Shows
LA VentureRayfe Gaspar-Asaoka -- Canaan PartnersVenture capital is a team sport masquerading as an individual sport. Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, partner at Canaan Partners, tells us why he thinks VC partnerships resemble a swim team. We also talk about space and defense tech, the evolution of venture capital, how generational transition can work well and why a thoughtful reserve strategy has outsized leverage, especially in early stage venture firms.2024-05-1428 min
Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast32. Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, Canaan - A Generalist VC or a Portfolio of Thematic SpecialistsCanaan is a storied, early-stage venture VC fund that has been around 34 years with ~6B AUM across 12 funds, and Rayfe discusses what the macro factors were that led Canaan into expanding a frontier and industrial tech thesis that would drive alpha for their fund. With a large and diverse partnership that is split 1/3 healthcare (digital, biopharma, medtech) and 2/3 tech (consumer, fintech, enterprise/cloud, frontier), he discusses both how to navigate a partnership into a new investment category/thesis and how the diversity of thinking within such a broad partnership leads to the beneficial cross-pollination of complimentary ideas and networks...2021-09-0731 min