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Ai = More Free Time. More Free Time = More In-Person
AI is making us more efficient. Goodbye, grunt work. What takes hours or weeks takes minutes. We now have more time. With the extra time I find myself doing more in-person meetings, more FaceTime, more engagement with our portfolio founders, new companies, LPs, and our network. Live entertainment and conferences are booming. We see it with Punchup.live and how large some of our favorite conferences have become. Future Proof, for example, in wealth management, is now a huge festival that takes up multiple blocks in Huntington Beach along the water! Money2020 has gotten so big that there are now 100+ side events during the conference in Vegas that I think more people come to Las Vegas for the event in October to attend the side events, than actually buy a ticket for the main conference!
I attended a VC Lunch in San Diego last week, and it was good to see and hear about the activity across the venture landscape from early-stage to late-stage growth investors. The longer I live in San Diego, the more people I meet who are a partner or principal at a VC firm, living in San Diego, but part of a larger team that is headquartered in SF, LA, or NYC. The ecosystem here isn’t large, but definitely growing and becoming more active.
As I was thinking about what is missing, I feel like San Diego needs an active push amongst the VC community to do deals together, share deal flow, and actively try to find opportunities to work on together. The best part about finding co-investors in San Diego is that you can convince the founders to come to town for the in-person board meetings!
Starting this summer, I am going to begin a quarterly San Diego Deals Dinner. A quarterly dinner for a group of VC investors in San Diego to get together and pitch a company that is actively raising or that you are actively leading an investment in, and need co-investors. The ultimate goal is to get the VC community in San Diego to work more closely together and continue to build the network. If you are in San Diego, this resonates, and are working in the Venture Capital space, shoot me a note. First SD Deals Dinner coming soon!
