12 November 2024 | Link to podcast episode
Surprisingly good podcast episode. I encountered Chris Paik first on a Invest Like the Best podcast episode which was interesting as well, and then again recently when his post ‘The End of Software’ went viral. He is an interesting thinker as you will see from the highlights of this episode.
A few points which stood out:
- On Thrive Capital, his previous employer, he mentions how they were always ‘playing offence’, given they were based in NYC, and no one from the Valley had to visit NYC. You were default on a plane.
- Pace Capital’s unfair advantage lies in being early. That is the only way they can compete with the multistage funds. If there is a deck, it is too late, is their internal motto per Chris.
- Bullish on local inference, and applications take advantage of that. Apple has a huge advantage per his thesis. Buy Apple! as he says sometimes the obvious trade is the clever trade (like FAANG and Bitcoin)
- Minimum viable infrastructure is an interesting mental model. There is a minimum technology format or bandwidth needed for a media or software product, like text for twitter, 3G for uber / snapchat, 4G/5G/video for tiktok etc. It explains why Instagram succeeded Twitter, and Snapchat succeeded Instagram, and TikTok succeeded Snapchat. The flow is usually in one direction. The reason we haven’t had a new consumer co in the past decade is because bandwidth has topped out. Interesting theory and he proposes Livestreaming as a potential new format (suggests Whatnot as a likely winner). Some of this thinking also appears in the Invest Like The Best podcast I mentioned.