Today I walk with David Haber, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. David co-founded Bond Street and sold it to Goldman Sachs, started his career working for the founder of Royalty Pharma and investing at Spark Capital, and helped open a16z's New York office. He gets into why he'd rather back the missionary than the mercenary, and why he believes opportunity lives between fields of expertise.
We get into:
- The Friday night football taco stand he set up in high school, which he says made the vendor millions of dollars over the next 20 years
- Working next to Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk as a sophomore intern, and passing on the chance to become Airbnb's first non-technical hire
- How Royalty Pharma got to a $25 billion market cap with about 50 employees, and why it inspired his firm over fund thesis
- Vantage, the AI tool he built from 750 meetings' worth of transcripts that now lives in a16z's Slack
- Why founders spend 95% of their time selling, and why he backs missionaries over mercenaries
so much more!
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
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00:00) Trailer
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00:51) David Haber, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
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01:14) Why people call him the most connected VC in New York
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02:35) From the Holocaust to Nicaragua to Tijuana
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05:23) The Friday night taco stand that made a vendor millions
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11:18) Sitting next to Airbnb's Nathan Blecharczyk as an intern
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15:40) Royalty Pharma: $25B market cap with about 50 employees
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28:48) The hardest problem in building Bond Street
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37:06) Emailing Goldman Sachs' CFO and ignoring his job description
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39:27) Vantage: the AI tool built on 750 meetings
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46:02) Why founders spend 95% of their time selling
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47:20) Missionary VS mercenary founders
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52:18) Firm over fund, and how a16z runs like a company
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59:40) Taking 275-year-old Sotheby's into NFTs
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1:00:36) Marc Andreessen's pitch: the J.P. Morgan of the information era
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1:10:45) Why he wishes Bond Street had been bigger
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1:12:31) Outro
Follow David
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haber/
X: https://x.com/dhaber?lang=en
Follow Luba
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeoflubaa/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yudasinal/
X: https://x.com/LubaYudasina