#232 What makes startups successful? - Matt Oguz

(0:47) Introduction-Matt Oguz is a growth stage investor in technology and life science companies. His investment portfolio includes names like Lyft, Lemonade, Ripple, carbon circle stock folio, he's known for being a thought leader in quantitative investment methods in venture capital, and private equity. Matt is the founding partner at venture science. When science was established in 2013, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. This company has pioneered the data-driven quantitative approach to venture capital, cloud infrastructure, networking, security, gaming, VR and drone technology, which are just a few innovations in venture science investment. Aside from all these, Matt is also the Chief Investment Officer for the iris family office. The family office invests in multiple asset classes and takes direct positions in those classes. The family office deploys a quantitative investment strategy once again and is unconstrained in terms of stage or sector. Matt is outspoken about his approach and shares his valuable thoughts as a columnist on TechCrunch. Matt is a person of multiple talents with his profession revolving around analytics, behavior, economics, Decision Sciences, and AI. And Matt is obviously a successful investor, entrepreneur, decision theorist, and writer. The interview-(2:22)Can you walk us through your journey? Like how, you know, how did it all happen? How, how did you get to this point, being an immigrant? What kind of challenges did you face? Something about your backstory?(3:01) I have been a student here for 25 years. I originally came here as an exchange student, and then ended up getting my master's degree. I got my MBA while focusing on my decision theory studies.People called the study of decision-making "Decision Sciences" and it was considered a legitimate academic discipline.  It's essentially the discipline of trying to make better decisions and using models, theories, and math. Over time, everyone learns a lot, and I've learned that America has many opportunities for entrepreneurship and investing. I also believe that America is the best place to do whatever you want. With hard work and a bit of luck, good things happen. (5:08)Generally, we make decisions on, you know, just random things based on our experience, we are very impulsive about decision making. So how do you see the world differently, how do you even figure it out? What are the factors that you need to consider before you can make a decision?(5:53) To be considered a meaningful decision, it must involve something with value at stake. That could mean money, but it can also meantime.Decisions you make every day may affect your personal life, the people around you, your business, or your bank account. Such as a decision to buy a house. When you're buying a home, there are some tangible attributes (size, number of rooms, etc.), but in the end, it's the intangible things about a home that are most important but ultimately you buy a house because it's like your grandmother's. You want to make this decision from a personal perspective, based on what's important to you. In business, the best entrepreneurs evaluate both the stakes and probability of success.If you have a positive expected value from a risky investment, it's smart to take the risk. If you don't, stay away.(15:30)So I'm guessing that you took all this information that you have and sort of applied it to venture capital and came up with a model to figure out how to optimally deploy your capitSupport the showFollow me on Facebook ⬇️https://www.facebook.com/manuj.aggarwal❤️  ID -  Manuj Aggarwal■ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manujaggarwal/ ■ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realmanuj■ Instagram: ...