Dan Gray
4 Feb 2026Moltbook, SpaceX Buys xAI, Forbes 30u30, Granola Rebrand
Dan Gray: Joining Odin, the IPO Drought & Where VC Alpha Lives
Dan Gray explains his move to Odin — the private-markets platform he calls a 'progress machine' — including a planned Q2 US expansion. He argues the post-2022 IPO drought exists because companies stay private too long and list weaker, with SpaceX and Stripe as exceptions, and ties Figma's slide and the SaaS selloff to AI-narrative pricing and capital herding into obvious winners. On where alpha remains, he champions people-first firms like 1517 Fund, 'investing in the consequences of AI' bets like surplus energy and desalination, and critiques the zero-rates era's slop spending — plus a quick note on his reserves-paradox guide for emerging managers.
4 Feb 2026Moltbook🦞, SpaceX Buys xAI, Forbes 30u30, Granola Rebrand
Dan Gray on Joining Odin & the "Progress Machine"
Dan Gray, research lead at Odin, joins the show. He explains why he joined Odin (Paddy Gilchrist's "progress machine" framing), discusses Odin's US expansion planned for Q2, and his role building research and best practices for GPs and emerging managers.
IPO Decline: Why Companies Stay Private Too Long
Dan explains his thesis that great companies go public (with SpaceX and Stripe as exceptions), argues the IPO slowdown since 2022 is because companies spend too long in private markets and arrive worse, and touches on Stripe's tax-related motivation to IPO. He also discusses Figma and Klarna's post-IPO share price drops as narrative-driven repricing rather than fundamental failure.
SaaS Selloff, Alpha, & VC Herding
The conversation turns to the FT article on the death of SaaS: non-AI-native tech stocks are down as capital concentrates in obvious AI winners like NVIDIA and Oracle. Dan argues information asymmetry in VC is dying, AI sourcing tools will kill alpha, firms like 1517 Fund that back people pre-company will keep edge, and most VCs are herding into trends like index funds, which hurts smaller ecosystems like the UK/Europe.
Productivity Shocks & Investing in AI's Consequences
Dan frames AI step-changes (e.g., the nano banana image model, Genie world-generation) as productivity shocks that historically trigger IPO waves, and argues the remaining alpha is in the "consequences of AI" — like desalination powered by surplus energy from data-center overbuild. The hosts bring up memory stocks like SanDisk running up ~1,200% on AI demand.
Stagnation, Wasted Capital & the Crypto Hype Cycle
Dan laments the boom-bust venture cycle: cheap capital flows into slop (e-scooters, rapid delivery, NFTs) while energy and defense tech starve, and capital only chases crypto when Bitcoin is up. He also briefly plugs his reserves-paradox guide for emerging managers before wrapping up.
24 Oct 2025etn. Episode 4
Dan Gray: Europe's VC Gap Starts at First Check
Dan Gray, head of insights at startup valuation platform Equidam, walks through his post written a year after Mario Draghi's EU competitiveness report: the much-cited 'growth capital gap' is a symptom, since too few scale-ups earn late-stage money, and the real bottleneck is inception/first-check funding. He notes the best European scale-ups take US growth rounds from Sequoia or a16z, extracting value and exits from Europe, and contrasts a ~$16B US angel market with the EU's ~$1.2B. US early-stage funds also make 20K–100K pilot checks, while European LPs — not just GPs — stay too risk-averse to back that strategy.
Dan Gray's Fix: Move Government Capital to the Earliest Stages
Dan's prescription is reallocation rather than more money: research shows shifting existing government VC allocation to the earliest stages yields the same productivity gains as doubling it, and the British Business Bank's new emerging-manager program is a first step. He cites data that EIF-backed fund ones beat market exit rates by ~7% and create more jobs, while Horizon sends ~60% of tech funding to mid-tech firms and repeat corporate recipients. Early capital is generative and diversifies what gets funded, he argues, but requires thinking beyond a single election cycle.