Cyan is one of the legendary angel and VC investors in Silicon Valley. I also say most overlooked. Inside the mind of one of the most unique thinkers and top investors in Silicon Valley. She is truly one of the best angel investors and now VC on the planet. In a July interview with Molly OShea here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810VlN3lkqQ&t=260s
We get an inside look at her brilliant brain. Plenty to learn here on how to think clearly and differently.
The description is as as follows:
“Cyan Banister put her entire IronPort exit into SpaceX when the rockets were still blowing up on the launchpad. She never sold. It became the best investment of her life. She is Co-Founder and General Partner at Long Journey Ventures, spent 4 years as a partner at Founders Fund, and with her husband Scott Banister has built one of the most successful angel portfolios in the world across 20+ years of investing together: SpaceX. Anduril. Uber. PayPal. Affirm. Flexport. Postmates. Niantic. Opendoor. Carta. Together AI. Diamond Foundry. Crusoe. Flock Safety. Substrate. Brave. Depop. Calm. Fivetran. Zappos.”
I pulled out some key parts on seed investing from that interview.
CB: “I think in two to three years, we're going to see a consumer wave. Like right now we're just trying to figure out like you know how it all works and which companies can use it and where the value is. But eventually it's going to be a huge consumer wave and signs are going to change outside.
Fashion's going to change if we can somehow work out our stuff with China. Manufacturing will come back. Vibe manufacturing, which I brought up, is going to be a thing. You're going to say, "I have this little widget. If only I could print it and get it made and get a million of them made, then I can also just go direct to consumer." And you're going to start seeing a lot of that. So, um, I am still looking for the Alibaba of the Americas. I haven't found it yet. I'm still turning over stones there, trying to find. So, I always like to put that out there in the wild in case someone claims they have that company.I've had many pitches. None of them have panned out yet. Uh, what else am I excited about?
I mean bringing computer, basically bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the Americas is a really important problem to solve. There's also some defense companies we're in that we're excited about power generation. A lot of deep tech right now.”
Molly: Deep tech is cool.
CB: Yeah, it's very cool. Very hard but very cool.
Molly: I mean you especially, with your track record have been a strong proponent of America.
CB: Oh yes. and re-industrialization.Yes. From day one.
Well, I think the cost of manufacturing and robotics has gone down considerably.
And so the ability to play and come up with prototypes and also the fact that SpaceX paved the way for a Varta, you know, for other types of startups to dream that they could even exist in that space, you know, it took a SpaceX in order to even open up that category. Most people wouldn't have touched it.
And so I think that's part of why now I think the other thing is I was reading an article that there's a space war going on where we have satellites by non-allied countries collecting data you know and they're destroying some of our satellites and there's this race to the moon and so we're in a bit of a cold war but it's definitely a war. A technology war with countries that don't have our interests. And so I think that's another reason of ‘why now’, drones wars are going to be fought with robotics in the future. There's not going to be humans on the battlefield. There's going to be robots and there's going to be technology, and battlebots is going to be a thing.
And so like if you look at Anduril for example, they have this product that can take out, you know, like a whole drone swarm in one go. We're going to start seeing things like that where, you know, maybe people don't want to work with Anduril, so they want a competitor. You know, maybe the other defense primes need to have a product. So you're going to see a lot of startups playing in that world. I do think that obviously Anduril is going to consolidate a lot of it and become one of the top defense primes over time, but they're already well on their way. So, I think that's why now. I tend to not play in the why now space though.
I tend to play in the what's coming space and so I think what's coming is nanotech, biotech. I'm much more interested in that. I'm also really really interested in what bottlenecks get removed because of AI or information that we're able to get and analyze for the first time in history. So, there's all these really, really neat data sets that once you start looking through them, we're going to be able to solve some of the world's hardest math problems and the hardest problems and be able to take us in more into this, you know, Star Trek future that we could have. And so, I'm thinking about that.
So when people right now are investing in things that are hot, I did the infrastructure layer for that because you know six years ago we were thinking about the infrastructure layer of crypto and AI because we had a bunch of friends at Singularity who've been talking about AI for years.
And so now I'm thinking okay what does this all enable next and what are the problems of it and what are we going to see because the alpha is there. It's not in ‘what's’ happening today. If I'm chasing everything in the hyper- competitive deals of today, I'm going to lose money.
So, I've got to try to find things at lower prices that are still a moonshot that I can get a good percentage of ownership like a good seed fund should do. You know, I tend to not chase many deals that are really hot today.
Molly: So, is that Cyan’s secret to success?
CB: Yes, it should be all seed funds secret to success, but it's not really.
Incredible track record. Incredible human being based on everything I hear and from all the podcasts I’ve watched. I always learn from her and this interview was no different. Cyan is someone who is genuine, authentic and uniquely herself. That is what makes her so interesting.