Dialectic

Chris Paik is a General Partner and Co-founder of Pace Capital, a Venture Capital firm in New York City.

He invests in technology and internet businesses at Pace, and previously did the same at Thrive Capital, which he joined in the earliest days. At Thrive, Chris invested in Twitch, Unity, Patreon, among others. Chris is a profoundly deep thinker who relies on behavioral economics to build robust frameworks for understanding technology, businesses, the internet, and human nature. As we discuss, intentionality runs through Chris's life and actions. While Chris has strong views about incentives and markets that may seem in conflict with some kinds of idealism, he is also strongly optimistic and earnest in his love for the world and its people, and for what we might create for each other.

We discuss Chris's frameworks and approach to explanations, markets and incentives, top-down and bottom-up thinking and companies, approaches to new markets and raising capital, his obsession with discovering the new, how his ideas become published thinking, the positive and negative impacts of the internet, Pace and its values, and the inner-workings of Chris's truly unique and fascinating approach to the world.

Timestamps:
(01:08): What does it mean to be intentional?
(05:21): Good Explanations
(07:28): Sharing explanations and thinking publicly
(14:45): Pendulum Theory
(22:14): The efficient market hypothesis
(27:34): Top-down vs. bottom-up thinking and companies
(48:09): First-to-market vs. best-to-market
(55:44): Cost of capital and when venture capital makes sense
(1:03:28): How Chris finds new things and how he curates what he consumes
(1:07:59): Chris's ideation funnel: thinking > sparring > publishing
(1:10:42): Is the internet actually good for us? What about capitalism? What rules above capitalism?
(1:18:56): The internet as a lever on agency and ability to take risk
(1:23:47): Pace Capital: Values, Brand and Reputation, Truth-Seeking, and People
(1:32:20): A pre-mortem on Pace's failure
(1:34:06): The first piece for a theoretical Pace Capital art gallery

Questions for Chris about himself
(1:36:07): Is Chris's unique set of worldviews and thinking more due to nature or nurture?
(1:37:21): What has Chris compounded most continuously
(1:38:23): What Chris's best or favorite “investment” in the universe?
(1:40:01): How do Chris use laziness as a lever? How might other people?
(1:41:50): Meta-analysis and cognitive biases
(1:45:11): How Chris hacks his brain: what's at the top of the usuer manual of being Chris?
(1:47:51): Where is Chris most confident in the conensus view
(1:49:01): How does Chris apply pre-consensus thinking to his personal life?

(1:51:36): Alignment: with Keely in life and Jordan at Pace
(1:55:43): Every second counts