Motion Blur

When humanity becomes the edgeWhat does labor look like today, and what does it look like tomorrow? Hammad leads part two of the long-awaited discussion about the concept of linearity. Today’s conversation extends beyond tech and covers a lot more of the societal and philosophical questions that are just beginning to surface. As we’ll highlight, most of these questions actually aren’t that new, but for many people they’re coming to a head now thanks to AI, robotics, and more. What will creativity look like? What will writing look like? What do people do with all the slop and clankers?Grant even talks about a 10,000 word essay he wrote (for fun!) over 8 months during COVID. From the conclusion of that piece:Steve Jobs had a famous aphorism that the computer was the bicycle of the mind. Meaning, that compared to other animals, humans weren’t that special. Our tools changed that. Tools aren’t something we can immediately use — we have to learn and practice first to reach proficiency.We’ve successfully given everyone a bicycle over the past decade, now all we need to do is teach people how to ride it.I’ll give Darwin the final word.“It is not the strongest of species that survive; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles DarwinEnjoy! 🔗 Show Resource LinksGrant’s 10,000 word essay, What If Everyone Could Code?John Maynard Keynes’ Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (from 1930)🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

A discussion with the Founder of Sage Road Research on the biggest forces reshaping the world.Today we’re interviewing someone Grant has been following since 2019: Trevor Noren, Founder of Sage Road Research.Trevor is an information omnivore. He’s a renowned financial analyst and thought leader, but we almost feel like that is too reductive; Trevor consumes huge quantums of data, synthesizes it all, and then packages it into coherent frameworks and analysis for his clients. Everything from tariffs to AI to demographics and investing.We brought him onto the podcast so we could discuss the takeaways from some of his recent reports, as well as go through his overall research process. We cover deregulation, reshoring, the retailization of private markets, and some glimpses into his upcoming report on AI productivity. Longtime Motion Blur listeners will recall that Trevor played a huge role in the Sate of Adventure deck. This conversation covers that and so much more.We also spend some time talking about Sage Road. After spending time at 13D and Wellington, Trevor decided to set out and build a firm that combines his unique synthesis abilities with his long-term time horizon. Sage Road focuses on the core themes and challenges that will define the next few decades.In Trevor’s words: Sage Road is dedicated to industry-leading research into return-defining themes. From my time as an analyst at 13D Research to my time leading investment content for Wellington Management, I have always valued yet struggled to find comprehensive and unbiased thinking on the biggest trends influencing investment outcomes. I founded Sage Road to fill that gap—to get beyond the day-to-day noise, challenge consensus thinking, and connect-the-dots on key investment themes many may recognize, but few have time or opportunity to fully understand.About Trevor: For more than a decade, Trevor Noren has been a financial industry thought leader. He worked for the world-renowned research firm 13D as a managing director and contributor to its flagship publication, What I Learned This Week. His areas of analytical focus ranged from tech disruption to consumer trends to financial industry plumbing, politics, and macroeconomics. After his tenure at 13D, he joined Wellington Management, a Boston-based firm with more than $1 trillion in AUM. In his role as Director of Investment Content, he led efforts to bring vital insights from the firm’s best-in-class, bottom-up investment dialogue to a global client base. He created and spearheaded the firm’s flagship publication, The Wellington Week, which became a go-to resource for thousands of investors and asset allocators across the world. Trevor is a proud graduate of Brown University. He lives in Ketchum, Idaho with his wife, two kids, two dogs, and many fishing rods.Enjoy!🔗 Show Resource LinksTrevor’s Twitter profileSage Road Research, and a link to the excellent reportsTrevor’s Real Vision interview Grant saw back in 2019 (and the tweet)🎙️ Podcast Links⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at ⁠⁠Cantos⁠⁠ where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, ⁠⁠Susa⁠⁠’s growth fund. Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠⁠⁠@grant__gregory⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Embers⁠⁠⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠⁠⁠@_hammad_aslamh⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Susa Ventures⁠⁠If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every week for new episodes.Intro music credit: ⁠⁠⁠Will Harrison⁠⁠⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to get notified for future episodes.

Apps, books, and people we loveIt’s time for our annual Thanksgiving-inspired episode! Grant and Hammad share a few thoughts on an app, book, and person that they each are grateful for.We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and wonderful start to the Holiday season. Thanks for listening!🔗 Show Resource LinksApp Recommendations: InKind, Copilot (referral code: MW6MHW), and ReadwiseBook Recommendations: Apple in China and The Book of RosyMaui: The Road to Hana🎙️ Podcast Links⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is an investor at ⁠⁠Cantos⁠⁠ where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, ⁠⁠Susa⁠⁠’s growth fund. Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠⁠⁠@grant__gregory⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Embers⁠⁠⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠⁠⁠@_hammad_aslamh⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Susa Ventures⁠⁠If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every week for new episodes.Intro music credit: ⁠⁠⁠Will Harrison⁠⁠⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to get notified for future episodes.

Where venture dogmas go to dieHammad leads a long-awaited discussion about the concept of linearity, something that is becoming increasingly more important in today’s world. Given its significance, we’ve decided to make this a two-part episode, this first part focuses on venture capital and startups. Hammad begins by giving us his definition of linearity vs non-linearity, and shares his critiques of some of the traditional growth metrics like ‘triple, triple, double, double’. This episode has everything: twitter references, iPhones vs Android, Blackberry, and even some convos about COVID.Enjoy! 🔗 Show Resource LinksDan Gray’s tweetDan’s article: Venture Capital is Not CompetitiveHo Nam’s quote tweet🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

Today we’re interviewing Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, co-founders of 1517 Fund. We’ve long admired their distinctive approach to backing builders outside traditional paths, and brought them on to dig into how talent, capital, and company formation work when you deliberately look beyond credentials. 1517 backs dropouts, students, and deep-tech scientists at the very first checks stage—often before there’s a company at all.Danielle is a General Partner at 1517 and was on the founding team that designed and ran the Thiel Fellowship, after earlier founding Innovations Academy, a project-based learning charter school in San Diego. Her career has centered on helping unconventional young founders turn early sparks into real companies.Michael is a GP at 1517 and, alongside Danielle, helped lead the Thiel Fellowship before co-founding the fund. He’s also the author of Paper Belt on Fire, a book about funding outsiders and rethinking how progress happens. Grant can attest, it’s a fantastic read.Enjoy!🎙️ Podcast Links⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at ⁠⁠Cantos⁠⁠ where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, ⁠⁠Susa⁠⁠’s growth fund. Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠⁠⁠@grant__gregory⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Embers⁠⁠⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠⁠⁠@_hammad_aslamh⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Susa Ventures⁠⁠If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every week for new episodes.Intro music credit: ⁠⁠⁠Will Harrison⁠⁠⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to get notified for future episodes.

The official State of Adventure presentation. Enjoy!🔗 Show Resource LinksThe official State of Adventure deckGrant’s tweet announcing the deckGrant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

This short bonus episode officially marks the one-year mark for Motion Blur.It’s been a great year, with a lot of highlights. We reflect on some of them and Hammad and Grant each share some exciting personal news.Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

One more convo about the State of Adventure! This one is with our close friend Will Quist at Slow Ventures. Will had Grant on their podcast to riff on Adventure Capital, Narrative Warfare, and much more.Will is one of the sharpest minds in venture, and we’re excited for you to tune into this convo.Grant Gregory and Cantos just dropped a 286-slide deep tech mega-deck. They swap inside baseball on narrative warfare, the voting vs weighing machine, and why “precision” in deep tech labeling matters (Waymo ≠ TLM ≠ Shinkai ≠ Anduril). Grant shows his two most important slides: the Deep Tech Score (levels from SaaS to “OpenAI before Transformers existed”) and the “narrative violation” where hardware’s capital-to-outcome multiples beat software in the data he compiled. Chapters: 00:48 Who is Grant? A16Z American Dynamism team → Cantos 01:36 Why capital finally “got the plot” on hard tech 03:13 The two most important slides: Deep Tech Score + Narrative Violation 04:20 Hardware vs software: the capital-intensity myth, with data 05:59 Narrative warfare: voting machine vs weighing machine 06:38 Anointment dynamics; operating between fundamentals and momentum 07:28 Can founders learn the voting machine? Authenticity over mimicry 09:44 Defense FOMO, IBM-ification of venture, and pre-signal markets 14:18 Defense exits: only a few true fund-returners; multi-product is required 17:21 Deck feedback: founders want a real definition of “venture scale” 18:45 Deep Tech Score criteria: risk types, hypothesis legibility, market maturity 22:22 Why concentrated, full-stack investing matters in non-consensus areas 24:32 Non-VC capital in SpaceX/Tesla/Anduril: the uncomfortable truth 29:31 Business physics: power, supply chains, leverage in physical industries30:13 Will’s take: Automation is a terrible investment vs services on top32:10 Advice to founders: narrative warfare + slow convictionKeep in touch with Slow Ventures: X: https://x.com/slowConnect with WillConnect with Grant🔗 Show Resource LinksThe full YouTube video of the conversation, and the tweetGrant’s tweet announcing the deckGrant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

It’s officially out! Grant and Hammad discuss the takeaways and reception from the inaugural State of Adventure Capital deck.The presentation covers every aspect of American Dynamism Cinematic Universe, from capital inflows to dilution metrics, deep currents, and more. We dive into the meaning behind “Adventure Capital”, why the timing is right for these categories, and what investment opportunities exist for startups building in the physical world.In Grant’s words: This is something I’ve been wanting to do for 3 years now (ever since my a16z days), and the goal is to have this be an annual project in similar scope to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report. An ambitious goal to be clear! But we believe we have a unique purview of the American Dynamism / Deep Tech / Hard Tech landscape, and are compiling all of our learnings together to share them with our founders, coinvestors, and other people in the cinematic universe. Our hope is that this will be a resource for everyone as they build in these categories.🔗 Show Resource Links​The official State of Adventure deck​Grant’s tweet announcing the deck​Grant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck🎙️ Podcast Links​Spotify​Apple Podcasts​⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠​Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:​Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠​Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

The state of all things Hard Tech, Deep Tech, and American DynamismAfter 9+ months of work, Grant has finished his inaugural State of Adventure Capital deck. And ahead of Grant’s presentation at the upcoming Cantos AGM, we’re giving Motion Blur listeners a special early listen.The presentation covers every aspect of American Dynamism Cinematic Universe, from capital inflows to dilution metrics, deep currents, and more. We dive into the meaning behind “Adventure Capital”, why the timing is right for these categories, and what investment opportunities exist for startups building in the physical world.In Grant’s words: This is something I’ve been wanting to do for 3 years now (ever since my a16z days), and the goal is to have this be an annual project in similar scope to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report. An ambitious goal to be clear! But we believe we have a unique purview of the American Dynamism / Deep Tech / Hard Tech landscape, and are compiling all of our learnings together to share them with our founders, coinvestors, and other people in the cinematic universe. Our hope is that this will be a resource for everyone as they build in these categories.The State of Adventure will be formally released next week. Until then, enjoy this early version.🔗 Show Resource LinksGrant’s recent tweets on some of the slides from his deck🎙️ Podcast LinksSpotifyApple Podcasts⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠Subscribe🌀 About Motion BlurExploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.Learn more about the hosts:Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa VenturesIntro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.