Silicon Valley Clones and Jersey Drones: Decoding the Signals with Nicole Wischoff | E2061

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Ramp. The corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and money. Get $250 when you join Ramp today at https://www.ramp.com/twist. DevSquad. Most dev agencies only offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://devsquad.com/twist Digital Ocean. Whether you're just getting started with AI, or seeing your project take off, DigitalOcean is the cloud platform that lets you focus on what matters: building killer apps. Right now get up to $100k in free credits at https://www.do.co/twist. Terms and conditions apply. * Timestamps: (0:00) Jason and Alex kick off the show (3:03) Government reactions to drone sightings (4:02) Theories and politicians' reactions to the drones (9:21) Ramp. Get $250 when you join Ramp today at https://www.ramp.com/twist. (10:48) Official statements on drone sightings (13:34) Speculation on drones' radiation detection capabilities (15:20) TikTok insights and Swiss startup Arctis Radiation Detectors (20:21) DevSquad - Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://devsquad.com/twist (21:52) Personal reactions and media aspects of drone sightings (26:12) Startups in drone detection and geopolitical implications (30:36) DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is the cloud platform you need to turn your AI project into a rocket ship. Right now, approved listeners can get up to $100,000 in free credits to try us out. Visit https://www.do.co/twist - get started and view terms and conditions. (32:23) American Security Drone Act of 2023 and government coordination (39:01) Nicole Wischoff joins Alex and Jason. (40:28) Startup pitches and trend discussions (46:14) Investment strategies and AI's impact on startups (51:10) Market dynamics in various industries (52:09) Fundraising strategies and venture capital insights (57:56) Closing thoughts with Nicole Wischoff (58:05) Venture capital performance metrics (1:00:39) Challenges for large venture funds * Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Mentioned on the show: Check out Wischoff Ventures: https://www.wischoff.com/ Robin Radar Systems: https://www.robinradar.com/ Arktis Radiation Detectors: https://www.arktis-detectors.com/ ApolloShield: https://www.apolloshield.com/ John Ferguson's full post: https://www.instagram.com/thegardenstate/reel/DDnmN8oRw3T/ American Security Drone Act Of 2023: https://smartpay.gsa.gov/resources/american-security-drone-act/#:~:text=On December 22%2C 2023%2C the,Fiscal Year 2024 (NDAA) * Follow Nicole: X: https://x.com/NWischoff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholewischoff * Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (9:21) Ramp. Get $250 when you join Ramp today at https://www.ramp.com/twist. (20:21) DevSquad - Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://devsquad.com/twist (30:36) DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is the cloud platform you need to turn your AI project into a rocket ship. Right now, approved listeners can get up to $100,000 in free credits to try us out. Visit https://www.do.co/twist - get started and view terms and conditions. * Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  We're starting to see drones emerge again as a topic and part of the zeitgeist. And obviously, this is all happening because in New Jersey, there have been a ton of drone sightings, and there are tons of theories of it. Politicians are kind of getting in on this. So now we have another layer to this weird information space we're in. I've never seen anything like this in our lifetime, but we have conspiracy theories, distrust in the media,

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:24Jason Calacanis?

  citizen journalism, plus a layer of politics and gamesmanship.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:29Jason Calacanis?

  How does, and this seems like the ultimate Rorschach test of what you believe about reality. So F it, let's just go down the rabbit hole here.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Ramp, the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and money. Get $250 when you join Ramp today at ramp.com/twist. Dev Squad: Most dev agencies only offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at devsquad.com/twist. And Digital Ocean: Whether you're just getting started with AI or seeing your project take off, Digital Ocean is the cloud platform that lets you focus on what matters, building killer apps. Right now, get up to $100,000 in free credits at do.co/twist.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:26Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, welcome to This Week in Startups. I'm Jason Calacanis. I invest in 100 startups a year. I do two podcasts, All In, This Week in Startups. Next year, three days a week for This Week in Startups, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Thursday, I tape All In, it comes out Friday, so you get four podcasts per week. That's the upper bounds here. And with me, my co-host on This Week in Startups, Alex Wilheim, you know him from his TechCrunch days, and he is x.com/alex. How are you doing, Alex?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Uh, good. I'm very excited about today's show. Uh, we were talking before, though, about how you're a better skier than I am a snowboarder, and the fact that my children wake up too early. But the nice thing is, Jason, is that we don't have to sit here and vamp about BS for 30 minutes, because even though it's late December, or mid-December, I suppose, things are still busy, which is just, I don't know. A blessing for us in the news business.

• 2:11Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to talk about, a lot of information for startups. And we'll be recording through the holidays. I think we have two live shows during the holidays. So we'll be coming to you live a little bit over the holiday, just to keep you up to date on what's happening. And maybe we'll do a twisty awards. And I think the drone story is where we should start, Alex, because this has taken over people's imagination.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:34Jason Calacanis?

  And drones were a major investment category, a major startup category that kind of died down when DGI took over the space and won all the hardware that, you know, consumers buy. But we're starting to see drones emerge again as a, as a topic and part of the zeitgeist. And obviously this is all happening because in New Jersey for the last month, there have been a ton of drone sightings and there are tons of theories of it. So let's get into it.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  First of all, this is not something that happened just this last weekend. I think that people are now paying more attention to it in the last week. But you're right, the sightings in New Jersey and the surrounding areas have been going on for about a month. So this is actually a pretty long running story, but there's been an increasing amount of noise. So one thing that people were curious about is, is this the government? And Jason, I think as far as we can tell thus far, the DOD has said that this is not the government to their knowledge, but it's also not a threat. And then the FBI has said that a lot of these drone sightings are in fact just people misidentifying aircraft. I'm going to show a clip here of what this kind of looks like in the world. So Jason, this is a grainy cellphone footage of a drone.

• 3:46Jason Calacanis?

  Yep, allegedly.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, allegedly. There's a couple of these clips out there, none of which I found to be super compelling in terms of convincing me that this is anything hyper nefarious. So I think between the two of us, we can scratch out the UFO tag as in aliens.

• 4:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I think we should start with what are the theories? And, you know, I, I love what Grok has been doing. Grok 2.0 came out and I've been using Gemini 1.5 and 2.0 with deep research. And I have to say, I'm now realizing.

• 4:20Jason Calacanis?

  That about half my searches are no longer on ChatGPT. They've moved to Grok or Gemini, which are both exceptional right now. In fact, I think there's parody, but here is the Grok conversation. I just asked it, what are the major theories of the drones over New Jersey? And you see, uh, what Grok does is it goes and collects some news stories and it collects some posts, AKA or FKA tweets. Really interesting. And if you go through these, uh, misidentification is the number one. So of course, some number of these are obviously helicopters or planes, et cetera. Second one is that there's some sort of military or government phenomenon going on, commercial or research activities, uh, hobbyists and copycat.

• 5:05Jason Calacanis?

  So that's definitely a piece of this. Whenever there is a phenomenon like this, of course, everybody with the drone is like, oh yeah, I own a drone. I'm going to go fly my drone and look for other drones.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Right. So then drones, drone, and then, yeah.

• 5:17Jason Calacanis?

  Exactly. And then there's the conspiracy theories, uh, alien, extraterrestrial. And then there's adversaries, like this is some other country. And my favorite, of course, is Project Blue Beam. I, I never heard of Project Blue Beam before this. Have you heard of this one?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  I saw it, uh, via, via the Grok summary, but I, I just read it and I was like, eh, okay.

• 5:36Jason Calacanis?

  So conspiracy theorists, um, have this belief that there is a project to destabilize. Uh, this is a conspiracy theorist by somebody named Sirg Mansang, 1945 to 1996. He is mostly known for his promotion of the Project Blue Beam conspiracy theory. I'm reading off the Wikipedia, which posts a plot to facilitate totalitarian world government by destroying Arabic religions by replacing them with the new age belief system of futuristic NASA technology involving fake alien invasion or fake extraterrestrial encounters. So this is nuts, right? New world order, crazy stuff, but the idea being it's a psyops essentially.

• 6:21Jason Calacanis?

  And so I think we can take out its aliens or psyops. It's obviously something's going on here, but there's too many, too much involvement here for it not to be. An actual phenomenon. I think we've gotten through that, right?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Definitely. I think the number of drone sightings implies that someone is doing something with drones over the skies in New Jersey. No one knows what it is. I remain, though, in the camp of there's going to be some very boring explanation for this. But you're right. I do think that there's been enough that I don't think that people doing copycat drone flyings and people just hearing about it and then misidentifying airplanes, star clusters, or just satellites, like Starlink's pretty low Earth orbit, you know? So I think there's something else here, but I bet it's boring.

• 7:02Jason Calacanis?

  And these are very low. And so I think, you know, one interesting way to look at this is, and there's a bunch of politicians coming in, and one of the things about the information landscape right now is because of a lot of conspiracy theories becoming true, which, you know, does happen one out of 100 times, right? Statistically, something starts as a conspiracy theory. Then, you know, we get evidence that, oh, hey, it's true. And then people fill in their minds very naturally. We have inquisitive, great big brains. We think of every permutation. This is how the human brain works. It is a speculation, fear-based machine. Why is our brains, you know, and I talked to a lot of different evolutionary biologists over the years.

• 7:47Jason Calacanis?

  They believe that our minds speculate and come up with theories for a number of reasons. One is survival, and one is to make tools and to evolve the species, right? So when we have these active imaginations, we come up with something like, I don't know, scuba gear. Or we come up with the concept of a drone.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:06Jason Calacanis?

  Or, you know, we speculate that, hey, that person who's missing from the tribe was eaten by a crocodile. And that big thing in the lake that pulled the, you know, deer into the water and ate it could probably also eat a human, right? So, okay, that's what's happening right now. But what are politicians saying? Because I know we, politicians are kind of getting in on this. So now we have another layer to this weird information space we're in. I've never seen anything like this in our lifetime. But we have conspiracy theories, distrust in the media.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:36Jason Calacanis?

  Citizen journalism, plus a layer of politics and gamesmanship.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:42Jason Calacanis?

  And this seems like the ultimate Rorschach test of what you believe about reality. So F it, let's just go down the rabbit hole here.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely apply any mental model to what's going on. Cause if you want to think that there's one world government coming, these could be cloud seeding drones, or they could be, you know, surveilling people in the New York area over potential, you know, post-election discontent. Um, the DOD though, has said that these drones are getting occasionally closer than they'd like to military installations. That's their remit, but they've also said that that happens somewhat frequently. It's irresponsible, they said. Didn't sound like a new shocking concern there.

• 9:22Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody, I want to tell you about an awesome corporate card and spend management software that's designed to help you save money. Basically it puts money back in your pocket. It's called Ramp and we use it here at Launch. My COO Heidi, our chief operating officer loves it because Ramp gives you visibility into your company's software usage. This is going to help you trim your subscription costs and it allows you to issue cards to every employee and then give them limits and restrictions. So we do this, sometimes we'll have the whole team go to an offsite. We send everybody a Ramp card. Everybody has a certain amount of money they can spend and they don't have to worry about using their personal cards or submitting an expense report or any of that drama.

• 10:03Jason Calacanis?

  No, and Ramp customers save about 5% on their expenses every year because you can do things like dial up and dial down how much money can be charged to a card. Ramp's offer is so smart, you no longer have to do manual expense reports either. And they'll even play bad cop for your company chasing down missing documentation and requesting repayment. Ramp's so easy to use and you can start making payments in less than 15 minutes. So join Ramp right now and they'll give you $250 right into your account. Ramp.com/twist, R-A-M-P.com/twist. It is the best way to manage expenses for your team. It's elegant, it's dead simple and it's going to save you money. Disclaimer, cards issued by Sutton Bank, members FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  So I just showed a couple tweets from Senator Chuck Schumer, very well known. I believe he's one of the most senior Democrats. And he said he's pushing for answers amidst these drone sightings, implying that at least at his level, Jason, which is high up in government, he doesn't know what's going on. I will say though, that people are getting angry. So the FBI and the DHS have held some briefings with people in government. And according to US Representative Josh Gottheimer, he's a Democrat from New Jersey and on the House Intelligence Committee, so should be very plugged in to all this stuff. He says, quote, "The bottom line is this, the FBI and DHS are not providing enough information to the public and the public is concerned."

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Now, right before we came on, right before we started the show, Donald Trump, the future president, said-

• 11:38Jason Calacanis?

  President-elect.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  The government knows what is happening. They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don't want to comment. Something strange is going on. For some reason, they don't want to tell the people and they should because the people are really, I mean, they happen to be over Bedminster. Will you shoot them down? They're very, they're very, they're very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster. I've decided to cancel my trip.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?

• 12:08Speaker 03

  I don't want to comment.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so I wanted to play the last bit there. Well, actually, yes, Jason, he got to mention his golf course how many times in there?

• 12:14Jason Calacanis?

  Three, three times. He sounds like me on the All In Pod, mentioning Faudry University.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:20Jason Calacanis?

  I mean- Very similar, Trump and I.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Business guys talk their book and that's not just, that's just how, how they will. He's been a self promoter for a long time. Says in that clip that the government knows, he says that the military actually knows where they took off and where they landed, but not sharing. He doesn't think that we should be so private about this, then declined to answer the question about intelligence briefings, talked about his golf course, and then said, "I'm not going to comment on it." Classic Trumpian, both sides at the same time type thing. But the fact that he was so clearly indicative that he thinks that the government does know that ex-president club is only so big, Jason, and you and I are not part of it. So I don't think we have the same view into what- The government would would not know in this case. I was surprised by that clip because now he has to release lots about it come January when he's back in charge.

• 13:06Jason Calacanis?

  And he said, you know, he was going to release the JFK files. He didn't do that, you know, so there is like, you're right. Now we put a layer on top of this of Trump says everything.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:19Jason Calacanis?

  All permutations and gives himself complete optionality when dealing with, you know, making a decision. He might uh go to Japan and go skiing. He might not, but he loves Japan, you know, it's it's like it never ends with him. So here he's kind of like, you know, giving us both possibilities, but the government, there's something going on here. I think everybody agrees with that.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:44Jason Calacanis?

  So then the mind wanders. The one that I attached myself to the most, just with a curious mind. And I thought this was super interesting and led to me doing a little research online was the dirty bomb.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:58Jason Calacanis?

  And that drones flying at low altitudes with certain sensors on them could sense radiation.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:06Jason Calacanis?

  And then there's always been this fear of a rogue, missing nuke, Ukraine, Russia, who knows? It could be a Pakistani nuke, you know, the they they did a lot of research. They sold their technology to supposedly Iran and North Korea. So completely possible of rogue nuke could be loose in the United States for the last 50 years. I mean, that would make total sense to me that we have a nuclear bomb somewhere in Russia, somewhere in China that we implanted at some point and hid in a basement somewhere. Why couldn't somebody do that to us and have that as an option? I know that sounds like crazy conspiracy theories, but that doesn't seem too difficult to do, especially with the size of tactical nukes. All right. So there was a video.

• 14:52Jason Calacanis?

  Of somebody who claims to be a drone expert, they have a LinkedIn page that looks like it has existed for a while. So I have no reason to not believe them. But this is my favorite theory. Why? Because it's the most interesting. And that's what our minds do. So here we go. Speculation like Columbo. This is an individual who works in the drone industry's assessment of what's happened.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yes, this is John Ferguson, the CEO of Saxon Aerospace. This is pulled from a TikTok video that he made.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  But I want to give you the truth. Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had dismantled the nuclear program. There were over 80 nuclear warheads that were in Ukraine that came up missing. I spoke to a gentleman a few months ago, who was trying to raise an alarm to the highest levels of our government, which they had their ears closed, about this one particular nuclear warhead that he physically put his hands on. He physically touched this warhead that was left over from Ukraine. And he knew that that thing was headed towards the United States.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Okay, so first of all, everybody, if you're thinking nuclear warheads don't get loose, they do sometimes. For example, when a major government collapses, for example, the Soviet Union, Jason, and I've been hearing about lost or missing nuclear weapons, visible material, or even just the nuclear batteries that they put in those far north lighthouses in Russia that they used to generate power for a long period of time. So the chance that there is visible material, or just a lot of radioactive material that could enter the US from, let's say, the eastern seaboard, doesn't shock me. And your point is that this could be what the drones are looking for?

• 16:36Jason Calacanis?

  Seems like a great use of drones. So I did a little research. He said, this sounds like a very interesting use of drones, right? If you're in a helicopter or a plane, those are expensive, they're loud, and sending 50 Cessnas across New Jersey.

• 16:55Jason Calacanis?

  You know, at 3,000 feet or 2,000 feet, whatever it is, that's going to create a lot of noise, a lot of ruckus. And sure, they could put on the bottom of them some sensors, but I don't know if it's low enough to actually pick up the radiation. I'm no expert on this, but sending drones and having them do it at night, which he said that's when in the part of the video, again, who knows, this is all pure speculation. But if they were looking for the signature of radiation, is there a startup that does this? I asked myself, because there would be multiple reasons to look for radiation. A dirty bomb would be high up there, but

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 17:30Jason Calacanis?

  leaks and other, you know, material, you know, I'm sure these, the Israelis have some technology here, trying to monitor what Iran is doing with stuff with their nuclear material, Pakistan, North Korea, there's all kinds of reasons to look for this. So we did see there was a startup when I was doing some, some research that does this. Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the one that I found is a Swiss company called Arctis Radiation Detectors, and they use UAVs to detect radiation, $15 million in known capital raised per Crunchbase.

• 18:01Jason Calacanis?

  This is the company, it exists in the world.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  And they talk about in their detection system area, they talk about using drones to do this sort of thing.

• 18:09Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, here we go. Arcus Airborne FPG Radiation Detection Drone. This Radiation Detection Drone can map an area of whatever in a single flight of 20 minutes. The system is about 50 times more sensitive than typical drone-based detectors. A central alarm station.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  This is, I think, kind of like the, the software for the different drones to actually go in. But they do a number of

• 18:33Jason Calacanis?

  Why are they doing it? Do they explain why they're doing this?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Because they're doing gamma radiation? Commercial.

• 18:40Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, for ports, for security reasons. Okay.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:43Jason Calacanis?

  So this has been the fear. Ports have radiation detectors, because there's always been this, I think this was the subject of 24, right? Like the TV show was there was a rogue nuke, a loose nuke. And so they said ports on a container where it would come from. So I guess the drones fly over containers or the containers, my understanding is go through machines that check them. This is a theory with some level of credibility. Now, on top of all this is the next theory I love. So anything else on this theory that is notable or that we should?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  If, man, if this, if there is loose radioactive material that we're worried about.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And we've done this much drone discussion as a nation on TikTok and social media and government briefings and in Congress, I'll be disappointed that we weren't a little bit more open about it. I just wanted to say that.

• 19:32Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, let's game theory then.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:34Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, you suspect there's a 1% chance that this Ukrainian former Soviet Union is in New Jersey at the port somewhere. You tell people if you're the government?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  1% chance?

• 19:49Jason Calacanis?

  I said to myself, yeah, 1% chance. I said to myself on Twitter and I got a bunch of people saying I was fear mongering.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  I saw that.

• 19:56Jason Calacanis?

  But you know, Twitter's for spitball and stuff. I said, you know, if it was me and I saw all these drones and I thought there was a 1% or even a 1 in 1,000 chance that it was actually a nuclear thing, I would take a vacation with my family. Now, of course, I have the means to do that or whatever, but if I was seeing these things over my house over and over again, whether I was a middle-class person or upper-middle-class, I would get the heck out of Dodge for a couple of weeks. Just go to a family member's house. I would leave. All right, take a second and picture the ultimate all-star team for your startup. Okay, you got that mental image? Maybe the Avengers, maybe even X-Men, Wolverine, Cyclops? Pick your favorite superhero team. And let's be realistic, until you've raised your Series

• 20:37Jason Calacanis?

  A or your Series B, you might need some help building that dream team and finding top-tier talent, managing all the timelines you've got, and maintaining quality. It's a big lift for all founders. I mean, scouting for that elusive 10x developer, that's going to eat all your time. And that's where Dev Squad comes in. Think of them as like Professor X, you know, they they know where to find those exceptional mutant developers who are 10x devs. And Dev Squad offers a complete product team from Latin America. You're going to get two to six full-stack developers, a technical product manager, and specialists in case you need them, like product strategy, or UI and UX design, DevOps, and of course,

• 21:18Jason Calacanis?

  quality assurance, all for 75% less than a US-based team. All for 75% less than a US-based team, while being on your same time zone. Which is really important. There's no long-term commitment. It's just seamless collaboration. So if you want a GSD, if you want to get stuff done and you're ready to squat up, head to devsquad.com/twist for 10% off your first engagement. That's devsquad.com/twist and transform your startup with the all-star team it deserves. That's just me. I'm not paranoid, but I think it would be sensible if they were coming over your, if you had these going over your house and you knew what we knew, what would you do with you and your, and your kids? Would you leave and go to your in-laws or your parents?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  No, no, we would. We'd talk about it and then we'd go, oh my God, can you imagine packing up for two months? Sorry, two weeks with a three, with three-month-old. And yeah, if our kids were two and four versus zero and two, I can see us going to the weekend house.

• 22:18Jason Calacanis?

  But you would have the discussion. It's not a crazy discussion is what I'm saying.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  No, because, because my, with my children, a 1% chance of death is 10 million times more than I'm willing to stomach. And I think that's the point you're trying to make.

• 22:31Jason Calacanis?

  Precisely. It's the same thing with like, I don't know, taking a small plane. I get offered all the time to go in little prop planes and bring the girls, go fly around New York City, take a helicopter here. Hard no. Thank you. I'll take a pass. I get invited to go heli skiing. I just say, you know what? I've done the actuary tables. I get to go scuba diving 100 feet. Nope. Motorcycles? Nope. I just took all this stuff off.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:55Jason Calacanis?

  Hard no on cave diving. Sounds fun.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:58Jason Calacanis?

  I'd love to cave dive. I'd love to heli ski. Hard no for me. I got three daughters. I don't want them to wake up one day and get the news that dad died heli skiing and then have them say, or wonder in the back of their minds, you know, dad took all these crazy risks. Did he love us or not? I know I'm sounding overly dramatic, but isn't that what everybody would think? Or am I different?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I, I think that people, there, there's an assumption, going back to our thing about our brains and how we think about risk and so forth. I think there's another element of, oh, what happened to me? Right? That's happening somewhere else. It's a theoretical risk. Now, the reason why I think people are so upset is because now that these drones are over their houses, it does make it very personal. It brings it very much close to home, literally. So. I I think that you're not that crazy because if you were, then we wouldn't be seeing so much interest in this story. So many people are talking about it, but clearly they're at least upset. And they're also cognizant that social media algorithms reward exciting material. So this is probably also a hit on TikTok for a reason. Actually, Jason, here's a fun question for you.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  There's no TikTok. Imagine the world. Does this, does this story get even half the attention?

• 24:09Jason Calacanis?

  As it did. Yeah, I mean, without social media, probably not. I think in the era before social media, it was much easier to control these kinds of situations. When something happened, you know, in a city, whether, you know, God forbid, a shooting, a mass shooting or something, it was easier to contain stuff, right? And to control the narrative. But when everybody's got a broadcast capable satellite truck in their pocket, and they can pop up any number of services and live stream and be citizen journalists, you're going to get the good and the bad, and you just have to be media savvy. So the question then becomes, you know, for me, every consumer, people listening to this podcast and others, you have to become really good at doing what we're doing here,

• 24:54Jason Calacanis?

  which is handicapping the situation, thinking of probabilities, thinking probabilistically, and maybe stitching together some facts. Here's another fact. Do we have tools to know the drones that are flying everywhere? Does that exist? Are there satellite companies? Are there radar companies? Are there camera companies that monitor drones? How do local police? How do military bases? How do airfields and airports? How do they know if drones are coming in? Because even a recreational drone. Certainly a larger commercial drone that could take down an airliner.

• 25:36Jason Calacanis?

  And we've seen just this week, some dipshits in Boston.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I mean, are we shocked that it was around Logan Airport?

• 25:45Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it's kind of obvious what's going on here in Boston, folks. So a bunch of guys in Boston.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  They have been drinking.

• 25:52Jason Calacanis?

  Celtic fans or Patriot fans. Decided to take their commercial drones and fly near Logan. They got picked up in two seconds. They got pinched immediately for being idiots. And they do this during a drone scare. And you know what? Drones in Ukraine, we have now videos of drones dropping grenades.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:12Jason Calacanis?

  On Russian soldiers and vice versa. So this is obviously on everybody's mind. These idiots go, they shut down Logan, they get pinched. But how do we know? And it turns out drone detection is a category in and of itself. We found a startup that does drone.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  So, uh, actually we found, well, there's a, there's a bunch of startups that are working on drones. And I just wanted to give a shout out really quick, Jason, to two that we've talked to on the show. One is, um, Frantil Dynamics. These were the students from.

• 26:39Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  University of Toronto, who were working on anti-drone technology using sound waves, if I recall correctly. And, uh, we've also had, of course, Skydio on. Skydio was sanctioned by China over providing, uh, Taiwan with some drones for their fire department. Um, great interview. We recommend watching that. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. Uh, but elsewhere, uh, earlier I showed some tweets from, uh, Senator Schumer. And he has also advocated for a company called Robin Radar. And, uh, they have a number of drone detecting systems and I have a clip from them, Jason, right here.

• 27:11Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Uh, so here we go. From Robin.

• 27:15Speaker 06

  Robin Radar Systems announcing on the move capability for Irish drone detection radar.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  So that's the radar. And now you can put them on your truck and drive them around mobile.

• 27:28Speaker 06

  And tracks rogue drones carrying improvised explosive devices and unauthorized drones surveilling mobile forces.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  So this is a company that I think is super cool. And if you are watching the video, what they showed was, Jason, a large cake container sized device on top of an SUV that does mobile drone detection. And now you can take this on the road with you. I think especially in light of the violence we've seen in our nation's political landscape in the last 12 months, let's say, Jason, that we're going to see a lot more stuff like this. And then finally, one last one, there's a company called Apollo Shield. It's a Y C company from 2016. And they're also doing anti drone stuff. So there's a lot of startups that are building cheaper, faster, better drones, and startups that are working on keeping us safe from drones. It's kind of like poison and cure.

• 28:17Jason Calacanis?

  So this is really interesting. You know, the ability to have essentially air traffic control for drones. Then there's the ability to take the drones out. And there's multiple ways to take a drone out. One is to screw with their electronics. Another is to hit them with another drone or a missile. There's all kinds of different lasers and heating them up, frying them. There's tons of ways to take them down. But first, you have to track them. And this, to me, is shocking that we don't have this technology in the field, which then leads to the next theory.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. Just to be clear, Jason, you mean, why don't we have a satellite pointed directly straight down over New Jersey, just counting each drone that's flying and giving us a live map of, okay, I see your point.

• 28:58Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, we have air traffic control. Why don't we have drone traffic control? Because if we know the next, you know, assassination attempt, the next terrorist attack, the next, God forbid, nine 11, is probably going to be drone warfare. I hate to say it. But that seems like the most obvious next thing for a lunatic, a terrorist, you know, an evil person, an evil group to do if they wanted to terrorize people.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:24Jason Calacanis?

  If you did what people are doing in Ukraine, and you started dropping grenades. On people waiting for a bus in Manhattan, this would be super terrorizing. I bought a DJI drone the summer. I was in Manhattan, I've talked about it. This thing's incredible and I was just flying it around Manhattan and I was shocked that you were allowed to. Well, there's a lot of money at stake here. Whenever there's the countermeasures, as you're pointing out, to the measures, that means there's an opportunity and there's a business opportunity. So we talked about all these different startups and we have Nicole on the pod later in the program. Talk about the opportunities and seeing a lot of duplicates. We're going to see, this is going to be a good beach for founders to surf.

• 30:04Jason Calacanis?

  We now know that drones can help in construction, inspections, all these kind of really great, awesome use cases. They're also entertaining and fun, they're great for photography. Okay, great, but there's going to be a downside. So now there's a whole industry of detecting and countermeasures. And those are, you know, we're going to see a lot of them, but geopolitics now plays into it. So we have conspiracy theories, we have reality, and then we have all these startups playing. But then there's going to be gamesmanship on top of this to get government funding. Okay, everybody, I'm about to give you $100,000 in free credits on Digital Ocean. Listen to this quick ad read to find out how.

• 30:46Jason Calacanis?

  If you're running an AI startup, you already know it's all about compute. And that means training your models, building AI agents, and of course crunching massive data sets. You need GPUs and you need them to be fast and you need them online yesterday. But you know, managing those on the traditional cloud platforms, it can be a nightmare. And that's where Digital Ocean comes in. It's the cloud platform built to help you scale faster without the headaches. And right now they're offering discounted GPU rates at just $1.90 per hour. That's a 20% discount. Combine that with their ability to spin up GPU powered virtual machines in seconds and you will be training your models or crunching data immediately.

• 31:28Jason Calacanis?

  And when you're done, you can shut them down just as fast, so you're not wasting money. You have to be frugal when you're running your startup. And here's the kicker, Digital Ocean lets you scale your Compute power based on your exact needs. From a single GPU setup to eight GPU configurations without any upfront hardware investment. And with an intuitive UI, robust documentation and on-demand support, you can focus on building the next big thing, not managing infrastructure, which is so tedious. Here's a very simple call to action. Right now, approval listeners can get up to $100,000 in free credits and GPUs at a special discounted rate of $1.90 per hour. That's about a 20% discount on the rate.

• 32:09Jason Calacanis?

  In addition to all those free credits, visit do.co/twist to get started and view terms and conditions. That's do.co/twist. So Schumer came out and said he wants this technology. Okay, there's also a bill. So maybe we can talk a little bit about the bills that we've seen and what's going on there. Because there is a bill or an act that I think got signed into law that Biden signed in where you cannot, if you're a government employee, buy a DJI drone. DJI drones, like the TikTok ban, is a major issue that we should all be aware of because DJI drones are made in China. And they could very easily be sending all the information they've got back.

• 32:48Jason Calacanis?

  And maybe there's like a zero day exploit, you know, where all the drones could be controlled or taken over at a certain point. Same thing with self-driving technology. Do you want BYD cars on the road in America? Do you want TikTok, you know, available in America? Do you want DJI drones? The Chinese could, at some point, just say, okay, have all the BYDs crash, have all the DJI drones, you know, kill people and then let's use TikTok to create chaos. You start thinking about these attack vectors, could be a little scary.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  On the geopolitical front, a lot of people have been talking about the American Security Drone Act of 2023. Effectively, that got fused into the NDAA or the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024. What's going on here for folks who are not familiar with how the US Congress spends money? Sometimes when there's a must-pass bit of legislation, like the NDAA, other things get taped to it so that way they can make it through. So this bill does mean that The federal agencies are prohibited from buying or using drones that are made in countries that are deemed to be threats to the United States. This means China, this means DJI, who has, according to our notes, seventy-three percent market share here in the US,

• 34:02Speaker 01

  which is a simply astounding number. Now, Jason, for most folks out there using drones to take a video of their dog at the beach, really, I don't, I'm not that concerned about it. But I can absolutely see how if you're a startup wanting to start with the government and now they cannot purchase from the leading company in the space, it opens up a ton of opportunity. So I'm kind of hoping, and I know we'll talk to Nicole about copycats in a bit, but like, I'm kind of hoping there is a brain explosion of startups working on drones across the gamut because I think this is a place where we need to lead. And so I think more people taking shots on goal versus fewer makes me feel safer.

• 34:37Jason Calacanis?

  There is a theory we left out. There was one theory this could be a military exercise. That seems plausible too. So I'll put the military exercise pretty high up on this list. And a military exercise with copycats could be like a really viable explanation here. And lest you think that our government is coordinated, I need only bring up nine eleven where hijackers in Florida were taking lessons and didn't care about learning how to land the planes. They only cared about learning how to fly them. And the FBI there knew about it.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:11Jason Calacanis?

  And it just kind of got lost, you know, across agencies, et cetera. We were tracking some of the hijackers long before nine eleven. This kind of stuff happens all the time. So it's completely possible.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Wait, I want to make a point about this. We live in a very particular nation with a particular set of government principles and rules. One is shared power at the federal level and then distributed power at the state level. This does create a less unified government. It also works reasonably well, as we've seen over the last couple of hundred years. Well, I've been a little surprised at the criticism of our patchwork of authorities from people who are frankly coming into power soon. Because I kind of thought that it was a bit of a feature, not a bug, that in our government, the DoD Saying we're talking military bases and everyone's kind of watching their own area of policy or protection. And if we wanted to have a more centralized approach to this, we'd have

• 36:08Speaker 01

  to have a stronger federal government. And Jason, I thought that was what we were moving away from. So I'm just curious your thoughts on on the government agency response to this situation, and if it's actually bad or working as intended.

• 36:20Jason Calacanis?

  What do they say? Like, success has a million parents and failures an orphan? If something successful happens, we're going to say, oh, my God, the federal government, you know, stepped in and it was incredible what they did. And then if it fails, we're like, oh, my God, the government failed. So, you know, if you look at something like education and we're falling behind on education or healthcare, you know, you're gonna be like, you know what? Screw the federal government, move it back to the states. The states are failing at something like, why don't we have a federal mandate for, I don't know, abortion? Or why don't we have a federal mandate for school vouchers? You get the idea. And so I think the best feature, if I'm being totally honest, is having two options. And in management, one of the theories is to

• 37:05Jason Calacanis?

  keep switching things up so that you don't hit stasis and calcification doesn't happen. So you go from building up all these middle managers at Facebook and Google and product managers, etc. And then you say, you know what? Rip it all out, flatten the structure, let's have more chiefs, more Indians, not a bunch of chiefs. Do I get canceled for saying that?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I just think it's I think it's gauche versus cancelable.

• 37:30Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, great. What's the word?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Well, canceling doesn't exist.

• 37:34Jason Calacanis?

  More worker bees, less queens, whatever. You know, some, you know, structure, and then you change the structure. You go from, you know, Uber having, you know, little fiefdoms where each city, when they were growing, were running their own city, running their own marketing, had their own little fiefdoms, and they were battling it out. And then Dara takes over and says, you know what? Let's bring the decision making central so that we're not ruffling as many feathers and turning over as many tables in the bazaar. And that was better for Uber at later stages. Maybe it's better to let a bunch of country heads go crazy again and, you know, have their own fiefdoms. So that's, I think, how you look at management theory is, the best thing to do is to switch it up from time to time.

• 38:18Jason Calacanis?

  And crack any calcification that could be occurring there.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Actually, I really am glad you said that because I've been a little bit, I kind of laugh at how management theories changed inside of Silicon Valley. I think we were talking about this last week, how Google had so much money for a while that they were onboarding talent before they could use them to hoard them. Sure. And that was considered smart for a while. Then Google got bloated and that was considered bad. So then they got smaller and that was considered good. And then I'm sure in the future they'll hire too many people again and go through this cycle. But I guess to your point though, about just needing to rip out what you were doing and replace it with something else. No matter where you were on the extreme of that cycle, up or down, it's okay because you're going to end up going back anyways. So it's more of an oscillation versus a destination. That actually makes sense to me.

• 39:01Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Next on the show, we have a guest. We love to have a guest on the show. Who's our guest today?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Our guest is Nicole Wischoff, the founder and GP over at Wischoff Ventures. She also, back in the day, helped found One Finance, a neo-bank that Walmart bought. Then she became a venture capitalist. Her first fund was $5 million back in 2021. Then she raised a fund two worth 20. And Nicole, according to PitchBook, at least your fund three worth $50 million has closed.

• 39:26Speaker 07

  Yes, it has. And thank you so much for having me on the show.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we wanted to have Nicole on, Jason, not only because we love talking to investors about what they're seeing in the market, especially after they've raised new funds, but also because she had a very interesting comment all about what she's seen in the startup market today. And whenever someone manages to go viral with a bit of startup chatter, I love to talk to them. So Nicole, why don't you talk us through your tweet here and then we're going to ask you about it?

• 39:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, of course. So I should caveat this with, I do specifically pre-seed and seed investing. So sticking a number of the same pitches from that lens, just wanted to call that out there. The point I'm trying to make is that the number of pitches, and maybe this is the case for you guys as well, coming from startups, even at the earliest stages, are almost always the same. So while this job can seem glamorous, I find that I'm hearing the same fintech idea or the same supply chain idea where people are building a digital freight brokerage over and over. The commentary was super interesting, Alex. I am sure you saw some of it. Happy to speak to it and give a few hot takes, but I will maybe let you guys lead with what you think could be interesting here.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Did a tweet yesterday about 3pm saying honestly shocking how many startup pitches are nearly exactly the same. Building in a market that's saturated, similar product, similar GTM, etc. The number of companies building something that doesn't exist or that is truly unique is far less than 1%. And this begs my first question, which is, what was this like three years ago? Has there been a proliferation, a doubling or a tripling of the number of startups you see pursuing the same idea at the same time, Nicole?

• 40:56Speaker 07

  I would certainly say if you look at the data from 20, especially 2021, just about anything was getting funded. And so I'd actually say that we're, you know, it would have been much easier a few years ago. I think the bar is obviously much higher and especially as things get to the series A. And so folks are probably a lot more, you know, gun shy to go do something super audacious.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  No, oh, Jason, please.

• 41:17Jason Calacanis?

  No, I was gonna say, you know, this phenomenon is very interesting. I've seen it many years, you know, going into my second decade. I think I'm maybe a couple of years ahead of you in this career. I remember during mobile and social, everybody had a check-in app like Foursquare or GoWalla. And we were investors in GoWalla, got sold to Facebook, wasn't a major outcome. But everybody was gonna do a photo sharing app. And then there was the sort of, everybody was gonna do a food delivery app. I think there's a kind of two phenomenon here. One is when there's a new technology that's gonna be applied, say apps emerged, GPS emerged. That becomes the why now. So everybody's like, whoa, Steve Jobs just launched the iPhone. Or there's an app store on the iPhone, or the watch is out.

• 42:02Jason Calacanis?

  And so everybody says, well, what can I do with that new platform? There's a new why now, there's GPS, there's Stripe, there's some new headset device. And everybody rushes in and of course, there's only a small number of things people do in the world. They eat, they sleep, and they go to work, they try to be productive, they laugh. You know, you can fit into a certain number of buckets. So new technology applied to existing problem sets in the world, eating. As but one example. And then I think the second one is people see funding for a category like we saw in SaaS, Nicole, and they're like, oh, wow, SaaS companies, there's a playbook here. I can learn the playbook and I can speak SaaS to Jason Lemkin or David Sacks

• 42:47Jason Calacanis?

  or people who've put out a shingle saying, we do SaaS and people who are looking for an idea say, seems like SaaS is getting funded. Seems like there's a lot of people hanging out on that beach surfing those waves and everybody runs to that beach, whether it's the VR beach, the AR beach, the SaaS beach, the on-demand beach, the app's beach, consumer beach. So I think there could be two phenomenon happening here.

• 43:09Speaker 07

  I think what's unfortunate is that in the short term, it definitely makes that first round of capital easier to raise, right? Like if you're, someone had posted an article I thought was well-written that they called the venture catering, which is like every year, VCs come out and they say, here are the things that we want to see, you know, next year, what we're looking for. And then a ton of founders races, check those boxes, right? And again, in the short term, because it's familiar, there's a lot of companies, hey, I'm going to go after that thing that they've thought about for maybe two weeks and they go raise money and it's easier. But then come the series A, there's about a hundred of those to sort through. They have very limited traction and metrics. And then you see the fallout, uh, which is obviously makes our job as VCs start to sink. You know, you get a single markup or maybe none, uh, and makes it more difficult.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I just want to underscore the point Nicole's making. So one thing that I keep seeing over time is people building exclusive credit cards with like access to events and hotels and perks and such. And here's another one from December 12th, so four days ago, it's called Atlas Card, just raised 27 million. And I'm sure in two more years, there will be another one that I have to read a release from. Seems to be a never-ending thing.

• 44:10Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Why? Like, I mean, my God, there's other problems in the world that I can't get a table at, pick a restaurant. Like that is not the thing that's going to save the planet from climate change and war.

• 44:20Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I want to call it too, Alex, you know, so a lot of founders responded and Jason, I don't know if you got to catch up on this, but a lot of them said it's the VC's fault, right? Like they should be looking for new, unique things. Like how dare they blame us for, you know, for this. And I think what actually makes this even harder, and I think about this a lot, is as a pre-seed and seed manager, like Trying to lead rounds and maybe put companies on the map to get moving. What then happens is I have to go around and think about, well, who will mark up this deal and continue to support these companies, right? Like, well, I have a new $50 million fund. Is that enough to really back up the truck and continue to support these companies? Um, hopefully, but right, there's not a lot of metrics in the first two years that would, you know, say, hey, LPs, can I put 20 million into this company and do it by myself?

• 45:00Speaker 07

  With that said is when I started asking around, people say, well, I remember I made an investment more recently called, uh, in a company called Frontlands. Repeat founder from the one, the one finance company that sold to Walmart and they're building, think of the Avon card, but for mineral rights. So no one's ever done this or property based rights. Everyone wants to buy them. PE is huge in the space or they're trying to buy these rights from people, but no one's actually letting you lend against them. And every multi-stage fund said to me, um, love it, but like with the Avon card, they didn't actually, to go get the credit facility, they didn't have to come up with a net new financial offering, right? It's the HELOC. It's a home equity line of credit and they're just attaching a card to basically spend against it. With this property based, you know, line, this is a net new product. That's going to be tough to sell a partnership like boo boo, right? And so it makes it tough.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  They just said that this is new, so we can't do it? I thought that's what these things were supposed to be for.

• 45:50Speaker 07

  I know, and that's exactly right. So I think what's tough is, and one, thankfully we have these early stage funds that exist and that continue to support these until they kind of create or get to this escape velocity where it's a series B and that same partner saying like, oh, the market exists. It's there. Thank goodness. You know, let's invest. But again, it makes it hard to go against the grain as an early stage fund and say, let's take an even bigger risk here by doing something that people probably won't support for two to four years.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Jason, does that impact how you think and how you invest?

• 46:17Jason Calacanis?

  Well, yeah, I am a bit of a lunatic and probably an outlier. And I think you're a function of the bets that you've previously won. So if you were to tell me the top three investments you would have would be a taxi company, a meditation app and a stock trading app where you don't charge people to trade. Those were obviously Uber, Calm and Robinhood, you know, three of our major outliers. Those were non-consensus bets and those were things people did not want. Tibet on at the time, nineteen of twenty one people I introduced Uber to did not invest first round. Cyan, Bannister and myself did the investment I had introduced first round and Cyan to it back in the day. And so Nicole is pointing out something called pull through.

• 47:02Jason Calacanis?

  And so for seed funds like ours, and we have same size seed fund and we do essentially the same thing. Although we have, I think, you know, an accelerator and a pre accelerator. So we have more programs, I think, and Nicole is, you're doing individual deals. I would expect maybe only one in three to half of our companies to pull through to the next round. Now that would be low by other people's standards. Where if you're a series A firm, you expect eighty percent of your companies to get a series B. If you're a seed fund, I don't know what Nicole expects, but I would guess two out of three to get to series A would be the hope. I'm actually hoping the opposite. Now, why would I be hoping that two out of three don't make it to the next round?

• 47:45Jason Calacanis?

  Well, that means we're being more audacious. We're taking more risk. So just based on my career, I would rather swing for the fences and hit another Uber, Robinhood, Calm and work the the power law. Then, you know, play it safe and do ten more SaaS companies. That doesn't mean I, we don't do SaaS or whatever, but portfolio management is part of the game here. You know, you, you do have to show in fund two that you can get half your companies to series A or whatever it is. In order to raise fund three. And that's because Alex, if you're a new VC, you know, my, it's only my first fund is really hitting the ten year mark now when you can actually look at returns.

• 48:30Jason Calacanis?

  And so how do LPs judge how Nicole's doing or how I'm doing or how Paravie's doing, Paravie C is doing? If they don't have outcomes where companies are going public or, you know, and you're distributing. They look at pull through. And so that does drive a little bit of this where everybody is circling the wagons and marking each up, each other up. But at the end of the day, your career will ultimately be defined by your power law outliers.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nicole, I'm curious if there's an AI element to the level of startups that are doing the same thing, because we've talked a lot about over the years, how it's easier to start a company, like you don't have to buy servers anymore, you have the cloud. Well, now you can have maybe fewer developers because of AI, blah, blah, blah. So does that mean that we're just seeing more total companies appear and that's making them seem to be more similar to one another than we might have seen five years ago?

• 49:23Speaker 07

  I feel like I'm seeing, well, I mean, it's obviously a smidge quieter, but precedes seed really hasn't. If you look at any of the Carter Angel list data, it's been super active. I think A's are where the friction is, where like there's a massive fall off of companies being promoted. With that said, I'd say I'm seeing a similar number of deals. It's just a lot of the same application. So, and I will say too, and I guess to founders credit, but a lot of really talented people that I meet are just now considering leaving, you know, their company and they don't have an idea. And so they're constantly doing this tour of duty, which is talking to a lot of people and trying to come up with an idea. And I think they do go to these VC spreadsheets and say, what are people looking for? And oh, that's interesting. Like, let's do that, you know, and cherry pick something, which also definitely is happening now. I mean, there are a million

• 50:07Speaker 07

  market maps coming out of every fund. There's all these flashy AI fund fundraises. And so it's also a function of, I think, people looking for ideas and those are just readily available.

• 50:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I call those, Alex, the beach to surf at. So what beaches have good waves right now? AI, defense tech, obviously. What beaches do people maybe not believe in as much? Consumer, VR, SaaS, people don't believe in anymore. Entrepreneurs rightfully will look for where the action is. And the action sometimes is based on just following, you know, Uber and DoorDash and Lyft and saying, oh, there's a lot of energy over on on demand and Airbnb. So they do Airbnb of everything.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  The Uber for X was

• 50:51Jason Calacanis?

  An Uber for X, right? I mean, how many of those pitches do we see? Which ones still exist? Which Ubers for X still exists right now? And then even with the copycats, you know, and you look at, say, food delivery. Man, all of the food delivery companies are consolidated down to how many players now? Two or three?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:10Jason Calacanis?

  Uber Eats, DoorDash, what else is there now? Toast, I guess, arguably is a public company that was private. So anyway, things consolidate down as part of the race. And if you were an investor in Lyft in the seed round or the series A or series B even, you're pretty happy even with, you know, the fact that Lyft, you know, maybe is an Uber, but it still became worth 10 billion or 20 billion at whatever point in time. You still did phenomenal. So sometimes even hitting the number two or the number three can be a massive grand slam for a fund. People forget that.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Jason Calacanis?

  Basic math, you know, especially for seed funds. If you're a seed fund and you were in Postmates or a series A investor and it got bought by Uber, you have for a couple of billion bucks, you feel pretty good about it, right?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  So Nicole, I know we have to let you go in a second, but I do want to ask, we've seen a lot of people that went out and founded new venture capital funds in the last couple of years, struggled to raise a fund too, even clearly with your fund three now raised, that's not you. So I'm just kind of curious if you could tell us about the state of the, uh, the venture capital fundraising side of this.

• 52:09Jason Calacanis?

  How hard was it to raise it there?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  That's what I'm asking very politely, Jason.

• 52:13Jason Calacanis?

  Institutions or individuals, where did you have the success?

• 52:16Speaker 07

  So look, I went out expecting this would take a long time. Right. I, uh, my legal team is Wilson Cincini. I think they're in the top three, like, uh, law firms that represent funds. Um, and they openly told me, Nicole, you should update your LPA. Even the really big mega funds are doing this, which is your limited partnership agreement. As a VC, you need one, uh, to, you know, raise money from LPs. And they, it traditionally said you have 12 months from the first close of the fund, um, to, to close the rest of the fund. And they said, you should update that to 18. So I thought, well, I better get super early here because it's going to be a bit, and I don't want to run out of capital. So I went to market and within five months I had all of it raised. I'd say at three months I had all commitments and we had a few months, um, of, of legal back and forth.

• 52:59Speaker 07

  I even, I scratch my head and wonder, you know, like, why, thank you. You know, how was I fortunate? Um, the $20 million fund took seven. I thought that felt like three years, um, just because you meet so many LPs. So I pitched, I put some data on this on X, but I think I pitched just over 120 firms. I do, I will say something that I think helped a lot, which was one, I mean, I think you have to, I've also tweeted about this, but I think you have to, there's sort of this game of have and have nots. Like you have to be in network, right? Like I think LPs really want to know that you've got like, you know, notable, at least initial LPs and notable deals that you've done. Jason mentioned this earlier, but when you don't have much of a track record, they want to see that like blue chip funds have marked up your deals. So how are those pressing? That's an early signal. And so I was fortunate to have a lot of that.

• 53:44Speaker 07

  I also think a big theme right now for folks is that they want super early stage true venture exposure, not the series A plus exposure that all the multi-stage funds have gotten bloated and there's tons of products for that now. They want people, what's that?

• 53:59Jason Calacanis?

  Why?

• 54:00Speaker 07

  Uh, I think they want real alpha, you know, for once. I think there's,

• 54:05Jason Calacanis?

  Returns, yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 07

  Yes, yes. And returns, right? There's, if you are, and definitely if you keep a disciplined even seed fund size, for another time, but I don't understand these $150 million plus pre-seed and seed dedicated funds from a returns perspective. And so I think that if you have a super disciplined fund size, so let's say it's 50 million. If you're going after pre-seed and seed, again, you have great, you have an opportunity to like, you know, have a hundred extras in there. And Jason's had a few of those and you are getting high ownership. That seems to be like what everyone is looking for and I checked those boxes. So the last thing I'll say on this in terms of strategy for raising the fund is, I went out and I took 78 first meetings in about three weeks and I hammered it. I did like, they were all hour long calls. I got all of the VCs in the pipeline and the data room at the same time.

• 54:51Speaker 07

  And then I, you know, I wouldn't say it was necessarily bluffing, but I didn't know if it'd work out. I kept saying, we're going to have a first close in June and a final close by the end of August. And I was holding my breath and it worked out. But I think if you create a sense of urgency and you tell people like this, it's, I think it's a matter of expressing this will get done. It's just a question of when and not if.

• 55:08Jason Calacanis?

  Which is the same for founders, right? Like if they have a definitive goal and they're saying, "Hey, the train's leaving the station. I'll talk to you for the next fund." You know, uh, did you start before or after Silicon Valley Bank, uh, went under and then had to reboot?

• 55:23Speaker 07

  Um, after. Oh, yeah. So this was, uh, it was this year. So we, I started raising in, what was it?

• 55:28Jason Calacanis?

  Good to hear.

• 55:29Speaker 07

  March of this year and then closed it in August. So it was really tight.

• 55:33Jason Calacanis?

  I started right of Silicon Valley Bank.

• 55:35Speaker 07

  That's-

• 55:36Jason Calacanis?

  imploded. Literally one year. Was that 2022 or 2023 when that happened?

• 55:41Speaker 07

  I think, I was just thinking the same thing. I was like, was that 2022?

• 55:44Jason Calacanis?

  God, it's like such a blur now.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  March 10th, 2023. So a year, less than a year ago.

• 55:48Jason Calacanis?

  I started right before that and oh my Lord, for six months, I just had to pause everything in the middle of it. And I was like, you know what? This makes no sense. I had already gotten in, you know, 10 or 20 million from my accredited investors and some early LPs. And then everything blew up. Every single person thought it was the end of days. And they just said, "We'd love to meet with you. Don't want to waste your time. We're not doing any funds this year." This is 2023. "We're not doing any funds in 2023 and we're pairing our names. We're going to lower the number of LP, number of funds that we already have. So we're going to cut names." And it was like, "You're going to cut names of people you just did their first or second fund?"

• 56:29Jason Calacanis?

  And they're like, "Yeah, because we don't have money because there's no DPI and the world's ended now." All we need is a couple more Service Nows and Reddits and these kinds of things. And maybe the end of the wrath of Lina Khan will change M and A. And then all of a sudden, when singles and doubles happen, that's when people get frisky. When you return, you know, 50% of your fund early, you know, year four or five, they get half their money back or they get, you know, a full turn, 1X. People are like, "Oh yeah, yeah. I'd love to support your next fund." But if you haven't returned, man, anybody who had that fund in 2020 to 2020, 2019 to 2022, that vintage is going to be really hard pressed to raise again. And so it's part of the process.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  A great point, Jason. Yeah. So, uh, Nicole's first fund, 2021, her second fund, 2022. So, um, I know we have to let you go.

• 57:17Jason Calacanis?

  But those were 10, 20 million dollars. Funds you did. Two most small.

• 57:19Speaker 07

  Yes, yeah. Five and 21, 20 and 22, and then I skipped STV. I guess I just got really lucky and then I raised in 24.

• 57:26Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, timing is everything. If you went out in peak Zerp, you raised, you know, three times as much in half the time. If you raised during, you raised half your target. And then if you raised after, you raised your target. So it's just like for founders, it's really difficult for VCs right now. And congratulations on doing that.

• 57:47Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 57:48Jason Calacanis?

  Keep it up.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Nicole. We appreciate it. And next time you land a hundred bagger, come back on the show and tell us all about it.

• 57:53Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, yeah. Promising startups.

• 57:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, love you. Love the show, you guys. Thank you.

• 57:58Jason Calacanis?

  Cheers.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  All right, bye.

• 57:59Jason Calacanis?

  She's awesome.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Although I gotta say, Justin, I was, I was going in there for the, what is your IRR from your 2022 fund?

• 58:06Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah, you could have asked her that. She probably would have said, um, yeah, my most, most, you know, here's the easy thing you say, I'm in the J curve.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:15Jason Calacanis?

  So most people would just say, I'm in the J curve, like for our fund three, I'm in the J curve, right? We just deployed it. So who knows? And then for fund one and two, on paper, 4.9 and I think 4X on paper. And then in terms of returns ballpark, I don't have the exact number in front of me. It's like 1.2 and 0.5 or 0.6 returned for the first two funds, which is great. And now my job is to close the gap between the paper gain and the actual distributed. And what's crazy is sometimes you have a startup that's, you know, 20% of your paper gains and it goes out of business. You know, like, oh, my Lord, now, you know, I was 5X on paper, I'm 4X.

• 58:56Jason Calacanis?

  And then you have some company you thought was, you know, just dead or was, you know, uh, in zombie state and the founder's like, yeah, I don't know if I, and then all of a sudden they pull a rabbit out of the hat and they raise a series A. And you're like, oh, my God, that's incredible. So these markups, you know, paper markups are just that. And it really comes down to can you get any kind of a DPI? Can you distribute? And so, great job Nicole. And it's hard. And I like keeping the fund size smaller. That was, I think, was the other point in her, in the discussion, Alex, is, you know, she's like, why would you have $150 million seed fund?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:32Jason Calacanis?

  You know, if you do a 50 million, you can get 100 names in there. You know, or, you know, 150 names, or in our case, maybe like 250, because we have this founding university, very unique product in the market. We give 25K checks for the first check that a company even gets to incorporate. You know, if you have something unique like that, the chances of hitting an outlier go way up. And then if you do hit the power law in a smaller fund, the ability to have a multiple on that goes up. So the smaller the fund, the greater the chance of having a four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 20x fund. Whereas if you've got a big number, like 500 million dollar fund or a billion dollar fund.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Jason Calacanis?

  You're going for two times, three times the amount of money, which means it's probably, you know, going to be very similar to the stock market. In the same period of time, which is why venture is such a troubled space right now is can you beat the market? Is the real question and the market gives you liquidity. So

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Jason Calacanis?

  VCs are having a really hard time because they have to beat the returns of a vibrant stock market.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the stock market's been on fire lately, but just to your point about larger funds, larger returns. This Jason Limkin tweet was actually something that I saw earlier today. And he does some math in this and he points out that VCs need about $2 billion in exits for about each 50 million they raise. And he has his own math for that. I'm sure you could tweak the numbers around, but it does go to show how much liquidity you have to generate to make a venture capital fund make sense financially. And it's, it's been tough.

• 1:01:06Jason Calacanis?

  The back of the envelope math would be, you know, you get diluted 50% if you're a seed investor. So if you owned 5% of a company for 500K, let's say you invested 500K at 5 million, a $10 million valuation. Now you're down to two and a half percent ownership, two and a half percent ownership at a $2 billion valuation is 50 million. So for every 50 million. You need to have one of those become worth 2 billion. How many companies do you invest in in your life that become worth 2 billion? And that you have the ability to exit? Because both things have to happen. It can't just be marked up on paper. You have to have the opportunity to exit. You know, those are few and far between, which is why when you get an opportunity to sell in secondary, you know, at 500, a billion, 2 billion as a seed fund,

• 1:01:51Jason Calacanis?

  you really are encouraged to consider that deeply and maybe sell 10%, 20%, 30% of your position to lock in some DPI and keep your fund in business. Okay, great job there with a great guest of the moment. We like our main characters. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Bye bye.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Bye.