This is my first conversation with Adam Grosser, a Silicon Valley OG. Adam has had a front row seat to what Silicon Valley is today from being at the centre of personal computing in the early days of Apple in the 1980s as Director of Engineering to directing products at LucasFilm in 1990s and investing in the still early internet days in the 2000s at Foundation Capital. Adam went on to be a Managing Director at prominent technology focused private equity firm SilverLake and co-created the Up Summit, an exclusive annual event for the future of transportation. He was also a part of building and scaling two multibillion dollar companies in the 1990s. He is also a 4x Forbes Midas list investor.
He now runs Up Partners which he founded six years ago around the thesis of future of transportation enabled by software. Up Partners has been an investor in companies like Hermeus (founded by AJ Piplica), Reliable Robotics, Axiom Space, Skydio, Westmag, Pacific Fusion and Beta to name a few. What makes him unique and extremely hard to b******t to is the fact that he builds cars, airplanes and boats in his workshop in San Carlos which I had the chance to check out, this is where the technical knowhow of founders gets tested. It is not a team of 10 technicians working on these projects, it is a team of just Adam plus a couple of contractors here and there. For investors in frontier tech, this would be the equivalent of touching grass.
Adam is one of the kindest and most generous humans I have come across in the industry, still a student at heart who is insatiably curious and genuinely interested in other people. Perhaps one of the reasons he has been so successful.
In this wide ranging conversation we cover a bit of Silicon Valley history, what it was like working with Steve Jobs, his time in media through LucasFilm and Sony, how venture capital has changed, how Adam keeps up and how to build a successful lasting venture firm.
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Timestamps
00:00 – Intro 02:52 – Early Days at Apple and Meeting Steve Jobs03:29 – Innovation and the History of Printing at Apple05:37 – Early User Interfaces and Working at Xerox PARC07:29 – Technological Breakthroughs at LucasFilm11:56 – Corporate Acquisitions and Maintaining Founding DNA14:43 – "Stake vs. Rank" in Corporate Structures17:19 – The Ephemeral Nature of Success in the Film Industry21:15 – Two Approaches to Creating Great Products22:22 – Spotting Breakthrough Innovations Early27:35 – How the Venture Capital Industry Has Changed31:56 – Rebuilding the Cottage Model with Up Partners38:19 – The Mobility Thesis and Stagnation in the Physical World42:18 – His San Carlos Workshop48:48 – Why Hardware Innovation Took Decades to Evolve54:36 – The True Job of a Venture Capitalist57:28 – Basic Research and the Return of the Polymath01:04:12 – The Chasm Between Tech and Business and the Value of Finishing Things01:10:53 – The "996" Work Culture01:17:34 – Choosing to Stay Nimble in Business and Investment01:23:00 – Building Alignment and Generational Stability in a VC Firm01:45:00 – Decision-Making Processes and Governance01:49:41 – Building Brand Equity Through Community Ecosystems02:02:42 – Archetypes of Successful Venture Partners02:11:15 – The Case for Investment Committees and Conviction-Driven Bets02:24:33 – Closing Questions
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