Kanyi Maqubela - Dawn of the 21st Century

My guest today is Kanyi Maqubela, co-founder of seed-stage VC firm Kindred Ventures, which he started with his partner Steven Jang in 2019. Before founding Kindred Ventures, Kanyi was a general partner at Collaborative Fund. In our conversation, we discuss the parallels between today and the Roaring ’20s of the last century, the misunderstood risk curve of seed investing, and dive deep into how Kanyi evaluates founders and businesses at the earliest stage of company formation. We also discuss Kanyi’s experience teaching the Design Your Life class at Stanford and how some of those principles convinced him to take the leap to start his own fund. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kanyi Maqubela.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes

[00:04:11] - [First question] - Understanding the roaring 20s and their potential resurgence

[00:06:14] - Seed-stage investing today compared to a few years ago

[00:09:02] - Lessons learned from studying the 1920s

[00:11:52] - Supply chain infrastructure in the 21st century

[00:14:49] - His investment philosophy and what influenced it

[00:17:47] - Defining the risk curve and early-stage divergence

[00:21:31] - Assessing risk in seed-stage investing

[00:23:32] - Other moments that influenced Kanyi’s investment philosophy

[00:26:50] - Assisting early-stage companies as a VC

[00:29:31] - How he approaches VC differently than traditional US VCs

[00:31:55] - Non-consensus ways and unique views when evaluating founders

[00:35:19] - Domain insight and its importance

[00:36:53] - What he looks for in a company when considering investing in them

[00:38:17] - Assessing a team in whether or not they have characteristics of longevity

[00:40:59] - Questions he most enjoys asking people

[00:42:24] - What makes for a good problem space

[00:44:26] - Early-stage crypto investing

[00:47:27] - How the crypto space and NFTs will change and influence other sectors

[00:50:37] - Emerging trends that are catching his attention

[00:54:20] - The potential for upward mobility in the coming decade

[00:56:30] - Teaching the Design Your Life course

[01:01:21] - Advice for modern investor-operators

[01:03:26] - If he could change one major thing in the industry

[01:06:57] - The biggest lesson learned from Obama’s campaign

[01:07:44] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him