Pod Insights How I Invest with David Weisburd E309: Why Most VCs Firms will Die by 2030 About this episode What happens when AI stops assisting humans and starts replacing decision-making itself?
David Weisburd speaks with Camilo Acosta about the rise of agentic AI, why incumbents still leave massive openings for startups, and how AI will reshape labor, venture capital, and entire asset classes. Camilo explains how investing ahead of regulation, betting on founders over ideas, and building for a fully agentic future define the next era of venture.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 David Weisburd? So Camille, you started at Meta where you were top AI engineer. And now you run Perceptive Ventures, one of the top agentic AI seed funds in the world. Tell me about how your experience from Meta informs your day to day as a venture capitalist.
0:15 Speaker 01 It's pretty critical. And before joining Meta, my company was acquired, so I was a startup founder and CEO. And both of those experiences are really critical to how I invest today. Having been a founder, I know how fast one can move and how nimble one can be. But having also been a big tech operator, I understand which large spaces big tech finds attractive and wants to move into. And the key here as an investor is making sure that we're not investing in spaces that big tech is going to dominate or be really interested in. And by the way, when I say big tech, I also mean OpenAI and Anthropic, because at this point, they have sort of like a neo incumbent power in AI.
0:44 David Weisburd? How do you know whether Meta, Facebook, or Anthropic, OpenAI is going to go after a space or not?
0:51 Speaker 01 Understanding scale. You know, I ran a $10 billion product suite at Meta, which is, you know, it sounds large, but in the grand scheme of Meta was actually not that big. And so there are $10 billion businesses that these large companies don't really have an interest in entering or pursuing, because it doesn't really move the needle when you're a multi-trillion dollar company. That's too small for them. But a $10 billion startup is a very interesting outcome for a venture investor like myself.
1:12 David Weisburd? If there's not top engineers on Meta that are going to go after a problem, you think that's a safer place to build a startup and to build something that can be dominant there versus having to compete every day against these large LLMs?
1:23 Speaker 01 The big problem with incumbents is that they have distribution power. So no matter how innovative your product may be as a startup and how forward thinking it is or well executed is, if you don't have the distribution power of these behemoths, it's quite dangerous to compete against them.
1:35 David Weisburd? So when you started Perceptive, early on in your genesis, you made a big bet that the future of AI would be agentic. Why is that?
1:42 Speaker 01 A lot of AI outsiders, I think, were convinced that artificial intelligence was about building tools to help knowledge workers. But the reality is that artificial intelligence is really centrally concerned with replacing human decision making. And that has three components at its core: prediction, judgment, and action. And these three components combined replace human decision making, which is the entire point of AI. So when we put them all together, it creates a completely agentic system. And the clearest example of that today for You know, for layman is Waymo. When you get into a Waymo, the system is performing all three functions. It predicts where the cars are, other cars are going, where it is going, how objects in the environment, such as pedestrians and bikes are behaving, and that applies judgment to those predictions. It says like, we should do X or Y. And then it takes action by actually
2:24 Speaker 01 moving the car in the, in the necessary direction at the required speed, based on those predictions and judgments. That's a fully agentic system. And that's exactly what's happening with software. Software is becoming agentic, which means it's not only eating software, but it's actually able to eat entire human workflows.
2:39 David Weisburd? So do you fall in the camp where you believe AI will destruct human labor? Or do you think it's gonna make things so efficient that more people will transact and there'll be more opportunities for business?
2:49 Speaker 01 I think it will disrupt and, and, and destroy a lot of industries for sure. I think it's also going to create a lot of new opportunities. And there's a lot of jobs that are also very difficult for AI to replace. We're always going to need restaurants. We're always going to need hotels. We're always going to need plumbers and electricians. We're going to need people to service the millions and millions of, of robots that are going to exist in our world. So it's going to create new jobs, but, but it will certainly disrupt and replace a lot of, of human knowledge work, human labor.
3:17 David Weisburd? Being on the inside and seeing all the disruption that's down the pipeline, what's your framework for figuring out what AI disrupts in the near term future and over long term?
3:28 Speaker 01 In the near term, it is easier to disrupt things that are less regulated. And so the thing, the, the areas that will be slower to change are the ones that are more regulated, spaces like the law or healthcare, where there are merchant guilds that protect those industries and accredit and license the individuals that work in those industries, working in concert with government to license those individuals. Like those things are going to be a lot slower to change, but they will eventually, as safety is proven not to be better with AI, as efficacy is proven not to be better with AI, but it's just going to be a lot slower.
3:58 David Weisburd? Last time we chatted, you said that there's a couple of players in the market that saw this agentic future years ago, and they have a head start. Tell me about these companies.
4:07 Speaker 01 Working on AI internally at Meta, we knew where things were going. That's actually what led me to leave and start Perceptive. We saw that future coming because we were part of the group building. Our vision at the time, even if we were to pull people internally at the company, though, would have seemed crazy. People broadly in the company might have thought that was pretty futuristic. But those of us working on these topics realized it wasn't that crazy because the models were getting there. So there is a head start that some of these big incumbents have, but it doesn't mean that this is the end all and be all. We are in the early innings of LLMs and we don't fully know if LLMs are the right architecture for developing AGI or superintelligence. So it's still a question mark if even this is the right path long term. It could be some other new company comes about and develops a new architecture that it's actually more efficient and better for developing AGI TPD.
4:53 Speaker 01 But certainly when it comes to the LLM landscape and the big platform models, there is certainly a head start that these big companies have.
5:01 David Weisburd? Seed stage venture capitalists in general have a difficult job of predicting the future 10, 12, 14 years from now. Today, that's even more difficult with the pace of AI. How do you create a framework investing 2026 for 2036 and beyond? One of the hardest things of investing is seeing what's shifting before everyone else does. For decades, only the largest hedge funds could afford extensive channel research programs to spot inflection points before earnings and to stay ahead of consensus. Meanwhile, smaller funds have been forced to cobble together ad hoc channel intelligence or rely on stale reports from sell-side shops. But channel checks are no longer a luxury. They're becoming table stakes for the industry. The challenge has always been scale, speed, and consistency.
5:47 David Weisburd? That's where AlphaSense comes in. AlphaSense is redefining channel research. Instead of static point-in-time reports, AlphaSense channel checks delivers a continuously refreshed view of demand, pricing, and competitive dynamics powered by interviews with real operators, suppliers, distributors, and channel partners across the value chain. Thousands of consistent channel conversations every month deliver clean, comparable signals, helping investors spot inflection points weeks before they show up in earnings or consensus estimates. The best part, these proprietary channel checks integrate directly into AlphaSense's research platform, trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds, with access to over 500 million premium sources. From company filings and brokerage research, to news, trade journals, and more than 240,000
6:32 David Weisburd? expert call transcripts. That context turns raw signal into conviction. The first to see wins, the rest follow. Check it out for yourself at alphascense.com/HowIInvest.
6:43 Speaker 01 We try to think a lot about what the world's going to look like and specific industries are going to look like, and invest towards that vision of the future. That's, we have a very thesis driven. And so we steer away from what seem like near-term improvements in innovation. We've historically never invested in co-pilots and things like that because we didn't believe that co-pilots were the end goal. And so we try to think about like, well, what does an agentic future for healthcare look like? What does agentic future for legal look like? What does agentic future look like for construction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? And work our way backwards from that in order to say like, this, this company fits that mold. But more specifically, this founder fits that mold because we have to see that that founder gets that future. A lot of founders, let's say most founders are optimizing for the next three to five years in whatever industry they're in.
7:28 Speaker 01 And that's how far out they think and they, you know, they pitch you like, hey, is I'm going to get to Series A? I don't care how you get to Series A, I'm concerned about how you're going to build a $100 billion company.
7:35 David Weisburd? How do you marry those two things, which is, I need to be pragmatic enough to attract the next round of funding while also not being leapfrogged by the next generation of technology?
7:44 Speaker 01 I would say it's a little controversial to say out loud, but I would say that the tier one investors in venture across stages, you know, whether it's seats, Series A, B, C, are very forward-thinking. They are investing in very disruptive. Innovation, whether it's Kozla or Founders Fund or Sequoia, that's how they think. And so there is an element of just being de-risked because we're aligned in how we think with some of those bigger players.
8:06 David Weisburd? And these investors are investing at the Series A pre-revenue. Basically, they realize that gap between the future and the current state and they're willing to subsidize even from a revenue basis. They're looking for something fundamentally different in terms of milestones.
8:19 Speaker 01 Yes, I know. So it depends on the industry, right? So in B2B, we've historically seen or in the last couple of years that it is very easy and quick for AI companies to get to revenue quickly. So by the time they get to Series A, they're drawing substantial amounts of revenue. So from that perspective, they're de-risked. But also there's, you can look at Kozla being the only venture investor at OpenAI back in like 2017, 2018, something like that. When OpenAI, it was pre-revenue then and it certainly still leads cash today. So there is the nominal of both, of being that visionary willing to back pre-revenue. But also, you know, there's a lot of companies that are getting revenue very quickly these days based on just AI.
8:52 David Weisburd? You're on the bleeding edge of agentic AI as investor. How much do you build a thesis around different parts of the market? And how much do you let your founders draw you into what they see as the future?
9:03 Speaker 01 A mix of both. Sometimes there are industries that we haven't sat down and thought about and fleshed out in terms of like what we think that future looks like. And so we can chat with the founder about what they, what they think is going to happen. And then we try to sit down and say like, all right, does that make sense to us based on what we see happening in other industries as well? But it is often that we have already come to a place of understanding what we're, or having a general rough sketch of what we think the future is going to be for that space.
9:30 Speaker 01 It's interesting, as a former founder, like you're just stuck in the weeds pretty often. And so it's often hard to see the bigger picture. So rare is the founder that really understands what the bigger picture looks like and how they're going to get there.
9:42 David Weisburd? A lot of people have trouble conceptualizing an agentic AI future. How does that work? Let's say I'm a business owner. Do I just? Go in, grab my coffee, press play and then leave, come back at the end of the day.
9:55 Speaker 01 You know, what's crazy is there is a world where AI is the business owner. You know, I've talked to really visionary founders who are working on this. What is a world where AI owns property, where AI has legal rights? And if so, then they are the business owner. They can spin up businesses, which is pretty wild. Until we get to that sort of regulatory regime. Like, yes, I do think there is a world where, and I think it's even here now already, where you see, you know, small business owners that can, you know, press a few buttons and run a large operation because they've automated so much of it. It's pretty, it's pretty awesome to see. The question again becomes like, at what point do they become replaced by an AI that owns the business?
10:35 David Weisburd? And I subscribe to this agentic AI future. I think it's more or less obvious if you think from first principles. What's not clear to me is a second order effects. So if I'm an investor, I'm running an endowment. How should I think about investing into other asset classes, assuming that an AI agentic future is imminent?
10:53 Speaker 01 Every asset class is going to be touched by AI. Private equity, there have been some large titans of private equity who were anti-AI a year ago now, but they're publicly trying to defend their portfolios because they're scared that the companies they've invested in are not going to survive the AI revolution. Every asset class is being touched by this. Trying to say like, think of what might not be, maybe commodities, but, but even then commodities, there's a lot of, the AI boom has driven a need for certain kinds of commodities. So it's even impacting that space in different ways. And I think the job of allocators of LPs is going to change because the Yale model, the Yale endowment model of investing, even that could be automated. Assessing different industries, assessing different managers in different sectors can be automated. So it's, it's really going to touch absolutely everything, even when we think it's not.
11:39 David Weisburd? How do you think about AI-enabled businesses versus AI-first businesses in the non-venture space?
11:47 Speaker 01 Then anything is not going to be touched by AI. So even think like you mentioned widgets. So I like to think about industrial like legacy industry kind of businesses, petrochemicals, you name it, like really old school stuff that requires machinery to operate. That's also getting automated. We see, we get pitched ideas in those really obscure industrial areas that you would think of. He just buys that, makes the widgets go faster, go, you know, run with less people, the whole operation runs with less people. All of that is also getting automated. So even if you're a lower middle market PE firm that does that, and we've actually started to see this, is some of those PE firms are starting to hire AI engineers or AI technologists to look at their portfolio and say like, all right, how is AI going to disrupt these companies? Like, that's the thing that people forget is like, you think that just because you're not doing it's not going to happen. But the reality
12:32 Speaker 01 is that someone else is going to try it. And if they're successful, they're going to beat you. So that's how, that's how we see it. And we see what's happening.
12:39 David Weisburd? And by some accounts, emerging managers in VC, there's an extinction level event happening where if anywhere from 50 to 75, some predict up to 90% of emerging managers are on their last fund and just won't be able to raise any more funds. How are you surviving this extinction level event? And how are you preparing yourself for the next era of VC?
13:02 Speaker 01 One of the reasons it's occurring is because too many venture managers came out of the pandemic high when anyone with a pulse and a deck could raise a fund, frankly. And it wasn't necessarily people who should have, to be honest. There's a lot of skills required in order to raise a fund, build a firm.
13:21 David Weisburd? And you made that distinction. A lot of funds don't know the difference between running a fund and running a firm. How are you building your firm? And what lessons have you learned from building a firm?
13:32 Speaker 01 A firm is a brand. And most people don't realize that you're, as a venture, to be a successful venture manager, you have to be consistently marketing that brand to founders and to LPs, founders and LPs constantly. They think that it's just a function of having deal flow and making the investment. And it's not. The only reason your firm exists is because you have been able to bring LPs into, into, you know, your, your capital base, has stewarded that capital well, and then, and continue to market your Performance and your ability to continue doing that over and over and over again. Venture, if you look at the studies about successful venture firms and starting all the way back to Sequoia, et cetera. They are successful today because of the success they had in the past and they they continue marketing of that success. And a lot of venture managers don't like marketing and they don't like fundraising.
14:15 Speaker 01 And they don't like investor relations, but that's the key to building a successful firm.
14:22 David Weisburd? You have some enviable LPs, especially earlier on in your firm building. How are you able to secure those LPs? And what are some best practices for other emerging managers that want to bring in blue chip LPs?
14:35 Speaker 01 I think the key to being a successful venture manager is having a very strong network. And people think that that just means a founder network. I think that's half of it. And the other half is having a strong LP network. Again, if you don't have the money, you're not an investor. So you have to have a strong LP network to begin with. It just happened in terms of how my life came together, my career, that I I did know a lot of LPs. And I had raised money as a founder, so I already knew how to do that. So I already had the network built in to go out, tap it and and start my firm. And from there, word spreads. LPs are a very insular, talkative group of people. They like to share their deal flow in terms of venture managers that they're finding. And you know, that's how my LPs, LP base was able to grow is through that word of mouth with these with these investors.
15:16 David Weisburd? Talk to me about these AI tools. What AI are you using internally that gives you an edge over your competitors?
15:21 Speaker 01 I believe that you can encode and and build models of what a successful founder looks like in B two B startups. And then also in consumer startups, because I think they're actually different. And so that psychographic model, I think, is key. And I think it's something that's repeatable and scalable. If you look at some of the character traits that really define the best founders of of the history of technology from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, et cetera, et cetera, they'll share common things. And so I think that you can actually model this and use that model, just like any other AI model, to say, this is the right founder to bet on versus using just got instinct, which is what a lot of precedency to venture investing is, a lot of gut instinct. But gut instinct is just data, is just accumulated data in your mind and body that I think can be actually modeled.
16:07 David Weisburd? Goes without saying, AI is a hyper competitive seed market. How do you compete against the other firms? And also, how do you compete? You mentioned Kozla, Sequoia, Founder's Fund. How do you compete against these multi-stage platforms as well?
16:19 Speaker 01 We are of the size where we don't have to compete with the big boys. We can collaborate with them, given our check size. And so we, you know, we're in deals with a lot of the big guys, Founder's Fund, Kozla, et cetera. So that's, this is due to size. Where we do compete is the other pre-seed and seed firms. And where we win is because we are exited AI founders. We've been down the road as founders before, and in particular in AI. And so it's, it's, it's a very, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's a pretty straightforward argument to make to any founder, like we, we've just been there before. We can help you with the challenges that you're facing today and will face tomorrow. From inception all the way through exit. And so that's, that's what really have been the key for winning for us. Because most VCs are run by career investors who've never built anything before.
17:00 Speaker 01 And then the firms that do have some level of operators, they tend to be operators, they're not founders. Very few firms have actually been built by former founders. Founder's Fund is certainly one, and recent Horace is another. But there's actually very few when you think about it.
17:14 David Weisburd? Tell me about some of the biggest misses you made as a VC. And where were the learnings from those mistakes? The most consistent logical fallacy or mistake that I see from smart VCs, and this is like a very predictable at this point, is that they really like the founder and they really hate the business and they don't invest. And they're right about both, but their decision not to invest is wrong.
17:34 Speaker 01 Right. And what you, what happens when you do make that decision or to invest or not invest is you're saying like, there has to be a pivot. And I'm investing with the hopes that this team will pivot. Sometimes you feel so strongly about a team that you say, I'm going to invest and they're going to figure it out. And I don't, I don't believe in this thing that they're doing right now, but they're going to figure it out. That's how we got our first check. Like when I was a founder CEO, we got our first check and our investor told us, they're like, we have no idea what you're doing or where this is going, but we really like you as a team. So here's a check. And that's the kind of bold investing you need to do. And then we've done, we've invested pre-Idea. Like I met a founder who had amazing two or three exits under his belt. And he was like, I don't know what I'm going to do next. And I was like, take my money. I don't know what you're going to do either, but, but you're smart enough to figure it out. So sometimes you just got to take that.
18:19 David Weisburd? Would you rather invest pre-Idea or in the wrong business model?
18:23 Speaker 01 Both are fine. I don't think there's an either or. Again, if it's the right team, it's the right team. You have to believe that they're willing to move quickly because sometimes you can have a really smart team, but they don't iterate fast enough. They don't, they get caught up in sunk costs and say like, oh, we've already built all of this. Like, do we really want to pivot to something else? You know, you need to invest in someone who's willing to let all that go and be ruthless with their time.
18:44 David Weisburd? Talked about AGI earlier. Do you lose sleep on this doomsday AI situation where there's an extinction level event, not in the venture ecosystem, but humanity in general?
18:56 Speaker 01 I don't lose sleep over, but I do think it's real. I think we, we have to think about it and it's unfortunately true that we have to balance it with national security concerns. So there's often this tension in the US at least of building for safety and building for speed. You can, you know, dumb it down and say some thought papers open AI. But the reality is, is if we don't build it, China will.
19:18 David Weisburd? So why even think about it? The decision is we have to move forward.
19:22 Speaker 01 There is that tension. Right.
19:27 David Weisburd? What's a key philosophy that you've changed over the last 12 months that you now, that leads you to make different actions today?
19:32 Speaker 01 One of the key things I've come to accept is that some of the best founders in the world are not necessarily always the best people to work for or to work with. There is an element of ruthlessness that's required in building generational companies to transform humanity. It's a sacrifice they are making personally, but it's a sacrifice they ask their employees to make as well and a sacrifice they ask investors to make as well. And so there's often a desire to do business with people you like, right? Like, it's a common maxim in the business. And the reality in venture is that sometimes you want to do business with people you don't like because they are the best, the most extraordinary, impactful people in history.
20:10 David Weisburd? Reminds me of a story you told me when we were having dinner a couple of months ago. Tell me about that.
20:15 Speaker 01 Yes. So we, it's an interesting story. So we were early in a company and the founder did behave in a certain way that was, you know, not very agreeable. And I'm trying to be careful how much I say here. He was not very agreeable. And when we talked about it and I see, you know, one of my, one of my partners said, hey, like, do we want to work with this guy? You know, he seems like an asshole. He's doing kind of asshole-y things. And I said, actually, I want to work with him even more now because he can be an asshole to me. Even despite all the things I've done for him, that makes me realize like this guy is going to do whatever it takes to build this company.
20:54 Speaker 01 And that was a wake up call for me and for our team in terms of what, what it takes to build a generational business and how we look for those people and impact them. And the compromises you have to make.
21:04 David Weisburd? How would you explain that? Cause there's obviously the opposite is also an axiom, compounding relationships, compounding your reputation. But here specifically, it's almost a zero sum mentality to relationships that was a superpower. How would you explain the mechanics around that?
21:18 Speaker 01 There is at the core, a level of humility you have to have because when someone's being disagreeable or an asshole, there's an element of like, I'm offended. It's my ego that's saying like, I, I'm hurt. I don't want to be hurt. I don't want to continue interacting with someone who is hurting me. So it takes a stepping out of that and saying, that doesn't matter. What matters here is as a venture manager, I'm here to make money from my LPs. And is this the right person to make money from my LPs, period? So it's taking yourself out of the framework that you often are in, in terms of being led by ego and about, you know, pain and whatever and hurt and saying like, what actually matters?
21:54 David Weisburd? Is that a specific case where you had to just burn through all your relationships in two, three years? Cause there's a short window or is there some general wisdom there for highly disruptive startup founders?
22:04 Speaker 01 At the end of the day, the best founders in the world have all the leverage. You know, they can, they can choose their investors and so they will have leverage in that dynamic always. You know, you, once you come in, they still will have leverage over you, even if, no matter how big your position is in the company, because they can always raise more from someone else. Right? So I, I don't think from a founder perspective, like you just have to be conscious of that. That's the dynamic now and that's okay. I'm not here to be in the spotlight. I'm here to support founders. I like how Vinder Kozla says he's not a VC, he's a venture assistant. He helps founders, he assists them in a service provider. That, that is the role is you have to own that and let this ego of the VC like push that aside. And it doesn't mean that your relationships are fraught. It just means that you have to be careful with those people and people who work.
22:48 Speaker 01 I'm fortunate to know people who worked with Steve Jobs or were on board with Steve Jobs. And they all knew, like, you gotta be careful with him. Doesn't mean that you can't have a relationship with him. It doesn't mean that he's not extraordinary. It just means you just have to be careful.
22:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:01 David Weisburd? Would that be the case if you were a customer of that entrepreneur? Clearly, that would be counterproductive to scaling. But it's really your commodity to that entrepreneur. So he didn't find the need to use niceties and waste time with you as a commodity. Versus if he was trying to secure a large product or a large, large contract, that would be a necessary condition for him to succeed.
23:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, and again, these founders, it's not that they're perma assholes. Like, they are quite charismatic, very friendly people when the moment is right. And so they know how to turn on the charm when it comes to sales, when it comes to customers, clients, et cetera. And that's their magic, is that they can be both. Now, when I look at my portfolio and we look at our top companies, top founders, unicorn founders we've backed, they all have that ability to, from one second go ruthless, to the next second be like the nicest guy in the world. And so they know that they, in order to build a massive company, they're gonna have to be the nicest guy in the world when they're out selling, when they're out pitching. But when push comes to shove, and there is a moment that requires decisiveness, they're not afraid to pull out the ruthless side of them.
24:01 David Weisburd? Yeah, if you think about your energy and being nice as being highly energy consuming, they have an efficient use of their energy when it comes to different parts of the value chain. Of course, that sounds psychopathic, but when you take away the moral frame on it and you look at what's gonna lead to, if you're trying to create an entrepreneur from scratch that's gonna execute at the highest speed with the fewest amount of resources, that's almost like the perfect equation.
24:25 Speaker 01 Yep, exactly. And I think we like to judge, you know, even using the word psychopathic. It's like, oh, man, do we want psychopathic founders? But what if that's just simply what it takes to build transformational global companies? It's a level of psychopathy.
24:41 David Weisburd? You could be 100% psychopathic and provide massive value to society. I'm not gonna name any founders. Psychopathy is a clinical definition of not caring, having low empathy and all these things. You could literally be clinically psychopathic. And if you have the right incentives, they could end up actually carrying society forward. And you could say, that's wrong, that's bad. But on a net basis, they're actually very positive for society.
25:01 Speaker 01 We need them. Exactly. Yep.
25:06 David Weisburd? Last time we chatted, you said that whoever controls the computing platform controls the future. What form factor do you expect the future of compute to take form?
25:15 Speaker 01 Let's talk about what today's interface model looks like in these computing platforms. So we primarily use two interfaces. There's the computer, which we're chatting on a computer right now. Most knowledge workers sit at a desk looking at a monitor or laptop. And this is interface model number one, let's call it. The second interface model is the phone. And I actually argue this is probably the most important one because most people on the planet have a smartphone, but most people on the planet do not have a desktop. And the GUI, the graphical user interface that we use on laptops and monitors and phones, it's been around for 40 years and it's entirely text-based. Even though it's visual, I still have to read the written word on my calendar, on my emails, websites. Reading is actually not that fast. Like, it's not necessarily the most efficient way to process information. And part of the reason for this is that we developed the spoken word long before the written word. We're wired for speaking, which is why we're having this conversation by talking instead of writing back and forth to one another.
25:59 Speaker 01 So that's a fundamental principle behind these interaction models. And again, the phone follows that logic, but I think the phone is going to be the first one that breaks because it's an even more inefficient interface. People have to check their email on their phone and then wait to respond on their computer because typing on a phone is so cumbersome. And we're already seeing early signs of that, that audio is faster and preferable. You see people using the dictation function to write emails and SMS on their phone. That's audio. That's a spoken word. So the input is becoming more and more audio-based. So I think that's what we're going to see right first, and that's going to be the platform shift that matters the most. And we've already started to see it with Humane, which came and went. But now OpenAI is going to release its own audio-first device. And while it may have a visual component, again, it's going to be primarily an audio interface.
26:38 David Weisburd? What is one piece of advice you could go back to 2006 when you had just graduated Princeton? One timeless piece of advice that would have either helped you accelerate your career or helped you avoid costly mistakes?
26:48 Speaker 01 One thing that I wish I had done was actually work at a big tech company earlier in my career, before I was a founder. When you're a founder and you've never worked anywhere before in tech, you're really flying blind. But when you work at a high talent at some place like Google or Meta, you understand what the bar is across a variety of functions. So it wasn't until I got to Meta that I really understood what world-class design looks like, world-class product, world-class engineering. I thought I knew as a founder, but it really wasn't until I got there that I understood the processes and systems that the best engineers in the world, the best designers in the world, the best product people in the world use to get the job done. And so if I was going back and talking to the younger version of myself, I would have said, "Go learn there. Go learn from them and then go out and build a company so you're not making a lot of mistakes."
27:34 David Weisburd? And I've only worked for three months in my life for somebody else. I worked at Jeffries for a summer. So I'm similar to you, very entrepreneurial. And when I think about these Meta engineers and these Google engineers, are they the same level of talent at the high end as the top founders and they just have a different risk appetite? Or are founders just a different class of engineers, designers, et cetera?
27:55 Speaker 01 I think it's just a risk appetite question. And going back to the psychopathy, you know, conversation, there's a different, you know, profile there. But in terms of
28:03 David Weisburd? That they care too much about being liked?
28:05 Speaker 01 They care too much about being liked. There's, yeah, they're not that, they're not the extreme of that psychographic profile that are founders.
28:12 David Weisburd? Not enough trauma?
28:12 Speaker 01 Not enough trauma necessarily. Yeah. So I think those, which I think are frankly the key factors, because there are tons and tons of intelligent brilliant people in the world. But how many of them have the right, let's call it the right trauma, the right wiring, the right psychopathy, the right et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to be a generational founder that transforms the world?
28:29 David Weisburd? To play devil's advocate on, you wish you would have went to Meta or Google earlier. You never know how that plays out. You could have been a lifer there. And I also, I started my career as entrepreneur and it's embarrassing how ignorant I was at the time. But yet, I developed the skill set of being an entrepreneur in an unknown environment that if I had to pick, I'd go with that skill set versus the hard skill set.
28:53 Speaker 01 The skill set of a founder doesn't translate very well to corporate America, is what I found. When I got to Meta, one of the first things I told my manager was, here's a list of a dozen people I think we should fire. And she, she just laughed.
29:06 David Weisburd? Was that day two?
29:07 Speaker 01 This was like the first week.
29:08 David Weisburd? Day one.
29:09 Speaker 01 I quickly could tell like who, who was pulling their weight and whatnot. And she just laughed at me. And she said, hey, like, this is not how things work in corporate land. We're going to have to work with these people, even if they're not great to work with in terms of efficacy. And so my, I have a strong bias for fashion as a founder. And that doesn't always translate very well to corporate land where there's systems and processes that are, that slow you down. And you can't just fire and hire the team that you want. So I think it really depends on what, what you're optimizing for.
29:37 David Weisburd? Camilla, this has been absolute masterclass. Thanks so much for jumping on the podcast.
29:40 Speaker 01 Thanks for having me.
29:41 David Weisburd? That's it for today's episode of How I Invest. If this conversation gave you new insights or ideas, do me a quick favor. Share with one person in your network who'd find it valuable, or leave a short review wherever you listen. This helps more investors discover the show and keeps us bringing you these conversations week after week. Thank you for your continued support.
Previous E308: The Future of LP Liquidity Next E310: The DPI Problem Plaguing Venture Capital & PE Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated