“When investing in funds, you are investing in a blind pool of human potential.” – Adam Marchick
Over the past twenty years, Adam Marchick has had unique experiences as a founder, general partner (GP), and limited partner (LP). Most recently, Adam managed the venture capital portfolio at Emory’s endowment, a $2 billion portfolio within the $10 billion endowment. Prior to Emory, Adam spent ten years building two companies, the most recent being Alpine.AI, which was acquired by Headspace. Simultaneously, Adam was a Sequoia Scout and built an angel portfolio of over 25 companies. Adam was a direct investor at Menlo Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures, sourcing and supporting companies including Carbonite (IPO), Rent The Runway (IPO), Rapid7 (IPO), Archer (M&A), and AeroScout (M&A). He started his career in engineering and product roles at Facebook, Oracle, and startups.
You can find Adam on his socials here:
X / Twitter: https://x.com/adammStanford
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammarchick/
And huge thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Alchemist Accelerator: https://alchemistaccelerator.com/superclusters
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
Brought to you by Alchemist Accelerator.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[03:14] Who is Kathy Ku?
[06:20] Lesson from Sheryl Sandberg
[06:39] Lesson from Justin Osofsky
[07:46] How Facebook became the proving grounds for Adam
[09:26] The cultural pillars of great organizations
[10:40] When to push forward and when to slow down
[12:39] Adam’s first investment: Dell
[14:20] What did Adam do on Day 1 when he first became an LP
[17:00] Emory’s co-investment criteria
[20:02] Private equity co-invests vs venture co-invests
[21:15] Teaser into Akkadian’s strategy
[23:03] Underwriting blind pools of human potential
[29:03] Why does Adam look at 10 antiportfolio companies when doing diligence?
[32:11] What excites and scares Adam about VC
[35:36] Engineering serendipity
[37:52] Where is voice technology going?
[39:45] How does Adam think about maintaining relationships?
[43:20] Thank you to Alchemist Accelerator for sponsoring!
[44:20] If you enjoyed this season finale, it would mean a lot if you could share it with 1 other person who you think would love it!
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Akkadian Ventures
- Emory University
- Emory Investment Management
- Headspace
- Bain Capital Ventures
- Menlo Ventures
- Sheryl Sandberg
- Meta
- Kevin Systrom
- Joel Peterson
- Kathy Ku
- Stanford Office of Technology Licensing
- Stanford
- Yamaha
- Mark Leslie
- Bob Tinker
- MobileIron
- Kahuna
- Justin Osofsky
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Tim Kendall
- Meraki
- Samsara
- Adam’s founder checklist
- HotelTonight
- The Weather Channel
- Yahoo
- DraftKings
- Overstock
- The New York Times
- Reid Hoffman
- Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman
- Dell
- Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics Lab
- Nate Leung
- Mel Williams
- Truebridge Capital Partners
- Midas List
- Mike Dauber
- Sunil Dhaliwal
- Amplify Partners
- Netskope
- Applied Intuition
- Bo Williamson
- Ben Black
- Mike Dinsdale
- Harvard University
- The Wharton School
- Y Combinator
- University of California, Berkeley
- Alexandre Linares
- Sam Altman
- “The Intelligence Age” by Sam Altman
- iBEAM Broadcasting
- Amazon Web Services
- Gong
- Microsoft Copilot
- Sequoia Capital
- “How to Raise Money from Sequoia Capital: Go to Stanford Football games” by Adam Marchick
- RAISE Global
- Maynard Webb
- Nick Shalek
- Ribbit Capital
- Yale Investments Office
- Josh Kopelman
- First Round Capital
- Ed Hutchinson
- Golden Bell Partners
- Amazon Echo
- Google Home
- Amazon Alexa
- ChatGPT
- OpenAI
- Perplexity
- Harry Stebbings
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“What’s so freeing is when you can bring your personality to work. It’s so much less cognitive load when you can be yourself.” – Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to Adam Marchick
“Take your work seriously, not yourself.” – Adam Marchick
“Be really transparent, and even document and share your co-investment criteria.” – Mike Dauber, Sunil Dhaliwal’s advice to Adam Marchick
“For an endowment doing co-invests, you should never squint.” – Adam Marchick
“When investing in funds, you are investing in a blind pool of human potential.” – Adam Marchick