Michael Dempsey is the Managing Partner at Compound, a thesis-driven, research-centric investment firm.

We spent two hours talking through the past, present, and future of a bunch of topics in technology and investing.

Michael started investing in AI in 2016. He was the first investor in now-unicorns Runway and Wayve. But he hasn’t done much AI investing over the past few years. We talk about why, how AI will intersect with robotics, the future of things like crypto and synthetic biology, and why so many deep tech companies mess up economic value capture.

We also talk about what it means to be a thesis-driven venture firm, Compound’s research process and how to replicate it, what private and public market investors can learn from each other, advice for anyone starting in venture today, how to build a brand in VC, and why venture firms don’t compound and actually decay over time.

Thank you to Kevin Kwok, Andy Weissman, Cristóbal Valenzuela, Blake Robbins, and Smac at Compound for their help brainstorming topics for this.

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