From the early days of Facebook and learning from Zuck to building a $2B+ VC franchise w/South Park Commons

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital.In this episode, I sit down with Aditya Agarwal of South Park Commons (SPC) to trace his journey from being one of the earliest employees at Facebook, becoming CTO at Dropbox, and then the inspiration of creating South Park Commons from his living room. The firm just announced a $575MM IV, it’s largest fund to date. We discuss his decision-making at key career forks including his learnings working with Mark Zuckerberg, the power of surrounding yourself with exceptional people, and the five founder traits SPC relentlessly optimizes for. We also covered what it means to invest at the -1 to zero stage, and his view on the current state of venture capital.Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Aditya. If you’d like to get Venture Unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. Thanks again for listening.Aditya Agarwal is a General Partner at South Park Commons and a longtime technology leader and entrepreneur. He previously served as CTO and VP of Engineering at Dropbox, where he scaled the engineering organization from 25 to more than 1,000 people. Before Dropbox, Aditya was one of Facebook’s earliest engineers, helping build foundational products including News Feed, Search, and Messenger before becoming the company’s first Director of Product Engineering. Today, he invests in and advises early-stage startups, drawing on decades of experience building some of Silicon Valley’s most influential technology companies.Topics in this conversation include:* Choosing Oracle Over Bridgewater (2:31)* First Impressions of Mark Zuckerberg and Early Facebook (6:02)* Lessons From Oracle on Talent Density and Bureaucracy (9:38)* Five Founder Traits SPC Looks For (13:14)* Growing the SPC Community and Early Angel Checks (22:33)* AI, ChatGPT, and Rethinking Fund Size (35:15)* Investing Ahead of the Curve in AI and Robotics (39:11)* Aiming for 5x Net Per Fund (41:04)* AI Compared to Railroads and Heavy Capex (46:07)* AI’s High Usefulness Floor and Mass Adoption (49:10)* Concerns Around Hyperscaler Capex and Hiccups (52:01)* Closing Reflections and Takeaways (54:38)Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on X. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com