How I Invest with David Weisburd
E157: DA Wallach: Spotting Genius in Elon & Zuck's Early Days
22 Apr 2025
D.A. Wallach’s journey is one of the most unconventional paths in venture capital. He went from fronting a rock band discovered by Kanye West and Pharrell, to investing in Spotify, SpaceX, and founding a biotech VC firm reshaping human medicine. In this episode, we dive into his evolution—from artist to investor—and what he’s learned from being in the room with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Ron Burkle. D.A. shares why great investing is an act of taste, how he earned his first big break with Ron Burkle at Inevitable Ventures, and why he believes biotech is the most exciting place to invest over the next decade. We also discuss how aesthetic intuition applies to investing, how to think in second and third order effects, and what it really means to be contrarian when contrarianism has gone mainstream.
Full Episode
He was early to recognize that technology was going to have a major impact. And I think he at the time knew Demis Hassabis quite well, who had been the founder of DeepMind. And that's a company that Google ultimately acquired. Demis now runs an AI group within Google. And Elon kind of opened my eyes to the advances that were starting to take place in that area.
I think at the time, the major innovations had really been these things Demis had put together that enabled an AI to play certain human computer games. like video games. And Demis came out of a game development background, so he really understood that world.
And I think to anyone who understood those games and how challenging they might be for a human player, it was really impressive that the AIs were able to start doing things successfully in that space. So it was kind of, you know, the proof of concept that years before had been reached with chess being demonstrated in much more complex games.
And Elon rightly appreciated that was just the beginning. So Facebook went viral in Harvard within a day. You emailed him or how did you get in contact with Mark? Tell me about the story about how you invested in SpaceX a decade ago. Oh my gosh.
Well, I got to know Elon socially here in LA. He lived here at the time. And that was before SpaceX and Tesla were household names. So I think Tesla at that time just had the Roadster out. And SpaceX had been doing a bunch of launches, but they hadn't yet done their first reusable proof of concept, which was a major turning point for the company. So I was really excited to meet Elon.
I met him at a dinner through friends and obviously was just super impressed by the kind of intrepid stuff he was doing and asked him if I could invest. So he facilitated that. And yeah, it was, I think, nine or 10 years ago. And Been a great investment. So this was around 2014, 2015, and you guys were talking about AI. Tell me about his views on AI a decade ago.
Well, no surprise. I mean, he was early to recognize that technology was going to have a major impact. And I think he at the time knew Demis Hassabis quite well, who had been the founder of DeepMind. And that's a company that Google ultimately acquired. Demis now runs an AI group within Google. Elon kind of opened my eyes to the advances that were starting to take place in that area.
I think at the time, the major innovations had really been these things Demis had put together that enabled an AI to play certain human computer games. like video games. And Demis came out of a game development background. So he really understood that world.
And I think to anyone who understood those games and how challenging they might be for a human player, it was really impressive that the AIs were able to start doing things successfully in that space. So it was kind of the proof of concept that years before had been reached with chess being demonstrated in much more complex games. And Elon rightly appreciated that was just the beginning.
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