Warning: This is a brief-ish, but hopefully entertaining intermission from the usual Superclusters programming. When we passed the 50th episode mark more than a few episodes ago, Tyler (my editor) and I thought it’d be interesting to record an episode where I change seats. Instead of me asking the questions, someone else would ask me questions. And I couldn’t imagine any better person to do so than my good friend, Allie, who in my humble opinion, is one of the best interviewers alive today.
Allie Garfinkle is a senior finance reporter for Fortune, covering venture capital and startups. She authors Fortune’s weekday dealmaking newsletter Term Sheet, hosts the Term Sheet Podcast, and co-chairs Fortune Brainstorm, a community and event series featuring an annual retreat in Deer Valley, Utah. A regular contributor to BBC’s Business Matters podcast, Allie is also a frequent moderator at major conferences such as SXSW. Before joining Fortune, she covered Amazon and Meta at Yahoo Finance and helped produce Emmy-nominated PBS Frontline business documentaries, including Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover and The Power of the Fed. A graduate of The University of Chicago and New York University, Allie currently resides in Los Angeles.
You can find Allie on her socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-garfinkle1/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/agarfinks
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[02:01] Art
[09:39] Competition
[17:49] Paleontology
[18:14] Allie’s Tiki mugs
[22:49] How has VC evolved?
[29:41] Evaluating risk
[43:04] Why is it important for VCs to stay in touch?
[47:10] Are there reliably good investors?
[53:09] Young GPs in market
[54:58] How useful is education that come via public talks?
[57:50] Does your niche fund size make sense for the market?
[1:01:16] Is there too much venture capital?
[01:05:24] How much of VC is art vs science?
[1:07:18] What’s going on in Allie’s world?
[1:09:45] Post-credit scene: Receipts
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Term Sheet
- Fortune
- Term Sheet Podcast
- Round Table Pizza
- LEGOLAND
- Formula1
- Star Wars
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Georges Doriot
- Arthur Rock
- Don Valentine
- Sequoia Capital
- Bill Draper
- “How whaling ventures in the 1800s shaped venture capital as we know it” by Allie Garfinkle
- a16z
- Benjamin Ehrlich
- First Momentum Capital
- “Our Risk Framework for Backing Emerging VCs” by Benjamin Ehrlich and me
- “Why Trust is Built from the Small Things” with Benjamin Ehrlich
- Brandon Sanderson
- Creating Proactive, Relatable, and Capable Characters: Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Lecture #5 (2025) — where Brandon talks about flaws, limitations, and restrictions
- Batman
- Joker
- Two-Face
- “Gratitude and Deal Flow” on Cup of Zhou
- NVCA (National Venture Capital Association)
- Larry Ellison
- Steve Jobs
- Homebrew Computer Club
- Bill Gates
- Homebrew
- Hunter Walk
- Satya Patel
- Mike Maples Jr.
- Harry Stebbings
- 20VC
- OpenAI
- John Felix
- “How Many Exceptions Are Too Many?” with John Felix
- Vijen Patel
- The 81 Collection
- “81% of America is Underfunded” with Vijen Patel and Grady Buchanan
- Kevin Kelly
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
I’m intentionally keeping this section void of the things that I said since I hate the idea of quoting myself.
“Part of the point of this [investing job] is that you want to be anonymously, asymmetrically correct. And you can’t necessarily be that by saying or doing the same thing as everyone else. That being said, the worst nightmare for a VC is that no one wants to back a company they’ve backed.” — Allie Garfinkle
“If it eventually doesn’t become consensus, you were wrong.” — Allie Garfinkle