Cyan Banister
speaker
346 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Cyan Banister’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I absolutely think that spirituality is an investable category and it's been long overlooked. So I remember when Pray.com was raising and everybody thought, who's going to actually use this? Which target demographic actually wants this? And I think that there are a lot of people, especially coming out of the pandemic, who spent two years wondering, why is this happening to us?
What is this all about? Why am I here? What is my purpose? And then looking inwards and then looking outwards. And I think people are seeking these answers more than ever before, because when you look online and you read what's going on in the world, it seems like it's increasingly getting darker out there.
I would say that it's not, but this is where spirituality comes in and lets people know where the light is. I think spirituality comes in many different ways. It comes in the form of prayer. It comes in the form of meditation. It also comes in the form of potentially even psychedelic medicine. So I do think that it's a hugely investable category. And you look at the success of Angel Studios.
Well, Angel Studios basically crowdfunded ticket sales as well as the development of a film. And it ended up being the best box office film at the time. And it went completely out of a studio model. And they basically put out this piece of art that people were clamoring for. And the studios themselves didn't think that it was an investable category.
Peter always says, Peter Thiel says, you know, it's okay to be contrarian, but you've got to be contrarian and right. Being contrarian for contrarian's sake is probably not a good path to take. But people have labeled me or coined me as contrarian. I don't know that I would be self-described as contrarian, but I tend to think differently than other people do.
And so when I identify an opportunity and I go out and try to convince other people that I've found an opportunity and they consistently tell me, no, this isn't going to work, which usually indicates to me that I'm onto something. I know something that no one else does. I'm thinking in a different way than other people are. And there is usually high alpha. there when you find these secrets.
Well, I dropped out of high school. I did not go to university. And so I always like to joke that I went to Peter Thiel University. And it was a dream come true for me. I was working at AngelList at the time. I was an angel investor. I'd actively been investing at that point for probably about eight years. And when they reached out to me and asked me to join them,
Three, it was like a Cinderella story. I got to go and work with people that I look up to so much and be able to learn from them and to basically absorb knowledge every single day. And they brought me on to run their early stage efforts.
But as you know, Founders Fund became a very large fund and it becomes increasingly difficult in a multi-stage fund to execute different strategies, especially at the early stage. And so they tried their best to help me grow into the muscle of Series A, Series B investing. And they did everything they could to keep me there.
And I would have stayed if we'd been able to figure out probably some sort of strategy that worked because I do love that team so much. Working there was probably one of the best four years of my life.
When you're an early stage investor, you're very qualitative, not quantitative. And I'm a qualitative investor.
And that becomes very difficult when you're trying to talk to quants or people who think about a world in data rooms and spreadsheets and wanting an answer to how you decided that you want to invest in something because you're trusting your gut or you've thought about the world a certain way, or you've been looking for this answer to appear in front of you may look
To others is if you're impulsive because you want to move quickly and they want to be deliberate and want to get in the data room and want to know more about the company.
And oftentimes at the early stages of a business, you know, very little, you know, that you've got a good founder in front of you, you know, that they have an idea and they have a shot, but all of that data is not going to be there. And so you've got two different types of investor types of minds that And that can be difficult to navigate and frustrating.
It was actually kind of soul crushing for me. I tend to like to be incredibly optimistic. And usually when you get into the quantitative realm of the world, you're dealing with a lot more pessimism. And so for me, I'm an intuitive thinker. And I think that if you're an intuitive thinker and you
have sort of a gut feeling about things and you really deeply think about the world, then early stage is probably the best avenue for you.
Peter gave me one of the best pieces of feedback. One of the things I love about Peter is he's so precise. He can give you like an amazing piece of feedback if you're willing to listen to it and really digest it. And he took me on a car ride one day and he simply said one sentence to me and it changed my life. And it actually led to me quitting the firm.
He said, Cyan, you're really good at feeling, but you're not really good at knowing yet. That was it. And I looked at him and I understood exactly what he was telling me. And I marinated on it and marinated on it. And I said, do I really want to know? Do I really want that skill set? Do I really want to learn these things that are so uncomfortable and unnatural to me?
And is this the right place for me? And the answer was no. So I think what Peter loved about me and why he wanted me to join the team is because I do have principles. I do have a North Star. I do make gut decisions very quickly. I think that...
There was a world where they had a carve out of a seed stage fund and it was a separate fund and it didn't conflict with the main fund investments, then this probably would have worked out. I think what he saw in me was someone who thinks differently about the world. He really loves to reward diversity of ideas and backgrounds. I think that people don't give him enough credit for that.
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