Motion Blur

Where venture dogmas go to die

Hammad leads a long-awaited discussion about the concept of linearity, something that is becoming increasingly more important in today’s world. Given its significance, we’ve decided to make this a two-part episode, this first part focuses on venture capital and startups. Hammad begins by giving us his definition of linearity vs non-linearity, and shares his critiques of some of the traditional growth metrics like ‘triple, triple, double, double’. This episode has everything: twitter references, iPhones vs Android, Blackberry, and even some convos about COVID.

Enjoy!

🔗 Show Resource Links

• Dan Gray’s tweet

• Dan’s article: Venture Capital is Not Competitive

• Ho Nam’s quote tweet

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

Today we’re interviewing Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, co-founders of 1517 Fund. We’ve long admired their distinctive approach to backing builders outside traditional paths, and brought them on to dig into how talent, capital, and company formation work when you deliberately look beyond credentials. 1517 backs dropouts, students, and deep-tech scientists at the very first checks stage—often before there’s a company at all.

Danielle is a General Partner at 1517 and was on the founding team that designed and ran the Thiel Fellowship, after earlier founding Innovations Academy, a project-based learning charter school in San Diego. Her career has centered on helping unconventional young founders turn early sparks into real companies.

Michael is a GP at 1517 and, alongside Danielle, helped lead the Thiel Fellowship before co-founding the fund. He’s also the author of Paper Belt on Fire, a book about funding outsiders and rethinking how progress happens. Grant can attest, it’s a fantastic read.

Enjoy!

🎙️ Podcast Links

• ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠

• ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠

• ⁠⁠⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠⁠⁠

• ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at ⁠⁠Cantos⁠⁠ where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, ⁠⁠Susa⁠⁠’s growth fund. Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠⁠⁠@grant__gregory⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Embers⁠⁠⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠⁠⁠@_hammad_aslamh⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Susa Ventures⁠⁠

If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every week for new episodes.

Intro music credit: ⁠⁠⁠Will Harrison⁠⁠⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to get notified for future episodes.

The official State of Adventure presentation. Enjoy!

🔗 Show Resource Links

• The official State of Adventure deck

• Grant’s tweet announcing the deck

• Grant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

This short bonus episode officially marks the one-year mark for Motion Blur.

It’s been a great year, with a lot of highlights. We reflect on some of them and Hammad and Grant each share some exciting personal news.

Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

One more convo about the State of Adventure! This one is with our close friend Will Quist at Slow Ventures. Will had Grant on their podcast to riff on Adventure Capital, Narrative Warfare, and much more.

Will is one of the sharpest minds in venture, and we’re excited for you to tune into this convo.

Grant Gregory and Cantos just dropped a 286-slide deep tech mega-deck. They swap inside baseball on narrative warfare, the voting vs weighing machine, and why “precision” in deep tech labeling matters (Waymo ≠ TLM ≠ Shinkai ≠ Anduril).

Grant shows his two most important slides: the Deep Tech Score (levels from SaaS to “OpenAI before Transformers existed”) and the “narrative violation” where hardware’s capital-to-outcome multiples beat software in the data he compiled.

Chapters:

• 00:48 Who is Grant? A16Z American Dynamism team → Cantos

• 01:36 Why capital finally “got the plot” on hard tech

• 03:13 The two most important slides: Deep Tech Score + Narrative Violation 04:20 Hardware vs software: the capital-intensity myth, with data

• 05:59 Narrative warfare: voting machine vs weighing machine

• 06:38 Anointment dynamics; operating between fundamentals and momentum 07:28 Can founders learn the voting machine? Authenticity over mimicry

• 09:44 Defense FOMO, IBM-ification of venture, and pre-signal markets

• 14:18 Defense exits: only a few true fund-returners; multi-product is required 17:21 Deck feedback: founders want a real definition of “venture scale”

• 18:45 Deep Tech Score criteria: risk types, hypothesis legibility, market maturity

• 22:22 Why concentrated, full-stack investing matters in non-consensus areas 24:32 Non-VC capital in SpaceX/Tesla/Anduril: the uncomfortable truth

• 29:31 Business physics: power, supply chains, leverage in physical industries

• 30:13 Will’s take: Automation is a terrible investment vs services on top

• 32:10 Advice to founders: narrative warfare + slow conviction

Keep in touch with Slow Ventures: X: https://x.com/slow

Connect with Will

Connect with Grant

🔗 Show Resource Links

• The full YouTube video of the conversation, and the tweet

• Grant’s tweet announcing the deck

• Grant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

It’s officially out! Grant and Hammad discuss the takeaways and reception from the inaugural State of Adventure Capital deck.

The presentation covers every aspect of American Dynamism Cinematic Universe, from capital inflows to dilution metrics, deep currents, and more. We dive into the meaning behind “Adventure Capital”, why the timing is right for these categories, and what investment opportunities exist for startups building in the physical world.

In Grant’s words: This is something I’ve been wanting to do for 3 years now (ever since my a16z days), and the goal is to have this be an annual project in similar scope to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report. An ambitious goal to be clear! But we believe we have a unique purview of the American Dynamism / Deep Tech / Hard Tech landscape, and are compiling all of our learnings together to share them with our founders, coinvestors, and other people in the cinematic universe. Our hope is that this will be a resource for everyone as they build in these categories.

🔗 Show Resource Links

• ​The official State of Adventure deck
• ​Grant’s tweet announcing the deck
• ​Grant’s LinkedIn post announcing the deck, and the full deck

🎙️ Podcast Links

• ​Spotify
• ​Apple Podcasts
• ​⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠
• ​Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• ​Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠
• ​Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

The state of all things Hard Tech, Deep Tech, and American Dynamism

After 9+ months of work, Grant has finished his inaugural State of Adventure Capital deck. And ahead of Grant’s presentation at the upcoming Cantos AGM, we’re giving Motion Blur listeners a special early listen.

The presentation covers every aspect of American Dynamism Cinematic Universe, from capital inflows to dilution metrics, deep currents, and more. We dive into the meaning behind “Adventure Capital”, why the timing is right for these categories, and what investment opportunities exist for startups building in the physical world.

In Grant’s words: This is something I’ve been wanting to do for 3 years now (ever since my a16z days), and the goal is to have this be an annual project in similar scope to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report. An ambitious goal to be clear! But we believe we have a unique purview of the American Dynamism / Deep Tech / Hard Tech landscape, and are compiling all of our learnings together to share them with our founders, coinvestors, and other people in the cinematic universe. Our hope is that this will be a resource for everyone as they build in these categories.

The State of Adventure will be formally released next week. Until then, enjoy this early version.

🔗 Show Resource Links

• Grant’s recent tweets on some of the slides from his deck

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

A deeper discussion on the shortcomings (and benefits) of venture

Today we’re interviewing Dan Gray, head of insights at Equidam. We’ve been following Dan’s work throughout the past year and decided to have him on as we begin talking to more LPs about their allocation strategies and perspectives.

Dan’s twitter account is a great follow — he frequently shares lots of data-driven insights and rebukes for a lot of the “tried and true” aphorisms. This episode is filled with hot takes, enjoy!

🔗 Dan’s Bio

• Dan is the Head of Insights at Equidam, a platform for startup valuation that helps make unconventional and novel ideas more legible for investors. With two decades of experience in and around startups, Dan’s career spans industrial engineering, gaming, fintech, and animation. He has worked across the startup ecosystem—from startup hubs to accelerator programs—supporting both founders and investors in navigating the complexities of venture capital.

• Dan is a prolific writer and commentator on the startup landscape, contributing regularly to Crunchbase News and sharing insights on his blog, credistick.com, as well as on X. His work focuses on demystifying fundraising, startup valuation, and the shifting incentives in the venture capital ecosystem.

🎙️ Podcast Links

• ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠

• ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠

• ⁠⁠⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠⁠⁠

• ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at ⁠⁠Cantos⁠⁠ where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, ⁠⁠Susa⁠⁠’s growth fund. Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠⁠⁠@grant__gregory⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Embers⁠⁠⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠⁠⁠@_hammad_aslamh⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Susa Ventures⁠⁠

If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every week for new episodes.

Intro music credit: ⁠⁠⁠Will Harrison⁠⁠⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to get notified for future episodes.

“It’s good to be back!” — Tony Stark

We are finally back after a long summer hiatus. Grant and Hammad discuss some exciting personal news, as well as what’s in the pipeline for the next few episodes of Motion Blur.

Enjoy!

🔗 Show Resource Links

• Grant’s recent tweets on some of the slides from his deck

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠

Thanks for reading and listening to Motion Blur! Subscribe to get notified for future episodes.

Today we’re talking about a topic we get asked about at least once every week: capital as a moat. Should you raise a billion dollars? Should you bootstrap?

Grant opens the debate by discussing the merits of durability and the idiosyncrasies of building in different categories. We dig more into Parker Conrad’s tweet about venture backed competition potentially eating your lunch, and Hammad then steps in to discuss his thoughts on capital as acceleration and the quality of leadership.

This discussion plays off of many of our prior episodes: chicken sexing, anointment, the hedonic treadmill, and more. Ultimately, capital can be a powerful accelerant in the hands of disciplined leadership, and it’s contingent upon founders (and their investors) to make the most of it.

Enjoy!

🔗 Show Resource Links

• Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry’s vs. Amazon

• Parker Conrad Tweet

• Ravens GM on the NFL Draft Tweet

• Ric Elias of Red Ventures on The Drive Podcast (a top recommendation from Grant)

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠