Riskgaming

While a huge amount of attention is being directed at crypto and media these days, one of the most important wild card investment trends of the 2020s is the coming expansion of biotech. Democratized science tools, improved research networking, and lab automation will revolutionize the practice of biotech, and that means there are huge opportunities for intrepid founders. But there’s a catch: biotech stock performance has been abysmal the past year, and many investors are walking away from the market. Josh Wolfe joins Danny Crichton to talk about what the gyrations in the biotech markets means for startups, some developments around the Human Genome Project, and what strategies existing biotech firms can take to weather the coming consolidation and reinvention of the industry.

There’s a huge expansion in demand for compute power going on, with AI models, cryptocurrencies, autonomous vehicles and our social media algorithms all guzzling more chip cycles than ever before. But we’re also in the midst of a climate emergency, and chips are a major cause of energy demand. How do we reconcile the two? Joining me to talk about this as well as the future of the semiconductor industry, the CHIPS act, and other national industrial policies is Lux’s Shahin Farshchi and Mythic AI CEO and founder Mike Henry.

“Redlines” in war are meant to be objective and unambiguous tests for a country to respond to another nation’s action. If one country uses chemical weapons in a conflict, that might violate the redline of another country and therefore force it to conduct military operations in response to reinforce the international laws and norms against the use of such weapons. Redlines though are often ambiguous, used poorly, and their deterrence effect is often diminished by a lack of credibility. How should leaders — from politicians to entrepreneurs — think about redlines? To answer that, host Danny Crichton was joined by Josh Wolfe and General Tony “T2” Thomas, the 11th Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and venture partner at Lux Capital, to talk all things redlines from a hotel lobby in sunny Miami.

In his new book, “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the Future,” Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Sebastian Mallaby brings his erudite attention from the hedge fund world to venture capital, interviewing the industry’s leading players over the last 50 years to discover what is unique about this industry that “manufactures courage.” In this episode, Mallaby, Josh Wolfe and Danny Crichton talk about the structural and cultural differences between hedge funds and VC firms, the long-term lessons that get re-learned by each generation of VCs, how succession is planned (and not), as well as a side story of a VC and a pile of maggot-filled meat laid by Hunter S. Thompson.

web3 technologies have received prodigious funding the past two years as founders and VCs collectively search for the path to the next evolution of the internet. But how do we bridge the gap between the ubiquitous Web 2.0 world with what we see coming in web3? In this episode, Lux VC investor Grace Isford joins host Danny Crichton to discuss the key infrastructure investments in what she is dubbing “web2.5,” the crypto developer stack, and what’s next for crypto in 2022.

In this discussion, Josh Wolfe, a thought leader on startup culture, and analyst Danny Crichton delve into the impact of TV shows like WeCrashed and The Dropout, highlighting the dark undercurrents of ambition and deception in Silicon Valley. They differentiate between complacent and conditional optimism, advocating for a more engaged perspective on success. Danny also emphasizes the urgent need for ethical standards to combat widespread corruption, underlining how technology and human nature intersect in today's tumultuous landscape.

The funding of science is one of the most important leverage points for growth in the global economy. Yet, we’ve barely experimented with how science gets funded or tried to evolve financing models that were invented decades ago. Now, dozens of new organizations have been started to explore novel models for funding scientists to do their best work. Danny Crichton is joined by Lux Capital’s scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman to talk about why this trend has accelerated and what all these new experimental models might mean for the future of science.

Danny Crichton talks with TechCrunch Global Affairs Project special series editor Scott Bade about the passing of Madeleine Albright, the intricate and extensive connections between tech innovation and U.S. foreign policy, the need for an American technology doctrine, and developments in U.S.-China relations.

In Episode 0 of “Securities” by Lux Capital, Danny Crichton and Chris Gates talk about why the world needs another podcast; Deena Shakir joins to discuss the future of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and a company she funded called Alife Health, and Danny discusses the global challenges that tech must confront in the 2020s. This is Episode 0 — named for the best movie in the Star Wars franchise and where it all begins.