Episode Highlights:

• How Did Brett Brewer's Early Real Estate Ventures Shape His Entrepreneurial Journey
• The difficulty of raising pre-seed financing, the role of accelerators and incubators, and the process of raising $300,000 for the business.
• The impact of the dotcom crash on e-commerce businesses and the shift to casual game development.
• The launch of Myspace, and the initial user engagement strategy.
• Brett's role in scaling Ad Knowledge, its rapid growth, and eventual sale to TPG and other private equity firms.
• The founding of CrossCut Ventures, and the evolution of its investment focus.
• The challenges of recruiting talent to LA, the evolution of the LA tech ecosystem, and CrossCut's role in connecting and supporting the community.
• The difficulties and challenges faced by venture capitalists.
• The significance of technology in education and the need to bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots in accessing educational resources.
• Brett Brewer's investment philosophy and insights into private versus public markets, influenced by Annie Duke's book "Thinking in Bets.”

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Be the straw that serves to drink.” — Kurt
• “So that starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy when you have that many smart people controlling that much capital living in the actual market.” —Brett
• “Understanding the best use of your time and how to be productive is a real challenge and ends up being the downfall of some VCs.” —Brett
• “Politics and infighting is the death of a startup.”—Brett
• “If you're gonna have an environment where people don't trust each other- where they can't give each other candid feedback, they will fail.”—Brett
• “And I think there's something really magical about being honest.—”Kurt
• “Culture isn't just values, it's the actual way ideas get put into practice. It's the behavior.”—Kurt
• “So it's more important than ever that as a society, we realize that we do have a moral imperative to invest in and believe in and educate all kids and give them a chance.” —Brett
• “Every individual and every company has a certain set of advantages. You have to take full advantage of them to greatly increase your chances of being successful.” —Brett
• “It's comforting when you realize there are just lots of things out of your control and the less time you spend worrying about them, the better off you'll be.”—Brett
• “You have to do something extraordinary and the only way you're gonna do something extraordinary is by actually doing some action.”—Brett

Links Mentioned:

• Kurt’s Twitter
• Kurt’s Instagram
• Kurt’s LinkedIn
• Brett Brewer
• Crosscut Ventures
• Aber Whitcomb
• Adam Goldenberg
• Brian Garrett
• Josh Berman
• Peter Tomasulo
• Ross Levinsohn
• Scott Nolan
• Thomas Anderson
• Alliance
• Amazon
• EdVoice
• Fabletics
• Fedex
• Foundersfund
• IGN
• LAtech
• Microsoft
• MySpace
• News Corp
• NVIDIA
• Real World Asset Group
• SoftBank
• SpaceX
• Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
• The Wall Street Journal
• TPG