I think this is a serious case of not understanding different types of roles and intelligence. Yes, a VC is going to be able to make great small-talk about emer

I think this is a serious case of not understanding different types of roles and intelligence. Yes, a VC is going to be able to make great small-talk about emerging tech ideas. Why? Because they're constantly bombarded with new ideas and people trying to persuade them to invest in different new projects, and in order to gain access to those deals it is table stakes today for them to manage their brand. So yes, they'll have some insightful things to say - most of which they'll likely have picked up somewhere and else and are just laundering. This isn't indicative of them being some kind of ubermensch the likes of which mere scientists could never hope to be. A research scientist spends years working away at incredibly difficult problems and if they're super smart, and quite lucky they might push their chosen area of research forwards significantly. But this focus is not going to make them interesting to make small-talk with, because to really understand the issues that they're interested in you'll need a huge amount of existing knowledge. I think funnily enough, we've had a real piece of evidence about whether these CEOs and VCs really are galaxy-brain individuals. We got the release of the Musk texts for the Twitter deal. What did it show? These guys are mediocre. They're sycophantic, group-think bros who know that the primary way to play the game is to suck up to each other and never criticise. If you're going to define intelligence as someone's ability to entertain you at a cocktail party then yes, slightly behind Paris Hilton, Jurvetson is your guy. If you want interesting insights, you can go and listen to people like Scott Galloway, but he's not a genius, he's just a rich guy who has enough money to have a team researching stuff so that he can provide interesting insights. A resource a researcher neither has nor needs.