The Street in San Francisco Where Billion Dollar Deals Happen

0:01[music]

0:06The future is already here. It's not evenly distributed.

0:17[music] We are standing right now within 50 m of Excel 25 billion, Founders Circle Capital 1.3 billion, Thomvest 750 million. That's small for here, but big for Europe. Lightspeed Ventures at 40 billion under management. And these VCs are literally on this very street. Yes. And Lightspeed is actually in the building that we're going to. Yes, we're going into the Lightspeed building. They also have a cafe that's famous for business deals. This is where we're going now. Yes, a coffee is an iconic institution almost already. Also a VC case if I'm not mistaken. It is. It is a great VC case. It is where deals happen cuz you just show up there and literally

1:00everyone there is making deals. Everyone is either a VC or a founder and it's all happening in this very place. They're all on this street. That's why they just walk down [music] and go to the next door coffee place. And this is where we're going now. And that's where they meet their founders, meet their investors. It's a great place. You could potentially just go there on your own as a founder and just listen around and you would meet some VCs that are here for their meetings. So everyone, this is Gabriel. He's an investor with Lobster Capital. Tell us a little bit more

1:32[music] about what you do. Yeah, sure. At Lobster Capital we're a local VC investing exclusively in Y Combinator startups. And most of you probably know, but for those who don't, YC is the biggest, most famous incubator here in San Francisco. Incubated companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox. So we're very close to that community. We invest

1:53exclusively with YC startups here in SF. And how far is YC from here? YC from here is just a couple minutes from we we measure things in Waymo here. So, it's a less than 10-minute Waymo from here in the dark patch. Very close. But here, this area is Soma, South of Market. And uh this is where not only all the VCs are, especially on this street, but a lot of the startups as well. [music] After YC, they find office space, and they often all gather right here. The guy we just walked by had a South Park Commons logo on his shirt, which is another great incubator. He was I don't know where he

2:27went, but he was just sitting there, and he has the logo. So, you know, we just walked past a guy who's probably incubating startups, investing in startups right there. It's all happening within a couple blocks of here. Exactly. And you [music] know, we could go to any people here in this park and ask them what they're talking about. Odds are, very likely they're actually talking about investing in a startup, raising a round, or some

2:49VC stuff.

2:58This is Lightspeed right there, okay? And then look where we are. This is the coffee place, okay? Right there. Like, you couldn't be any closer. They just walk out of here and go have meetings with founders right there. Like, there's no closer thing than this. [music]

3:23[music]

3:30[music] So, what brought you to the Bay Area, San Francisco, Silicon Valley? Well, I'm from Europe, and I started messing with European startups, only to realize that US startups had more potential, more velocity, bigger exits. And in the US, it's actually here. It's like, you know, 90% of the market is here in the Bay Area and in San Francisco. So, it's like the Champions League, if you know, if we're talking to European LPs, you could play football in your small club, but if you want to play in the big league, this is where you got to be. So, you know, I started as a visitor coming in and out,

4:04but there there's so much happening here. It goes so much faster. If you're not here, whenever you go home, you're missing out on some stuff. So, finally I decided I made the move. You have you have to be here full-time if you want to capture everything that's going on. And it's streets like this where we're on now where is all this like billions under management are situated where the action is happening, right? It's crazy because compared to a European city, San Francisco is pretty big in terms of size, but where people actually hang out, where the business is happening, is very small. It's a couple of blocks

4:35around us and especially this this street, but you know, you walk 5-10 minutes in any direction and you'll be at the office of 90% of the startups of the city. They all congregate here and so the density is absolutely crazy. You literally meet people you know in the street. Like you cross the street and across from you is just someone that you know. It happens all the time. It's pretty insane. I haven't seen that anywhere else. So, you would say making

5:00the move was totally worth it for you? 100%. Now I only invest in YC startups. I don't invest anywhere else. So, you know, in US startups I should say, YC more specifically. So, I don't even look at European deal flow anymore. That's [music] how convinced I am. It's a probably an an extreme stance, right? Not everyone has to do that and there are still some great companies being built in Europe, but yes, it's been a tremendous move. It's paying off hugely and I think in the next 20 years it's going to continue to pay off. You know, it's very interesting. The best founders in the world, not all of them, but a lot

5:33of them, they have one dream, one ambition is to come here in San Francisco. They don't dream of coming in to you know, moving to London, moving to Paris, moving to Switzerland, or even moving to New York. They're dreaming of moving to San Francisco. So, it's a magnet for talent and everyone congregates here. and even founders from Europe who want to stay in Europe, they come here once in a while to see what's going on. Yeah. So, I spent a couple days here now and of course we talk about AI in Europe, but it feels like AI is different here. Like,

6:01how would you describe it? I think AI in Europe is where San Francisco was two, three years ago. We always say, "Hey, you know, the US are ahead of us." Usually we used to say 10 years, Silicon Valley is 10 years ahead of of Europe. Maybe because we're such a connected world and and AI is moving so quickly, maybe San Francisco is just two years ahead on AI, but two years in the AI world like is a lot. [music] Like every week in AI there's so much stuff happening. So, people here are pushing the boundaries. People here are innovating at a crazy pace and most companies in Europe are still trying AI,

6:37implementing pilots. Most companies in the Valley have adopted AI, but you have entire, you know, new segments, entire segments of it being built AI native from the ground up. So, it's moving much quickly. It's adopting, you know, technology faster, but this technology is actually built here and it's going to be used in Europe next year or in a few months. So, I always think of this quote. I have a lot of European LPs, investors in my fund and they tell me, "You live in the future." And I always think of this quote, "The future is already here. It's not evenly distributed." So, this is one of the

7:08most advanced cities on Earth. It's pretty cool to live in the future. So, I mean, and if you don't want to move here, you can come and visit us. I plan on doing so. How would you say did moving here change the way you invest? I probably would say that the way I invested here is what made me move. So, it's sort of the other way around, but what you realize in this city is that there's no limits. You know, Europeans we have, I think all of us, I had for sure, limits in your mind of, "Oh, you know, a big company maybe is a a unicorn at a billion." But like

7:38here in SF, a billion is small. You want 10 billion or you actually want a 100 billion [music] exit. And so, you realize here this is a city of abundance. You meet someone in the street randomly. This this person probably has, you know, millions of dollars of personal investments, angel checks in startups, has a friends who works at OpenAI and Anthropic who have, you know, again millions and millions of of salary. So, the upside here is unlimited. You're literally inventing the technology for the entire world. You know, everything we use, YouTube was invented here. Facebook was invented here. LinkedIn is just around LinkedIn is around there. Like every technology

8:15you can imagine was invented again within a few kilometers from here or miles we should say from here. Even when you think of the singers, all the singers, the music we're listening to and the movies we're watching, they're here in California. It's not SF, it's LA, but they're in California. If you think of all the Disney movies we grew up with, they're here. So, we're this small part of the world has such a huge influence on all of us. And this is

8:36where people come to invent the future. So, you could invent the next Facebook, the next LinkedIn. You know, Waymo was invented here. And [music] you know, Waymo now is everywhere in London. It's everywhere in 10 cities in the US. It has such a tremendous like it will change everything. Once you take a Waymo, you understand that it will change everything. It was invented here first. And I think our kids will not even remember that people used to drive cars. It's like for us, if you're going on a horse [music] with a carriage, like we we've never done that. It's like from the from the

9:03antiquities. So, this is the same here. It's unlimited and it's just maximum [music] upside and you can actually have a meaningful impact on the world. It's very It's very amazing. It feels good. Okay, this is great example. So, we literally found this out. And it's been we turned the camera off what? 15 seconds ago. And here's someone that I was with earlier today at an

9:24And we just met today. And she's here. Does it happen to you a lot here? Do you come here a lot? I actually don't come to this spot a lot, but I do say I run into the same people a lot. And that That a massive event, right? It just has happened we were at the same high top table and we're at the same blue bottle. But this is also South Park and a lot of people

9:40come here, so. Exactly. That's the point of the thing. This is the place. So, one encounter and let's count. We're going to meet more people today. It's amazing. So good to see you. So, we've learned a lot since we [music] met on Monday last week for the first time. Thank you for showing me around. I'm taking all these lessons with me back to Europe and hopefully we can implement some of this stuff back in

10:02Europe and learn from the best out here. You know, entrepreneurship is going to happen everywhere. There's a lot of great entrepreneurship in Europe, but yes, I believe Silicon Valley has somehow perfected the the methodology. So, I think I advise all European founders to come here, observe, see how it's done. You know, you're very welcome to to come here and uh it's you know, it's far from perfect, but on the entrepreneurship level it works quite well. Um so, it's an exciting place and

10:27I hope you come visit us someday. Perfect. And with [music] that, YouTube has determined that the video you're seeing on the screen right now is perfect for you, so make sure you click that, watch that, and also give that one a thumbs up. And subscribe. [music]

10:44[music]