Inside Venture Capital – the Hidden Force Powering Innovation

Stansberry Investor Hour

Stansberry Research

America, How, To, Crash, Money, Learn, Stansberry, Income, Research, Debt, Stocks, Porter, Business, Realestate, Banking, Investment, American, Investing, Invest, Howtosave, Sjuggerud, Ferris, Eifrig, Jubilee, Buck, Sexton, Market, Bonds, Churchouse, Savings, Options, Lashmet

4.4 • 677 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Adrian Fenty to the show. Adrian is the founding managing partner of MaC Venture Capital, an early-stage venture-capital ("VC") firm investing in visionary founders. Before breaking into VC, Adrian was the mayor of Washington, D.C. from 2007 to 2011.

Adrian kicks off the show by discussing how he transitioned from politics to VC, starting with investing in education-technology companies and working at established firm Andreessen Horowitz. As he explains, VC is still the Wild West of investing, so he searches to find "technical" founders with big ideas. Adrian also covers which sorts of companies MaC is invested in right now and how he helps them grow. (0:00)

Next, Adrian talks about AI investing in the VC space – what conversations are happening and how companies are keeping up in this new and rapidly evolving ecosystem. He says that the U.S. is "building the future through technology," and it's drawing talent from all over the world. Adrian then discusses why he doesn't encourage early exits, the pattern of larger companies "acqui-hiring" AI engineers and founders from smaller companies, and how he finds promising startups to invest in. (17:26)

Finally, Adrian talks politics. Once D.C.'s youngest mayor, he shares his thoughts on city governments and politicians not doing enough for their people, especially in terms of trying to reduce crime. His solution for this problem involves putting someone ambitious and qualified in charge of the efforts. Adrian says that, similar to management at successful companies, city officials need to tackle problems head on and not let them fester. He then finishes with a discussion about Americans "letting politicians off too easy," gives his opinion on the upcoming New York City mayoral election, and argues that the government needs to be held to higher standards. (35:20)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Stansberry Investor Hour.
0:13.0	I'm Dan Ferris.
0:14.0	I'm the editor of Extreme Value and the Ferris Report, both published by Stansberry Research.
0:19.0	And I'm Corey McLaughlin, editor of the Stansberry Daily Digest.
0:22.5	We're here in Las Vegas at our annual conference talking with Adrian Fenty, former DC mayor and
0:28.0	managing partner at Mac Ventures. Adrian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Yeah, glad to have
0:34.1	you. Excited to be here. So just before we hit the record button, Adrian and I were talking and I was trying to remember
0:41.3	in the few hundred podcasts that we've done since we started doing this, since I started doing
0:48.3	it seven years ago.
0:50.3	I don't think we've ever had a venture capitalist or the show.
0:53.3	Amazing. I think you are the, I think you are it. You are the first. I'm going to try and do well. Right. Of course, as a firm, we're focused more on publicly trade security. So that sort of explains it. But not really. I mean, you guys are out there. Yeah, I mean, you know, it takes a while, but startups become great public companies, as you can look at the top of the NASDAQ.
1:16.6	Exactly, exactly. This is where it all starts.
1:19.6	Now, before we get into exactly what you do, the portfolio, everything, since you're a new guest to our audience maybe tell them a little bit about i was particularly
1:28.4	interested in what you did with um ever fly yeah is that a stone they were earlier in the in the
1:35.3	career yeah all right maybe maybe in the investing career yeah yeah so the political thing yeah
1:40.6	yeah so uh you know i spent 10 years in politics and, you know, kind of my greatest,
1:50.0	you know, your greatest thing that you did wrong can be the greatest thing as you did right.
1:55.0	And that was education.
1:57.0	It wasn't the most popular thing, but a lot of people appreciated it.
2:01.6	And one sector that appreciated it was education technology companies.
2:06.6	Because education technology companies usually have really bright, innovative founders and engineers
2:13.6	who have a great product that can usually help kids do better in school, but schools are so slow in buying.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Stansberry Research, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Stansberry Research and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.