Episode 102: Early-Stage Investing, Modern Venture Capital, and Trends in Enterprise Infrastructure with Astasia Myers

Show Notes(01:56) Astasia shared her childhood growing up in Silicon Valley.(05:12) Astasia reflected on her undergraduate education at Stanford - studying Political Science and International Relations.(06:35) Astasia discussed her research at the Graduate Business School with Professor Condoleezza Rice on a case study called "San Leon Energy: Hydraulic Fracturing in Poland" - which explores how to manage the political risks of using a controversial energy extraction technology in the European Union.(09:26) Astasia talked about her year in the UK getting a Master's in Technology Policy at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School.(12:52) Astasia recalled her experience as an Equity Research Analyst at Baird and Co.(17:49) Astasia mentioned her work at Cisco Investments, driving their cloud-infrastructure M&A and venture investments.(20:58) Astasia shared her thoughts on different M&A frameworks she learned from Cisco.(23:27) Astasia reflected on her decision to join Redpoint Ventures in early 2017, leading investments across developer tools, cloud infrastructure, data/ML infrastructure, AI applications, and cybersecurity.(25:44) Astasia debunked misconceptions about the venture industry.(29:30) Astasia discussed ways to prove her value upfront in potential deals and start forming her investment theses as a new investor.(33:01) Astasia dissected the key factors that triggered her to invest in the Series A of Solo.io and the Series B of LaunchDarkly (in the domain of cloud infrastructure).(38:48) Astasia explained her Series A investment in Hex and Series B investment in Preset (in the domain of data infrastructure).(44:12) Astasia shared advice she had given her portfolio companies in hiring decisions, pricing products, and navigating go-to-market strategy while at Redpoint.(47:36) Astasia walked through her process of writing comprehensive research primers in her Medium blog Memory Leak on wide-ranging topics - from data science notebooks and data orchestration to data pipelining and ML data management.(51:19) Astasia shared the typical