Bryce Roberts - Indie.vc
Building an alternative to the "Entrepreneurial Industrial Complex"
In this month’s interview on the Idea Maze, I’m speaking to my long time friend Bryce Roberts. Bryce is the first (and likely one of the only) investors that I’ll be interviewing on the Idea Maze. He was a true OG of the seed investing world, having started OATV back at the very early dawn of institutional seed investing. He then made a hard pivot towards a very different style of investing with his new firm, Indie.VC.
Here is how I’d characterized Bryce’s story: It’s about a founder that started something that was successful but then realized that the world had changed. Driven by an early insight, experience, and deep conviction he sought to bring about something new to meet this market opportunity. Sounds like the perfect ingredients for a winning pitch right? If I were to put this in terms of a startup founder: this was the successful second time founder that saw a big problem in a market he knew super well and looked to attack it in a unique way. Should be a no-brainer.
Except that it wasn’t. LP’s didn’t love it. Many in the ecosystem didn’t get it. The flow of VC dollars seemed to defy gravity and his vision for a different relationship with capital seemed out of touch with a startup market that was ripping.
Even though this is a discussion with an investor, it is really a founder story. It’s a story of a founder that tried to build something. Was shut down by the market. Thought it was over. But realized that this was something he just had to build, even if it was just for himself.
Over the course of the interview, Bryce shared tons of wisdom about the “Entrepreneurial Industrial Complex”, appealing to the investor’s lizard brain, tinkering, and framing timing as a wave you can ride. It’s one of my favorite discussions with one of my favorite people, and hopefully provides a taste of the great work he is now doing at Indie.