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I sit down with Arjun Sethi, Co-Founder and Partner of Tribe Capital, a firm with over $1.6B in AUM focused on using product and data science to engineer N-of-1 companies and investments. They’ve backed some incredible and interesting fintech companies, including Kraken, FTX, Bolt, Carta, Nium, Pipe, and the list goes on.
In this episode, we discuss:
Tribe Capital’s quantitative diligence process for investing in great companies and the rationale behind their Magic 8-Ball framework.
“We always kind of had this vision, which is how do we reduce the amount of information that you get, or increase the signal in order to make better decisions? The same way you think about it as being a product manager at a company is that you get data about your customers, then you create a data-informed view.”
What are N-of-1 startups and why Tribe looks for this kind of company and founder.
“N-of-1 companies tend to have some sort of network effect. For example Facebook, Airbnb, Slack, Uber… I'd argue Square and Carta... And so what does an N-of-1 mean? It basically means that you are able to find scale and invariance in something that continues to compound over time, without you having to put in extra capital.”
Arjun’s take on the state of crypto markets, and why he is paying special attention to DeFi innovations and companies that are building rails and infrastructure to make this technology accessible for all consumers.
“I would actually argue that the blow-ups we see today are actually very good to be able to see the good, bad and ugly in a transparent way, because it happens so fast. And we're able to focus our time and attention and even incentive alignment towards fixing that.”
Working with Chamath at Social Capital. What he learned during his years there and why he’s a frequent listener of the All-In Podcast… and a lot more!
“[On The All-In Podcast] I listen quite frequently. The great thing about what they're talking about is that it’s exactly what we used to talk about at the firm. We didn't just talk about capital allocation, we were thinking about macro strategies. What does that mean for our companies? How do we advise them? On how are we consiglieres around the table?”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
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