David Weisburd

then paying three to $5 billion on these three to 500 X engineers in order to bootstrap a company and a team for a market cap that could go from 1.6 trillion to $10 trillion.

If AI plays out, it becomes highly rational, but only when you tether it to the future, not when you tether it to the past.

And what you're really saying is top-desk investors that have kept their AUM consistent and have not grown.

So the next generation of Josh Copelman's news, but today in 2025.

There's a meme in the market that today, more than ever, it's about product and distribution.

Peter Thiel, this is his paradigm.

He calls himself a distribution maximalist, meaning the best example in the last couple of years has been this company, Clueless, that learned how to go viral without necessarily having a worked out product, which is quite impressive in today's world.

To what extent is that what founders should be looking for, which is, can this VC help me with my product, which really is upstream of that in terms of recruiting?

Some people will work on product, but that's not very scalable.

Or two, can they help with distribution?

And just to add to that, so many of the top firms now are investing heavily in media, Andreessen Horowitz.

Eric Tornberg, who co-founded this podcast with me, now has their media strategy.

And talk to me about media.

And is media becoming a core part of a value proposition for venture?

Or is it just some headline grabbing thing that VCs are doing?

When you're in this time period with so much froth, so much activity, so much noise, as you mentioned, and you're picking the top funds for institutional investors, that's what Franklin Park does.

One of the principal agent issues that I see is you may be reluctant to pick a very potentially high expected return fund that may end up going to zero.

So you have this headline risk that a principal investor would not have.

How do you make sure that you're staying cutting edge and choosing those funds that may be a 10x half the time, might be a 1x the other half?

How do you make sure that you stay cutting edge?