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I love research. That may be obvious now, given I've written 170 blog posts over the last 3.5 years and built Contrary Research, producing millions of words on private companies. But that wasn't always clear. I felt like research was an attempt to wrap my arms around something. Reading, talking, thinking, writing -- it was all in pursuit of something. I didn't have great words to articulate that until I stumbled on a quote mentioned on Compound's website:
“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody has thought.” (Albert Szent-Gyorgi)
That was it. What I enjoyed most was finding those little nuggets. Not usually things that no one else had seen, but insights that were hiding in plain sight, waiting to be unpacked, understood, and articulated.
Research is a method approach to venture capital. In the kind of world we live in, and the type of venture ecosystem I've written about over and over again, a thesis-driven approach to venture, putting research at the center, those aren't exactly in vogue.
That is, I think, why I have so much respect for Michael Dempsey and what he's built at Compound. They describe Compound as a venture firm specifically catered to that ideal: "a thesis-driven, research-centric investment firm."
This conversation gave me goosebumps, I enjoyed it so much. We touched on a huge range of topics, all of which informed my perspective on venture, using research, being idea-centric, leveraging speculative fiction, and building a concentrated strategy around the pursuit of ideas.
Enjoy the conversation!
Side Note: Normally, I like to go find the links we talked about in the conversation, maybe even edit them in, and sometimes summarize key parts of the conversation. Unfortunately, one of the woes of me just winging these podcast episodes is I occasionally mess up. Today, that happened with my audio, so I had to spend so much time editing it to not sound crazy that I didn't have time to go deeper. But there is so much meat in this conversation, I'm liable to write about it again next week because there were some really exceptional nuggets in here!
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