Generalists can spot opportunities experts overlook

Transcript

From the transcript TBPN publishes with the episode.

1. 2:32:32

   think about percent. How do you think about, your your philosophy on expertise versus, like, being a generalist. Yeah. There's a lot things to debate about this.

2. 2:32:46

   Expertise on, like, a category versus, like, judgment around Yeah. Human. But take me through, like, advice for a venture capitalist who's joining your firm, advice for someone who's graduating high school and thinking about how to pursue. Like, what is your philosophy on on generalism versus becoming an expert in something?

3. 2:33:09

   I mean, look, I think journalism in general, it's a really good thing. But I I think, look, there are there are a couple of really interesting secrets or insights. Number one, just to give you real data to make this point, is that when I started nVenture, the other thing that people underestimated is like they're like, listen. All these sectors you're invest in, you're not an expert in any of any one of them, and you're not gonna be able to make a good investment. I think people what people misunderstand is if you're an expert in a sector, you're going to look at a company and you're only going to look at the orthodox way of doing things.

4. 2:33:43

   And when somebody comes in as an outsider and like, I want to do something the way it's never been done before, you're going to say that's never going to work. And so, like, the paradox here is the expertise. Right? Like, the experts are supposed to know the field really well, but that also anchors them in the way that things are done traditionally. Versus a generalist is going to be first principles and say, you know what?

5. 2:34:04

   There's actually a new way of doing things, and if this thing works, it's gonna be amazing. And at Feliz is like, the most interesting stat that I'm most proud of is that we made early investments in companies, 53 of them that exceeded a billion dollar in valuation. Not a single one of them was led by an expert. It's amazing. And so, like, that's the thing. Like, when you got for free. When you guys started, you were not media experts or, like Yeah. Proven like media people and you had a great idea.

6. 2:34:32

   Would tell you, the funny thing is in our case, like, I've been working in and around advertising my entire career. John had been an expert on on like content production, but we certainly were not experts on hosting a show. A lot of And I know and if you had asked us even literally, like, twelve months ago, if you had asked us, like, would you be hosting would you could you ever see yourself hosting, like, a daily show? We would have been like, like

7. 2:34:59

   I always love that Paul Graham formulation, which is like most cofounders, like, if you look at the cofounding teams, it's usually, like, two or three people where each of them are are somewhat experts in, like, two or three disciplines. So you have someone who knows, like, marketing and finance and operations and then someone who knows, like, front end and back end and technical design and architecture and also some of the trade offs about how the product design works. And so you wind up with, like, you know, some level of expertise in 10 different categories bundled up in two to three people on a specific team that seems to work really well. But, yes, they're not like pure play experts, which is what we think of, at least what I think of when I think of expertise.

8. 2:35:42

   A 100%. Look. I'm gonna add two more things, which is I think one one of the other elements of being successful, whether you're a founder or investor, especially as a VC, is it's all about the people. And I've actually done sales at Google, and you would say, how is that related to being a venture? At the end, it's a people's game. The founders are not, you know, taking money based on numbers, but if they can trust who you are. Mhmm. And so, like, being good with people and being able to relate to them is really important. So these days, when people are starting in the business, whether they're a founder or future VC or emerging VC, I'm like, look. Your biggest asset is your network and the people that you know.

9. 2:36:20

   Mhmm. But the second thing is, especially for venture, you need to be exposed to outliers. Right? Like, I feel like my training at Google, you know, every single thing that Google has done in the six years that I was there, not a single thing was standard. Every single thing we did, we did a completely different way that has been ever done before, and the results were stunning. So if you've never been at a company where the founders and the firm was crazy enough to do things completely differently Mhmm. And you kind of understand that culture, that mindset, right? Like, we did talk about being generalists, but it is also important to have been exposed to some of these things. And then you're like, okay. You know what?

10. 2:36:59

    Now that I have seen it, it's in my DNA, it's in my blood, I can kind of like see other signs of that. So being good with people, being able to understand outliers, at least being exposed to them, I think are key ingredients, at least in venture. So those are things that nobody ever told me like, hey. This is gonna be really important for you. But now after twenty years of doing it, I can tell you that it is very important.

11. 2:37:23

    And like journalists, like, I worked in every discipline across four continents. I've done finance, sales, marketing, product. That was also really great. I didn't have to be the deep expert in all of these things, but being able to understand so you can, like, see around the corners and find little things, you know, just enough to make sure that you're not gonna make a stupid move, but you don't know too much that you would be too anchored in it, and you would be skeptical of a brand new way of doing things.

12. 2:37:50

    Well said.