Arjun Sethi speaks with the confidence of someone who knows more than others, or who knows that sounding confident can shape perceptions. In any case, he told me on his Zoom that “in five years, he will have 50% of the world's personal data in his hands,” and that “it will be impossible to compete against me.” ” When he says it, he says it with all his might. Warren Buffett's authority has dropped the truth about the stock market.
Sethi, co-founder of venture firm Tribe Capital, is talking about Tribe's recently spun out Termina, a subscription-based AI software platform for “quantitative diligence” that allows investors to invest as much as possible. It can improve the performance of the home, Sethi said. sign up. But the mere prospect raises questions. So if Termina is so good, why are Sethi and Tribe giving other investment firms a competitive edge? Why should other investors trust Termina to improve?
First, it's worth learning more about Termina itself, which soft-launched two products last month. Broadly speaking, one of those products will enable investors to quickly determine the health of a company by comparing across companies in Termina's initial proprietary data set and combining it with customers' own data. This is a dashboard designed to. The second proposition is designed to help investors understand the external factors at play, such as expected market changes. Think of Termina as “the empowerment of 1,000 allies,” says Sethi.
Mr. Sethi declines to name his early clients, but they include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and private equity funds, all of which he collectively manages to “keep under the radar.” “There's a large base of capital deployment personnel who want to do that,” he characterized.
He's happy to discuss his ambitions for the business, whose biggest advantage is the transaction data for about 1,500 companies that Termina feeds into several large-scale language models (which Mr. Sethi won't name); LLM, says Sethi. He says Termina itself was created to enhance benchmarking capabilities for investors.
To leverage this tool, Termina customers also provide their own raw data. “Private equity firms will dispose of their data because they may be using it for M&A.” [into it] The same is true for other VC firms,” he says. What the software ostensibly spits out is a comparative data set of companies “across the board, across all stages,” Sethi said. Sethi calls Termina, which was founded just six months ago, “the true Bloomberg of private markets.”
Naturally, some people scoff at the fact that Termina handles so much sensitive data, which is every company's most valuable resource. This may prove doubly true given the relationship between Termina and Tribe Capital.
Still, he dismisses such concerns. For one thing, Tribe invests in companies from seed to Series C stages, seeking venture-like returns, he says. On the other hand, Termina says, “This is two completely different strategies because it allows anyone from any asset class to think about how to invest in software companies, regardless of their stage.”
Sethi, who worked with VC Chamath Palihapitiya at his company Social Capital before selling his previous company called MessageMe to Yahoo and then co-founding Tribe, said he was unable to accomplish what he set out to do. It also suggests that you have the necessary reputation.
“Part of it is you're essentially building a lot of trust over a long period of time,” Sethi says of convincing other investors to use Termina.
Let's take a look. Indeed, there are both advantages and disadvantages to Termina's close relationship with Tribe, which owns Termina stock. (Termina has raised just over $10 million to date, including a personal donation from Sethi.)
For example, a team that has been working together for many years is an advantage. In addition to Sethi, who stepped down as Tribe's CEO last December and instead assumed the role of chairman and chief investment officer to partially focus on Termina, the seven startups include It also includes other people who are splitting their time.
These include Alex Chee, who co-founded MessageMe with Sethi, joined Social Capital, and went on to co-found both Tribe and Termin with Sethi. Chee oversees the day-to-day operations of his Termina. He also remains Tribe's Chief Product Officer. Jake Ellowitz, another of his Termina co-founders and a short-lived Social Capital employee, is his CTO at Tribe.
On the other hand, Tribe itself is quite young and has yet to prove itself. The 30-person organization, which already boasts an impressive $1.6 billion in assets under management, was founded just six years ago. While the company has had some success investing in crypto tokens, other investments have yet to be exited, and the trajectory of some bets is unclear, highlighting the limitations of quantitative analysis. Take, for example, Karuta, a cap table management company that has come under fire for tactics that some have questioned, or Bolt, a one-click checkout company that has been in the news for a while.
It's also worth noting that Termina's clients have not agreed to share their data exclusively with the company. So if someone's black box is better, Termina might be happy.
Once again, Sethi waves off talk of challenges. “The reason we exist and our customers work with us is because we have the best data in the world and we have the best products. We don't have any specific patents. Everything we do is a trade secret. And our tools aren't 10x better than what's out there. It's just a matter of what people's existing workflows are. It’s 1,000 times better than being.”
What that means for Tribe is that he apparently has bigger ambitions now. “My biggest goal is that there are limits to what one venture can do. As a company, I can do more.”