Headline venture partner Kamran Ansari joins Asking For A Trend to give insight into the state of the venture capital landscape as the AI craze continues to ripple across markets.
Kamran argues that no matter the situation, the key concern in venture capital is who to trust: “The best founders are figure outers. They’re the kind of people that are going to hit stumbling blocks because those are inevitable, right? Every startup, every company, whether it’s seed stage, whether it’s series D or E or public company runs into problems. You’re going to have problems with people, with funding, with strategy, with competitors. And the best founders are the ones that figure out a way forward. They don’t get discouraged. They’re always trying to move ahead and can pivot and move quickly. And that ultimately is kind of a DNA thing.”
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.
This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino
Video Transcript
Now, if recent earnings are any indication all it takes to drive investor enthusiasm is A I but for smaller start ups, it’s a competitive landscape out there, especially in technology.
So where are the venture investors looking for with me?
Now?
Is headline venture partner, Cameron?
I’m sorry, Cameron.
Great to see you as always my friend.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
I thought we were talking Cameron off camera.
I thought we’d start with uh you kind of jo listen, you’re, you’re meeting a lot, a lot of interesting smart founders and entrepreneurs and I, I wanna start with just what you interests you right now in terms of just broad topics and trends.
Is it, is it just A I 24 7 right now, Cameron, is that it, I, I mean, you know, just I was joking with somebody.
If you had dot A I to the end of your URL, then you increase your evaluation of two X.
So, you know, there’s a lot of obviously theater right now with everyone saying that they’re leveraging A I I have A I uh you know, what’s your A I strategy?
But to me A I is a foundational layer.
It’s kind of like saying I’m a mobile app, II, I use the internet, it’s like HTML or, or one of these foundational.
So how do you that?
It’s a really interesting point you made then Cameron, how do you sort of as an investor?
How do you kind of distinguish?
OK. OK.
This is real versus I’m hearing marketing for.
So I think that there are legitimate use cases for A I where it’s it’s additive.
I’ve spent a lot of time in fintech within fintech.
For example, there are three or four broad use cases that people have identified.
And I think makes sense to me where A I can really be a differentiator.
For example, customer service, Klarna uh recently announced uh Klarna is the giant, you know, um buy now pay later product in Europe and in the USA little bit as well.
They replaced something like 900 customer service agents with an A I solution that actually got a higher uh score in terms of satisfaction from customers.
So customer service in one area, another is underwriting, for example, lending an insurance.
Um Another is with uh you know, thinking about how A I can be leveraged for um things like the back office and improving your internal operations.
Uh these things all make sense.
There are other things that, you know, you can say you have a within your banking app or whatever where it’s like, OK, that’s nice.
And all, but is that really necessary or is that gonna improve the customer experience?
And then you have to diff differentiate between where it can actually add value and where it’s just a bit of uh kind of extra dressing.
I’m also interested a as you sort of decide, ok, who’s you’re gonna write a check to you meet a lot of smart people, what are the variables that decide that it, it ultimately comes down to the founder?
Honestly, no matter, you know, people say at the first matter their background, the the experience, the background, the personality, right?
The the stick to itiveness.
I think the thing you’re trying to suss out is is this person, in my opinion, what I call a figure outer, the best founders are figure Outers are the kind of people that are gonna hit stumbling blocks because those are inevitable, right?
Every start up, every company, whether it’s seed stage, whether it’s CD or E or a public company runs into problems, you’re gonna have problems with uh people with funding, with uh strategy, with competitors and the best founders are the ones that figure out a way forward.
They don’t get discouraged.
They’re always trying to uh move ahead and can pivot and move quickly.
And that ultimately, it’s kind of a DNA thing, right?
I think you either have it or you don’t.
And that’s the thing you really try to suss out as you’re meeting a founder and getting to know them and figuring founder, founder, founder, I think so that makes so much difference in the world.
You have the best product in the world, the best, you know, company.
But if the founder, because the founder ultimately is the person that they hire, they recruit, they fundraise, they market, they have to get out and talk about the company.
And if they can’t do those things well, then the business is ultimately not gonna succeed.
There’s a lot of people listening right now, they, they may not be invested in private companies, but they’re investing in publicly traded companies, right?
And so I was interested to get your take on the broader IP O landscape.
Are you surprised that maybe that we haven’t seen more uh companies taking the public market plunge in, in the sense that the stock market’s working, the economy is decent.
Inflation is moderating.
What do you think?
Uh it could be a matter of time?
But this at the same, uh you know, in the same breath, I’m looking at the performance of the companies that have gone public since September.
And you have it, it’s been mixed frankly when you look at the actual, exactly.
It’s like other than in fact, the two best performing stocks that I saw one was uh arm which was obviously a Blockbuster IP O.
The other is Kava, the, the, the food business, the, the Mediterranean chain.
So the other ones, Instacart Clavia, um Rubric, I bought a, they’re in many cases flat or down from the IP O price.
So none of the other tech names that have gone public other than Arm have really done tremendously well in the public market, Reddit’s up like 15 20% which is, you know, one of the exceptions, but the other ones are essentially flat or down.
So that doesn’t really give encouragement to the other tech names that are maybe waiting to come out that aren’t an A I story like arm was uh to how well they’re gonna do.
So that’s something that gives me a little bit of pause.
I think about the pipeline of names that have been, you know, discussed as coming on in the coming months.
One other big theme, obviously, we talk a lot on the show.
I wanna get your take on it, the fed, you know, higher for longer.
That’s the mantra.
Is that a big topic in your world, Cameron that you think a lot about, does it impact you as a venture investor?
Uh Yes and no, I mean, it, it trickles down for sure.
It impacts the broader market, impacts the stock market and the stock market in effect is the downstream, you know, or upstream, however you want to define it for the venture market.
And so to the extent that investors are wary about making big bets and equities because they feel like the there’s better opportunities maybe on yield to do things in, in the bond space.
Of course, that’s gonna impact the venture space as well.
It’s not something we discussed day in and day out, you know, to meet with founders when they’re talking to me about interest rates.
Unless it’s a lending business, obviously, with which within fintech is a meaningful part of the the space.
Cameron.
It was so great.
I had so many more questions, but we’ll leave it there.
Thanks for coming in.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.