Drive Capital

Turner Novak 🍌🧢 Verified account @TurnerNovak · Aug 27

New @ThePeelPod with Chris at @DriveCapital

Chris left Sequoia in 2012 to start Drive in Columbus, Ohio on a single bet: the best companies in America are getting built outside Silicon Valley. And almost nobody's funding them.

Timestamps:
0:00 America is the best emerging market on Earth
8:13 Why this couldn't have happened pre-2006
10:48 Top lessons from 10 years at Sequoia
14:17 Why the "meeting factory" model fails
21:42 Searching for vacuums
24:51 Sequoia passed on a company 10 miles too far
29:37 Greece's GDP equals Detroit's
34:34 The biggest tech companies aren't in SF
40:28 223 meetings to raise Fund 1
44:27 Turning one fund into a product catalog
48:47 The day his biggest LP pulled out
52:08 Fundraising is a persistence game
57:36 Returning $500M in a single week
59:56 Only 12 companies hit $50B in 20 years
1:01:29 Why Drive owns 30%, not 10%
1:05:03 Returns over logos, the carry math
1:10:00 Mindset of VC's outside SF
1:14:19 Being early is the same as being wrong
1:15:54 How AI unlocks boring, giant markets
1:19:22 Investing in catalysts, not sectors or geo
1:25:35 3,500 firms raised, 100 survived
1:31:33 OpenAI won't eat every other company
1:37:46 Compete with yesterday's version of yourself

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Andrew Lonsberry Verified account @AndrewLonsberry · Aug 6

Path has signed a $600M+ agreement with @wearehii (part of the $900M HII HYPR project).

When I started Path eight years ago, I believed AI and robotics could give the world abundant skilled labor, helping people build the things that matter.

Stronger infrastructure. A revitalized industrial base. The ships, factories, and critical systems our country depends on.

Today is a major step toward that vision.

In this agreement we'll deliver not only welding, but also dexterous assembly, enabling raw components to be turning into finished products. Unlocking throughput that was previously impossible, and unthinkable, without physical AI.

Path was never just a welding company. The goal was always physical AI for all manufacturing and excited to take that next step at scale.

Time to keep building.

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Landon Verified account @landon20s · Jul 30

Hosted 200 founders and investors last week for a startup showcase

On our rooftop

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