Chris Paik - Venture Investing Frameworks - [Invest Like the Best, EP.338]

My guest today is Chris Paik, who is a General Partner at early-stage venture firm, Pace Capital. Before Pace, Chris spent eight years building and investing alongside last week’s guest, Josh Kushner, at his firm Thrive Capital. During that time, he sat on the board of Twitch. Our conversation explores Chris’ frameworks for investing, from atomic value swaps to business model product fit and the seven deadly sins. We also discuss different consumer trends like the rise of virtual YouTubers, Apple’s Vision Pro, and why everyone graduates off YouTube. Please enjoy my conversation with Chris Paik.

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

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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. 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

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Show Notes

(00:03:00) - (First question) - The history of humanity as a data storage and transfer problem and how that relates to new kinds of computer interfaces

(00:14:47) - Investing strategies; knowing when to invest in new technology

(00:16:39) - Assessing the gray areas of a potential investment

(00:22:13) - CodeMiko and VTubing

(00:32:51) - An explanation of atomic value swap

(00:39:55) - The 7 deadly sins and the degrees to which each sin is monetizable 

(00:45:05) - Evaluating the people behind new technologies

(00:50:03) - The Reddit Revolt - the current changes happening at Reddit  

(00:53:09) - Business model alignment; the steps to take when determining a business’ value capture mechanism 

(01:03:52) - The investment decision that Chris is most proud of 

(01:08:14) - The consumer investing landscape today

(01:11:19) - Chris’ methods for finding new content, technology and potential investments on the internet

(01:14:06) - The fundamentals of value creation  

(01:15:06) - The dark side of tech, how can it be more than just friction reduction

(01:17:22) - Chris’ opinion on why so many innovations come from the US

(01:20:37) - Defining market places and how to start and grow a successful one

(01:23:23) - Chris’ thoughts on opportunities with bad business models

(01:26:19) - A breakdown of Chris’ analogy “Sculptors versus painters”

(01:29:34) - The kindest thing that anyone has ever done for Chris