José

José × Ian Rountree

Cantos’ edge is deliberate smallness: Fund IV reached $70M, supporting $1.5–4M checks before websites and same-day SAFE execution.Ian favors hard tech, vertical integration and manufacturing scale, with Neros at 1,000 drones weekly and targeting a million annually.The opportunity is cost advantage and defense demand; China’s control of motors, actuators and rare-earth inputs remains a physical-AI risk.

José × Michael Dempsey

Venture momentum is uniquely fragile: without scaled liquidity, dilution and preferred stacks can turn a softening bid into a 100% drawdown rather than 10–20%.Compound’s seed data finds that every valuation bucket above the bottom quartile produces similar top-decile outcomes, while Dempsey sees a 2028–2030 AI window and must rebuild the firm’s edge through higher-order analysis.

José × Andrew Kang

Humanoid robotics may be approaching the pre-ChatGPT phase of AI, with $50,000 robots requiring only 20,000 units for $1B revenue and a projected tens-of-billions industry within two to four years.Robo Strategy (NASDAQ: BOT) seeks to challenge SoftBank through public markets, favoring vertically integrated players with embodiment-specific data; US restrictions on Chinese robots could help, while robotics data businesses face a two-to-five-year durability test.

José × Jordan Nel

Jordan Nel argues venture’s bottom-up opportunity can survive weak venture beta because outlier funds capture multiples from overlooked companies and signal larger funds before they can deploy $30–100M tickets.The investable edge lies in pre-consensus access and GP calibration, but frontier AI is a winner’s market, advantages decay, and first funds need a prior angel record.