Juan Orbea

In 2018, venture capital funds directed +$35B of investment to software, while directing $1.9B to synthetic biology. Why is this happening? Only 5% of people in Forbes 400 have formal scientific training, and it makes sense that people don't invest in things they don't understand. So this is a big problem.

But I thought a better way of thinking about how we manage our portfolios is to think about it as a funnel. If we do 36–40 deals in a Seed Fund, somewhere between 25–40% would likely see big up-rounds within the first 12–24 months. This translates to about 12–15 investments.

A Thought Experiment

Eventually, as the negative consequences of the financial crisis played its way out, and say, all the banks disappeared, some kind of new approach (e.g. Google innovating an entirely new way of handling banking) or the emergence of an entirely different regime, would have come into place, and we would have moved forward effectively with no damage... See more

Using colorful anecdotes and brain imagery, Dr. Nardi shares key insights from his lab. Among these insights: how people of different personalities can find and sustain a state of creative flow.