11: How one of Arian Ghashghai’s virtual reality companies is on track to hit $20M in revenue after one round of funding

Have you ever played with an Oculus VR headset? You probably owe thanks to Arian Ghashghai. The former founder was working at Meta when someone in his network introduced him to an opportunity to invest in gummies. Yes, gummies. 

That’s far and away from Arian’s machine learning roots, it’s now one of his best investments to date. Arian has since gone full-time into investing as the founder and managing partner at his own fund, Earthling VC, which specializes exclusively in making pre-seed investments into companies in the AR/VR and robotics domain. One of his investments is on track to do $20M in revenue this year after only needing to raise a single $1M round. We cover a lot of good ground in this episode, and we really get into how the rise of these “raise-once” companies is changing traditional VC models. 

Arian invests $25K to $200K in pre-seed AR/VR and robotics startups through Earthling VC. 

Highlights: 

• Arian was a founder and quickly realized he hated being a founder. He started at Meta as an applied machine learning software engineer and angel invested for the first time in a CPG company, a decision largely driven by how impressed he was by the founder. 
• To Arian, worse than losing money is being labeled as another dime-a-dozen investor with no unique insight or edge. That’s why he advocates for being a big fish in a small pond to reduce competition and make it easier to stand out. 
• Arian explores why VCs have traditionally been skittish about getting into VR and robotics, and why there’s never been a better time than now to start investing in these categories.
• Arian is seeing a trend among companies that only need to raise capital once before they can rely on their own profitability. 

• (00:00) - How one of Arian Ghashghai’s virtual reality companies is on track to hit $20M in revenue after one round of funding
• (00:29) - Welcome, Dan Hightower, a new co-host!
• (02:00) - How Arian got into investing: Meta, friends, and gummies
• (09:13) - Invest in the top 1% of founders
• (13:02) - Treat your angel investing fund as a portfolio
• (16:40) - Marker
• (21:05) - On realizing deep tech was going to change everything
• (27:20) - The four measures of an extraordinary founder
• (31:46) - Lessons from the worst investment: Don't fall in love with your expertise
• (36:01) - Check size, scaling, and sourcing
• (44:12) - Truffle hunters vs. heat seekers
• (47:19) - Speed round
• (59:44) - Bonus Qs: The rise of raise-once companies and why aren’t investors investing in robotics and VR content?