PODCAST · business
Motion Blur
by Grant Gregory and Hammad Aslam
Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam
Episodes
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Tempo Tempo Tempo
A case for a high cadence Today Grant reads his latest essay, this one is about building in hardware with tempo. One of my college coaches always preached that we needed to move with Tempo, Tempo, and Tempo. It extended from decision making to the actual execution. Always be moving, and move with...
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Desperation
The other side of Product Market Fit Today Grant reads his latest essay, this one is about desperation, and just like porn: "you know it when you see it". 🔗 Show Resource Links Desperation 🎙️ Podcast Links Spotify Apple Podcasts X (FKA Twitter) Subscribe 🌀 About Motion Blur...
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Bullets in the Chamber
Snipers, Intentionality, and Why Hardware is Hard Today Grant reads his latest essay, this one is about building in hardware. A very close founder friend was recently talking to me about his experience in hardware: “I bled out of my ears and eyes for 3 years. I'm never doing that again.” That was...
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Need For Speed
Another side of vertical integration Today Grant reads his latest essay, this one is a continuation of vertical integration benefits. SpaceX customers frequently comment on the fact that they’ve quickly built trust with the company because they saw how hard SpaceX worked to get the products where...
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Vertically Integrate or Die
Today Grant reads his latest essay on the topic of vertical integration. Vertical integration has been the topic de jour the last few days — leading to some energized back and forth on X. One position that kicked off the frenzy centered on the idea that “too many startups vertically integrate...
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(Potato) Chips, Hard Hats, and a Happy New Year
Predictions, resolutions, and more Happy 2026 everyone! We’re excited to open the show with some exciting news about Hard Hat DAO. We then transition into some new years resolutions, predictions for the tech industry — some of which have already proven true — and then some broader commentary on…
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The 2025 Retrospective
It’s the end of 2025, so Grant and Hammad decided to revisit some of the most important themes from this year and highlight their significance now that we've had more time to digest them. Hammad cooked in this one, so Grant thinks you’ll particularly enjoy it. Thank you for continuing to listen…
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Pursuing Nonlinearity (Part 2)
When humanity becomes the edge What does labor look like today, and what does it look like tomorrow? Hammad leads part two of the long-awaited discussion about the concept of linearity. Today’s conversation extends beyond tech and covers a lot more of the societal and philosophical questions that...
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Trevor Noren – Building Sage Road Research and Seeing the Future
A discussion with the Founder of Sage Road Research on the biggest forces reshaping the world. Today we’re interviewing someone Grant has been following since 2019: Trevor Noren, Founder of Sage Road Research. Trevor is an information omnivore. He’s a renowned financial analyst and thought…
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Thanksgiving Gratitudes – 2025
Apps, books, and people we love It’s time for our annual Thanksgiving-inspired episode! Grant and Hammad share a few thoughts on an app, book, and person that they each are grateful for. We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and wonderful start to the Holiday season. Thanks for listening! 🔗...
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Pursuing Nonlinearity (Part 1)
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...
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Michael Gibson & Danielle Strachman – 1517, The Thiel Fellowship, and Finding Outliers
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...
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Video: The State of Adventure (Capital)
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...
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Bonus Episode: One Year of Motion Blur!
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...
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Will's Corner: Hardware Over Software?
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...
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Official Release + Takeaways: The State of Adventure Capital
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...
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Early Release: The State of Adventure Capital
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...
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Dan Gray – What's Wrong with Venture?
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....
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It's Good to Be Back
“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...
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Capital as a Moat
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...
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Craving Commodities
We are back after a short summer break! Our first order of business, commodity companies. But not the ones you’re thinking of, we’re talking about businesses that make and sell commodities. Most investors shy away from commodities because they imply heightened competition and structurally lower...
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IO Awaits
Fundraising milestones, OpenAI's latest acquisition, and the merits of planning ahead One of the hardest dynamics of today’s venture landscape is figuring out milestones to benchmark yourself against. Categories like American Dynamism aren’t mature enough for there to be definitive milestones…
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Finding Maze Historians
In today’s episode Grant and Hammad unpack the “Idea Maze” — a framework for understanding whether founders truly grasp the terrain they’re building in. The Idea Maze comes from Balaji Srinivasan’s lecture notes on entrepreneurship, and was subsequently popularized by Chris Dixon’s succinct blog...
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Replay: The Hardware Playbook
Given we’ve had a bunch of new subscribers recently, we decided to re-release one of our first episodes we ever recorded, and the first one we launched with! You know the saying: Hardware is hard! In today’s episode, Grant and Hammad discuss why that’s the case. Together they examine the software...
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Howdy, Partner
Grant's Promotion to Partner, the State of Seed Investing, and Quantum vs Classical Risks Today’s episode is a day late but for good reason — Grant was recently promoted to Partner(!), so Hammad wanted to open the pod congratulating him, and let Grant share some thank you’s to those that have...
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Q&A Mailbag #1
Today’s episode is the long-awaited Q&A. Thank you to all our listeners who submitted questions to us, we did our best to cover as many as possible. We plan on making more of these in the future so please keep them coming (and hopefully we can get to some that we couldn’t cover this time). 🔗…
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Past Performance Does Not Equal Future Results
Entropy, record revenue growth, and persistence Today’s episode covers the Second Law of Thermodynamics — entropy, and how it extends to the world of (AI) companies. We’ve seen a number of companies shatter revenue milestones in record times, and Hammad and Grant viewed this as an opportunity to...
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Time for Tariffs
What reindustrialization actually means, and how we do it The market is digesting the impact of the latest round of tariffs, and given that reshoring is a core talking point, we wanted to use this as an opportunity to cover our perspective on the broader reindustrialization efforts. This is very...
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Chicken Sexing
The art of founder picking Today we’re covering a topic near and dear to our hearts: chicken sexing! While you might think it’s an odd comparison, there’s actually a lot of similarities between chicken sexing and founding picking. Grant originally wrote about this over a year ago on a previously...
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The Hedonic Treadmill
11x, an AI sales development representatives (SDR) co is in the news for some potentially troubling action. We are not going to comment on the individual company, but instead we wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk about what the challenges of building in the world of software are. Hammad...
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M&A is Back on the Menu
Google is acquiring Wiz, so we decided it’s time to talk about M&A. There’s a lot of analysis on this particular acquisition and less about how it fits into the broader tech ecosystem, so that’s where most of our discussion centers. We open the conversation by talking about Grant’s time at the…
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Not Dead, Can't Quit
Given the recent market sell off Grant and Hammad thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the current venture landscape and how macro conditions impact the GP and LP ecosystem. We start off by quickly looking at the American Dynamism 50, which is an annual list of 50...
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Matt Curtolo – An Allocator's Mind
Insights from two decades in the private markets Today we’re interviewing a close friend of the show — Matt Curtolo. Grant first met Matt back during his time at MetLife, and he’s one of the people responsible for Grant entering venture in the first place. In this episode we discuss Matt’s…
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Human(e)'s Encore
Humane, Alexa Plus, and the future of computing Last week Humane announced that HP was acquiring its team and technology, which formally marks the end of their AI pin product. We thought today would be a good time to dissect the news, but more importantly, we wanted to explore what the future of...
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Ride or Die
AI or die? What’s the latest with AI? Is it really AI or Die? A bunch of people are telling us to pay more attention to what’s happening, so Grant and Hammad decided to dive into the meta discussion of how to handle periods of profound change. We discuss everything from Formula One race…
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Competition is for Winners
Choosing Competitors Wisely You know the line: Competition is for losers! But what if the opposite is actually true? Today Hammad and Grant explore the topic of choosing your enemies (in reality:competitors), and how that sets your company up for success (or the lack thereof). We dive into...
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Not from Concentrate
Index Investing vs Concentration Today Hammad and Grant debate the merits of index investing vs concentrated investing at the early stages. The conversation begins with Hammad sharing a tweet from a notable early-stage investing legend; Grant proceeds to explain why he thinks it’s wrong! Been...
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Konnichiwa, DeepSeek
Lessons from a last-minute trip to Tokyo, and DeepSeek Hello from Tokyo! This week Grant shares some lessons from a recent trip to Japan to support one of the Cantos portfolio companies: Shinkei Systems. For context, Shinkei is a vertically-integrated robotic fish processing company. They’re…
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Ian Rountree – Founder & Managing Partner of Cantos
Today we have a special episode where Grant and Hammad interview a mentor, friend, and someone who happens to also be Grant’s business partner — Ian Rountree. Ian founded Cantos back in 2016 and has since built the firm into the preeminent early-stage investor in the deep tech universe. We open…
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The Starlink IPO
We’re back for the first episode of 2025! Today we’re exploring one of Grant’s older essays:The Starlink IPO. We open the conversation discussing Amazon and it’s path to creating AWS, and then compare that story to SpaceX and Starlink's meteoric rise. Grant discusses his thesis in greater detail...
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2024 in Review
It’s the end of the year, so Grant and Hammad decided to revisit some of the most popular 2024 tech predictions and evaluate how accurate they were. We open with Grant’s maritime prediction from his time at a16z, and then we shift to robotics, crypto, Apple’s Vision Pro, and geopolitics. Hammad...
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Riding the Wave
Grant and Hammad discuss how the act of creating a company is like surfing a monster 100 foot wave. Grant begins by sharing a surfing metaphor that explains what it’s like to build a company. Hammad steps in to share his pushback, and then the conversation transitions to some stories about John...
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Insiders vs Outsiders
Larry’s tone was in the friendly advice-category. He teed it up this way: I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas....
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Thanksgiving Gratitudes
In this special Thanksgiving-inspired episode, Grant and Hammad share a few thoughts on an app, book, and person that they each are grateful for. We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and wonderful start to the Holiday season. Thanks for listening! 🎙️ Podcast Links Spotify Apple…
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The IBMification of Everything
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, or so the saying goes. Grant and Hammad talk about how that same sentiment has pervaded everything from Boeing to Venture, and what that means for today’s startup environment, as well as ways to address it. Hammad shares some perspectives on growth, and Grant...
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How Can I Help?
Episode 3: The iconic line. Everyone’s heard it. We’ve joked about it. Today we’re talking about it. Grant and Hammad cover everything from how multistage firms support portcos to founder dinners. Grant tells us his gold standard for helping founders, and then closes us out with some comments on...
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Long Live Software
Episode 2: Software strikes back! In today’s episode, Hammad leads a discussion about the history of software and how it brought us to today's venture landscape. Hammad details how incrementalism has come to dominate investing decisions and why he eschews that in favor of embracing true...
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The Hardware Playbook
You know the saying: Hardware is hard! In today’s episode, Grant and Hammad discuss why that’s the case. They examine the software investing frameworks that also apply to hardware, and also explore new frameworks that offer some predictability in the built world. Hammad closes us out with some...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Motion Blur have?
Motion Blur currently has 48 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Motion Blur about?
Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam
How often does Motion Blur release new episodes?
Motion Blur has 48 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Motion Blur?
You can listen to Motion Blur on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Motion Blur?
Motion Blur is created and hosted by Grant Gregory and Hammad Aslam.
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