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Patrick Chun on Juxtapose’s Experienced CEO Thesis
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Venture capitalists sometimes say having the right person in charge can make or break a startup, particularly at the earliest stages. Juxtapose, a venture firm that both creates and invests in startups, has an unusual approach to ensuring companies have the right leaders: it picks the CEOs. The New York-based firm, which was founded in 2015, says it chooses chief executives who are more experienced and thus oftentimes older than the typical tech startup founder.
Patrick Chun, Juxtapose’s founder and managing partner, detailed for WSJ Pro the upside as well as the challenges this thesis brings. The interview has been edited for length.
WSJ Pro: Does Juxtapose tend to hire older CEOs? What’s the thesis when it comes to picking CEOs?
Chun: One of Juxtapose’s core pillars and differentiators is that we partner with experienced entrepreneurial CEOs to help build and lead our companies. Given that we seek leaders who have built multiple companies, created and scaled high-functioning organizations, and accreted real company value, they do tend to be older than the traditional startup CEO—our average CEO has over 20 years of professional experience. This usually includes decades at the C-level or CEO level.
WSJ Pro: Is it oftentimes difficult to get more experienced CEOs to take a job at a seed-stage startup? How do you attempt to draw them in?
Chun: It’s unique for somebody to be both an experienced and entrepreneurial CEO, and also hard to find them at the right point in their career to get them to join us. So yes, the short answer: it is difficult! Finding the absolute right CEO for a business, with the bar we have, is probably the biggest limiting factor in our space. This often means we end up creating only one or two businesses in a given year. Juxtapose’s model invests heavily in the concept development process. This level of diligence and support is attractive to CEOs who want the unique opportunity to start a new company without the typical risk profile.
WSJ Pro: How does your CEO thesis fit into the current realities of the venture market?
Chun: Despite it becoming much harder (and theoretically higher risk) today to start a business, what that also means practically is that there is more availability of talent, more forced discipline, and less puffed air in the ecosystem. We are in an environment that will demand (and ultimately reward) rigor, focus, and results, where competition from both early-stage and incumbent companies will be less abundant, and where exceptionally talented people are available.
And now on to the news...
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EnergyRe builds transmission lines to carry wind and solar power to big cities. PHOTO: WAYNE PARRY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Getting clean energy to big cities. U.S. cities racing to cut their emissions are facing a roadblock: They can’t access the wind and solar power being developed in remote sites hundreds of miles away. Now a group of investors is betting on a startup that builds massive transmission lines to carry renewable electricity to urban areas.
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EnergyRe, launched by executives at real-estate company Related Cos., said Monday that it raised $1.2 billion from a group of European investors to build more projects across the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Meta and IBM Launch AI Alliance
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Meta Platforms and International Business Machines launched a coalition of more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and research institutions that are pushing a so-called open model of AI, hoping to gain traction in a fast-growing market, WSJ reports. The AI Alliance, whose members include Intel, Oracle, Cornell University and the National Science Foundation, said it is pooling resources to stand behind “open innovation and open science” in AI. Its members largely support open source, an approach in which technology is shared free and draws on a history of collaboration among Big Tech, academics and a fervent movement of independent programmers.
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Inside Anduril, the Defense Startup That’s Run Like a Tech Company
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: ALEXANDER HOTZ/WSJ
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Startup Anduril Industries is shaking up the U.S. defense industry. Founded by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey, Anduril is building AI-powered, autonomous weapons systems that it says will create a more nimble and cost-effective military. [WSJ Video]
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Uneven buildup of wealth. The pandemic made Americans richer across every racial, ethnic and income group—though not equally, WSJ reports.
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Between 2019 and 2021, the median household’s net worth increased 30% to $166,900, according to a report out Monday from Pew Research Center.
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The wealth of white and Asian households increased the most in total dollars during those years. For many Black and Hispanic families, the boost wasn’t enough to lift them fully out of debt.
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Funds
Intuitive Ventures, established by robotic-surgery company Intuitive Surgical in 2020, said it has closed on $150 million for its second fund. The firm, which invests in startups with technologies that improve minimally invasive medical procedures, launched with a $100 million inaugural fund in 2020. The new fund will be led by Murielle Thinard McLane, who joined the firm earlier this year. She is taking over as managing partner and head of Intuitive Ventures from Dr. Oliver Keown, who is now leading a startup. He will support new and existing portfolio companies as a venture partner, the firm said.
People
Dana Malman Warren has joined Canaan, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based early-stage venture firm, as a venture partner. Warren previously led global strategic platform partnerships at payments company Stripe.
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Boston-based Nth Cycle, a critical metals refining company, has closed $37 million in Series B and an additional $7 million in nondilutive financing, led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with participation from backers including MassMutual through the MM Catalyst Fund I, and Caterpillar Venture Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar.
Chelmsford, Mass.-based AM Batteries, which is developing lithium-ion dry-electrode technologies for batteries, said it raised a $30 million Series B round led by Toyota Ventures, with participation from Porsche Ventures, RA Capital Management, Anzu Partners and others.
Rohirrim, a Reston, Va.-based developer of generative artificial-intelligence technologies for the enterprise, raised a $15 million Series A round led by Insight Partners.
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ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDRA CITRIN-SAFADI/WSJ
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