating, but these become big companies that affect most people in the country. So the broadest definition is these are companies that support the national interest. Oftentimes, they sell to the government, sometimes they compete with the government. Other times, they're just heavily regulated by the government, but they touch everyone. We're excited to build a practice around this thesis, but also because we feel like the tailwinds are unique for this moment that we're in, especially coming out of COVID. Katherine, does that include things that support the national interest that aren't necessarily defense or foreign policy–related? I'm thinking healthcare, I'm thinking education, big swaths of the American economy and American time spent domestically.…

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