February 19, 2024 • 42 mins
Prepare to be whisked away on a journey through the frontiers of synthetic biology and deep tech with James Wang of Creative Ventures VC. Our latest Ultra High Network podcast unveils the seismic shifts in the pharmaceutical industry and the vital role living organisms play in the advent of new drug creation. James and I will walk you through the intricate landscape of healthcare economics, discussing the hefty toll of healthcare costs on entrepreneurs and exploring the industrial sector's innovative ways to combat labor shortages. James brings his treasure trove of knowledge in early-stage investment and shares how Creative Ventures rises to the challenges of climate change, healthcare, and demographic upheavals with cutting-edge technology.
Fasten your seatbelt for a trek across the horizon of healthcare and the socioeconomic aftershocks of medical advancements. We'll examine the burgeoning biohacking movement and its quest for proactive health optimization against the backdrop of an aging society. The conversation steers towards the quest for early disease detection and the exciting leaps in biologics, all while considering the personal weight of healthcare costs. James dissects the potential AI and robotics hold in shouldering the burden of rising labor costs and inflation, painting a picture of a future where deep tech lends a hand in reshaping our economic fabric.
Our exploration culminates in a broad look at the future of infrastructure, from the electrification of the trucking industry to the possibilities within Apple's VR endeavors and Web3. We'll scrutinize the intricacies of battery technology, essential for the shift to electric vehicles, and the role controlled environments play in perfecting autonomous vehicle tech. Including the investment prospects scattered across AI, robotics, and advanced materials. We zoom out to appreciate the overarching impact of AI-infused tools and products that will sculpt the world for the next generation, including your children will inherit. Join us for an episode that's not just about foresight but the vision to create a better tomorrow.
To Learn More About James Wang:
1. https://creativeventures.vc/
2. https://weightythoughts.com/
3. https://twitter.com/AJamesWang
To learn more about Jonathan's recession resilient mobile home park real estate Fund, as our next Fund raise is $50 million only for accredited investors: https://www.midwestparkcapital.com/
To learn more about Jonathan's highest level business growth consulting and fractional CMO services. And upcoming group zoom entrepreneur masterminds:
https://www.revenueascend.com/consulting/
Sign up to get on the list for the World's Most Exclusive Social Networking App: https://www.prestigesocialapp.com/
New Kava beverage, it's buzzy not boozy:
https://www.drinkwowipop.com/
To those looking to potential exit or sell their business or talk about potential business roll up partnerships:
https://www.businesscashout.com/
https://linktr.ee/jonathantuttle
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Wang (00:00):
in terms of pharma.
People are familiar that pharmagoes out there and basically
tries to do tons and tons ofdifferent experiments and tries
to figure out specificallyscreening out drugs.
But nowadays actually, a lot ofthe most interesting drugs are
not traditional chemistry,they're actually synthetic
biology.
We're, say, yeast viruses,other things, cell-based
therapies.
You have to have a living thingcreate the drugs.
(00:22):
That's super new and superexpensive, so there's a lot of
technologies to bring that downin cost as well.
Jonathan Tuttle (00:29):
Welcome to the Ultra High Network podcast,
which is a global community ofthe most successful and their
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We want our families toflourish, collaborate and create
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This podcast is a trustedresource to learn from each
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I'm the host, jonathan Tuttle,the founder at Midwest Park
(00:53):
Capital, a boutique mobile homepark.
Real Estate Fund Revenue Send,a leading digital consulting and
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Business Cash Out, a boutiqueM&A firm focused on
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(01:13):
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Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to the Ultra HighNetwork podcast.
Today I have a fantastic guest,james Wing of the Creative
(01:34):
Ventures VC.
Welcome to the podcast.
James Wang (01:37):
Thanks so much, Jonathan.
I look forward to having a good, great conversation and happy
to be here.
Jonathan Tuttle (01:42):
Awesome, thank you.
So yeah, we're just talkingbefore the show.
Can I give us a littlebackground about your company?
I like you just describing yourown terms and words.
James Wang (01:49):
Thanks, Sure, totally so.
Creative Ventures is anearly-stage deep tech fund, so
what we do is something that'sactually the way I've described
it nowadays a little more akinto the way venture used to work,
sort of, in its early days.
A lot of what we invest in isnot software.
It is AI, robotics, syntheticbiology, advanced materials, a
(02:11):
lot of these frontiertechnologies that have a lot of
potential, especially within,say, climate change areas, areas
around healthcare costs, areasaround demographic change in
terms of aging populations andlabor.
So we tackle a lot of these bigproblems that we see as
existential in cases forhumankind and just some of the
(02:32):
biggest challenges we face, anduse a lot of these deep
technologies to go after them.
And the distinction for us isthat a lot of these technologies
tend not to make that muchmoney up front.
They tend to have prettysignificant IP barriers.
So you can't just look at it inthe sense of, oh, a SaaS
company.
You can kind of look at ARR asit steps up round by round and
(02:52):
basically see a nice steadyregression and see whether or
not they're hitting theirmetrics.
These kinds of things.
It's a little bit more all ornothing.
We recently had a company gofrom zero revenue to over a
billion in the course of 16months.
So it's a little lumpier, letme say, in terms of that, and my
own background and thebackground of our partners kind
(03:13):
of goes towards that.
Myself as part of the coreinvestment team at Bridgewater
Associates some background therein terms of investment and ops,
and I was also at Google X.
I still am a reviewer.
I did grad work in AI andwhatnot and pretty much all of
our folks have that.
So PhDs as well as previousventure business investing,
things like that.
Jonathan Tuttle (03:33):
So yeah, that sounds crazy.
That's not.
That's kind of like the cryptokind of rocket ship in some moon
space.
That's in the what is your, bythe way?
Just curious.
James Wang (03:45):
It's in the battery space.
But that's the thing.
It's like you either don't haveanything at all or some of the
big manufacturers immediatelyput in orders, in which case
these are all large.
So if you imagine, say not thatwe invest in this, but say
aerospace or something right,it's like you're either not on
the map at all or you're gettingmassive orders.
So a lot of deep tech kind oflooks like that just in terms of
(04:08):
profile.
Jonathan Tuttle (04:09):
Yeah, so it's, yeah, sounds super competitive,
but you just have to have theright light relationships and
you guys do all the duediligence in the back end.
So let's talk about so you alsodo agriculture and healthcare.
What are some of the like?
What are some of the industriesyou work in?
What do you see kind of likethe trends going forward and the
sharing going forward?
James Wang (04:27):
Yeah, totally.
I mean, our overall thesis isbasically around a lot of big
macro and secular trends, soaging population is bringing
much a core one.
So I mentioned a little bit interms of labor costs.
We're seeing that especiallyacutely right now.
I think Apollo had a reallynice chart in terms of the US,
anyway, having six millionmissing native-born workers or
(04:50):
something like that, but thishas been a long time coming.
This is just demographics inthe sense of post-baby boomer
sort of as you're going downBasically a few young people, a
lot more old people, tooversimplify in terms of it.
So you have less manual laborto throw at things.
So AI, robotics, stuff like thattends to have a really
interesting effect in terms oftrying to go after it and
(05:12):
obviously for this audience,everyone's very interested in
interest rates, inflation andstuff like that.
But we have a thesis and we'vebeen talking about this for a
while, although people arepaying attention to it more.
If you look at where inflationis coming from, it is not
commodity markets.
In fact, that's been helpfuljust in terms of dampening
inflation with how muchcommodity markets have pulled
(05:33):
back.
China's collapse like a soufflehas also helped that to some
degree as well but it's reallylabor costs that are holding
that up.
So we have a big secularproblem and we sort of have to
plug the gap somewhere.
And again, that's where AIrobotics comes in.
Healthcare costs a lot ofsynthetic biology not AI and
other things too but a lotcheaper.
(05:54):
Figuring out how to get cheaperdrugs out there, figuring out
how to do diagnostics moreeasily a lot of these different
challenges are not reallytackled that well by traditional
technologies.
And then climate change you geta lot of stuff like carbon
capture or whatnot, but there'smuch more brass tacks things out
there, like batteries, forexample.
So in terms of batterytechnologies, we need a lot of
(06:15):
improvement in terms of them ifwe're actually going to see the
kind of electrification thatgovernments are trying to push.
Jonathan Tuttle (06:21):
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
One of the interesting downmanis mobile home parks, and so
there's the 10,000 baby boomersand that whole industry is
behind it's laggard because it'sbeen kind of overlooked, and
the whole industry.
You add a little technology toit, just even payment online.
It's like a big deal Justadding operational efficiencies
using tech, more basic techcompared to what you do.
(06:42):
And actually I'm friends withEric Florey.
He's from Beyond Imagination,the CEO.
He does AI robotics for seniors.
His focus is seniors inhealthcare.
You might even know him.
He's out in California as well.
It's fascinating in thoseindustries where it's going
because, like I said, that'sjust a huge shortage of people
tackling those problems andthere's a lot of opportunity and
(07:04):
most people are looking for theeasy wins.
But those are like you said.
You find these things are thelong-term solutions are huge
home runs if you find the rightones.
So, yeah, I totally understandthe baby boomer demographic and
adding the technology, the AIand robotics to it, so pretty
fascinating stuff.
You mentioned the carbon.
Are you familiar?
(07:24):
What is that?
Elon Musk funded something itwas like.
I can't think of a name of it,but it's like a program he has
like a contest for definedsolutions for Are you familiar
with that?
I can't remember the name of it.
I know he donated from thisfoundation like $100 or $120
million, but you know, familiarwith that.
James Wang (07:42):
I'm blanking on it a little bit, but I know the one
you're talking about.
But he and a bunch of the otherbillionaires also threw in
breakthrough energy ventures aswell, which is itself a venture
fund, and also sort of took upthe charge from some of it in
order to go after a lot of thesebig problems.
So, yeah, there's a lot ofinitiatives that him and Jeff
(08:03):
Bezos and Bill Gates, and one onand cascade and whatever are
all going after.
So there's quite a fewinitiatives out there.
It helps do some of the climateboom for a while, though the
big challenge there is like, ifyou aren't able to actually get
something that's scalable andeconomical, it's going to be
hard to actually keep it going,especially once the money runs
(08:24):
out.
Jonathan Tuttle (08:25):
Yeah, and it was one of your core industries.
You want to give us a littlebackground.
What you see is the problems,because obviously it's one of
the biggest things that we allneed is like one of the
hierarchy of needs.
Maslowe's, I say, has those,but Maslowe's hierarchy needs
added culture and the foodsupply in the US.
What are some of the issues youguys are tackling and how do
(08:48):
you solve in those problems?
James Wang (08:50):
Yeah, food supply.
The funny thing is it'sactually mostly labor that is
the challenge within agriculture.
I mean, you have various thingsin terms of monocultures, you
got to like renew certain things, but all of that is kind of
cost to some degree.
Labor is not just cost.
It's actually become a prettybig bottleneck in terms of
actually just getting enoughpeople in the fields to do the
picking, to do the other things.
(09:11):
I think a lot of folks whenthey think about agriculture,
they think about big mechanizedfarms or whatever, and while
that is true, a lot of differentcrops especially, say, fruits
and other things, require humandexterity to be able to go out
there and pick.
So, surprisingly, most ofagriculture is still fairly low
(09:32):
tech, just in terms of themanual dexterity and other
things needed.
We have a big labor shortage,like we were talking about
before.
The costs have gone up and a lotof times within agriculture you
end up just wasting a lot oflabor too.
Like what if you send people outinto the fields and other
things just aren't ready to bepicked or there's dispersion in
(09:52):
terms of where it is in thefield, so then you send them to
the wrong place.
There's a lot of inefficiencieswith it and there's a lot of
challenges with it, and becauseof that we see a lot of
different bottlenecks,especially again within labor
costs.
There's actually been kind ofan interesting trend within the
industry as well, where theNetherlands and some of these
other Nordic countries that havefigured out how to do more
(10:15):
tight greenhouse, mechanizedfarming kind of things.
They've actually taken off inother places too, just because
labor shortages have gotten soextreme that people are actually
looking at different options,especially within, say, higher
and organic or whatever markets.
So lots of opportunity there.
There's other issues that goalong with it, especially
(10:35):
climate change related, just interms of moisture, soil et
cetera, but the big thing rightnow that everyone's talking
about within agriculture tendsto be labor cost.
Jonathan Tuttle (10:46):
Yeah, that makes sense.
A lot of people.
We're in the generation nowwhere people just want to create
tic-tacs and have an e-comstore and said, oh, they don't
want to actually go to work.
Well, that's a different worldwe're in right now.
What do you see?
Some of the challenges andopportunities in the healthcare
realm?
Obviously, if you're focusingon baby boomers and I know right
now the big thing too you'reseeing well, you're in
(11:07):
California, so you seem like thebiohacking movement is becoming
a thing.
Obviously, it's probablydifferent in your industry, but
healthcare is becoming soprominent in the US for just a
multitude of ways, whether it bethe people's insurance policy
or people want to be biohackers.
What do you see as achallenging opportunity?
Is what you guys are focusingon?
James Wang (11:28):
Well, you mentioned it's becoming more and more
prominent, right, it's becomingmore and more prominent across
the entire world, basicallyhealthcare, leading up a larger
share of total GDP.
Essentially, I mean you wouldhave said developed countries,
right, because you alwaysthought about Europe and Japan
and whatever in Korea all agingthe US is actually one of the
younger ones on the chart there,but China and some of these
(11:51):
other in Southeast Asia youactually have some of that
phenomena too, where thepopulations are aging quite a
bit, especially as livingstandards go up and birth rates
go down.
So the big challenge here ischronic disease.
That is essentially what isdriving most of the costs there,
and once you actually get downto that and look at it, it's
(12:12):
like okay, it's a lot ofdiseases of aging, which is why
some of the biohacker movement Ithink is interesting, right,
because you're kind of takingthe frontiers of, oh, how do you
deal with anti-aging andwhatnot?
A lot of that boils down to ina lot of people's minds it's
like, oh, it's rich peopletrying to get younger or
whatever.
But no, no, If you think aboutit, aging like what is the
biggest predictor of, say,cancer, heart disease, all of
(12:35):
these other things?
Like, normally you'd exclude itfrom the regression, but if you
put it in there like age isactually probably the best
predictor of it and part of itmakes sense, right, chronic
disease you kind of need timefor these things to come up, but
age is a big factor in howcancer, heart disease, all of
these diseases of age and wealthin the case of people talking
(12:56):
about it, but really age comesinto play and that is really
what's weighing down the systemdiabetes, metabolic disease,
heart disease, cancer.
So we are, we see a lot ofopportunities within the space
to be able to help bring downcosts.
There's more and moregovernments, including the US,
are basically trying to pushcosts somewhere because the
(13:17):
government, within the US systemand many other systems more
directly, is kind of the payerof last resort.
So if people run out of moneyor whatever, they show up in ERs
or whatever, the governmentultimately essentially puts the
bill.
It goes through various layersbut it kind of falls on the
government at the end.
So there's been a lot ofsystems trying to push some of
(13:38):
the costs more onto thehospitals, more onto the
insurance company, like tryingto push it away, and a lot of
these entities are starting totry to figure out ways of trying
to contain those costs andbasically make it better Part of
it's business model.
But a lot of it is also if youcan catch some of these things
early, if you can start doingmanaged care early, if you can
start trying to use different,say biologics and synthetic
(14:01):
biology to create better drugsto actually manage these
conditions better.
It's sort of a whole like allof the above kind of choice in
terms of trying to actually bendthis curve for healthcare costs
and how much it's actuallyimpacting the total economy.
So there's sort of opportunityall over the place.
But we really like diagnostics,just in terms of making
(14:23):
diagnostics easier within thehospital space and actually fit
the business model as well.
This may be a longerconversation, but healthcare
incentives are interesting,complicated and in some ways
kind of messed up, so you got tofigure out the right way to
actually go about it.
But diagnostics would be greatif you can get it adopted and
you have to figure out the rightbusiness model for it.
(14:45):
But also biologics, since Ithink in terms of pharma people
are familiar that pharma goesout there and basically tries to
do tons and tons of differentexperiments and tries to figure
out specifically screening outdrugs.
But nowadays actually a lot ofthe most interesting drugs are
not traditional chemistry,they're actually synthetic
biology.
Where, say, yeast viruses,other things, cell-based
(15:07):
therapies?
You have to have a living thingcreate the drugs.
That's super new and superexpensive.
So there's a lot oftechnologies to bring that down
in cost as well.
Jonathan Tuttle (15:16):
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating stuff Like
what I was trying to live withyou before.
Is you probably familiarbecause he's a VC former VC
Brian Johnson with his twomillion a year?
But I've been like into thebiohacking movement for like 10
years before because I was inthe fitness and a lot of stuff.
It's kind of segued over tolike healthy eating and I was,
like you know, just kind offascinating.
We're prevented about this andbasically and trying to do
(15:39):
self-diagnosis with data backingit up and doing some being your
own kind of scientists andtesting on biology.
So yeah, it's prettyfascinating what you're
literally to.
Like some of the healthcaresystems are messed up in the US,
like it's you know some of thebills for an average, you know.
If you don't, if you're anentrepreneur, for example and I
have friends who areentrepreneurs, I love a family
that are paying like two orthree grand a month for health
(16:00):
insurance and the 40s, it's likeyou know it's pretty crazy, you
know yeah.
James Wang (16:05):
What do you?
Jonathan Tuttle (16:07):
I was just saying what do you in terms of
like as we go into like?
I'm going through yourdifferent industries here
because it's like it's kind offun to see the spectrum of
things you work on now.
Industrial, is that more isyour industrial, more like for
e-com stores?
Like industrial storage, isthat what it is?
Or industrial in what regard?
James Wang (16:26):
Unless it's more like it goes into the labor
shortage side.
So it's more logistics and alot of the different things that
go into there.
Food services a little bit,though again that's more just
general labor.
But a lot of industrial tendsto be logistics or, say, robot
(16:46):
safety within no a lot of timesactually logistics or
manufacturing type of settings.
Jonathan Tuttle (16:52):
Okay, and you think we'll keep on the Elon
Musk thing here.
Do you think there's going tobe kind of like Tesla trucks
doing like you know, because Iknow there's a shortage in the
US or there's a?
It goes back to like a lot ofpeople don't want to do manual
labor.
It goes back for your talkalluded to, like they didn't
want to do the.
It's usually, you know, peoplecome into the country.
(17:13):
They want to do it to get thefirst jobs but like to do the
picked the fruits.
And then you mentioned you knowthere's a shortage of people
wanting to do stuff and helpingme solve that issue.
Do you foresee, like you know,the biggest issue comes down to
infrastructure?
I think you mentioned in thebeginning was like with the
batteries.
Do you foresee in the futurethat there will be, you know, in
the next 20 years they'll belaying just on the charge of
(17:35):
battery for the trucks to go.
Is that to make a reality, tohelp to reduce the shortage of
truck drivers, or what do youkind of see in that regard?
I'm just curious.
James Wang (17:43):
Yeah, I mean, the easier thing to basically
predict out and expect isusually the less infrastructure
stuff.
It's kind of an unfortunatething, but if you look at it,
the US just it isn't that goodat building big projects anymore
.
So if you're imagining like asystem where it's super
efficient, with a lot of theselike charging stations all over
(18:03):
the place or maybe even wirelesscharging or there's a lot of
dreams in terms of it.
But the usual better bet isbasically the thing that is most
incremental and you can kind ofhit and will work Right.
So you're talking about Teslatrucks or electric truck,
electric vehicles in terms oftrucking, right, and that's
usually becoming a fairly bigthing because those are usually
(18:23):
pretty short haul drives.
So the total battery capacityis not that big of a deal, but
the maintenance cost and thecheaper maintenance cost to say,
electric vehicles, so long asthey last long enough to pay
themselves off, because once thebattery goes bad, that's
basically the entire damnvehicle at that cost.
As long as you can actuallykeep that battery life enough to
(18:46):
sort of pay it off, you canactually save quite a bit in
terms of trucking just by goingto electric vehicles, let alone
AVs at that point.
But there are also interestinginitiatives in terms of AVs
within that environment.
Because the thing that I'vementioned to folks is like, if
you think about why autonomousvehicles aren't out there like
if someone pushes you on that,it pushes me on that question,
(19:06):
or wherever there's two answers.
One is, well, they are in thesense of we've been able to
actually do a lot of this AVstuff for years.
Right, if you go back to theX-Prize stuff and everything,
it's like, well, we've been ableto do this a long time.
Yeah, but on the other hand,the big problem is the
exceptions.
It's like you have the cruisevehicle dragging a passenger and
(19:27):
dragging a pedestrian andeverything in San Francisco and
that big thing that had come outthat put cruises off the road.
I mean, the thing about AVsautonomous vehicles is the
exceptions to the rule.
So the more uncontrolledvariables you throw into things,
say like a bunch of pedestriansand other people running around
everywhere, the harder it is.
(19:49):
But if you can have reallycontrolled environment slave,
you're just going from warehouseto warehouse on like pretty
empty roads or whatever.
No, avs can actually do thatpretty well because
predictability and everything'smuch higher and the big
challenge is not the 95% of thetime.
The big challenge is the last5% of the time.
Jonathan Tuttle (20:08):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and that was what I wasup to before was the X Prize.
I couldn't think of anything.
He said that's the name of it.
Yeah, the X Prize is like,basically every year they do the
contest.
It helps solve like world,global issues that are kind of
huge, huge scale basically, andfun about volunteers.
So yeah, that's how I put thename of that.
So what are you guys?
(20:29):
A few adventures.
What are you guys focused on asa certain specific industry, or
focused on investing right now,or what do you kind of like see
as a good opportunity in thenext couple of years there?
James Wang (20:41):
Yeah, it's pretty much still all of them.
So AI, robotics, syntheticbiology, advanced materials
because of the big problem areas, I would say that we probably
are leaning out of AI slightlyat the moment, just because
there's a lot of hype in thearea and every type in the
industry and everything and alot of these companies and I've
written quite a bit about thison my end it's like a lot of
(21:04):
these companies don't reallyhave a true business model.
They don't have differentiatedmodels, they don't have
differentiated data and they'rehoping that one day they'll be
able to charge enough to make upfor their compute costs.
And it's like, as far as hopeis a strategy is concerned,
that's not really a goodbusiness model for a startup.
So a lot of AI stuff isactually going to have pretty
(21:25):
challenging issues going forward.
There are still reallyinteresting companies within the
space, but they have to havesome sort of actual edge within
the area and some defensibilityto keep others from actually
coming into it.
But there's still a lot ofinteresting things, like I said,
from the synthetic biologyplatform to being able to make
biologics for cheaper, as wellas just advanced materials,
which is just merely explodingat the moment.
(21:47):
Again, the battery technologies, cell membrane separators for
battery cells, these differentelectrode technologies like
battery management systems.
There's a lot of stuff therethat just is super needed, super
important, makes a lot of money, but is kind of
underappreciated or underseenbecause it takes a little bit of
(22:09):
knowledge to actually thinkabout it and really understand
this is something needed, andthen you need some level of
knowledge to validate it.
So, if anything, a lot of theseareas are getting somewhat
underfunded, which is why we'reparticularly interested in them
right now.
Jonathan Tuttle (22:22):
Yeah, I love that because I remember the
whole VC Web 3 was like thething in 2022, 2023, and then
FTX.
And then all of a sudden,chatttv came out and then that
was like.
It was like a teeter-tatter.
All of a sudden, everyone'swhat's Web 3, crypto, FTX, what
is AI?
(22:43):
Everything's going to AI.
That's right.
James Wang (22:45):
All the folks who were at the crypto conference.
It just changed the assign andjust put up the AI conference.
Jonathan Tuttle (22:52):
Yeah, AI software for whatever they can
set it up on.
First, I remember that it waseven on Twitter and Rex now.
But it's pretty fascinating too, because you're not going to
see the valuations that comedown, obviously, but you're not
going to see what I've seen kindof sentiment on Twitter or what
Rex was that you alluded to.
They're not going to be able tobuild unicorns and building on
(23:15):
it it's going to be because theAI moves so fast and you have
the biggest in the Microsoft andGoogle.
They're going to just acquirethese, as they had 10, 20
million dollar valuations, andjust to roll it into their
software, into their ecosystem.
You're not going to have thesebig valuations.
People are creating these, theyget it funded and a lot of
these won't be.
There's no competitive, there'sno mode around it.
(23:39):
I agree with that sentiment, butit's just kind of funny just to
see the sentiment on Twitter.
That's the year it was so soonas FTX collapsed.
It's literally the same monthand all of a sudden you chat to
GTP and I'm like, oh yeah, it'sbeen around, I've had this
technology.
It's basically just moreobviously, but the technology
has been around and it justteeter-tattered, yeah exactly.
James Wang (24:01):
I mean.
One of the challenges is a lotof people think that AI is
software.
Now, obviously it's softwarefrom a definitional sense.
But the thing is it doesn'tmatter that you literally use
software to implement it, itmatters what the business model
looks like.
You can't look at AI and saythis looks like a SaaS company
because technically they aresoftware and technically they
sell it as a service likeChatGBT.
(24:24):
You have to spend a lot of moneyto get the data, even if you're
just scraping it from theinternet legally or illegally,
Hard to say.
But even if you're justscraping it from the internet,
lots of money to go do that.
Then you have to spend themoney to train the thing, which
is a bunch of money upfrontagain before you ever serve a
single customer.
Then, even worse, once youactually start serving customers
(24:44):
, inference.
So each query also costs a lotof money.
If you're actually talkingabout what kind of business this
looks like, it actually looks alittle bit more like a modern
and fabulous semiconductorcompany more than it does a
software company.
If you're going in and hopingwell, I'm going to get SaaS or
software like margins off ofthis thing and all I need to do
(25:09):
is scale it, you're in for apretty unpleasant surprise,
because once you get to the endof it, you realize no, my
marginal cost is not actuallyzero with an AI company.
I spent a bunch of money tobasically get there and find
that out.
Jonathan Tuttle (25:22):
Yeah, it's the, the burn rates astronomical.
Then on top of that you'rethrowing into a sass.
At least you could say hey,we're acquiring customer, here's
the lifetime value or averageorder value, and you have a
hockey stick growth, and but theAI, it's like, all right, cool.
The next new AI, it's the 21.
They just customer job ship, orthe data, basically.
James Wang (25:41):
So yeah, and again, you're spending a bunch of money
to serve these queries, likethe assher.
Like big software systems costmoney.
People have high AWS bills,even for sass, but that's tiny
relative to the kind of revenuethey can bring in against each
query.
Each AI query actually costsquite a bit of money, like as
far as it goes.
Yeah, sure, it's in the senserange or whatever, but no, it's
(26:03):
in the sense range in terms ofevery single time some, like
teenager or whatever, throwssomething into Chachi tea.
It costs actually have beenquite a bit of money coming back
.
This is why and you can see thisin public in some of the 10k's
or whatnot for Google theircosts to serve each query has
been going up year by year, byyear.
So margins have actually beengetting worse and worse and
(26:24):
worse, and that's becausethey've been incorporating more
and more AI.
Do they need to?
Yes, but it's.
It's an interesting thingbecause the software business as
it used to stand, where you canround down Marginal cost to
zero, is not that way anymore,not with AI incorporated.
Jonathan Tuttle (26:42):
Yeah, I think I saw another spread me if I run,
but I saw data.
It was like I think Facebookand a and Google are acquiring
like 80% of the world's AI, orbasically data, just so they
keep their moat and creep their,keep their trillion dollar
valuations going forward.
James Wang (26:58):
So, yeah, they kind of, they kind of have to because
they can't.
They have to keep that up, andthere are one big advantage that
they have to keep themselvesalive as they spent a ton of
money on compute.
So what you got to do is leaninto that and take advantage of
that fixed cost that you dumpeda ton of money into and Ride it
all the way, right it as far asyou can.
Jonathan Tuttle (27:17):
So yeah, yes, it's just fascinating.
We're kind of trying to seeseeing what's coming word on the
street in San Francisco.
What are you seeing peoplereally excited about this year
besides AI?
Is there anything that you'rehearing that's kind of like Kind
of creeping out there that mostpeople don't know about?
I Mean.
James Wang (27:32):
I think the real thing is and it's said and kind
of like almost derogatory ways,it's like applications in AI,
because everyone likes to talkabout foundational models.
If you look at who what's in thenews, obviously chat, gbt.
If you look at what's making therounds, obviously anthropic X,
ai, these other big foundationalmodel companies.
(27:53):
But there's a lot of reallyinteresting companies being
built in applications and versusthat thing that I just said,
where your models the same andyour data is the same, if you
can actually have differentiateddata, just because your area is
kind of niche or kind ofannoying to get data for, say,
medical devices or say anythingin the physical world which adds
a ton of friction, then there'sa magic thing that happens the
(28:16):
data side is proprietary, the AIside doesn't matter, because
what you do is each year you canswitch out your AI for the
faster one that's coming alongand take advantage of the
proprietary data that you stillhave.
So it's almost like a companythat the software company that
was in the semiconductor age forthe 80s, 90s and going into the
2000s do nothing about yoursoftware and magically, every
(28:39):
year it gets better, in thesense of it gets faster, just
because the CPUs and GPUs aregetting faster.
Same way here your data is thesame, but your products getting
better, because every singleyear the AI is getting better
than able to do more with lessdata.
Jonathan Tuttle (28:54):
Yeah, that makes sense.
And Quick question because,like, if you've been in Silicon
Valley, like I, we just as thisis released, the about time we
just had the Apple VR glasses,oh, yeah it is and it kind of
ties in a couple ways because Iyou know technology inflammation
.
It reminds me a back like adecade ago of Google glasses.
(29:14):
Do you think that Apple canpull off like this has been the
biggest thing and the VC worldis?
Vr are gonna be.
Obviously you can see it maybein the medical space and doctors
and being in third, indifferent place and they could
do stuff, but like it could bean application for it.
But do you see that's gonna beApple can make a mass adopted
with the VR just because ofApple's brand, or do you think
(29:34):
it's the price point or do youthink that it's just not gonna
have lakes?
James Wang (29:40):
It.
If anyone can do it, itprobably is Apple in terms of
getting more mass adoption,because the challenge for, say,
google Glass or a lot of theseother VR Sets as they were
always niche right like you got,you had Gamers to some degree
for some of the VR stuff.
Except that's going to belimited too because there's a
lot of other platforms thatthat's kind of a Competitive
business or in terms of theconsoles platforms, mobile
(30:02):
gaming, etc.
So that's not the greatest areato go into.
Ar has real industrialapplications, as Google Glass
and some of these others foundout.
It's like hey, and alsoMicrosoft's glasses as well, or
Blanking on the name.
But Microsoft actually has apretty good platform, hollow
lens, platform, industrialapplications.
So you go around and you cansee different things and it'll
(30:24):
give you information and fordoctors and surgeons and
dentists and whatnot, it canactually come up with really
interesting Information on thefly as you're going and doing
the procedure without getting inyour way.
Really interesting stuff,important, that are really niche
and, as far as adoption goeswithin those industries and
areas, kind of slow.
So if you don't actually havesomething helping you bring down
(30:45):
that cost curve, it's not goingto become economical and it's
always going to be kind of anifty product rather than
something that's mass adopted.
Apple is going after consumersand hoping that they use this as
some sort of alternativeComputing cloud.
All spatial computing is, Ithink, the thing that they keep
saying.
Yeah, I mean I know folks whohave used it.
There are applications for it.
(31:07):
It still is kind of nichebecause it's like it's basically
like a really big screen that'skind of portable but kind of
heavy on your head, so it's afirst-generation product.
I think we're gonna have to seewhere Apple takes it.
Like the iPhone the firstiPhone was not revolutionary,
right, like it only could browsethe web and stuff and I had
(31:27):
gotten it.
But I mainly got it becausethat visual voicemail if people
remember that was the big saleselling point voicemail you can
actually like scroll through itinstead of just listening one by
one and pressing one or five orwhatever.
But the basically for thevision pro.
It's pro.
We'll have to see what thevision not pro looks like and
(31:47):
we'll have to see as Apple goesdown generations.
But I think there's a realpossibility that Apple can do it
.
If anyone can, they would,especially going after consumers
.
Jonathan Tuttle (31:57):
Yeah, but it's just fascinating with the price
point.
Like obviously says firstgeneration, we get the price
point down for average consume.
I think it's like three or fourgrand.
It's pretty steep, you know,because each iteration, even the
first iPhone, I don't think wasa thousand dollars, it's
probably 800 bucks.
You know, obviously it was 2008, preinflation or six, whatever
year it came out.
But just fascinating that whole.
(32:17):
I've just seen all the, thevideos of people like where the
world is the end is nearinitials.
People like driving in theirTesla or something like doing
like the Apple program.
James Wang (32:30):
It's just coming.
Jonathan Tuttle (32:32):
It's coming, so it's so funny.
And what are some of your kindof goals with the creative
entrance in the next couple ofyears?
Personal goals or businessgoals with the company?
James Wang (32:44):
I mean, I think the thing here is that deep tech is
only getting more and moreinteresting, because I think one
of the big challenges for theVC industry is it's not like
software companies are done,it's not like there's no
business models or extra thingsthat will come up.
Come up.
But you know, saas kind ofstarted hitting a wall even pre
COVID, just in terms ofinteresting new business models,
(33:04):
new companies.
It's never the case that you'vetried it all, but at that point
it's kind of new companystealing business, stealing
market share from old companies,old companies that also were VC
back not that long ago.
There's a lot of interest,obviously, in AI.
There's a lot of sin by others,a lot of this other stuff.
I'm just excited by the factthat a lot of these things are
(33:25):
all coming up and coming tomaturity now.
So you talked about Vision Proand other stuff.
Right, it's like AR and maybeI'll change the way that we do
things.
But if you think about it, ailike chat, gpt and stuff is not
itself a revolution.
But if AI starts designing allof our drugs, if AI starts
designing a lot of our materialssay the iPhone now the new
(33:46):
iPhone's titanium, but say thenewer iPhone that comes down
five years down the line is anAI designed because, like a
ceramic kind of blender, whatnot, that was figured out by AI.
We're going to see a lot ofthings come up in the coming
years with all of thesedifferent technologies merging
(34:08):
together and changing ourphysical world in terms of
everything that we do.
So I'm really excited aboutthat.
That's less on a personal level, though, obviously, like
business wise, that's kind of myday to day that I live and
breathe.
So really excited about all ofthat.
Yeah, just from a personallevel, just excited to see all
these things coming up.
I have a one year old and twomonths at this point and I'm
(34:31):
excited to basically help usherin a better world that she can
live in in essence.
Jonathan Tuttle (34:37):
Yeah, it's pretty fast.
Congrats on that.
And it's pretty fascinating tosee the word technology is
advanced from even a decade ago,like just, I mean a decade ago,
just like Facebook, and nowyou're.
Tech-tech wasn't around, it wasjust basically social media and
obviously, do you think webthree actually well, we're on
this conversation do you thinkweb three will eventually find
legs once everything kind ofsells down?
(34:57):
Do you think there'll beadoption for mainly for the data
component and also maybe likethe currency slash tokens?
Do you think there's going tobe legs once everything with the
regulation and the SEC and allthat going forward?
Just curious, your personalopinion.
James Wang (35:13):
Most of it.
No, there's always been like asubset that has real
applications in terms ofblockchain, having like a real
application for why you wouldneed a ledger etc.
And if you have that be public.
And there are real applicationsin terms of being able to move
money around more easily interms of cryptocurrencies and
stuff.
But just a lot of the spaceended up being taken over by.
(35:36):
Why does it work?
Well, because it's blockchainor because it's crypto, or
because it's web three, kind oflike AI.
Now, actually, if we're to saythat it's like, what business
model do you have?
What advantage do you have?
How can you ever bring costsdown?
No, don't worry about it, it'sAI.
I mean, it used to be that way.
It's like don't worry aboutit's crypto.
So a lot of the space, I think,is going to die out, but
(35:56):
happily at some point, once alot of that does die out and a
lot of the more stability comesabout, I think we will start to
see like real applications comeout, especially for blockchain,
I think, because that was sortof an underappreciated stepchild
of like the a lot of the webthree stuff.
It's like just becausecryptocurrencies took off so
much and sucked up all theoxygen in the room.
(36:18):
Basically.
Jonathan Tuttle (36:20):
Yeah, I think your state was one of the ones
that was testing on, if it'sstill doing.
I saw car titles California D&B, and so they were doing a
blockchain because there waslike a big issue with people
having exotic or luxury cars andlike they'd be some shady car
dealers and they'd re-sold thetitle a couple of times like the
money, like hey, we did it andthey threw an LLC and they are
(36:40):
in SPV and they're like oh,that's come, come find me, it's
in the Caribbean, camden Islands.
And so watching and say hey,verify, instead of being NFT,
verify the car owner is thisdealership or this person owning
it and then transfer ownershipthrough the.
James Wang (36:54):
Exactly.
I mean those cases.
Right, if you can ask thequestion why is this better than
just doing it in a database?
And like most of the web, threethings fail that question,
right.
It's like well, not really wecould have done it in a database
, but it's just blockchaininstead.
Questions like that in terms ofwell, you can prevent that, you
can publicly show people thetitle is owned by someone and
(37:15):
not transact on it multipletimes.
If you can make an answer tothat question of why isn't it
just better than theirtraditional database, you have a
real application andpotentially business there.
And if you can't which again,most of the companies end up
failing that test If you can't,then you probably don't.
Jonathan Tuttle (37:31):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Are you guys your creativeventures?
Are you guys currently raising,Are you doing a new fund, or
where are you kind of in thatrealm?
James Wang (37:39):
Yep, so we're going out into markets, since we
basically finished up ourinvestment period on the last
one, so going out for a fundthree, so excited to well.
I guess excited is the wrongword because it's apparently the
hardest, or was it one of thetoughest venture environments
that there have been in the lastdecade or so.
But at least for us we're stillseeing quite a bit of interest,
(38:01):
just because our specificindustries were less hyped
before and thus came down lessand, if anything, we're getting
more attention now.
So sort of good and bad interms of it and, yeah, excited
to sort of see how it comes upin the coming year.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:17):
Yeah Well, you guys are unstable under she's
not only benefit technologies.
You always have that kind ofthat mode.
What's your raise?
What are you guys looking toraise?
Do you have?
James Wang (38:25):
a second.
Yeah, yeah, I mean in terms offor us, we're basically we're
upscaling our funds.
So at this point we're lookingat around 150, 200 or whatnot.
So it's probably around whatwe're looking at.
I'm just being a little carefularound SEC rules as well and
not marketing or whatever.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:45):
Oh yeah, are you guys.
Are you guys RECCRB?
Oh sorry, are you guys RECCRB?
506 RECB.
James Wang (38:52):
Yeah, we're yeah, vec company.
So yeah, with the exemptions interms of that.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:58):
Got it?
Yeah, I was just curious.
And then yeah, and then, as wewrap this up, working people
find more about you and thecompany Creative Ventures.
James Wang (39:08):
Yeah, so creativeventuresvc is our
website.
We have various things there.
I also do write a sub-statcalled weightythoughtscom, so
weight, and then a Y, sort of apun on weights in terms of AI
and whatever.
But weightythoughtscom do a lotof writing, especially about AI
and different deep technologythere, both channels open in
(39:29):
terms of that.
I'm also on X, formerly knownas Twitter, as well as A James
Wang, so A like one of, so AJames Wang, so perfect.
Jonathan Tuttle (39:43):
Yeah, I'll add the links and information in the
show notes below.
Is there anything last you wantto leave with before we go?
Anything, anything, any onewide, something of wise words or
just a leaving statement.
James Wang (39:58):
Well, actually I'll leave it with this.
So for a while, there's a lotof tech optimism in terms of
tech is going to save and changethe world and whatever, and
over the past decade or so,we've lost that.
We've gotten to.
Yeah, tech is doing terriblethings and it's like social
media and all this stuff.
But I will say, if you look at,say, climate change, what
actually helped us bring downfrom the worst case scenarios
(40:22):
before, it wasn't specificallyeveryone getting together and
reducing carbon emissions, itwasn't all of these things, it
was the fact that solar powerand some of these alternative
renewable energies, technologygot better, evs got better.
Like technology has been sinceindustrial revolution, green
revolution, a huge driver inmaking our lives better, and it
(40:44):
still is right now.
And a lot of our biggestchallenges in the world right
now.
It's hard to actually see howwe get past them without pretty
significant jumps in technology.
We've done that each generation.
Like we're not in ThomasMalthus' world where basically
you end up all scrambling forresources that all run out, and
that's because technology hascontinuously improved.
(41:06):
So I just asked people to maybethink about it and have a
little bit more tech optimismagain, technology is just a tool
.
It doesn't itself have morals,it doesn't like itself magically
make things like better justbecause, but it is the method in
which, as a society, we're ableto solve these big problems.
Jonathan Tuttle (41:26):
Yeah, absolutely love that.
Yeah, that was a great.
I glad I asked that question.
That was a great ending to thispodcast.
So, james, thank you so much.
I'll have the show notes below.
It was very format.
It was a great conversation.
We did a whole differentspectrum from all the different
technology integrates intotraditional businesses that
normally don't use technologythat much.
So, thank you again, james.
(41:48):
It was great having you on theUltra High Network podcast.
James Wang (41:51):
Awesome.
Thanks so much.
Great conversation andappreciate it.
Jonathan Tuttle (41:54):
Thank you.
Hey, it's Jonathan.
Make sure to download andlisten weekly as I bring the top
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(42:17):
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Thanks for listening.
in terms of pharma.
People are familiar that pharmagoes out there and basically
tries to do tons and tons ofdifferent experiments and tries
to figure out specificallyscreening out drugs.
But nowadays actually, a lot ofthe most interesting drugs are
not traditional chemistry,they're actually synthetic
biology.
We're, say, yeast viruses,other things, cell-based
therapies.
You have to have a living thingcreate the drugs.
(00:22):
That's super new and superexpensive, so there's a lot of
technologies to bring that downin cost as well.
Jonathan Tuttle (00:29):
Welcome to the Ultra High Network podcast,
which is a global community ofthe most successful and their
insights.
We want our families toflourish, collaborate and create
a better world for all.
This podcast is a trustedresource to learn from each
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I'm the host, jonathan Tuttle,the founder at Midwest Park
(00:53):
Capital, a boutique mobile homepark.
Real Estate Fund Revenue Send,a leading digital consulting and
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Business Cash Out, a boutiqueM&A firm focused on
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(01:13):
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Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to the Ultra HighNetwork podcast.
Today I have a fantastic guest,james Wing of the Creative
(01:34):
Ventures VC.
Welcome to the podcast.
James Wang (01:37):
Thanks so much, Jonathan.
I look forward to having a good, great conversation and happy
to be here.
Jonathan Tuttle (01:42):
Awesome, thank you.
So yeah, we're just talkingbefore the show.
Can I give us a littlebackground about your company?
I like you just describing yourown terms and words.
James Wang (01:49):
Thanks, Sure, totally so.
Creative Ventures is anearly-stage deep tech fund, so
what we do is something that'sactually the way I've described
it nowadays a little more akinto the way venture used to work,
sort of, in its early days.
A lot of what we invest in isnot software.
It is AI, robotics, syntheticbiology, advanced materials, a
(02:11):
lot of these frontiertechnologies that have a lot of
potential, especially within,say, climate change areas, areas
around healthcare costs, areasaround demographic change in
terms of aging populations andlabor.
So we tackle a lot of these bigproblems that we see as
existential in cases forhumankind and just some of the
(02:32):
biggest challenges we face, anduse a lot of these deep
technologies to go after them.
And the distinction for us isthat a lot of these technologies
tend not to make that muchmoney up front.
They tend to have prettysignificant IP barriers.
So you can't just look at it inthe sense of, oh, a SaaS
company.
You can kind of look at ARR asit steps up round by round and
(02:52):
basically see a nice steadyregression and see whether or
not they're hitting theirmetrics.
These kinds of things.
It's a little bit more all ornothing.
We recently had a company gofrom zero revenue to over a
billion in the course of 16months.
So it's a little lumpier, letme say, in terms of that, and my
own background and thebackground of our partners kind
(03:13):
of goes towards that.
Myself as part of the coreinvestment team at Bridgewater
Associates some background therein terms of investment and ops,
and I was also at Google X.
I still am a reviewer.
I did grad work in AI andwhatnot and pretty much all of
our folks have that.
So PhDs as well as previousventure business investing,
things like that.
Jonathan Tuttle (03:33):
So yeah, that sounds crazy.
That's not.
That's kind of like the cryptokind of rocket ship in some moon
space.
That's in the what is your, bythe way?
Just curious.
James Wang (03:45):
It's in the battery space.
But that's the thing.
It's like you either don't haveanything at all or some of the
big manufacturers immediatelyput in orders, in which case
these are all large.
So if you imagine, say not thatwe invest in this, but say
aerospace or something right,it's like you're either not on
the map at all or you're gettingmassive orders.
So a lot of deep tech kind oflooks like that just in terms of
(04:08):
profile.
Jonathan Tuttle (04:09):
Yeah, so it's, yeah, sounds super competitive,
but you just have to have theright light relationships and
you guys do all the duediligence in the back end.
So let's talk about so you alsodo agriculture and healthcare.
What are some of the like?
What are some of the industriesyou work in?
What do you see kind of likethe trends going forward and the
sharing going forward?
James Wang (04:27):
Yeah, totally.
I mean, our overall thesis isbasically around a lot of big
macro and secular trends, soaging population is bringing
much a core one.
So I mentioned a little bit interms of labor costs.
We're seeing that especiallyacutely right now.
I think Apollo had a reallynice chart in terms of the US,
anyway, having six millionmissing native-born workers or
(04:50):
something like that, but thishas been a long time coming.
This is just demographics inthe sense of post-baby boomer
sort of as you're going downBasically a few young people, a
lot more old people, tooversimplify in terms of it.
So you have less manual laborto throw at things.
So AI, robotics, stuff like thattends to have a really
interesting effect in terms oftrying to go after it and
(05:12):
obviously for this audience,everyone's very interested in
interest rates, inflation andstuff like that.
But we have a thesis and we'vebeen talking about this for a
while, although people arepaying attention to it more.
If you look at where inflationis coming from, it is not
commodity markets.
In fact, that's been helpfuljust in terms of dampening
inflation with how muchcommodity markets have pulled
(05:33):
back.
China's collapse like a soufflehas also helped that to some
degree as well but it's reallylabor costs that are holding
that up.
So we have a big secularproblem and we sort of have to
plug the gap somewhere.
And again, that's where AIrobotics comes in.
Healthcare costs a lot ofsynthetic biology not AI and
other things too but a lotcheaper.
(05:54):
Figuring out how to get cheaperdrugs out there, figuring out
how to do diagnostics moreeasily a lot of these different
challenges are not reallytackled that well by traditional
technologies.
And then climate change you geta lot of stuff like carbon
capture or whatnot, but there'smuch more brass tacks things out
there, like batteries, forexample.
So in terms of batterytechnologies, we need a lot of
(06:15):
improvement in terms of them ifwe're actually going to see the
kind of electrification thatgovernments are trying to push.
Jonathan Tuttle (06:21):
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
One of the interesting downmanis mobile home parks, and so
there's the 10,000 baby boomersand that whole industry is
behind it's laggard because it'sbeen kind of overlooked, and
the whole industry.
You add a little technology toit, just even payment online.
It's like a big deal Justadding operational efficiencies
using tech, more basic techcompared to what you do.
(06:42):
And actually I'm friends withEric Florey.
He's from Beyond Imagination,the CEO.
He does AI robotics for seniors.
His focus is seniors inhealthcare.
You might even know him.
He's out in California as well.
It's fascinating in thoseindustries where it's going
because, like I said, that'sjust a huge shortage of people
tackling those problems andthere's a lot of opportunity and
(07:04):
most people are looking for theeasy wins.
But those are like you said.
You find these things are thelong-term solutions are huge
home runs if you find the rightones.
So, yeah, I totally understandthe baby boomer demographic and
adding the technology, the AIand robotics to it, so pretty
fascinating stuff.
You mentioned the carbon.
Are you familiar?
(07:24):
What is that?
Elon Musk funded something itwas like.
I can't think of a name of it,but it's like a program he has
like a contest for definedsolutions for Are you familiar
with that?
I can't remember the name of it.
I know he donated from thisfoundation like $100 or $120
million, but you know, familiarwith that.
James Wang (07:42):
I'm blanking on it a little bit, but I know the one
you're talking about.
But he and a bunch of the otherbillionaires also threw in
breakthrough energy ventures aswell, which is itself a venture
fund, and also sort of took upthe charge from some of it in
order to go after a lot of thesebig problems.
So, yeah, there's a lot ofinitiatives that him and Jeff
(08:03):
Bezos and Bill Gates, and one onand cascade and whatever are
all going after.
So there's quite a fewinitiatives out there.
It helps do some of the climateboom for a while, though the
big challenge there is like, ifyou aren't able to actually get
something that's scalable andeconomical, it's going to be
hard to actually keep it going,especially once the money runs
(08:24):
out.
Jonathan Tuttle (08:25):
Yeah, and it was one of your core industries.
You want to give us a littlebackground.
What you see is the problems,because obviously it's one of
the biggest things that we allneed is like one of the
hierarchy of needs.
Maslowe's, I say, has those,but Maslowe's hierarchy needs
added culture and the foodsupply in the US.
What are some of the issues youguys are tackling and how do
(08:48):
you solve in those problems?
James Wang (08:50):
Yeah, food supply.
The funny thing is it'sactually mostly labor that is
the challenge within agriculture.
I mean, you have various thingsin terms of monocultures, you
got to like renew certain things, but all of that is kind of
cost to some degree.
Labor is not just cost.
It's actually become a prettybig bottleneck in terms of
actually just getting enoughpeople in the fields to do the
picking, to do the other things.
(09:11):
I think a lot of folks whenthey think about agriculture,
they think about big mechanizedfarms or whatever, and while
that is true, a lot of differentcrops especially, say, fruits
and other things, require humandexterity to be able to go out
there and pick.
So, surprisingly, most ofagriculture is still fairly low
(09:32):
tech, just in terms of themanual dexterity and other
things needed.
We have a big labor shortage,like we were talking about
before.
The costs have gone up and a lotof times within agriculture you
end up just wasting a lot oflabor too.
Like what if you send people outinto the fields and other
things just aren't ready to bepicked or there's dispersion in
(09:52):
terms of where it is in thefield, so then you send them to
the wrong place.
There's a lot of inefficiencieswith it and there's a lot of
challenges with it, and becauseof that we see a lot of
different bottlenecks,especially again within labor
costs.
There's actually been kind ofan interesting trend within the
industry as well, where theNetherlands and some of these
other Nordic countries that havefigured out how to do more
(10:15):
tight greenhouse, mechanizedfarming kind of things.
They've actually taken off inother places too, just because
labor shortages have gotten soextreme that people are actually
looking at different options,especially within, say, higher
and organic or whatever markets.
So lots of opportunity there.
There's other issues that goalong with it, especially
(10:35):
climate change related, just interms of moisture, soil et
cetera, but the big thing rightnow that everyone's talking
about within agriculture tendsto be labor cost.
Jonathan Tuttle (10:46):
Yeah, that makes sense.
A lot of people.
We're in the generation nowwhere people just want to create
tic-tacs and have an e-comstore and said, oh, they don't
want to actually go to work.
Well, that's a different worldwe're in right now.
What do you see?
Some of the challenges andopportunities in the healthcare
realm?
Obviously, if you're focusingon baby boomers and I know right
now the big thing too you'reseeing well, you're in
(11:07):
California, so you seem like thebiohacking movement is becoming
a thing.
Obviously, it's probablydifferent in your industry, but
healthcare is becoming soprominent in the US for just a
multitude of ways, whether it bethe people's insurance policy
or people want to be biohackers.
What do you see as achallenging opportunity?
Is what you guys are focusingon?
James Wang (11:28):
Well, you mentioned it's becoming more and more
prominent, right, it's becomingmore and more prominent across
the entire world, basicallyhealthcare, leading up a larger
share of total GDP.
Essentially, I mean you wouldhave said developed countries,
right, because you alwaysthought about Europe and Japan
and whatever in Korea all agingthe US is actually one of the
younger ones on the chart there,but China and some of these
(11:51):
other in Southeast Asia youactually have some of that
phenomena too, where thepopulations are aging quite a
bit, especially as livingstandards go up and birth rates
go down.
So the big challenge here ischronic disease.
That is essentially what isdriving most of the costs there,
and once you actually get downto that and look at it, it's
(12:12):
like okay, it's a lot ofdiseases of aging, which is why
some of the biohacker movement Ithink is interesting, right,
because you're kind of takingthe frontiers of, oh, how do you
deal with anti-aging andwhatnot?
A lot of that boils down to ina lot of people's minds it's
like, oh, it's rich peopletrying to get younger or
whatever.
But no, no, If you think aboutit, aging like what is the
biggest predictor of, say,cancer, heart disease, all of
(12:35):
these other things?
Like, normally you'd exclude itfrom the regression, but if you
put it in there like age isactually probably the best
predictor of it and part of itmakes sense, right, chronic
disease you kind of need timefor these things to come up, but
age is a big factor in howcancer, heart disease, all of
these diseases of age and wealthin the case of people talking
(12:56):
about it, but really age comesinto play and that is really
what's weighing down the systemdiabetes, metabolic disease,
heart disease, cancer.
So we are, we see a lot ofopportunities within the space
to be able to help bring downcosts.
There's more and moregovernments, including the US,
are basically trying to pushcosts somewhere because the
(13:17):
government, within the US systemand many other systems more
directly, is kind of the payerof last resort.
So if people run out of moneyor whatever, they show up in ERs
or whatever, the governmentultimately essentially puts the
bill.
It goes through various layersbut it kind of falls on the
government at the end.
So there's been a lot ofsystems trying to push some of
(13:38):
the costs more onto thehospitals, more onto the
insurance company, like tryingto push it away, and a lot of
these entities are starting totry to figure out ways of trying
to contain those costs andbasically make it better Part of
it's business model.
But a lot of it is also if youcan catch some of these things
early, if you can start doingmanaged care early, if you can
start trying to use different,say biologics and synthetic
(14:01):
biology to create better drugsto actually manage these
conditions better.
It's sort of a whole like allof the above kind of choice in
terms of trying to actually bendthis curve for healthcare costs
and how much it's actuallyimpacting the total economy.
So there's sort of opportunityall over the place.
But we really like diagnostics,just in terms of making
(14:23):
diagnostics easier within thehospital space and actually fit
the business model as well.
This may be a longerconversation, but healthcare
incentives are interesting,complicated and in some ways
kind of messed up, so you got tofigure out the right way to
actually go about it.
But diagnostics would be greatif you can get it adopted and
you have to figure out the rightbusiness model for it.
(14:45):
But also biologics, since Ithink in terms of pharma people
are familiar that pharma goesout there and basically tries to
do tons and tons of differentexperiments and tries to figure
out specifically screening outdrugs.
But nowadays actually a lot ofthe most interesting drugs are
not traditional chemistry,they're actually synthetic
biology.
Where, say, yeast viruses,other things, cell-based
(15:07):
therapies?
You have to have a living thingcreate the drugs.
That's super new and superexpensive.
So there's a lot oftechnologies to bring that down
in cost as well.
Jonathan Tuttle (15:16):
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating stuff Like
what I was trying to live withyou before.
Is you probably familiarbecause he's a VC former VC
Brian Johnson with his twomillion a year?
But I've been like into thebiohacking movement for like 10
years before because I was inthe fitness and a lot of stuff.
It's kind of segued over tolike healthy eating and I was,
like you know, just kind offascinating.
We're prevented about this andbasically and trying to do
(15:39):
self-diagnosis with data backingit up and doing some being your
own kind of scientists andtesting on biology.
So yeah, it's prettyfascinating what you're
literally to.
Like some of the healthcaresystems are messed up in the US,
like it's you know some of thebills for an average, you know.
If you don't, if you're anentrepreneur, for example and I
have friends who areentrepreneurs, I love a family
that are paying like two orthree grand a month for health
(16:00):
insurance and the 40s, it's likeyou know it's pretty crazy, you
know yeah.
James Wang (16:05):
What do you?
Jonathan Tuttle (16:07):
I was just saying what do you in terms of
like as we go into like?
I'm going through yourdifferent industries here
because it's like it's kind offun to see the spectrum of
things you work on now.
Industrial, is that more isyour industrial, more like for
e-com stores?
Like industrial storage, isthat what it is?
Or industrial in what regard?
James Wang (16:26):
Unless it's more like it goes into the labor
shortage side.
So it's more logistics and alot of the different things that
go into there.
Food services a little bit,though again that's more just
general labor.
But a lot of industrial tendsto be logistics or, say, robot
(16:46):
safety within no a lot of timesactually logistics or
manufacturing type of settings.
Jonathan Tuttle (16:52):
Okay, and you think we'll keep on the Elon
Musk thing here.
Do you think there's going tobe kind of like Tesla trucks
doing like you know, because Iknow there's a shortage in the
US or there's a?
It goes back to like a lot ofpeople don't want to do manual
labor.
It goes back for your talkalluded to, like they didn't
want to do the.
It's usually, you know, peoplecome into the country.
(17:13):
They want to do it to get thefirst jobs but like to do the
picked the fruits.
And then you mentioned you knowthere's a shortage of people
wanting to do stuff and helpingme solve that issue.
Do you foresee, like you know,the biggest issue comes down to
infrastructure?
I think you mentioned in thebeginning was like with the
batteries.
Do you foresee in the futurethat there will be, you know, in
the next 20 years they'll belaying just on the charge of
(17:35):
battery for the trucks to go.
Is that to make a reality, tohelp to reduce the shortage of
truck drivers, or what do youkind of see in that regard?
I'm just curious.
James Wang (17:43):
Yeah, I mean, the easier thing to basically
predict out and expect isusually the less infrastructure
stuff.
It's kind of an unfortunatething, but if you look at it,
the US just it isn't that goodat building big projects anymore
.
So if you're imagining like asystem where it's super
efficient, with a lot of theselike charging stations all over
(18:03):
the place or maybe even wirelesscharging or there's a lot of
dreams in terms of it.
But the usual better bet isbasically the thing that is most
incremental and you can kind ofhit and will work Right.
So you're talking about Teslatrucks or electric truck,
electric vehicles in terms oftrucking, right, and that's
usually becoming a fairly bigthing because those are usually
(18:23):
pretty short haul drives.
So the total battery capacityis not that big of a deal, but
the maintenance cost and thecheaper maintenance cost to say,
electric vehicles, so long asthey last long enough to pay
themselves off, because once thebattery goes bad, that's
basically the entire damnvehicle at that cost.
As long as you can actuallykeep that battery life enough to
(18:46):
sort of pay it off, you canactually save quite a bit in
terms of trucking just by goingto electric vehicles, let alone
AVs at that point.
But there are also interestinginitiatives in terms of AVs
within that environment.
Because the thing that I'vementioned to folks is like, if
you think about why autonomousvehicles aren't out there like
if someone pushes you on that,it pushes me on that question,
(19:06):
or wherever there's two answers.
One is, well, they are in thesense of we've been able to
actually do a lot of this AVstuff for years.
Right, if you go back to theX-Prize stuff and everything,
it's like, well, we've been ableto do this a long time.
Yeah, but on the other hand,the big problem is the
exceptions.
It's like you have the cruisevehicle dragging a passenger and
(19:27):
dragging a pedestrian andeverything in San Francisco and
that big thing that had come outthat put cruises off the road.
I mean, the thing about AVsautonomous vehicles is the
exceptions to the rule.
So the more uncontrolledvariables you throw into things,
say like a bunch of pedestriansand other people running around
everywhere, the harder it is.
(19:49):
But if you can have reallycontrolled environment slave,
you're just going from warehouseto warehouse on like pretty
empty roads or whatever.
No, avs can actually do thatpretty well because
predictability and everything'smuch higher and the big
challenge is not the 95% of thetime.
The big challenge is the last5% of the time.
Jonathan Tuttle (20:08):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and that was what I wasup to before was the X Prize.
I couldn't think of anything.
He said that's the name of it.
Yeah, the X Prize is like,basically every year they do the
contest.
It helps solve like world,global issues that are kind of
huge, huge scale basically, andfun about volunteers.
So yeah, that's how I put thename of that.
So what are you guys?
(20:29):
A few adventures.
What are you guys focused on asa certain specific industry, or
focused on investing right now,or what do you kind of like see
as a good opportunity in thenext couple of years there?
James Wang (20:41):
Yeah, it's pretty much still all of them.
So AI, robotics, syntheticbiology, advanced materials
because of the big problem areas, I would say that we probably
are leaning out of AI slightlyat the moment, just because
there's a lot of hype in thearea and every type in the
industry and everything and alot of these companies and I've
written quite a bit about thison my end it's like a lot of
(21:04):
these companies don't reallyhave a true business model.
They don't have differentiatedmodels, they don't have
differentiated data and they'rehoping that one day they'll be
able to charge enough to make upfor their compute costs.
And it's like, as far as hopeis a strategy is concerned,
that's not really a goodbusiness model for a startup.
So a lot of AI stuff isactually going to have pretty
(21:25):
challenging issues going forward.
There are still reallyinteresting companies within the
space, but they have to havesome sort of actual edge within
the area and some defensibilityto keep others from actually
coming into it.
But there's still a lot ofinteresting things, like I said,
from the synthetic biologyplatform to being able to make
biologics for cheaper, as wellas just advanced materials,
which is just merely explodingat the moment.
(21:47):
Again, the battery technologies, cell membrane separators for
battery cells, these differentelectrode technologies like
battery management systems.
There's a lot of stuff therethat just is super needed, super
important, makes a lot of money, but is kind of
underappreciated or underseenbecause it takes a little bit of
(22:09):
knowledge to actually thinkabout it and really understand
this is something needed, andthen you need some level of
knowledge to validate it.
So, if anything, a lot of theseareas are getting somewhat
underfunded, which is why we'reparticularly interested in them
right now.
Jonathan Tuttle (22:22):
Yeah, I love that because I remember the
whole VC Web 3 was like thething in 2022, 2023, and then
FTX.
And then all of a sudden,chatttv came out and then that
was like.
It was like a teeter-tatter.
All of a sudden, everyone'swhat's Web 3, crypto, FTX, what
is AI?
(22:43):
Everything's going to AI.
That's right.
James Wang (22:45):
All the folks who were at the crypto conference.
It just changed the assign andjust put up the AI conference.
Jonathan Tuttle (22:52):
Yeah, AI software for whatever they can
set it up on.
First, I remember that it waseven on Twitter and Rex now.
But it's pretty fascinating too, because you're not going to
see the valuations that comedown, obviously, but you're not
going to see what I've seen kindof sentiment on Twitter or what
Rex was that you alluded to.
They're not going to be able tobuild unicorns and building on
(23:15):
it it's going to be because theAI moves so fast and you have
the biggest in the Microsoft andGoogle.
They're going to just acquirethese, as they had 10, 20
million dollar valuations, andjust to roll it into their
software, into their ecosystem.
You're not going to have thesebig valuations.
People are creating these, theyget it funded and a lot of
these won't be.
There's no competitive, there'sno mode around it.
(23:39):
I agree with that sentiment, butit's just kind of funny just to
see the sentiment on Twitter.
That's the year it was so soonas FTX collapsed.
It's literally the same monthand all of a sudden you chat to
GTP and I'm like, oh yeah, it'sbeen around, I've had this
technology.
It's basically just moreobviously, but the technology
has been around and it justteeter-tattered, yeah exactly.
James Wang (24:01):
I mean.
One of the challenges is a lotof people think that AI is
software.
Now, obviously it's softwarefrom a definitional sense.
But the thing is it doesn'tmatter that you literally use
software to implement it, itmatters what the business model
looks like.
You can't look at AI and saythis looks like a SaaS company
because technically they aresoftware and technically they
sell it as a service likeChatGBT.
(24:24):
You have to spend a lot of moneyto get the data, even if you're
just scraping it from theinternet legally or illegally,
Hard to say.
But even if you're justscraping it from the internet,
lots of money to go do that.
Then you have to spend themoney to train the thing, which
is a bunch of money upfrontagain before you ever serve a
single customer.
Then, even worse, once youactually start serving customers
(24:44):
, inference.
So each query also costs a lotof money.
If you're actually talkingabout what kind of business this
looks like, it actually looks alittle bit more like a modern
and fabulous semiconductorcompany more than it does a
software company.
If you're going in and hopingwell, I'm going to get SaaS or
software like margins off ofthis thing and all I need to do
(25:09):
is scale it, you're in for apretty unpleasant surprise,
because once you get to the endof it, you realize no, my
marginal cost is not actuallyzero with an AI company.
I spent a bunch of money tobasically get there and find
that out.
Jonathan Tuttle (25:22):
Yeah, it's the, the burn rates astronomical.
Then on top of that you'rethrowing into a sass.
At least you could say hey,we're acquiring customer, here's
the lifetime value or averageorder value, and you have a
hockey stick growth, and but theAI, it's like, all right, cool.
The next new AI, it's the 21.
They just customer job ship, orthe data, basically.
James Wang (25:41):
So yeah, and again, you're spending a bunch of money
to serve these queries, likethe assher.
Like big software systems costmoney.
People have high AWS bills,even for sass, but that's tiny
relative to the kind of revenuethey can bring in against each
query.
Each AI query actually costsquite a bit of money, like as
far as it goes.
Yeah, sure, it's in the senserange or whatever, but no, it's
(26:03):
in the sense range in terms ofevery single time some, like
teenager or whatever, throwssomething into Chachi tea.
It costs actually have beenquite a bit of money coming back
.
This is why and you can see thisin public in some of the 10k's
or whatnot for Google theircosts to serve each query has
been going up year by year, byyear.
So margins have actually beengetting worse and worse and
(26:24):
worse, and that's becausethey've been incorporating more
and more AI.
Do they need to?
Yes, but it's.
It's an interesting thingbecause the software business as
it used to stand, where you canround down Marginal cost to
zero, is not that way anymore,not with AI incorporated.
Jonathan Tuttle (26:42):
Yeah, I think I saw another spread me if I run,
but I saw data.
It was like I think Facebookand a and Google are acquiring
like 80% of the world's AI, orbasically data, just so they
keep their moat and creep their,keep their trillion dollar
valuations going forward.
James Wang (26:58):
So, yeah, they kind of, they kind of have to because
they can't.
They have to keep that up, andthere are one big advantage that
they have to keep themselvesalive as they spent a ton of
money on compute.
So what you got to do is leaninto that and take advantage of
that fixed cost that you dumpeda ton of money into and Ride it
all the way, right it as far asyou can.
Jonathan Tuttle (27:17):
So yeah, yes, it's just fascinating.
We're kind of trying to seeseeing what's coming word on the
street in San Francisco.
What are you seeing peoplereally excited about this year
besides AI?
Is there anything that you'rehearing that's kind of like Kind
of creeping out there that mostpeople don't know about?
I Mean.
James Wang (27:32):
I think the real thing is and it's said and kind
of like almost derogatory ways,it's like applications in AI,
because everyone likes to talkabout foundational models.
If you look at who what's in thenews, obviously chat, gbt.
If you look at what's making therounds, obviously anthropic X,
ai, these other big foundationalmodel companies.
(27:53):
But there's a lot of reallyinteresting companies being
built in applications and versusthat thing that I just said,
where your models the same andyour data is the same, if you
can actually have differentiateddata, just because your area is
kind of niche or kind ofannoying to get data for, say,
medical devices or say anythingin the physical world which adds
a ton of friction, then there'sa magic thing that happens the
(28:16):
data side is proprietary, the AIside doesn't matter, because
what you do is each year you canswitch out your AI for the
faster one that's coming alongand take advantage of the
proprietary data that you stillhave.
So it's almost like a companythat the software company that
was in the semiconductor age forthe 80s, 90s and going into the
2000s do nothing about yoursoftware and magically, every
(28:39):
year it gets better, in thesense of it gets faster, just
because the CPUs and GPUs aregetting faster.
Same way here your data is thesame, but your products getting
better, because every singleyear the AI is getting better
than able to do more with lessdata.
Jonathan Tuttle (28:54):
Yeah, that makes sense.
And Quick question because,like, if you've been in Silicon
Valley, like I, we just as thisis released, the about time we
just had the Apple VR glasses,oh, yeah it is and it kind of
ties in a couple ways because Iyou know technology inflammation
.
It reminds me a back like adecade ago of Google glasses.
(29:14):
Do you think that Apple canpull off like this has been the
biggest thing and the VC worldis?
Vr are gonna be.
Obviously you can see it maybein the medical space and doctors
and being in third, indifferent place and they could
do stuff, but like it could bean application for it.
But do you see that's gonna beApple can make a mass adopted
with the VR just because ofApple's brand, or do you think
(29:34):
it's the price point or do youthink that it's just not gonna
have lakes?
James Wang (29:40):
It.
If anyone can do it, itprobably is Apple in terms of
getting more mass adoption,because the challenge for, say,
google Glass or a lot of theseother VR Sets as they were
always niche right like you got,you had Gamers to some degree
for some of the VR stuff.
Except that's going to belimited too because there's a
lot of other platforms thatthat's kind of a Competitive
business or in terms of theconsoles platforms, mobile
(30:02):
gaming, etc.
So that's not the greatest areato go into.
Ar has real industrialapplications, as Google Glass
and some of these others foundout.
It's like hey, and alsoMicrosoft's glasses as well, or
Blanking on the name.
But Microsoft actually has apretty good platform, hollow
lens, platform, industrialapplications.
So you go around and you cansee different things and it'll
(30:24):
give you information and fordoctors and surgeons and
dentists and whatnot, it canactually come up with really
interesting Information on thefly as you're going and doing
the procedure without getting inyour way.
Really interesting stuff,important, that are really niche
and, as far as adoption goeswithin those industries and
areas, kind of slow.
So if you don't actually havesomething helping you bring down
(30:45):
that cost curve, it's not goingto become economical and it's
always going to be kind of anifty product rather than
something that's mass adopted.
Apple is going after consumersand hoping that they use this as
some sort of alternativeComputing cloud.
All spatial computing is, Ithink, the thing that they keep
saying.
Yeah, I mean I know folks whohave used it.
There are applications for it.
(31:07):
It still is kind of nichebecause it's like it's basically
like a really big screen that'skind of portable but kind of
heavy on your head, so it's afirst-generation product.
I think we're gonna have to seewhere Apple takes it.
Like the iPhone the firstiPhone was not revolutionary,
right, like it only could browsethe web and stuff and I had
(31:27):
gotten it.
But I mainly got it becausethat visual voicemail if people
remember that was the big saleselling point voicemail you can
actually like scroll through itinstead of just listening one by
one and pressing one or five orwhatever.
But the basically for thevision pro.
It's pro.
We'll have to see what thevision not pro looks like and
(31:47):
we'll have to see as Apple goesdown generations.
But I think there's a realpossibility that Apple can do it
.
If anyone can, they would,especially going after consumers
.
Jonathan Tuttle (31:57):
Yeah, but it's just fascinating with the price
point.
Like obviously says firstgeneration, we get the price
point down for average consume.
I think it's like three or fourgrand.
It's pretty steep, you know,because each iteration, even the
first iPhone, I don't think wasa thousand dollars, it's
probably 800 bucks.
You know, obviously it was 2008, preinflation or six, whatever
year it came out.
But just fascinating that whole.
(32:17):
I've just seen all the, thevideos of people like where the
world is the end is nearinitials.
People like driving in theirTesla or something like doing
like the Apple program.
James Wang (32:30):
It's just coming.
Jonathan Tuttle (32:32):
It's coming, so it's so funny.
And what are some of your kindof goals with the creative
entrance in the next couple ofyears?
Personal goals or businessgoals with the company?
James Wang (32:44):
I mean, I think the thing here is that deep tech is
only getting more and moreinteresting, because I think one
of the big challenges for theVC industry is it's not like
software companies are done,it's not like there's no
business models or extra thingsthat will come up.
Come up.
But you know, saas kind ofstarted hitting a wall even pre
COVID, just in terms ofinteresting new business models,
(33:04):
new companies.
It's never the case that you'vetried it all, but at that point
it's kind of new companystealing business, stealing
market share from old companies,old companies that also were VC
back not that long ago.
There's a lot of interest,obviously, in AI.
There's a lot of sin by others,a lot of this other stuff.
I'm just excited by the factthat a lot of these things are
(33:25):
all coming up and coming tomaturity now.
So you talked about Vision Proand other stuff.
Right, it's like AR and maybeI'll change the way that we do
things.
But if you think about it, ailike chat, gpt and stuff is not
itself a revolution.
But if AI starts designing allof our drugs, if AI starts
designing a lot of our materialssay the iPhone now the new
(33:46):
iPhone's titanium, but say thenewer iPhone that comes down
five years down the line is anAI designed because, like a
ceramic kind of blender, whatnot, that was figured out by AI.
We're going to see a lot ofthings come up in the coming
years with all of thesedifferent technologies merging
(34:08):
together and changing ourphysical world in terms of
everything that we do.
So I'm really excited aboutthat.
That's less on a personal level, though, obviously, like
business wise, that's kind of myday to day that I live and
breathe.
So really excited about all ofthat.
Yeah, just from a personallevel, just excited to see all
these things coming up.
I have a one year old and twomonths at this point and I'm
(34:31):
excited to basically help usherin a better world that she can
live in in essence.
Jonathan Tuttle (34:37):
Yeah, it's pretty fast.
Congrats on that.
And it's pretty fascinating tosee the word technology is
advanced from even a decade ago,like just, I mean a decade ago,
just like Facebook, and nowyou're.
Tech-tech wasn't around, it wasjust basically social media and
obviously, do you think webthree actually well, we're on
this conversation do you thinkweb three will eventually find
legs once everything kind ofsells down?
(34:57):
Do you think there'll beadoption for mainly for the data
component and also maybe likethe currency slash tokens?
Do you think there's going tobe legs once everything with the
regulation and the SEC and allthat going forward?
Just curious, your personalopinion.
James Wang (35:13):
Most of it.
No, there's always been like asubset that has real
applications in terms ofblockchain, having like a real
application for why you wouldneed a ledger etc.
And if you have that be public.
And there are real applicationsin terms of being able to move
money around more easily interms of cryptocurrencies and
stuff.
But just a lot of the spaceended up being taken over by.
(35:36):
Why does it work?
Well, because it's blockchainor because it's crypto, or
because it's web three, kind oflike AI.
Now, actually, if we're to saythat it's like, what business
model do you have?
What advantage do you have?
How can you ever bring costsdown?
No, don't worry about it, it'sAI.
I mean, it used to be that way.
It's like don't worry aboutit's crypto.
So a lot of the space, I think,is going to die out, but
(35:56):
happily at some point, once alot of that does die out and a
lot of the more stability comesabout, I think we will start to
see like real applications comeout, especially for blockchain,
I think, because that was sortof an underappreciated stepchild
of like the a lot of the webthree stuff.
It's like just becausecryptocurrencies took off so
much and sucked up all theoxygen in the room.
(36:18):
Basically.
Jonathan Tuttle (36:20):
Yeah, I think your state was one of the ones
that was testing on, if it'sstill doing.
I saw car titles California D&B, and so they were doing a
blockchain because there waslike a big issue with people
having exotic or luxury cars andlike they'd be some shady car
dealers and they'd re-sold thetitle a couple of times like the
money, like hey, we did it andthey threw an LLC and they are
(36:40):
in SPV and they're like oh,that's come, come find me, it's
in the Caribbean, camden Islands.
And so watching and say hey,verify, instead of being NFT,
verify the car owner is thisdealership or this person owning
it and then transfer ownershipthrough the.
James Wang (36:54):
Exactly.
I mean those cases.
Right, if you can ask thequestion why is this better than
just doing it in a database?
And like most of the web, threethings fail that question,
right.
It's like well, not really wecould have done it in a database
, but it's just blockchaininstead.
Questions like that in terms ofwell, you can prevent that, you
can publicly show people thetitle is owned by someone and
(37:15):
not transact on it multipletimes.
If you can make an answer tothat question of why isn't it
just better than theirtraditional database, you have a
real application andpotentially business there.
And if you can't which again,most of the companies end up
failing that test If you can't,then you probably don't.
Jonathan Tuttle (37:31):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Are you guys your creativeventures?
Are you guys currently raising,Are you doing a new fund, or
where are you kind of in thatrealm?
James Wang (37:39):
Yep, so we're going out into markets, since we
basically finished up ourinvestment period on the last
one, so going out for a fundthree, so excited to well.
I guess excited is the wrongword because it's apparently the
hardest, or was it one of thetoughest venture environments
that there have been in the lastdecade or so.
But at least for us we're stillseeing quite a bit of interest,
(38:01):
just because our specificindustries were less hyped
before and thus came down lessand, if anything, we're getting
more attention now.
So sort of good and bad interms of it and, yeah, excited
to sort of see how it comes upin the coming year.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:17):
Yeah Well, you guys are unstable under she's
not only benefit technologies.
You always have that kind ofthat mode.
What's your raise?
What are you guys looking toraise?
Do you have?
James Wang (38:25):
a second.
Yeah, yeah, I mean in terms offor us, we're basically we're
upscaling our funds.
So at this point we're lookingat around 150, 200 or whatnot.
So it's probably around whatwe're looking at.
I'm just being a little carefularound SEC rules as well and
not marketing or whatever.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:45):
Oh yeah, are you guys.
Are you guys RECCRB?
Oh sorry, are you guys RECCRB?
506 RECB.
James Wang (38:52):
Yeah, we're yeah, vec company.
So yeah, with the exemptions interms of that.
Jonathan Tuttle (38:58):
Got it?
Yeah, I was just curious.
And then yeah, and then, as wewrap this up, working people
find more about you and thecompany Creative Ventures.
James Wang (39:08):
Yeah, so creativeventuresvc is our
website.
We have various things there.
I also do write a sub-statcalled weightythoughtscom, so
weight, and then a Y, sort of apun on weights in terms of AI
and whatever.
But weightythoughtscom do a lotof writing, especially about AI
and different deep technologythere, both channels open in
(39:29):
terms of that.
I'm also on X, formerly knownas Twitter, as well as A James
Wang, so A like one of, so AJames Wang, so perfect.
Jonathan Tuttle (39:43):
Yeah, I'll add the links and information in the
show notes below.
Is there anything last you wantto leave with before we go?
Anything, anything, any onewide, something of wise words or
just a leaving statement.
James Wang (39:58):
Well, actually I'll leave it with this.
So for a while, there's a lotof tech optimism in terms of
tech is going to save and changethe world and whatever, and
over the past decade or so,we've lost that.
We've gotten to.
Yeah, tech is doing terriblethings and it's like social
media and all this stuff.
But I will say, if you look at,say, climate change, what
actually helped us bring downfrom the worst case scenarios
(40:22):
before, it wasn't specificallyeveryone getting together and
reducing carbon emissions, itwasn't all of these things, it
was the fact that solar powerand some of these alternative
renewable energies, technologygot better, evs got better.
Like technology has been sinceindustrial revolution, green
revolution, a huge driver inmaking our lives better, and it
(40:44):
still is right now.
And a lot of our biggestchallenges in the world right
now.
It's hard to actually see howwe get past them without pretty
significant jumps in technology.
We've done that each generation.
Like we're not in ThomasMalthus' world where basically
you end up all scrambling forresources that all run out, and
that's because technology hascontinuously improved.
(41:06):
So I just asked people to maybethink about it and have a
little bit more tech optimismagain, technology is just a tool
.
It doesn't itself have morals,it doesn't like itself magically
make things like better justbecause, but it is the method in
which, as a society, we're ableto solve these big problems.
Jonathan Tuttle (41:26):
Yeah, absolutely love that.
Yeah, that was a great.
I glad I asked that question.
That was a great ending to thispodcast.
So, james, thank you so much.
I'll have the show notes below.
It was very format.
It was a great conversation.
We did a whole differentspectrum from all the different
technology integrates intotraditional businesses that
normally don't use technologythat much.
So, thank you again, james.
(41:48):
It was great having you on theUltra High Network podcast.
James Wang (41:51):
Awesome.
Thanks so much.
Great conversation andappreciate it.
Jonathan Tuttle (41:54):
Thank you.
Hey, it's Jonathan.
Make sure to download andlisten weekly as I bring the top
guests in the Ultra HighNetwork niche, sharing their
best insights and providingexclusive resources.
Finally, I get a lot of peopleasking me to help them one on
one.
Yes, I can, but it's verylimited.
Go to a revenue, a sign forbusiness and CMO consulting For
(42:17):
real estate investing go toMidwestparkcapitalcom and those
looking to invest inservice-based business rollups
go to businesscashoutcom.
All links are included below.
Please like, comment and sharethis podcast with your friends.
Thanks for listening.
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