E34: “Angel” Podcast: George Zachary, General Partner at CRV shares insights on cancer scare shifting his focus to investing in health-tech, passing on Google at MDV, CRISPR & “designer babies”, coronavirus threat, origins of Sand Hill Road & more!

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2020

⏱️ 124 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

0:50 Jason intros CRV's George Zachary
2:20 Passing on Google at MDV and coming to peace with the anti-portfolio
5:51 Differences between leadership & management, where Steve Jobs, Larry & Sergey fell on that scale
10:27 Why 1990's VC was sales & marketing-driven instead of product-driven as it is now
12:52 What shifted the philosophy to product-driven businesses?
18:00 Meeting Elon Musk in the 1990's and backing Zip2
21:59 What were Seed investors like in the '90s? Origins of Sand Hill Road
25:48 Elon pitching Zip2 to a conglomerate of venture firms & selling Zip2 for cash
28:07 How VCs can be conceptually right and wrong in the outcome, how X.com merged with Confinity and became PayPal
33:27 Why is it harder to 3x the massive venture funds? How is age a limiting factor in VC?
40:28 "It doesn't make a difference what you pass on. It only takes 1 company to make your career." Positive & negative feedback cycles in VC.
42:54 Battling through multiple portfolio companies dying at once
44:15 What was George's biggest investment hit, both economically & personal fulfillment?
52:37 George describes his recent health scares and how they shifted his investment focus
1:04:06 Reasons the life-expectancy in the US has gone sideways in recent years
1:07:39 Potential health-tech advancements in the near future
1:21:58 Thoughts on CRISPR & "designer babies"
1:30:27 Cell-based fish & meat
1:37:32 Potential coronavirus repercussions - what's real and what's not?
1:55:13 Jason calls for eliminating handshakes

Transcript

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0:50.0	Angel. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Angel the podcast this is the
0:54.4	podcast where we talk to investors about how they make their decisions and
0:57.8	today we have the low-key legend George Zachary back on the podcast. He was on episode 237 back in 2012.
1:07.0	Again, he was on the pod episode 631 with Sebastian Thrun after I think you invested in Udacity. Yes. And
1:15.8	Sebastian is now doing Kitty Hawk. Yes. Right, the flying quadcopters.
1:21.5	George Zachary's a bit of a legend here in Silicon Valley but you will not see
1:26.2	him on VC brags or on Twitter bragging. No, he just backed companies like Zip to and Odeo. If you don't know those companies, you certainly
1:34.4	know the founders. Zip 2 was the company that came before SpaceX, came before PayPal, and
1:40.1	came before Tesla, and Odo was the company that was the precursor to Twitter.
1:45.6	Yes, that's right.
1:46.6	George Zachary back Jack and Elon before they were Jack and Elon,
	...

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