Susa Ventures: 0 to VC in 12 Months

many well-known ways to break into VC as a career and you took none of them.

>> It took us around nine months to launch one generative AI feature for a single line item in the job flow and one box took us 9 months. You were like, I'm going to be an investor. And then next thing you know, we dropped five posts

and there were 700 companies that applied to be a part of this accelerator. So if any one of his

accelerator. So if any one of his partners brought a deal into the firm that they really wanted to do, but they weren't willing to personally put their money into, he wouldn't do it. Hey, you

guys got to look at this. I know you don't even know who I am cuz I'm some random fellow at Susso. You guys haven't talked to me before, but I promise this is worth looking at. There are so many VCs that do not have a right to win.

>> All right. Shah here. [laughter]

Welcome to the podcast.

>> Thanks for having me, >> dude. This might be the most happy way

>> dude. This might be the most happy way we've ever started one of the episodes.

This is going to be a fun episode. It

will. Uh there are many well-known ways to break into VC as a career and you took none of them.

>> Yeah, something like that.

>> And so a lot's happened in the last year and a half and I feel like this is going to be a great episode for anyone that like has ever thought about getting into VC, especially right now there's so much happening like in the world with people

leaving and people joining and somehow everyone's working at A6Z all of a sudden. And so I think this will be a

sudden. And so I think this will be a really great episode to talk about, you know, the last kind of like roller coaster of like a VC career that you've been on for the last 18 months.

>> Um, I think the best way to start off is when we maybe not first met, but when we first, you know, started talking and like kind of hanging out more, you were at LinkedIn >> and you knew like one of the first things I told you about like, hey, you

ever want to start a company? Like what

are you trying to do in the next few years? You were like, I'm going to be an

years? You were like, I'm going to be an investor. And at the time, you were just

investor. And at the time, you were just a product manager, right? Product

marketing. And I was a product bisops something. Yeah.

something. Yeah.

>> Okay. You were product bisops at LinkedIn.

>> Yeah.

>> And I remember that's when I first learned about Yzin, right? Cuz you know there were you had done all this research on like ways to break into VC.

>> Yeah.

>> And then we started working on a lift, right?

>> And what was it four months after a lift bachelor ever like you know officially like kicked off you got accepted into SUSA's fellowship program >> and then you created a role for yourself at the company.

>> Yeah.

>> So let's start out at LinkedIn. Shah

here was at LinkedIn. He knew he wanted to go into VC. Like set the stage here.

>> Yeah. So I graduate 2023 from Berkeley.

Job market is bad. I actually almost work at Scale AI, but they end up hiring an MBA and I'm like, "Oh, that's fine."

And then AI hits in 2022 and obviously that business does very well. And I'm

like, "Oh, shoot. I'm still at LinkedIn.

What do I do? I'm missing everything that's happening in this wave." The the moment I knew that was when it took us around nine months to launch one generative AI feature for a single line

item in the job flow. So when you go to post a job on LinkedIn, you manly type in everything you want the job to say and one box took us nine months, let alone doing the entire job with AI. That

part took two years. And so when I realized like this is the speed at which these teams are going to move, um there's not as high of a density of young people who are interested in

building things with AI. How do I get exposure to that or get or become a part of that if that's what I want to be doing? And so I think that was around

doing? And so I think that was around the time that I had met you. I started

coming to Founders Inc. SBC, HFZ, started with the venture studios.

They're honestly great starter locations in my opinion in San Francisco for people who are immigrants or first-time founders moving to the Bay for the first time. these spaces can often be a great

time. these spaces can often be a great place for them to get started meeting people. I mean, you ran it for like two

people. I mean, you ran it for like two years, you know what that was like. Um,

>> the marketing. Yeah, it was it was it was cool to see all those people kind of come in.

>> Exactly. Um, and so, similarly to me, I felt that energy and I remember we put on an event together. I was generally trying to get involved in more events, meet more founders that way. And so,

that was how I very passively got started like angel investing, developing my own taste, which we'll we'll definitely talk a lot about that. But

one of the most important things as an investor to develop over time is taste because it's the thing that makes you unique from other investors. And so I think that was right around the time that you and I had started talking about Alif, what it could do for the

community. We linked up with two of our

community. We linked up with two of our friends at the time to start the program. And I think at least under from

program. And I think at least under from my impression, I thought we'd roll out a few LinkedIn posts, a few Twitter posts.

We'd start slowly, the community would build over time. And then next thing you know, we dropped five posts and there were 700 companies that applied to be a part of this accelerator. And so I think for both of us, in fact, probably for

all of us, in that 3 to four month period, I learned more about building an organization, running a venture fund and picking founders than I would have if I had just gone and like scouted or

interned at a fund and like tried to look into their deal flow. When you go out into the world and you build something of your own and you're the one making the decisions around these are the perks and offerings we're going to have, these are the ones we're not going

to have, this is the type of programming we are going to offer, and this is the type of programming we're not going to offer. All of those decisions and

offer. All of those decisions and trade-offs come together in your fund story or its mission. And I feel like ALF did a very good job of that. And so

learning that here was very beneficial when I went to create my own path in getting into venture. Um, so we ran OLif, we worked with a lot of perks, providers, partnership providers. We

talked to everyone under the sun, AWS, OpenAI Bench Pilot Rippling Asana Notion. Um, we got

Notion. Um, we got >> Did you have those on on like practice that >> that was probably 50% of them there was there was 50% more that I clearly forgot. But, um, the part that I enjoyed

forgot. But, um, the part that I enjoyed the most was interfacing with investors because obviously one of the biggest success metrics for an accelerator is can they raise preede seed rounds afterwards. Um,

afterwards. Um, >> and at this point we didn't have like I hadn't raised the fund yet, right? That

came so much later.

>> Yes. Yes.

>> And so at this point it was like >> validating the idea right >> at this point I was like hey I'm at Founders Inc. at this point to be honest I wasn't planning on leaving like Founders Inc. kind of like the dream job. But, you know, FKCON was nice

job. But, you know, FKCON was nice enough to be like, "Hey, yeah, you can run this thing out of our, you know, out of our office on the nights and weekends." And eventually I was like,

weekends." And eventually I was like, "Yeah, you know, there's like these these these three other guys are like helping put it on." And, you know, we had this batch where we just accepted 16 out of 600 people. And I think the hit

rate was like of those 16, one of them raised like 8 million at 43. Like, you

know, within the course of the batch, they came in, no product, no revenue.

>> There was like another one who, you know, got their first term sheet. Today

they're, you know, they actually, they came on the podcast, saw me from Pam.

They're about to hit that $10 million in revenue mark. They raised their seed

revenue mark. They raised their seed round and we had a couple other >> rais seed round at two million at that point in time and now everyone is trying to give him money, which shows the power of if you can pick these people early on, you can build something really special.

>> And I think what's really interesting is as I've watched your career now grow, especially since you've been at SUSA, it feels like I find a company, I'll send it to you from Twitter and you're like, "Yeah, we just invested in them." And so

it'll be really interesting now for us to kind of talk about like because that wasn't like you weren't at that point when we were when had first started.

>> Definitely not.

>> And so you know I think a lot of that comes from you got to work with Chad Buyers, right? He's the founder of SUSA.

Buyers, right? He's the founder of SUSA.

He's like one of Silicon Valley's kind of like most interesting investors right now.

>> Um and so I think it'll be cool to talk about first how SUSA came about >> and then kind of how you've come up from there.

>> So I'll start with the history of the firm. The firm was started in 2012 and

firm. The firm was started in 2012 and this is very different from the preede seed landscape that exists today where you have three types of funds trying to do the same type of deal. So you have your multi-stages trying to come in, you

have your obviously susas, your seed firms trying to lead and then you also have smaller super angels that can do participatory checks and you'll end up cooking together a round with some component or one of these three. At that

point in time in the early 2010s, the seed market didn't exist in the same way it did today. Kleiner Perkins and all these guys who were doing big rounds, they were primarily doing them at the series A and they were like today's seed

pricing. I think the insight that the

pricing. I think the insight that the founding team had was that if we are the best at picking people and building relationship with people early and then having high conviction in them to the point in which we're willing to lead

their round or put in a significant chunk of our fund into their singular company. Those are the types of high

company. Those are the types of high conviction investments we want to do.

And obviously they were very fortunate that the first one they did was Robin Hood. Um, so the very first deal the

Hood. Um, so the very first deal the fund that Chad Buyers did out of the fund was Robin Hood. He had met the founders at the time. There were a lot of consumer apps that were coming out and when he had used the Robin Hood

experience, he was like, "Hey, everyone in my generation doesn't use Fidelity.

They don't make a Schwab brokerage account. They're going to be on their

account. They're going to be on their mobile phone and they're going to want access to trading to do that. If these

guys build the most delightful product experience, which even at that point in time in 2012, he said that that was the most delightful experience or like mockup he had seen for something like that, they would end up performing very

well, be a big business, etc. And you can see that today, Robin Hood is a $130 billion company. And obviously, there's

billion company. And obviously, there's a few companies that are of that size.

What makes Robin Hood special is that from the day they incepted to the day they IPOed only took seven years.

Traditional venture cycles are taking 10, 15 years for these companies to go public. And some don't even have plans

public. And some don't even have plans to go public in the near future like Stripe.

>> Yes. Um and a consumer app is one of the few rare types of products where if people get if it gets people's mind share as the app to do this thing on, it

can grow so much faster than a software platform or any kind of B2B company could. There's very few consumer apps

could. There's very few consumer apps that are actually able to hit that level of consumer love, but Robin Hood was one of them. Um

of them. Um >> rest in peace Paparazzi.

>> Yeah, exactly. And so just taking a step back, the firm was founded by three partners. Today we're a partnership of

partners. Today we're a partnership of five. We're on our fifth fund. Very

five. We're on our fifth fund. Very

different than when we started when we were a small $25 million fund. Today we

deploy out of $175 million. We'll do1

to5 million checks typically leading preede and seed stage rounds. We can

participate at any point from the company's in inception up to its series A. Um and the ethos that we've always

A. Um and the ethos that we've always stick to is each partner or investor only doing two to three deals a year, choosing founders that they have a high high level of conviction in. They're not

trying to do a small amount of checks and put them into a bunch of different companies where they allocate a little bit of their time. We go deep with our founders and I think folks have really enjoyed that when it comes to raising their series A. Obviously, hiring talent

is very difficult right now. Getting

introductions with high levels of trust in that intro to enterprise customers is also a very difficult thing to create and we spend a lot of our time with our companies working to get them from that preced stage to that a stage and we

position ourselves as the best partner for that stage of the company company journey. And so that's SUSA, right?

journey. And so that's SUSA, right?

Where is your part in that? Because I

remember, you know, for I guess audience context, one of the parts that we were building out with the first iteration of ALF was we would reach out to all these venture funds and say, "Hey, we have our founders. We want to bring them out."

founders. We want to bring them out."

And at this point, we were completely just coasting on like, "Hey, we're all Muslim. Let's help each other out." We

Muslim. Let's help each other out." We

were just outbounding them. I had this email template uh and like a list of like a bunch of Muslim investors that like my EA had put together.

>> And we would reach out to them and I'll be like, "Hey, my name's Omar. I did

this and this and now I'm doing Alf."

you know people in our batch have gone on to be backed by X Y and Z >> and you know we talked to Bane and we also talked to SUSA because of Hammad >> and uh so all of batch zero this is

probably July August of 2024 we're at SUSA and we're all pitching like all of our founders are like hey you know like this is our company this is our pitch deck some of them had their laptop presentations and they were in a room

with Derek and I forget who else was there >> and uh two months later I get the call from you and you're Hey, I'm I'm actually about to like do this fellows program. I might need a reference. But I

program. I might need a reference. But I

was like, oh, like no, like we were there.

>> Yeah, it's a crazy journey, man. I So,

what had happened was we had put out that post that was like, hey, if you're an investor who's interested in meeting with these Muslim founders, come find us. Hammad reached out to us. He was

us. Hammad reached out to us. He was

interested in setting up a pitch day at SUSA. We brought the founders over

SUSA. We brought the founders over there. And I think we've done a few of

there. And I think we've done a few of these at this point. But what I liked about the SUSA guys is they had very intentional advice and also strategy for how to run these rounds, etc. that I felt like other VCs hadn't shared with

our founders. And so I was impressed by

our founders. And so I was impressed by them to start and then obviously found out about the fellowship. And I think for me I was looking I think like one of the most important things to develop as

an investor is a real right to win.

There are so many VCs that do not have a right to win. And that's okay because oftentimes you lean on your GP or the founder of your firm who does have a real right to win and you can funnel opportunities to them. But if you want to do something on your own, like ith

for example, your own fund, you have to develop some kind of edge that founders are receptive to and they're choosing that edge as the one they want to work with over the other edges or rights to

win other VCs may have. And so when I thought about that, I felt like I hadn't developed one yet. Like there was no reason realistically if a excellent founder was meeting with me they would

choose to take my money over exfirm or ex you know uh serly tenured investor today. So how do I set myself up in a

today. So how do I set myself up in a position to best attain that or develop one and so when I was looking at funds to join or fellowships to join I felt like SUSA had developed a real right to win in the seed market which was very

difficult to do today and I wanted to learn from that. Um, so that's why I got into the fellowship, decided to do it and then I was very fortunate that I got to work across a partnership very early

on into my time there. Actually, I ended up sourcing a series A opportunity and like the core SUSA seed fund is preede and seed. We have a separate

and seed. We have a separate opportunities fund that does series A's and series B's and I was like, "Hey, you guys got to look at this. I know you don't even know who I am because I'm some random fellow at SUSA. You guys

haven't talked to me before, but I promise this is worth looking at." Next

thing I know, I thought it was just going to be me and partner on that call uh back at last November. And then the entire KVU team, which is the name of our growth fund, was on that call, ended up doing the investment.

>> And you sourced it >> and I sourced it. Um

>> can I know which one it was?

>> Yeah, it's a company called So it's a Muslim founder. His name is uh he was

Muslim founder. His name is uh he was the youngest lecturer ever at John Hopkins University for radiology. Ended

up starting a medical device company and also started Microsoft's vertical AI team. So he had both the AI experience

team. So he had both the AI experience and the healthcare company building experience, married the two best people from those two past endeavors and started a new company in the radiology space.

>> So now you're on this call, you have the entire growth fund there. They ended up doing the deal. It looks like, you know, it turned out to be a, you know, a deal that you actually made. And

>> you know, I'd say how many deals do does SUSA see in a year versus how many do they actually do?

>> This is a really good question. And I

know there are firms out there who like keep track of the number of deals they see, but I actually think that's just like an inefficient use of your time because if you try to tag Yeah.

ballparking is thousands.

>> So you see thousands, right? Like I

don't think people realize how many pitches the average or like you know a good fund receives. Y

>> and Sue says now you know out of the thousands of of of pitches they received I guess they actually invested in a company that you sourced very early on into into your time there.

>> How did you then go from that to you know I know if you look at your LinkedIn it'll say fellow and then you know January 2025 you became an investor.

>> So what was that conversation like?

>> Good question. You know it was it was really a learning journey for me. It was

my first time working with investors and being a part of their brand and trying to represent that brand of something that was already established and already existed. So I'd say the first few months

existed. So I'd say the first few months were just trying to understand the people at the firm, the types of investments they like to do that they've done historically, the gaps that they felt like the firm may have in certain

coverage areas etc. And then when come time around like November, December, the end of that year as the fellowship was wrapping up, talked to early stage funds at the seed stage that you know I was potentially interested in joining

full-time. And the things that I kept

full-time. And the things that I kept coming back to with the SUSA team were twofold. One, I felt like the trust that

twofold. One, I felt like the trust that I had with the team that I had built up over the few months of doing the fellowship is something very underrated in venture. One of the most important

in venture. One of the most important things as a young person when you enter venture is having a senior person at your firm or having multiple senior per people at your firm who are your champions. And that doesn't mean they're

champions. And that doesn't mean they're sitting you down every day and telling you what to do and reviewing your deal pipeline and all that. It means they trust you to go out into the world, find opportunities that they would not be

able to, and trust your taste and your ability to bubble up those things to them. And as long as you do your job in

them. And as long as you do your job in that way, you trust that they will be a champion of yours. They trust you. They

want to build your brand. They want to see you grow in BC because often times the best champions also understand that if they can homegrow an investor and get them to be very good, that's only going to get increase their carry pool, right?

Carry pool is the way make money. Yep.

>> Um so VCs get paid in two ways. One is

traditional salary like 9 to5 get 100K, 200k, 30 whatever. Um and then the other portion is carry >> which is their equity.

>> Yes. Which is the equity that of the companies that we've invested into as a fund. And so the way a carry pool will

fund. And so the way a carry pool will work is let's say there's a 100 points total. Um 80% of those points will go to

total. Um 80% of those points will go to our investors. So there's foundations,

our investors. So there's foundations, nonprofits, universities, pension funds, etc. that will invest in these VC funds.

>> Um we'll distribute 80% of the returns to them. And then the 20% remaining is

to them. And then the 20% remaining is distributed amongst the partnership who did the investments. Um and another important note here is you don't just start making carry like right away. You

first have to return the fund. So if you have $175 million fund, you first have to return $175 million before you start making any additional money on top. So

you actually have to be at a place that is good to make any money off of carry, >> which is a great incentive alignment structure.

>> Exactly. Exactly. And some firms also give you the opportunity to co-invest and there's like this story from Peter Teal where he made every single investor have the opportunity to co-invest on a

deal-by-deal basis in the fund. The way

most funds do it is you can co-invest in the fund. So if SUSA fund 5 is a fund I

the fund. So if SUSA fund 5 is a fund I want to co-invest into, I'll just decide the amount that I want to do alongside every investment. The way Peter Teal set

every investment. The way Peter Teal set it up is that you had to make that call on an individual deal basis. So if any one of his partners brought a deal into the firm that they really wanted to do, but they weren't willing to personally

put their money into, he wouldn't do it because he would be like, "Wait, so you want to put my firm's money behind this, but you don't even have enough conviction to put in your own money."

>> Um, which is which is a very real check for why you should do an investment. So,

it's a good anecdote, but that's how Carrie works.

>> Got it. And so, you know, you're now you're talking about you became an investor. You know, you're talking about

investor. You know, you're talking about GP's championing, you know, you wanting >> senior partners at your fund to kind of champion you.

>> And so, >> you have a unique source of deal flow, right? Like that's honestly one of the

right? Like that's honestly one of the reasons even today that we're able to connect, you know, founders that we invest in with later stage funds is because we can say, "Hey, here are the people we've sent you before. Maybe you

passed, maybe you didn't, but if someone passes, we'll also let them know like, hey, you know, casually because we maintain a lot of these personal relationships or like, hey, did you hear, you know, semi from Pam, for example, just did this or you know, um,

you know, this other company that we just invested in >> and so you're building up your own kind of like equity in a sense with that person in that relationship.

>> And so now you've you've built up your own equity kind of like at the fund or you've started to you're in. And um

where did it go from like you know Shahir is kind of this guy at the the firm that's like super young to now someone brings you a deal you bring it to them and they know it's legit.

>> Great question. Very good question and arguably one of the most important jumps that a young investor has to make. Um I

would say a couple things. One just to give like the background to that. The

second piece of what I was going to mention is when I met with Chad and I had a few offers from other firms. I think the reason he hired me is because I wrote a very long document with all of the areas that I thought SUSA lacked

coverage in. And to your point, it was

coverage in. And to your point, it was sourcing networks. It was coverage areas

sourcing networks. It was coverage areas where I felt like the team may have been undercovered or underpenetrated. And

spending time with those groups of people would have a bunch of benefits for the firm. Obviously, the most obvious one being you can invest in those people. Um and so the transition

those people. Um and so the transition that I had to make or the the way I did what you what you just asked is starting with those coverage areas starting with like a plan of attack on these are the

four or five things that if I get done by the end of the year I will have felt good about like where I moved Susa's brand and I think so far alhamdulillah like those things are tracking quite well. Um and it it was really just

well. Um and it it was really just following up on the things I committed to doing. So when you say you're going

to doing. So when you say you're going to go build relationships with younger founders, be booths on the ground at the universities in a way that other funds can't be. I would ask, oh, like what's

can't be. I would ask, oh, like what's going on? You're like, [snorts] I was

going on? You're like, [snorts] I was just at Purdue. I was just in New York.

You were always in some random city at some random university. Are you still doing that?

>> I am still doing that, but in a much more intentional way. So I think the reason why I was probably so tired is cuz like the first two, three months, we're just saying yes to everything. I

would just Yep. You say yes to everything. You travel everywhere. you

everything. You travel everywhere. you

try and expand your surface area as much as possible just so you can see as many things as possible. There's like two beliefs that investors have. One is that you need to see a million companies before you can see one that's good because you can pattern match to the

best ones. And then other people who say

best ones. And then other people who say actually like you should not just be meeting as many founders as possible.

You should be very intentional and selective with the very few that you meet with and they should always be hitting a certain quality bar. I'm

personally of the belief that if you are not someone who is 40 years old and has sold like two unicorn companies, you're going to have to do the first one. And

the only way you'll become a good investor is by developing the muscle of seeing a thousand of these things.

>> Um, >> I love how you mentioned 40 years old as as though that's like old. [laughter]

>> Dude, these guys always get mad at me because I always call them old and they're like 35.

[laughter] >> And so I think now that we have all that context, I'm a founder now. I'm trying

to build an AI company. I want to raise 5 million at 50.

>> Don't do it. [laughter]

>> But I do. Okay. So, I'm coming to you.

I'm coming to Shahir because you know Yakuba over here gave me the intro to you and I got a great pitch deck.

>> Uhhuh.

>> No revenue.

>> But I got a great pitch deck.

>> You don't want to have any of that.

>> No revenue.

>> Yeah.

>> I went to a really good school. Okay. I

went to Stanford and Berkeley together.

>> Oh wow.

>> Dual degree.

>> And I come to you and it's a deal. And

you're like, "Okay, you know what? This

is worth looking into. I'm gonna be one of the hundred people you talk to that day.

>> What then happens? What kind of questions are you asking me? And then I want to go from like that first initial meeting to how it gets, you know, pushed to eventually an approval all the way from, you know, your partners versus a

rejection from you.

>> Mhm. Um, in this case where you're a very smart young student from these pedigreed schools, >> ex- studentent, >> ex- student >> from multiple pedigreed schools, >> you've dropped, you've dropped out. The

very first thing I would try and understand about you is what are your motivations in doing this company? There

are two buckets I think of young people right now and I'm not saying either one is right or wrong but this is what people are choosing to do. One is

someone like the profile you just mentioned where they understand how smart they are and how hot the market is and that all of their peers who are similarly smart are dropping out and starting companies. So that's probably

starting companies. So that's probably the thing they should do instead of going to Goldman Sachs or Mckenzie like it used to be. Um and so once you have that realization, you come up with an idea that you know VCs will like to hear. You go out and pitch it. Maybe

hear. You go out and pitch it. Maybe

it's not even one that you know VCs will like to hear, but it's just the one that's most obvious to you. You end up raising money for it. There's a chance it works and you find PMF and that's great. That's a fairy tale story.

great. That's a fairy tale story.

>> Agents for people who live in Elsagundo.

>> Oh man.

>> Who are building spaceship companies, >> you know? Maybe maybe uh the defense tech guys can help you out. But the the thing I was going to say here is and more realistically what ends up happening in these cases is they raise

some amount of money. They go out and they try and test that idea and they very quickly find out a lot of the assumptions they made in tackling that space were incorrect and they end up pivoting around and that could still be a successful story. Frankly, you should

pivot your startup until you find PMF but or Equire. The second bucket of people, which are the people that I really enjoy spending time with, are similarly pedigreed, maybe a few less

accolades, but they have a very clear story on why they're building the company they are today. So, I'll give you an example. One of the founders I work with, his name is Tian Lanson. He's

also a Berkeley studentite, did Eekes there. Yes. Foresight Health was a

there. Yes. Foresight Health was a Masayoshi Sun fellow. So, SoftBank paid for his entire I didn't even know he had a fellowship. He has all those

a fellowship. He has all those accolades, right? Um, and when he came

accolades, right? Um, and when he came in and he met me, the depth at which he was able to talk about CPT reimbursement codes for Medicare and Medicaid and how

he had started a company when he was 15 years old so that he could treat the diabetic retinopathy that his mother had. He trained his own foundational

had. He trained his own foundational model that had like state-of-the-art performance on benchmarks because his mom had a certain disease. And so when I when I talked to him about his story and his passion behind what he was trying to

build, it was so clear that he wouldn't give up. The thing that is so difficult

give up. The thing that is so difficult in company building is you have to choose to not give up every single day for 15 years. And in my opinion, the people who are most likely able to do that, have something in their childhood

or have something in their story that connects themselves to this problem in a truly deep way. And when you're 35, when you're 40, when you're 45, >> he said when you're aged, >> when you usually have those deep

connections or you have some deep understanding of a space because you've spent your career building in that building time and building relationships in that area. For young people, they're often blank slates where you don't have that and you have to really just assess what their motivation behind building

is.

>> And so you you went into that with like specific questions. Did you look at the

specific questions. Did you look at the pitch tech before and you did your own research or does that come after once you've had those initial questions?

>> That's a good question. I would say most companies we see these days are similar enough to an existing market or existing company that like you don't need to get completely caught up to speed. I think

maybe closer to January time there were still enough like really net new ideas that you would have to get caught up on the market etc. >> Well, you're saying that the market caught up in like it's only been 11 months.

>> Yep. I've found that the ideas that people were pitching in January, February, March were are much more novel than the ones I see today. The ones I see today feel a lot more incremental and feature-like on top of existing AI platforms. Chad should probably just be

the ones building out that feature.

>> Where were you in 2008?

>> In 2008, I was uh seven.

>> Couldn't have bought a house.

>> Yeah, I could not have bought a house.

>> But do you think >> I was 12 when Chad invested in Robin Hood?

>> You were 12?

>> Yeah.

>> Did you co-invest?

>> No.

>> Did you download the app?

>> No, I did when I was in high school though. A couple years later.

though. A couple years later.

>> Couple years later.

>> Yeah, a couple years later.

>> But the reason I asked that is because what you're saying implies a bubble, does it not? 11 months and the ideas aren't novel anymore.

>> What are your thoughts? That's a serious question.

>> It's a very good question. I am not a market maker. I'm not an economist. So,

market maker. I'm not an economist. So,

I'm just going to speculate just like anybody else who would answer this question. But my take here is that

question. But my take here is that there's been so much money raised in the private capital markets over the last 5 to 10 years that has not been deployed.

What that means is there's funds sitting on hundred millions of dollars of dry powder that need to deploy it somewhere.

and because they need to deploy it somewhere. That's why so many companies

somewhere. That's why so many companies like net new companies are being funded at the earlier and earlier stages. Um

that would on the surface imply a bubble. But I still think there's

bubble. But I still think there's multiple years of room to run where this capital needs to be deployed and people are continuing to raise this capital in the private markets that they want to continue deploying that this this

capital cycle will last for like more than just like three months or something like that.

>> No, it'll definitely take a few it'll take more than months, right? But even

the deployment cycles for funds, right?

when you go and raise a fund you have around 2 to 3 years of an average deployment cycle where the average fund is 8 to 10 years unless it's some evergreen thing >> and um in that case then we have another two or three years and already I think

we are starting to see very quiet signals that certain pension funds or certain LPs might be a little bit more hesitant to deploy into markets we're seeing just to play devil's advocate we

got Mr. Michael Bur himself who predicted 20 of the last two recessions >> uh drying up his own uh his own fund and returning money to his LPs.

>> Yeah. Buffett sold all of Nvidia.

>> Exactly. Even Peter Teal, right? He

dumped his entire position in Nvidia and Palanteer.

>> Yeah.

>> Or Nvidia.

>> So do you even with all of that context, do you still believe that we have, you know, years of like smooth sailing? I

don't know if it is years, but what I will say is I think this is still a phenomenal time to be investing because when you start your career in a technology shift moment, presumably if

you invested in the companies that endured after the crash, so obviously do bubble happened in like 2000, right?

Google is a company that existed in the internet era, but they had a real business model that was not incremental to what everyone else was launching and had real value and defensibility. So

they compounded their moat over the decades that came after and they survived that wave being one of the biggest companies to come out of it.

Similarly with AI right now there's a handful of companies getting funded in every category. Most likely what ends up

every category. Most likely what ends up happening is when money tightens and the market crashes and the raising infinite capital is no longer a part of the equation. That's when you'll really see

equation. That's when you'll really see who had a good product, who had a good sales motion, who delivered real business value. And in all likelihood,

business value. And in all likelihood, there'll be one or two companies that consolidate in any of these given spaces that endure and persist and compound over decades. And the market cap of

over decades. And the market cap of those companies, I think, will be bigger than past technology shifts, which I think justifies the amount of capital being invested.

>> That makes sense. I want to talk more about like what happens after you've talked to a founder, assuming you like them, >> but also, you know, that that that meme of like the the three kids on the podcast with the YouTube video and they're all sitting on the [laughter] couch.

>> Yeah, I do.

>> This is us right now talking about markets and bubbles.

>> Oh, yeah. We We're like 20. We have no idea what we're talking about.

>> Um >> I'll look back at this in 15 years and be like, "Wow, >> we were stupid."

>> Yeah.

>> But hey, game's game. Um so now when you're talking about you like a deal.

>> Yeah.

>> Who are you going to? You going to chat?

Is there someone else?

>> Yeah. Good question. I would say the way our process works is it's usually in three steps. The first one will be

three steps. The first one will be discovery. Pretty simple. Take a first

discovery. Pretty simple. Take a first meeting with a founder. Get a sense for their vibes, your vibes, business model, market, team, etc. If both sides are mutually interested in moving forward, we'll usually have a second conversation. For that, I'll typically

conversation. For that, I'll typically loop in Chad, but if there's a particular partner who's a specialist in that space, I may loop them in instead.

Um, and from there, we're really trying to identify what are the white hot risks of this business. Um, what are the reasons why it would fail over time and how can we derisk those things in this

meeting or get comfort around the fact that those things can get derisked? If

we have comfort in that, we'll typically do a final meeting. Sometimes it'll be a broader partner meeting, sometimes it'll just be the crew that's been on that deal. we'll get to know the rest of the

deal. we'll get to know the rest of the team and usually that'll just be more of a closing conversation. Um the whole process is run in one to two weeks.

Obviously that's adaptable. In some

cases you have more time, in other cases you have less. Um and typically when we do want to do an investment, we will lead it or co-lead it. We usually don't write small checks. So again going back to the high conviction, high ownership

investing. Um so far I've gone to work

investing. Um so far I've gone to work on investments that I've either sourced or been the lead for. Um, and I think at SUSA, we're not really concerned over like who is the deal lead or who gets ownership over this thing. I think we

all understand that this is a partnership in which if we all work in parallel to amplify each other's efforts, we'll get a much bigger carry pie at the end of the day. Um, and

that's really the way that I think Chad has has seeped the ethos into the firm.

As we kind of get to the end of this episode, one of the most interesting like types of conversations we've had over the last year has always been, you know, these random stories of you meeting people that are you kind of like legends in Silicon Valley. And I think

it's also interesting how some of them have become friends of ours in like different in very different ways and very different paths.

>> But what are some of those stories of investors or people that you looked up to before you properly entered VC and you know some of the stories or lessons they gave you? Yeah, I think uh you know

it's only fitting that since I'm on the POS podcast, the quintessential example here is Mammoon. Yes,

>> he was someone that I had looked up to for a long time. Obviously had

understood his track record with Slack, Figma, all the way back to Yelp Box.

>> Um and hadn't met him up until that point and I remember the first time I had met him very briefly was at Demo Day badge zero. Um and I remember he was on

badge zero. Um and I remember he was on the panel, he was giving the stories about Figma, etc. And I was like, it's really cool to be in the flesh getting to listen to these stories, right? Um I

thought nothing of it. I was like, you know, one day when I have done the investments worthy of spending time with someone like that, I'll be there. Um and

I joined SUSA and the very first event >> literally four weeks later, like three weeks after that demo day.

>> Yep. Exactly. And I had I joined SUSA.

The first event that we were going to do as a firm that I was going to be a part of is something we call our series A Summit. And the keynote speaker was

Summit. And the keynote speaker was Mimoon. And I was like,

Mimoon. And I was like, >> no, he was the keynote. That's pretty

cool. was the keynote speaker and I literally had prayed the night before. I

was like, "It would be so cool to like sit down and talk to Moon now that I'm actually doing this."

>> And not only did I get to do that, but he was the keynote speaker at our event.

Obviously Chad's dad, Brooke Buyers, had started Kleiner Perkins, so they have a long-standing relationship with the firm.

>> Oh, I hadn't thought of that.

>> Yep. And so when I when I got there and I got to spend time with him, I got to sit down with him. He gave me some advice. And I think the number one thing

advice. And I think the number one thing that stands out to me, which is like pretty obvious, but like it's something I think you always got to remind yourself of is stay humble. like as you you're in a position now where you're obviously able to give people money and

that is something that can very quickly get to your head um or just be something that is misused and not treated with the level of respect and gratitude that someone in that seat should have. So

always stay humble, always stay respectful of that fact and if you honor it, you know, hopefully you'll do good investments and get to work with earn the right to get to work with the best people.

>> Um >> it's great advice.

>> It was great advice. Yeah.

>> I mean we had him back here maybe like two months ago now. It was the first event we've ever had in our current office which is actually really interesting if you think about it because he was crazy too. He was the

first person we ever had him you know Furcon and Sjude were like the first people we ever had to um like speak at ALF and we sent that email out like after the first few LinkedIn posts went

out. I remember Hamza Kawaja made that

out. I remember Hamza Kawaja made that intro to us because he was a KP fellow and I was asking him I was like hey who are some interesting people that you think we could get to through your network? He mentioned Mimoon. I was

network? He mentioned Mimoon. I was

like, "Yes, that one. Let's do that one."

one." >> And uh it's it was full circle because Mimoon then became one of the first investors in our hold in our company and then came and was like the first kind of like keynote speaker we ever hosted here.

>> Yeah. Y

>> and I think it's really cool to see this like ecosystem and how it's growing and how it's being formed >> in the current way that it is in the last year because obviously there are many ecosystems like this before us but just like seeing

>> what's special about this is like and you say this all the time if you can really show young Muslim kids that they have a path of getting into entrepreneurship and real value wealth business creation giving people jobs

that is like a role model example like type of job that people should be doing today that we don't and if we can just get more and more people to do that today it's me sitting here as a young investor. If there can be five more of

investor. If there can be five more of me in two more years from now, that's a success story. If there can be like five

success story. If there can be like five more sets of companies that you guys invest in at like all of this stuff will compound so beautifully over time and I'm I'm really excited for it, >> dude. I mean, it's already happening.

>> dude. I mean, it's already happening.

Like even Yzen, right? He was a principal at Emergence when you first introduced me to him at that event that you dragged me to >> and he's a partner now. He's like behind all these hot companies like Blend and Unifi

>> and it's just like really cool to watch this ecosystem. Like I just said it, but

this ecosystem. Like I just said it, but yeah, it is >> it is something that is special. As we

talk about like these like different investors in the space, it's also interesting to note that they all have their own like MMO when it comes to how they go about investing. SUSA is like very unique in that

>> they instead of, you know, spraying and praying the way a company like A6Z might do. Very few companies are backed by

do. Very few companies are backed by SUSA, you know what I'm saying? And

those are both good strategies. I'm not

dissing A6Z. Um but do you know of any other kind of like funds that also operate in a similar way where it's all very heavily concentrated into a few companies?

>> I think the best example for that is probably Founders Fund. What they were if you talk to Brian Singerman who was one of their founding partners. The

thing that he will tell you that Founders Fund was better at than anybody else was differentiating a minus founders from A+ founders. Now obviously

the inevitable next question you're going to ask is how do you do that? And

he literally told he literally told us >> him, Peter, the whole team had authors come in who had written like generational autobiographies on people, spend years with them trying to put pen to paper on what makes an A minus

founder versus an A+ founder and they were never able to do it. They were

never able to put into words.

>> Autobiographers. Yeah. Well, they

brought in Walter Isacson or >> I don't even know, man. But like the reason I bring up the story is because when they would find an A+ founder, the thing that they were very good at doing, which I think a lot of this the seed

market or even just in general the VC market is getting wrong today, is instead of trying to look for a net new company or a net new asset to invest into, they would realize they had an A+ founder on their hands, A+ company on their hands, and they would try and

concentrate as much of their fund as possible into those investments. Um,

they have a bunch of companies they've done this with. There's probably like seven. Um, the Elon companies are pretty

seven. Um, the Elon companies are pretty famous and probably the most well-known ones, but Airbnb is another example.

Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is another example. And they would rather spend

example. And they would rather spend time doubling down on their assets and making opinions on them than they would trying to like underwrite a net new company. Uh, which I find I find very

company. Uh, which I find I find very respectable about them. And one other anecdote there that Brian shared that I thought was interesting is anytime a company would come up for a new fund raise, so you may have invested at the

seed, but now it's fundraising for its A or its B, you reunderwite the company.

So you do the work again whether you want to continue to concentrate capital into it rather than just automatically assuming like oh if it was good at C it's good at this or good at that. And

like all the founders fund companies kind of have a similar aesthetic and I don't mean like visually although they kind of do between Anderil and SpaceX and >> do you feel like there has been a lot of influence because a lot of their their

capital came from the same source >> early on at least.

>> I think this is very variable and today going back to the right to win thing the way some funds have developed their right to win is on the supporting front.

So they're like hey I was the second salesperson at Uber. I stay there through its IPO. I'm one of the few people on planet earth that actually knows how to scale a sales work from two to a thousand people and do so

successfully for marketplace companies.

If you're starting the nextgen door dash uh anything exactly yeah you want them for the support that they're able to give you the hiring insights the network they have the set of customers they may have relationships with >> so I think like when we look at it at

SUSA the way we support like to support companies is obviously on the series a when they go out to fund raise from the best funds in the world architecting that story for them so they get the lowest amount of dilution possible

highest price and best partner um on the hiring front one thing that I've tried to spend a lot of time doing is we obviously meet with a lot of these younger folks still in university who want to get into startups, want to get into the Bay Area scene. They're often

juniors, seniors, very smart, have a lot of time, and they're looking to get plugged into opportunities in the Bay.

You guys see this too with all of you guys do the same thing. And so being able to tap into those talent pools and help companies hire, I think, is one of the most important things today because capital is becoming more and more

homogeneous. $5 million looks like $5

homogeneous. $5 million looks like $5 million regardless of who you get it from. but unique access to talent and

from. but unique access to talent and people and having those people come onto your team is real power in today's market and that is something that not every firm can offer you. So thinking

through all those things that we do to support them that are uniquely suited to the seed stage and the company stage that they're at is like what we've been

doing for 13 years. Um and so those are >> since he was eight years old. 13 years.

10 years old.

>> 10. Yeah.

>> 10.

>> 11.

>> 11.

>> 11.

>> 11. Well, that was a great answer.

>> Yeah.

>> And I'm gonna ask you the question I ask to end off all the podcasts, which is, you know, 24 months ago we first kind of met to do that event at Founders Inc. Um, [laughter] that random geopolitical

I don't even know what that was, but you sold it really well and we did it.

>> And then 12 months ago, you had started at SUSA. just decided you just made that

at SUSA. just decided you just made that jump from ALF to >> SUSA.

>> Today you're at SUSA, you're on the trajectory, you have like the next few years charted out it seems like.

>> But where do you want to be exactly one year from now? If we were to do this podcast again, what would you have to accomplish to consider the past year of success?

>> I think one year from now, I want to know what my own strategy on the field is. So what is right now? Now I think I

is. So what is right now? Now I think I do some things that are becoming unique but at that point in time I would like to have an ARB or a way of either building connections with founders or meeting founders earlier on than other

people and my own way of doing that that's truly unique to me. And then

obviously if I can have been an investor of record on a company that is very significant in this AI movement that would be great as well. And look venture is a very long-term time horizon game.

So, I can't guarantee you in a year I'll be there, but I would hope that I've learned as much as I possibly can in that year. And however I'm playing the

that year. And however I'm playing the game at that point in time is a 100x more effective than the way I'm playing it today. In the same way, the game I'm

it today. In the same way, the game I'm playing today is 100x more effective than it was a year ago. That's that

would be my answer.

>> It's a [snorts] great answer. Thanks for

coming on the podcast.

>> Thanks for having me. I like that it's legit now. We got the whole space. So,

legit now. We got the whole space. So,

keep cooking.

>> We will >> keep cooking.