Bill Maris's Four Lessons for Investing & Tech's Future

Summary

Bill Maris, former CEO of Google Ventures, has launched a new $150 million fund, Section 32, emphasizing a selective investment approach. He shared four key lessons: 1. Seeing the future requires a degree of 'insanity,' like his early venture into data centers or someone live-streaming an inauguration on a laptop. 2. Don't bet against computer science; applying it correctly leads to answers, even when circumstances seem dire, like tarring a leaky roof in a thunderstorm. 3. Smaller funds often outperform larger ones due to focus and the ability to give founders more attention. Data suggests funds under $750 million achieve higher returns than those over $1 billion. He calculated that a $500 million fund needs $5 billion in exits for a 3x return, while a $7 billion fund would need $210 billion, an amount exceeding most annual exit values. 4. The venture capital model has broken incentives, with large funds often making significant investments at inflated valuations, potentially leaving retail investors as bagholders. Maris is particularly interested in investing in the underlying platforms and machinery enabling the AI revolution, comparing the current stage of AI to the Atari command line era of gaming, and anticipates significant advancements in the next five years. He also expressed interest in computational biology but noted the challenges of human clinical trials and regulatory hurdles in life sciences.