Tech Brew Ride Home - (First Ones) Josh Wolfe Of Lux Capital

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

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On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Josh Wolfe, what was the first computer you ever remember using? First computer I ever had was Commodore 64, floppy drives, and then after that, I think it was an Amiga 2000 HD with the little three and a half inch floppy disks.

What was the first program that you fell in love with? It could be a game, it could be a programming language or whatever, but what was the thing that was like, oh, this computing stuff is for me? First programming was logo that I fell in love with with the turtle, and you had turtle graphics for Commodore 64, but I much preferred the games. And we used to have these floppy disks. You'd cut out the little corner of them so that you made sure that they couldn't get erased.

And I had international karate. That was always a lot of fun. Zork, which was like the first text-based role-playing game. Impossible Mission, Spy Hunter. Yeah, those are awesome. That sort of steps on my question in terms of the first game that you fell in love with. It was where you were, it sounds like a computer gamer before like a Nintendo or whatever, gamer.

Yeah, my gaming experience definitely started on the Commodore 64. Again, international karate, Zork, Impossible Missions, Spy Hunter. Yeah, I love those action role-playing games. Then consoles would come later. What was your first console? Hands down, my favorite. Everybody else had Super Nintendo. or regular Nintendo, which was cool, but I fell in love with Sega Genesis.

What was the game on Sega? Were you one of those people that was like, that Mario's too stodgy, the, I can't think of his name, the blue guy. He's cooler, he's faster. This is hip. Sonic. You know, I wasn't into Sonic. I loved the camaraderie, and we used to beat the heck out of each other playing Madden and NHL and the early basketball games. But I mean, it was like, Like literally, I have a friend Jared. He used to just, he'd win. I knew all these tricks on how to get off the line on it on Madden. And he just like, nail me.

So I had all these bruises from, but that was like real life. You know, no virtual reality. We were just nailing, railing on each other. Yeah, that was awesome. Sega Genesis, all the sports games in the early 90s. Yeah, it's funny. If you actually do the research on it, like Sega kind of broke through with all of those EA and sports games. Like that was their sort of their wedge into the market.

It was John Madden. It was John Madden. Like, if it's in the game, it's in the game, you know, it's just, yeah, it was awesome. Do you remember the first time you ever went online? Yes, Compu served in the early 90s. And that had bod-banded, which was the thing that would attach to my 2400 Bodmoden, and that sound of that, you know, it was like harmony. Love that.

You don't happen to remember your compi-serve, because it was a string of number. but that's probably impossible to remember all this time later. No, I can't remember that, but I can't remember that Mike Tyson's Punchout with 0-07373-5-9-663. I can't remember people's phone numbers, but I can remember the code to get to Tyson, Mike Tyson's Punchout on Nintendo. Similar question, and please don't docks yourself if you're still using something similar, but do you, was there a screen name or like a user login that you used to use that was kind of fun back in the day? For a computer server, I can't remember. I think all my logins and usernames have been Wolf Josh.

I think everything has been what it is on Twitter. And yeah, Wolf Josh, last name first, on original. I wish I had like cookie cupcakes 4-4 or something like that. But no, just Wolf Josh. Yeah, that's a sometimes people have amazing answers to that question. But also for this one, like some people, the answer is, oh, I had a GeoCities page or whatever. But did you have a homepage? What was your first time in terms of like,

this is Josh? Hello, World. This is me on the internet? Yeah, that was probably freshman year Cornell. So this was early 90, 95. And it was GeoCities. And man, I remember the wavy HTML backgrounds. Those were the thing in the horrific fonts and the flashing

under construction signs. Yeah, that brings me back. Those were terrible. What would you put? post to your GeoCities page? Was it music, sport? What was the thing that you were posting? It was favorites.

I would post favorite links. So music, music, bands, sports stuff. Yeah. I mean, everything like all these portals were about news and weather, and they all sucked. But the personal pages were cool. First cell phone. Motorola StarTac, black flip phone. And my antenna, I used to, like, fidget with it.

I'm a fidgetter. I fidget with the backup remote controls. I fidget with everything. And that antenna was just hanging by a thread. First movie you saw in a theater. My mother tells me it was Star Wars, but I was too young to remember. But war games, I do remember. And Return to the Jedi, so Star Wars 3.

How about first record or album that you bought with your own money? I think it was Nine-ish Nails Pretty Hate Machine. I remember the first CD we got was Billy Joel Stormfront, but the first one I bought for myself was Nine Inch Nails. Is Stormfront the one that has We didn't start the fire on it? Yes. Yeah. First concert? I'm embarrassed, but it was Young MC who sang Bustamove,

and he was opening for Millie Vanilly. That's a great answer. True story. Okay, getting into sort of career stuff, but let's do first car. We grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn, and my mom used to have Honda Accords, and they got stolen every time we went to the library in downtown Brooklyn. It was like a thing. My grandmother helped me buy a Ford Explorer in junior year of college.

And yeah, that was my first car. Do you, you don't happen to know what year that Ford Explorer was? 96, 94, 94, 95, 96, something like that. Because what I'll do is I'll overlay the pictures of the models and stuff like that. I think it was a hunter green, dark green, 94 Explorer. First job, and I am looking for paper route, blockbuster video, whatever, not the first real, real job. First job was shoveling snow, bus boy at a catering hall in Coney Island, Brooklyn, and the first job I got fired from.

The only job I've ever gotten fired from, I was delivering flyers in Coney Island. We lived in these large apartment buildings there in the projects, and there were 23 stories and eight apartments on a floor, and I was delivering all these flyers for a local restaurant called Tasty Delights. And then after the first few days, I realized I'm getting $25 for every few hundred flyers that I deliver, but what if I just put them at the elevator or in the laundry room? And I stopped delivering him door to door. The guy called me and he's like, are you delivering him?

I'm like, yeah? He's like, I'm not getting any calls. And he fired me that day. It's the only job I ever got fired from. I might need to add that as a question first job he ever got fired from. For you, this is sort of you specific. First investment. Now, some people have answered this with a stock, which is fun sometimes too.

I bought Disney stock with money for my grandfather at age 10. Or if you want to go with like the first actual start. up you invested in. Whatever is more interesting? First investment I ever made, I took my bar mitzum money and I put it into a guy. I was working in a science lab and he was a scientist, but he was making money, trading futures and options. And he gave me a hot tip and I put it into I Omega, which made the zip drives back in the day. It went, I think I had $2,000. It went to like $8,000 or $10,000. I thought I was rich. It's more money than I'd ever seen in my life. And then fraud came out

and it basically went to zero. And I learned a very valuable lesson very quickly. And it made me pretty cynical about most management teams. If it's interesting, you can pass if you want, but first startup or company you invested in. First startup we really formally invested in was a company called Nanosis, started by a guy Larry Bach, who was an amazing venture investor, and we learned how to start Nucos from Larry. He passed away, but he would become a partner, Lux. And he had synthesized all of the work that was coming out of all the different universities into one company called Nanosus, and we funded that.

If I asked you to name the most important mentor for you in your career, who would that person be? Bill Conway. Bill is the founder of the Carlisle Group. And just, you know, we always like to say at Lux that we believe before others understand. He just, that feeling of somebody believing in you was just immense. And to this day, still an immense force and mentor that we want to make proud. And we forever appreciate he put Lux in business. about three more and these are kind of you specific also do you remember the first time in your career

I know you were on Wall Street previous in various places where you're like I'm successful or I'm I can do this the first like career win let's call it uh there was a feeling I generally had about an ability to like read voraciously synthesize a lot of information and communicate it and sort of take advantage of the arbitrage that people didn't fully understand but it's a more idiosyncratic personal thing and it goes to like just the relationship I really didn't have with my own father growing up. But there was a moment when somebody, my father and I had spoken and we don't talk that often. And he said, somebody was in my office and said, are you Josh Wolf's father?

And that to me was this very salient symbolic moment that suddenly like he was known as being my father as opposed to like, I don't know. That was just a very important moment in my life. Excellent answer. What is the first either lesson or first thing that you look for? in a founder when you invest in it. I kind of don't know how to phrase it, but what's the one key aspect of a successful entrepreneur that you look for?

By far, the number one thing I look for in an entrepreneur is chips on shoulders. I always like to say that chips on shoulders put chips in pockets, and it's this idea that somebody's got something to prove. And it could be that they were from a broken home. They were the minority in a mostly white neighborhood. They had a learning disability. They had a LISP.

they, whatever it was, they had a physical disability, they have a chip on their shoulder and they want to prove everybody else wrong with that idea of I'll show them. And that is a perennial fire that you will never put out. It doesn't matter how much money people make, how much fame they get. That idea of like, I have something to prove is one of the great forces that when you harness that entrepreneurial energy and put money and belief behind it, man, you can't stop it. Final one. This is favorite gadget of all time.

Now, not the best gadget. Your current computer is the best computer you've ever had. the current car is the best car. But the gadget where it was like you have the most nostalgia for it, maybe it was your Walkman, whatever it was, it's the gadget like that you love and you think of with fondness. You know, to my wife's chagrin, I still think of it with fondness. And if I may, I have it in my office.

Oh, sure. My technique's 12-hundreds. 30 years old, they still work. and absolutely love my turntables. So they are just a feat of engineering that I don't think people make products like that. They can last 30 years. It's amazing. So wait, those are the original ones that you bought that you learned to like DJ or something on?

Yeah, like hip hop records and DJing parties in college. And yeah, it goes back to 1995. What makes that particular model special or different to you? it's deeply technical in engineering but it's also analog there's all these gears and motors and i've never had to have this thing repaired maintained it just it was made with just incredible japanese style precision and um i don't know i just admire i admire the devices themselves i admire how they were reworked to serve this subculture which became hip-hop i admire that you can just produce music from it so um and yeah these damn things still work it's just absolutely amazing

1200s techniques. Edit point right there. We're done. Beautiful. Great answers. You had a bunch of other cool questions you didn't ask. Which ones do you want? Like your favorite book, science fiction.

Sanaz Semi, yeah, first celebrity crush, entrepreneurial. Hey, I'm afraid to do that one. You want to do that one? Oh, no. I'm happy. First celebrity crush, first poster in your childhood. Here, these are the ones I had.

First poster childhood bedroom. First art rated movie, favorite book. Favorite sci-fi. All right, let's do them all. Let's do them all. If you got the time, let's do it. Yeah, I'm good. All right, first celebrity crush.

Hands down, Alyssa Milano. What did you see? Well, that would have been who's the boss, right? Yeah, early, but I had a friend who had this poster, and I'm still friends with him, but she was just showing a little bit of midriff, a little bit of belly button, and I must have been, I don't know, 10, 11, 12, whatever was. And I was like, I need that poster. But yeah, Alyssa Malano.

What was your, if I said, if I was in your 12-year-old bedroom or whatever, what's the poster that had pride of place in your bedroom? One was heavy metal related. One was girl-related. I used to love Spin Magazine, and I ripped out this incredible ad. I still remember vividly of Claudia Schiffer in a guest jeans ad. And so that was out there. It was this black and white, classy, but she was just so beautiful. And then juxtapose right next to that is this red and black motif, which,

which is two colors that I love. They even embody today in Lox of the Undertow Tool album, this weird red ribcage thing. But yeah, it was like the sexiness of Claudia Shiver and the dark enigmatic metal of tool in undertow. By the way, I am now paying attention to what's behind you, and I see Thundercats, I see G.I. Joe. This is a nostalgia of my...

I got A-Team. I got one of my first handheld OG Nintendo, Donkey Kong. My Game Boy. Yeah, I got all my old gadgets. Voltron. Voltron. Okay, here's one for you.

Real heads will know this one. Lion Voltron or Space Voltron? Me too. That was the cooler toy. And instead, for Christmas, my parents got me the lion one. Okay. You want to do first R-rated movie? First R-rated movie was aliens, the sequel, Sigourney Weaver.

And I, to this day, love the H.R. Geiger dark art. Like, that just had a big impression on me. What's your science fiction? Star Trek, Star Wars. What's your most passionate about science fiction series or whatever? It's a weird one. I even ate my son after it, but it was called Photon. And it was a book that I was reading.

My parents had a custody battle, and I was living with my dad, and I found fantasy and escape in this novel. It was basically, like, the West Coast version of Laser Tag, or, like, the prequel to Enders Game kind of thing, the prelude to Enders game. But I would say the series that I actually love the most that I think is brilliant and a little bit more contemporary is Why the Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn. I think that's brilliant.

I got to look that one up. Do you have a favorite book of all time? TIE between Consilience by E.O. Wilson and How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker. Comic book series, X-Men, Spider-Man, what's your jam? Why the Last Man would be in that genre of graphic novels. I love anything not in the Marvel DC universe. That was more like Alan Moore, so a little bit more like literary. Swamp Thing and Watchmen.

But if I had to pick one, it's Batman and like the darker Batman. What else is on that list that I didn't hit that you like? Favorite record album. You did first concert. Because I keep changing it up every time I talk to different people. Yeah, I mean, different personalities have. If we hit them all, then we're good. You got book, series.

Yeah, favorite album. Okay, let me give you one that, again, this would be you specific. If I were someone that wanted to either go into tech or start a company, what's the one book that you would want me to read? Oh. I would actually think that this is a little bit universal, but I would want you to be more polymathic and either poor Charlie's almanac or from Darwin to Munger, which is all about the mental models because I think technology can change.

So I would pick those two. And then probably more philosophical, some of the Kevin Kelly books. So out of order, which is behind me somewhere. what technology wants, things that sort of transcend specific moments of technology time and can sort of point to the directional arrows of where technology is going. All right. One more, and this is me fishing a little bit because everyone would probably say Steve Jobs or whatever, but entrepreneurial idol.

I mean, I happen to love, and I happened to see him last night, but Jeff Bezos, just because he's got such a positivity, and I think his relationship with the truth is far better than say Elon's and his ability, which people don't appreciate, they raised virtually no money in their IPO. And their ability to compound and generate cash and capital is truly like the essence of a great entrepreneur that can do more than anybody thinks possible with less than anybody thinks possible. Elon's amazing, maybe the greatest capital raiser of all time. But Jeff, as an actual entrepreneur, I think, is just like, you know, unbeatable.

Oh, shit. I just had another one that I thought would be good for you. I mentioned record. I mentioned, we were talking tech books, Kevin Kelly, Charlie Munger, Jeff Bezos, great entrepreneur, not Steve Jobs. Oh, yeah, I got one. It's hip hop related, but I don't know where to go with us,

like your favorite hip hop artist, or you can give me your favorite musical artist of all time. I'm tempted to do like a Biggie versus Jay-Z or Nas or whatever. But I love both hip hop and metal. also Life of Agony, which has an album called River Runs Red, which I grew up going to their shows at Lomores in Brooklyn. I love Tool, probably Lateralist is my favorite album there. I think it's just sophisticated. It's not radio-friendly, but dark, sophisticated.

And then hip-hop, I love Black Moon. There's an album called End of the Stage. And I think every song on that, I know every word too. And my eight-year-old son is fluent in almost every Tupac lyric. And he's just dying to let me let him watch, which my wife won't. my favorite hip-hop movie of all time, which was juice. All right, this is the very last one. And this is older than both of us,

but it's a good sort of Coke versus Pepsi thing. If you had to pick Elvis, Beatles, Stones, or Dylan, where would you go? You know, it's interesting. Beatles are Stone, so I'm going to cut off the other two because I wasn't big into Elvis, and I wasn't big into Dylan, which I know is like heresy. I saw the Stones live on Copacabana Beach with friends.

it was the first time I'd ever seen them live. I know a bunch of their songs, but was like not super into them, but the energy, and given that these guys were probably 130 years old at the time, was just like absolutely insane. So I admire that. Beatles, on the one hand, like I've seen all these things, you know, like Kirby Jackson & Johnson's, everything is a remix, and you see all these things and how they stole or whatever.

But I love that Apple documentary from two years ago where they showed how they're making these songs and how raw it was and how unplanned in some of these cases. And then the weird thing that actually turned me on to the Beatles probably a decade plus ago was seeing Beatles love the Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas and i was like holy shit this is amazing and so that's probably my favorite Beatles album is the i think it's called ones or something like that's the the soundtrack basically that they remixed um and uh and then my favorite song of that is eleanor ringby