Venture Unlocked is the playbook for starting, operating, & scaling a successful venture capital firm. Samir Kaji, Host of Venture Unlocked has +20-years of experience assisting & advising startups and venture firms. Listen for VC fund guidance.
Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.
Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital.
In this episode, I’m joined by three deep tech investors and friends of the show, Nate Williams, Sunil Nagaraj, and Guy Perelmuter, for a roundtable on the state of deep tech and the changing venture landscape. We dig into what deep tech really means today, why it’s suddenly attracting so much capital, and how economics, government tailwinds, and AI as a “killer app” have pulled these once niche technologies into the mainstream. We also explore the growing concentration of capital in a handful of hyperscale winners, the tension between consensus vs. non-consensus investing, and what all of this means for emerging managers, LPs, and founders operating at the zero-to-one stage.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Nate, Sunil, and Guy. If you’d like to get Venture Unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. Thanks again for listening.
Nate Williams is the Founder and Managing Partner of DeepTech seed firm UNION (Union Labs, Union Peak VC funds) and formerly served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) at Kleiner Perkins focusing on vertical “Physical AI” opportunities across Climate/Resilience, PropTech, and Mobility. Nate has made over 40 early-stage investments, including Urban Sky, Butlr, Antimatter (acquired by Databricks), Proxy (acquired by Oura), Ruby Robotics (acquired by Intuitive Surgical) and Klue (acquired by Medtronic). Before transitioning to full-time VC, Nate built a track record as a hands-on operator with senior leadership roles across startup, growth, and turnaround stages, culminating in successful exits for 4Home (to Motorola, 2010), Motorola Mobility (to Google, 2012), Motorola Home (to ARRIS, 2013), and August Home (to Assa Abloy, 2017). Earlier in his career, Nate was an Analyst in the Digital Home Group at Intel Corp. Nate holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Comms from the University of Connecticut.
Sunil Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm investing in “software beyond the screen,” including robotics, AI, industrial automation, and frontier technologies. Prior to founding Ubiquity, Sunil spent over a decade at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he invested in companies across cloud computing, developer tools, and emerging technologies. He is widely recognized for his early conviction in deep tech and infrastructure-driven innovation before it became mainstream in venture capital.
Guy Perelmuter is the Founder and Managing Partner of GRIDS Capital, a venture firm focused on deep tech, AI, and advanced industrial technologies. With a background spanning engineering, technology, and investing, Guy has built his career around backing highly technical founders tackling complex global problems. He is known for his insights into the convergence of AI, infrastructure, and industrial transformation, as well as his emphasis on technical depth and long-term value creation in venture investing.
Timestamps:
Topics in this conversation include:
* Definition of Deep Tech by Technical Prowess and Advanced Engineering (2:51)
* Hardcore Technology, Difficulty to Build, and Hardware Misconceptions (3:51)
* Drivers Of Deep Tech Tailwinds: Maturing Technologies and Government Push (6:12)
* Excess Investor Interest After SpaceX and Other Breakout Successes (9:18)
* Historical Analogy to Electrification and AI as New Infrastructure Layer (14:43)
* Need For Specialized Deep Tech Expertise and New VC Org Structures (19:36)
* Schizophrenic Risk-on Behavior and King-making of Consensus Winners (22:08)
* Why Normal M and A and IPO Outcomes Still Matter For Smaller Funds (26:53)
* Fund Proliferation, New Managers, and What Will Prove Transient (28:49)
* Access Capital, Hollywood-ization of Venture, and Coming Bust Risks (33:34)
* Consensus Growth Obsession, 10x Expectations, and Metric Distortions (38:02)
* How Seed Managers Adapt and Curate Downstream Capital for Portfolios (41:01)
* Founder-led Investor Selection and Power Shifting To Specialist Seed GPs (44:53)
* Myths About VC Impact, Trend Surfing, and Overstated GP Influence (48:18)
* Final Thoughts and Takeaways (53:11)
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