Visionary Founders and Market Disruption

This chapter explores the critical roles of visionary founders in shaping category-defining companies and their innovative approaches to market dynamics. It emphasizes the importance of combining ambition with practical planning, using examples like SpaceX and Stripe to illustrate how unique mindsets can drive market disruption. Furthermore, the chapter discusses team dynamics in evaluating investments, the shift towards capital-intensive projects, and the need for a multifaceted approach in assessing growth potential within emerging industries.

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My guest today is Kareem Zaki. Kareem is a General Partner at Thrive Capital and has been at the firm for a decade. In an episode last year, Thrive's founder, Josh Kushner, told me he is the best healthcare investor in the world. Kareem has co-founded three healthcare businesses worth over one billion dollars. He also has expertise in financial services, where he's led the firm's investments in companies like Ramp and Robinhood.

It's a timely moment to have this discussion, with Thrive announcing a new $5 billion fund in August. We talk about how Thrive identifies category-defining companies, what concentration means to them, and how startups should approach the healthcare industry. Please enjoy this great discussion with Kareem Zaki.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest growing FinTech company in history and it’s backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I’m aware of. It’s also notable that many best-in-class businesses use Ramp—companies like Airbnb, Anduril, and Shopify, as well as investors like Sequoia Capital and Vista Equity. They use Ramp to manage their spending, automate tedious financial processes, and reinvest saved dollars and hours into growth. At Colossus and Positive Sum, we use Ramp for exactly the same reason. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Show Notes:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(00:06:02) Early Days and Consistent Strategy

(00:07:10) Personal Journey and Reconnecting with Josh

(00:08:36) Investing Philosophy and Strategy

(00:11:04) Building a Supportive Structure

(00:12:10) Generalist Approach and Market Trends

(00:13:45) Life Cycle Investing and Concentration

(00:16:16) The Builders Mentality

(00:17:52) Raising a Huge Fund and Its Implications