‘Why I Put $35 Million Into Anthropic’ — Guy Oseary

I want to hop back to the investing. I mean, you've had a lot of hits. Airbnb, Uber, Spotify, it goes on and on and on. I mean, I don't know how many IPOs and so on that you've had. I mean, a gazillion. Let's talk about one. So you put in, tell me if I'm getting this right, $35 million at a $5 billion valuation into Anthropic. This is a company that's been in the news a lot. I think the last round was what, $965 billion, something like that? Are those numbers roughly? Accurate?

Yes.

Okay, so that's a pretty nice multiple so far. You know, we'll see how things go. How did that Anthropic deal happen?

Well, it starts a little before. The day that OpenAI came out, which was on my dad's birthday, ChatGPT, it was life-changing. And I, You remember those moments. And again, I go back to music. I remember when I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, I pulled over the car and I went, what is this?

Mm-hmm.

And when ChatGPT came out, that was a what is this moment for me. And if you saw me anytime after ChatGPT came out, I would've harassed you to show you ChatGPT. There's no one, every artist, every actor, everyone I walked around and met, I'm like, check this out, check this out, check this out. And I was obsessed. And I called Ashton and I said, Ashton, this is it. OpenAI, we're doing OpenAI. This is the greatest thing I've ever seen. We have to do it, have to do it, have to do it. And so that was our first, this is the one we're going to go after. But then when we first started investing, Ashton and I, it was when the iPhone and the App Store were happening. And so for the first time ever, you can scale companies like never before. And I think anyone would have done well at that time. We were like lucky people that came in at the right time and were looking at the right time and started our fund at that very moment, which is crazy. And so we had this incredible success because of that. I saw it again. Back to pattern recognition. If you fast forward, we're still using Uber and Airbnb and Spotify. We're still using those things from that time period. And we felt that this is it. These foundational AI models in 10 or 15 years will be how we plug into all these things. So we really felt like we had a 3-month window. We told people we have a 3-month window. Now, It came out November 30th, 2022. So there's not much you can do. People are going away. There's just Christmas time break, blah, blah. But as soon as January came, we went out there and told people, this is the vision. We're going to do a foundational AI model fund.

I got it. LPs.

Raise money. Raise money and create this fund, which was a crazy idea at the time.

Now, had you already confirmed that you'd be able to get allocations or did you just have complete confidence?

Ashton spoke to Sam. We were able to get OpenAI. What happened was, is I'm very close to Marc Benioff, and Salesforce Ventures, people don't really understand how smart they are. Yeah, they're really smart. They don't get all the press on— they are one of the best investors in the world. There's 2 guys there, John Samorajai and Paul Druze, who were, when I was doing my research, 'cause now I'm on the lookout, what should I know about an AI? Once I find out about something, I just lock in, and I want to know everything about it. And as I was doing my research, I was finding out that they were going to do Anthropic, and they were very bullish about it. And I found out from a friend that works with job hunter kind of people who help find jobs for people.

Oh, like headhunters.

Headhunters, that everyone's going to this company called Anthropic. People are really going to this Anthropic place, and they're not going anywhere else. I'm like, Whoa, okay, I need to pay attention to this. So I asked Paul and John, connect me with this founder, Dario. So they connect me with Dario and Nirav. They come here in this room, and that's where we made the deal to invest in Anthropic. So we did a bunch of other companies in that foundational AI fund. It was a 3-month window, so it was before a bunch of other things that have come out since, but we set ourselves up for exactly what we did. This is going to be within 3 months. We're going to deploy 80% of the money within the next 3 months. And that's what we did. And that's over 3 years ago.

How did you know the window was going to be so narrow? I imagine— did you get any pushback from LPs when you said, we're going to deploy 80% of this in 3 months?

Well, we didn't have— there was no LPs, meaning that was the pitch.

Yeah, yeah.

So it wasn't like we raised money.

They either bought in or they didn't.

Yeah, it wasn't like we raised money and then told them the pitch. It was like, here's the pitch.

Here's what we're gonna do.

There's a window of opportunity here. We think this is the future. And that was it.

They had opted in.

Yeah, opt in or opt out. We didn't know what we were gonna raise. It's just whatever came up is what it was gonna be.

So I was trying to pull from memory, but it looks like sound, At this point, is that 86 exits and 26 IPOs? That's insane. I mean, that is—

It's been fun.

You have seemingly different batteries, certainly. I mean, you've got good batteries. What does the next 5 years, do you think, look like for you? I mean, is it more of this type of investing? What do you see? Is it switching gears entirely and looking at the prison through a totally different way? I mean, what is What is next for Guy?

I feel like going back to the core, really honing in that antenna for the greatest talent in the world, the greatest ideas in the world. This is an incredible time where people can scale up a company in the quickest ways. And I'm excited about the potential of what's to come. I've already identified 3 things I want to do today. So I can only imagine what's to come, but it's just really just, I'm okay doing a version of what I've been doing, which is identify great talent and help them, help them in every which way that I can, and pick the teams that you want to back. So I'm feeling pretty good about that, just continuing on this best-in-class talent idea. The hard part is, for a lot of people, is the access. So we're very lucky we have access, and we also do the job. We have more than enough proof of people that come through when you work with them. And we're a different kind of investor on the cap table. We're not in the Valley, we're here in Hollywood, and we bring a different dynamic, a different Obviously, narrative is something that I'm very focused on. Marketing is something I've been doing since I was a teen. And so, marketing strategy, media partnerships, narrative storytelling, hey, if you want someone like that on your cap table, I might be interesting to you, and hopefully I can be helpful. And that's what I need to find, that dynamic of a company that I'm in love with, and hopefully the founder believes that having me would be a great A lot of founders listen to this podcast.

Are there any particular things that have your interest right now, or types of companies, types of founders, anything that you'd like to sort of make clear to people who are listening or otherwise? Also, where can people learn more about what you're up to? Is there anywhere that you would point them in particular?

I'm a generalist. I don't care. That particular AI fund was very specific, and we may have thematic funds from time to time. If an idea comes and you go, you know what? I've got an idea. It's going to be built around this one idea. But usually I'm a generalist. I really like— I just like talented people. And in regards to sharing, where can they find out what I'm up to? Not really. This is it. Yeah, this is it. As you know, this is my first podcast. And depending on how this goes, could be my last. If it goes well, maybe one more. But I'm not out there— everything has been fine without doing that.

Yeah.

You know, people either find us word of mouth through friends or I find them. It's okay. It all works out. I'm not out there, you know, yelling, hey, find me 1-800-whatever. Or it's like, it'll work itself out. The right people We'll find each other.