David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…I think that you're thinking about it right in the set of trade-offs. I think the tricky part is that, and Schrödinger's cat is not right here, but maybe you'll understand the right version of what I'm saying. As soon as I go in-house somewhere, I lose half of my value or X percent of my value as soon as I go in-house somewhere, and that is one. Even though I do sponsored posts and all that, there's this independent voice that I have, that obviously goes away. Everything that I write would go through a legal team and a compliance team. All of those types of things probably wouldn't be able to even do it at the cadence or even the schedule that I do now where I'm making my last edit or writing my last sentence 30 minutes before the piece goes out, or even a minute before the piece goes out. So I think it would lose a little bit of that flavor. I think, probably, you need to add a time dimension on this, which is, when does it make sense to do this? There's probably like, when I'm deeply in that S-curve, if I've gotten big enough that somehow, just because I'm Packy McCormick, people now think that I'm smart, where now I need to prove that I can add value every week. Maybe at some point in the future when there are half a million subscribers, people will just assume that I know what I'm talking about, even though I don't and I'm just making it up every week. Then maybe the trade makes sense for me because there's not that exponential upside and for the fund because I don't lose all of my value as soon as I set foot in the door of that fund. But I think for the time being, it would be upside limiting for me and option limiting for me, and the fund would not, I don't think, get what it paid for. It's funny. I'm thinking as you're saying that, you doing this—joining a venture firm—to my mind, will be almost exactly like Amazon buying Kiva Systems. Kiva Systems Robotic Warehouse company, they had lots of clients. I think maybe Target was a client, Walmart, lots of clients including Amazon, lots of value. Then at a certain point, Amazon was like, okay, it's worth more to us to buy you, it's worth more to you to sell to us at Amazon, and we're going to shut down 90% of your business, but the ultimate value is going to be higher. I think that's probably right. Maybe where it would make sense right now is if there is, it's more than just having a GP. It's their strategic value in another firm not hiring me or in maybe you don't have a Web 3.0 practice, but you need to play catch up. I still think there are better people, frankly, who are way more technical. It would have to be me and some technical people who are deeper in the space than me, but maybe it helps you get a quicker leg up into an area where you feel that you're behind. I think you're absolutely right, though. Amazon was not just making that decision based on Kiva's revenue and client roster because that all goes away. They're making it to keep that away from other people and to do something themselves.…

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