In his new book, “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the Future,” Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Sebastian Mallaby brings his erudite attention from the hedge fund world to venture capital, interviewing the industry’s leading players over the last 50 years to discover what is unique about this industry that “manufactures courage.” In this episode, Mallaby, Josh Wolfe and Danny Crichton talk about the structural and cultural differences between hedge funds and VC firms, the long-term lessons that get re-learned by each generation of VCs, how succession is planned (and not), as well as a side story of a VC and a pile of maggot-filled meat laid by Hunter S. Thompson.

web3 technologies have received prodigious funding the past two years as founders and VCs collectively search for the path to the next evolution of the internet. But how do we bridge the gap between the ubiquitous Web 2.0 world with what we see coming in web3? In this episode, Lux VC investor Grace Isford joins host Danny Crichton to discuss the key infrastructure investments in what she is dubbing “web2.5,” the crypto developer stack, and what’s next for crypto in 2022.

Josh Wolfe and Danny Crichton talk about the influx of TV shows covering startup busts including WeCrashed, Super Pumped, and The Dropout; strategic ambiguity, game theory, and a bit of geopolitics; and what the case for optimism is in this world, including the difference between complacent optimism and conditional optimism. Finally, Danny observes the perilous state of corruption in the world today and the need for a firmer ethical line for all people.

The funding of science is one of the most important leverage points for growth in the global economy. Yet, we’ve barely experimented with how science gets funded or tried to evolve financing models that were invented decades ago. Now, dozens of new organizations have been started to explore novel models for funding scientists to do their best work. Danny Crichton is joined by Lux Capital’s scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman to talk about why this trend has accelerated and what all these new experimental models might mean for the future of science.