Michael Dempsey – Investing in Bleeding Edge Technology – [Invest Like the Best, EP.212]

My guest today is Michael Dempsey, General Partner at Compound. Michael invests in a broad range of areas but has a unique talent for combining brand building and direct customer relationships with technically demanding sectors. Our conversation covers the rise of virtual influencers, robotics, and how to best identify key inflection points in the evolution of new technologies. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Michael Dempsey. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Koyfin, one of the fastest-growing fintech startups. I discovered Koyfin earlier this year when I asked Twitter for the best Bloomberg alternative, and the overwhelming winner was an intriguing new product called Koyfin. Koyfin has tons of high-quality data, powerful functionality, and a nice clean interface. If you’re an individual investor, research analyst, portfolio manager, or financial advisor, you should definitely check them out. Sign up for free at koyfin.com. ------ This episode is brought to you by MIT Investment Management Company. MITIMCO is the endowment office of MIT. New and small investment funds listen up. MITIMCO is looking to find investors starting funds today. MITIMCO is partnership-driven, long-term focused and has an extensive history of backing investors early in their careers. These partners are key in delivering the outstanding investment returns required to support MIT's pursuit of world-class education, cutting-edge research, and groundbreaking innovation. MITIMCO is focused on finding and partnering with the best investors across the globe no matter the market environment. No firm is too small, too young, or too non-institutional. If you or someone you know is currently in the process of starting a fund or recently launched, please email partner@mitimco.org or discover more on their website at mitimco.org/partner. ------ Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:02:54] – [First question] – Early stages of his career [00:05:13] - What are inflection points and how he views them as a source of opportunity [00:07:40] - Real vs fake inflection points [00:12:19] - Creativity as a key component of inflection points [00:12:33] - On Inflection Points [00:15:01] - Generative Adversarial Networks [00:18:02] - History of animation and the innovation we are seeing there today [00:20:12] - Animation is Eating the World [00:24:11] - The concept of a digital celebrity and their scale [00:29:17] - Characteristics of digital celebrity creators [00:31:12] - Longevity and consistency of these personalities [00:33:11] - Future of gaming and potential for investments in the space [00:37:49] - The landscape for robotics and what has him excited [00:41:07] - The exploration of space and the opportunities there. [00:44:35] - Computational biology and the investment potentials. [00:48:11] - How 2020 has changed the ability to solve scientific problems [00:51:32] - The idea that Cyberpunk is now [00:53:32] - Sam Hinkie podcast episode [00:53:51] - Kindest thing anyone has done for him