Elad Gil on How to Evaluate Markets

Elad Gil (@eladgil), entrepreneur and investor, joins Erik and co-host Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol), Chief of Staff to Justin Kan, for a discussion of all things markets.

They start off talking about Elad’s philosophy of life and career in general, including why he says that “less happens than you think in 2 years, and more happens than you think in 5 years.” He points out that it’s hard to predict the future and says it’s impossible to say where he will be or what he will be doing 10 years from now.

Elad has a different way of looking at potential companies and investments than most investors. Rather than starting with the quality of founders, he starts by evaluating the quality of the market. He explains why this is important and how it has led to success for him as an entrepreneur and investor.

He talks about what makes a good market, and why “most startup markets have to be definitionally non-obvious.” They contrast the “Rabois School of Markets” versus the “Thiel School of Markets” and Elad gives his opinion on which markets are currently being ignored by Silicon Valley.

They finish with a rapid-fire round where they name a market and Elad gives his take on it, including VR, longevity, consumer social, and others.

Quotable Lines From This Episode

“Starting a company, at least for first-time founders, can really be an act of desperation.” — Elad

“Startups tend to fail at thing big companies are good at.” — Elad

“I see a lot of things done in professional services that should just be SaaS software.”  — Elad

We apologize for the audio quality of this episode. We ran into technical difficulties during recording.