Sam Hinkie

Often a great culture guy is something you name after the fact based on someone whose incentives were aligned with it.

I think Jared Dudley was probably a great culture guy for the Lakers this year, and he played...

just a few minutes in the finals and very little in the playoffs and waved a towel and was an adult and was useful and was encouraging in a bunch of ways.

He's also quite near the end of his career.

I think Jared Dudley at 25 might not have been quite as happy.

to have not played at any of those.

This might be a byproduct of success versus something that's coming in.

I think your confidence interval on predicting how someone will behave when it's against their own personal interest may be very, very different.

Someone in a contract year might react wildly differently if their sort of numbers are being suppressed than someone who just got paid and who's doing amazingly well and doesn't have to worry about that kind of security.

So now going back the other direction, leaving sports and now devoting yourself and your time and all these hours studying breadcrumbs and people into the investing world, what ideas are you bringing with you that you think are distinct or different than the median venture capital investor would be applying as a part of their process to find great teams and founders?

People are really a power law and the best ones can change everything.

Betting on people who have these incredibly high ceilings and a reasonably high likelihood of getting there, I think is much of where the game should be even more than most.

So the example I often use is I'll say, I like the field you're in.

I like that you're in dev tools.

I like that you're in software infrastructure.

I like that you're in an API driven business.

Those are deeply interesting to me.

Call it left field.

You're going to run at left field.

I have no idea if it's going to end up dead center left field or left field foul pole or maybe even center left.