Dina. Does that fill what you're seeing? A
Tale of two halves right now? You know,
it is in many ways, a Tale of two
Cities. Um But I don't think I would agree
with the sentence that there's nothing exciting outside of A
I. And at Lux, we love to invest
in the intersections. In fact, we just had
our A I summit here in New York on Tuesday
. And what you see is a lot of A
I but A I intersecting, intersecting with sciences,
intersecting with physical intelligence, intersecting with health tech,
even with Medicaid care delivery. So while I do
think A I is very exciting, it's an area
we've been investing in for quite some time. It's
not necessarily the only area that we're seeing exciting investments
these days. That was the point when you launched
the new fund, right? I remember all the
things that I get excited about robotics. Dare I
say it? Life sciences. But has it been
an easy environment to cut checks in because you sometimes
have to find willing partners who have the same level
of excitement that you do in those fields? Yes
, these are all areas we are still excited in
. And I think one way in which it's a
tale of two cities is that you're seeing these,
these, uh you know, seasoned operators who are
on their second or third company, who may be
building an A I or outside of A I that
are getting these very large mega rounds and then other
companies that are struggling to raise those early dollars,
that being said we have companies across different stages and
sectors that are continuing to raise. I think the
big question which Kyle pointed out is really what the
exit market looks like. And as we, you
know, we sat here two years ago, Caroline
talking about 2023 being the year 2024 should be the
year. I think we're all looking to 2025 to
be the year where we start to see more of
those exits and distributions. Do you get that question
? And that pressure from the LP S for there
to be exit opportunities, you know, we are
a deep tech fund. So we've always had long
life cycles. We invest uh what we like to
invest in the impossible and turn it into the inevitable
. And so uh we have patient LP S who
know that these companies take time. Um And we
look for the generational large companies that turn into,
into very big outcomes. Did any of those LP
S want you to be in the open A I
round? Well, we'll see. Well, what's
interesting is some of the nuances around that round.
A people are sitting up and seeing who's leading it
and, but they're also sitting up and saying,
oh, they're not allowed to invest in competitors.
Is that usual? Actually, when you invest in
like a runway which you're in would ultimately you not
go out and reallocate to a competitor in that space
. I, I would say that is normal but
not every fine approach is that the same way from
our perspective, we certainly don't intentionally invest in competitive
companies. We like to put our resources, our
connections, our network behind our investments oftentimes companies will
evolve over time and eventually end up intersecting and,
and that can certainly happen. Um But we do
try to be careful to, to put our eggs
in a basket and really double down on, on
our winners. There's something you mentioned a moment ago
, Dina that I think is probably true of whether
you're in deep tech or in A I in industrials
or otherwise, which is the type of investor coming
in is different. You see the very large mutual
funds being a player or NVIDIA comes in as like
a strategic, you're a sizeable venture firm. But
is it difficult for you to, to get in
on some rounds because of those new types of player
? You know, we uh our current fund is
is over a billion. We're investing in everything from
incubation through pre IP O. And so we have
that ability to construct a portfolio across different stages.
The job of any good VC of course is to
, to buy low and sell high. And so
we're able to do that across the spectrum of these
companies where we believe there's still a massive outcome,
even investing at a later stage, we will do
that and we have the ability to do that.
Um And we all so have the ability to start
companies ourselves. Uh companies uh in our portfolio like
evolutionary scale, which is applying A I to life
sciences that we were early into or, or a
life health, which we were the first institutional capital
in applying A I to the fertility space. What
about the companies that on, as we say A
I natives, you say there's a lot of excitement
in the areas of intersection, but how are some
of the other companies in the older portfolios able to
cope with this current environment? Are they steering well
? Are they managing to ensure that they're cutting costs
and dialing in on revenue growth? Absolutely. And
it's those two things. Well, three things I
would say one A I is a way of doing
things. It's not A I for A I's sake
. So hopefully it's enabling efficiency, it's enabling better
accuracy, it's enabling, you know, better profit
margins. And so every company needs to have an
answer to that. Not because it's what they need
for fundraising although it likely is. But also because
it's what they need to survive in the world.
This is a huge paradigm shift. It's a seismic
shift. So all of our companies are doing that
and some of the most exciting applications I've seen are
actually in companies that are very much still human oriented
companies like way mark in our portfolio, which is
leveraging community health workers to deliver health care in Medicaid
communities, but are using A I to help predict
emergency room admissions and to help streamline the operations of
health care providers. Dina, you've been busy,
you're always a busy person, but you've also become
an author, Lina Mo Ceo. Very quickly tell
me about it. Yes, Lina Mo Ceo,
brand new book just released last week. It's a
story about a young girl who builds a robot to
help shovel snow out side of her house, goes
through the process of building a team raising money.
Um and uh was was inspired by my own journey
as a parent trying to explain venture capital to uh
to a bunch of preschoolers um which as it turns
out is just as hard as explaining to fully grown 00:05:33.528 --> adults.