Kareem Zaki - Small Ideas Attract Competition - [Invest Like the Best, EP.391]
Episode publishedPodcast: Invest Like the Best with Patr...Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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2 fun facts about our newest sponsorship partner, Ramp. 1st, they are the fastest growing Fintech company in history, reaching a level of revenue in 5 years that I can't quote exactly, but is eyebrow raising. 2nd, they are backed by more of my favorite past guests, at least 16 of them when I counted, than probably any other company that I'm aware of. A list that includes Ravi Gupta at Sequoia, Josh Kushner at Thrive, Keith Raboy at Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Ovitz, Brad Gershner. The list goes on and on. These facts demand the question, why? Having be
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Karim Zaki. Karim is a general partner at Thrive Capital and has been at the firm for a decade. In an episode last year, Thrive's founder, Josh Kushner, told me that he thinks Karim is the best health care investor in the world. Karim has cofounded 3 health care businesses worth over $1,000,000,000 He also has expertise in financial services where he's led the firm's investments in companies like Ramp and Robinhood. It's a timely moment to have this discussion with Thryv announcing a new $5,000,000,000 fund in August. We talk about how Thryv identifies category defining compa
I think what's just so interesting about the Thryv story is if you looked at us from the outside, and our first fund being a $40,000,000 fund, all the way now to our most recent being $5,000,000,000 fund, a lot of different sized funds in between, you'd look at it from the outside and be, like, wow, things have changed a lot at Thryv. And there's definitely some things we've gotten better at, and we've grown up, and been smarter about certain things. But if I actually look back to the early days, joining Thryv about a decade ago when we had a $150,000,000 fund, I'd actually say the most surpri
I'm gonna ask about that last thing before returning to category defining because I'm worried that we're gonna go off on a half hour sidewinder. I hope we do. When you say the firm has changed and matured to better be able to handle, and we were talking about this before recording that in the last x period of time, it feels like there's this new alignment and maturity of the business and the ability to go after this in the most fulsome way. Maybe just describe what that literally means. What did you do to change it so that you're better equipped to handle these kinds of companies and supportin
Absolutely. And I think it's had been a deliberate decision as we've grown. Because when we were first small fund, we were small team. And everyone's heroing it and figuring it out as we went, and we kinda react to what's happening. And then as our fund size grew, I think we had to make some really intentional decisions to maintain that purity of mission that we were committed to pursuing. A lot of things make Thrive special, but if I had to really summarize it, I think it falls in 4 pillars. The first is that we're committed to being generalists, we're committed to being life cycle investors,
One of the things that has surprised me about learning the history of the business is the nature of portfolio construction even in the very small funds and that you were doing these g
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