Dr. Elad Verbin_E2: From Idea to Real World Magic [3/30/2020]
Dr. Elad Verbin, General Partner at Lunar Ventures in Berlin
Note: References with links are listed at the end of the show notes.
INTRO:
1:00 Shares his family’s background in physics / mathematics and how he dreamed of becoming a mathematician from an early age.
1:30 Shares his experience starting his Bachelors in math at age 12, until his mother (a professor in Comp Sci) convinced him to try her subject — with equally interesting visionary, technical, and interesting prospects.
3:00 Discusses his passion for Theoretical Computer Science, and it being a branch of mathematics studying the nature of computation, with interest in topologies / topographies.
3:45 Shares his passion for algorithms (e.g., linear programming, maximum flow, barriers)
SECTION1: Mission Driven Approach of Fund
4:45 Discusses Riemann Hypothesis and prime factoring ($1M prize Clay Institute). Also discusses NP Completeness in the study of algos. Shares his love for the Theoretical Computer Science community, and how it’s discovery has been the root of many tech advancements — e.g., internet, genome sequencing, cryptography.
7:21 Suggests a sequence of talks The Algorithmic Lens (see below: working of brain / economy).
8:45 Discusses his PhD in Telaviv Post-Doc study in China, and his shift in focus to venture.
9:00 Started researching industry, and how first principles could be applied to working at a hedge fund. Dr. Vervbin discusses the secretive nature of working at a hedge fund, and the fascinating work.
10:30 Discusses his sense of wonder, out-of-the-box thinking, and real-politik of helping to run a VC fund. Discusses responsibility of a rote understanding of risk management and fiduciary duty.
11:30 Shares passion for working with smartest people he’s met in venture.
12:00 Explores interest in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and possibilities in society.
SECTION2: Deep Tech as an Impact Play
13:30 Discusses importance of turning insight into real world magic, and the process of discovering opportunities through this lens.
14:00 Shares the evolution of Google, and the fundamentals behind the business model.
15:00 How to look at research and GTM — uses examples of Asymmetric Cryptography (and RSA) and data in transit. Shares the dawn of The Generals Problem as the problem of secrecy over an open line.
18:30 Explains the evolution of Number Theory, and it’s connection to E-Commerce, and other transactional industries.
19:00 What’s a technical investor? To him, it’s a VC that has decision making ability, with a background in scientific / engineering — as a subject matter expert.
20:30 Discusses long cycles of pharma investing, and how domain knowledge can enhance a more well informed decision.
22:00 Highlights grit, promise, expertise, domain knowledge, and the ‘smell test’, as factors that go into a technical investors’ decision making process — and how it ties into the mission of his fund.
22:30 Discusses pre-revenue strategies and his favorites — business / technical Co-Founders. Interested in nascent stages, around PreSeed.
25:00 Shares knowledge about terms Deep Tech, Frontier Tech, Hard Software, and Tech Tech — and how they overlap as a ‘fickle creatures’ representing opportunities that are difficult to deploy, and how each ties into their fund’s core goal of high impact.
26:30 Shares a timeline on RSA, and Zero Knowledge Proofs, Neural Networks, and the cycle of academia — where Deep Tech allows for jumping the gun; creates profits and changes the world. Uses Paypal as an example of taking cryptography into a reality — also shares insights about Elon Musk and non-trivial unit economics.
28:46 Shares insights about portfolio company Mobius (a light SDK for mobile image recognition) and industry problems they are solving in remote environments, along with emotional facial detection for social applications.
33:30 Explains Yao’s Millionaires’ Problem in the context of PrivacyTech. Privacy in Collaboration, or data at rest — involving FHE
36:30 Shares the example of Sugarbeet in private communications, and how Zero Knowledge is being used in ZCash. How Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) is being used in companies like Duality.
38:00 Describes FHE as a superior PrivacyTech opportunity space, and an example of DNA processing using cloud computing applications that are privacy preserving. He believes FHE will unlock tremendous amounts of value globally.
SECTION3: VCs as Subject Matter Experts
40:00 Thinks the world is missing something, and there is opportunity for great change through technology — leading to outsized impact which will continue to lead to greater achievement. Talks about technology’s positive sum attribute, where it unlocks additional unknown value.
41:30 In investor class, there is often not enough Subject Matter Expertise (SME) to unlock tech’s value drivers. He points to it being a responsibility to help Scientists get into both VC funds and Government, where the problem also exists.
43:00 Points to SME’s needing a more streamlined path into investment universe. And says that it’s valuable for Scientists to have one leg in the investment side
44:00 Points to top three tools non-technical investors can give to technical investors (as he sees): Realism (out of the possible, operating efficiently on returns) & Collaboration (two way both scientific / investment skills) & Business Operational (seeking non-novel opportunities and utilize simplicity).
49:00 Highlights the types of opportunities Lunar Ventures is looking for — primarily pre-seed with some elements of magic!
50:00 How to get in touch
-Twitter: https://twitter.com/verbine
-Webpage: https://lunarventures.eu/elad/elad.htm
-Medium : https://medium.com/@elad.verbin
-Talks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg8RW_RnL1jONQThUX2e_wg-G3HRvzvvH
-Lunar Ventures https://lunarventures.eu/
**Thank you to both Dr. Elad Verbin and his team!**
SOURCES:
- Clay Institute — Riemann Hypothesis https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/riemann-hypothesis
-Paul Erdos — The greatest mathematician of 20th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s
- Recommended Biography: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714583.The_Man_Who_Loved_Only_Numbers
-Christos Papadimitriou on theoretical computer science and the algorithmic lens: Past, theory, future https://youtu.be/e34iBh4sBIA
-LSE Events | Tim Roughgarden | Game Theory Through the Computational Lens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HYJ2oJtLZk
-The Algorithmic Lens: How the Computational Perspective is Transforming the Sciences Christos H. Papadimitriou — UC Berkeley http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/fcrc/Christos.FCRC.pdf
-Lecture Series: Computation and the Brain — Christos H. Papadimitriou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkJUUoTCGYo
-Data Collective (DCVC) https://www.dcvc.com/
-Lux Capital https://www.luxcapital.com/
-Root Ventures https://www.root.vc/
-Mobius Labs https://mobius.ml/
-Ron Rivest on voting using homomorphic encryption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho
-Technical talk: The Road to Secure Computation with John ‘Tux’ Pacific from NuCypher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VghROFwV8uo
-Technical Intro: The Swiss Army Knife of Cryptography
https://windowsontheory.org/2012/05/01/the-swiss-army-knife-of-cryptography/
-Wikipedia: -Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
-Zero Knowledge Proofs and Their Future Applications: talk by Elad Verbin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3jKROwTPCs
-Yao’s Millionaires’ Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao%27s_Millionaires%27_Problem
-Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_multi-party_computation
-Duality (startup mentioned working on encryption) https://dualitytech.com/
-Sugar Beet Blog (Blog about Multiparty Computation and Private Computation) https://medium.com/applied-mpc
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Song Credit: The Croft — By Joakim Karud
[ No Copyright on Music and Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 ]
