Raj, welcome.
There's so much hype around tech at the moment.
How do you, as an investor, keep a level head?
You know, there is definitely hype.
I think a lot of the hype is being driven by AI
right now.
What I would caution about AI
is that, yes, there is a lot of hype around AI,
but this is a stage change in technology.
We talk about a lot of iterative changes for stage changes.
The reason that AI is so fundamental is because Generative
AI, AIML, this has been around for 40, 50 years.
What's different now is that we're getting
the closest we've gotten ever to computers being able to program themselves.
Now we're probably five plus years away from that.
But the power of what's happening in Generative AI
is truly transformative.
And the area
that we're really focused on at B Capital is around the copilot technology.
And what you're seeing is that there used to be
only a few programmers who were kind of these 10x programmers
who were really kind of just far head and shoulders above anyone else.
My co-founders and I, we're definitely not 10x programmers, but with AI
technology, we've gone back to coding and programing
and it's so much easier than it ever was before.
More and more companies will be able to build their own software
applications, and that's what's exciting today for us.
How do you find the quality?
What is it that you're actually looking for?
I think for us, first and foremost, we invest in people.
And so we back great founders.
We want founders who are really committed to what they're building.
It's a perilous journey to build a company,
let alone to build a company that leverages new types of technology.
And we want founders who are willing to crawl through broken glass to really
achieve their mission and their visions of transforming these industries.
And so fundamentally, for us, number one is people.
And number two is we do look for transformative technologies.
And number three is timing,
because so much of investing for us is investing in technologies,
which time has come.
And we all know from our past of what happens
when you invest too early and when you invest too late.
So just getting that right timing is really key for us.
Tech has been on something of a rollercoaster the past few years.
I could probably say the past few decades.
How do firms and VCs hold steady,
I guess?
I think you've got to have a long-term commitment to the sector.
You know, we invest in two areas technology and health care.
We're increasingly investing in a third area climate technology,
which we're really excited to be doing more of.
These are three spaces that we see long term secular tailwinds, too.
We think that digitization is just getting started.
We believe that the health care revolution is still very much in its early stages.
And in climate, we know we need trillions of dollars to really achieve the
bold goals that have been set on climate change.
So we have funds that have a ten-year perspective.
So we are looking for a return.
But ultimately we want to back
founders who are building transformative technologies and founders
who we believe have the ability to partner with great companies.
BCG clients have been
a great area for us to be able to connect the companies
we invest in to large enterprises, and it's a key part of what we do at
B Capital. Raj, thank you so much. Thank you.