Kyle Kuzma on VC investing: following smart money, American Dynamism, and the SpaceX bull case

Kyle Kuzma on VC investing: following smart money, American Dynamism, and the SpaceX bull case

Kyle Kuzma has spent nearly a decade in the NBA thinking about what comes after basketball. His answer, increasingly, is private markets.

The path in started with Kobe Bryant, who Kuzma credits as an early mentor. Bryant was running a fund shortly before his death and encouraged Kuzma to get involved in VC and tech. That access was the entry point. Since then, Kuzma describes himself as a singular investor, getting onto cap tables or joining SPVs through his network rather than deploying through a formal vehicle. He says he's at an inflection point now, eyeing a move toward earlier-stage deals, though he acknowledges that putting $25,000 to $75,000 into a pre-seed when his portfolio skews late-stage growth doesn't quite pencil yet.

“When I think about space and defense and where we're at in this world — whoever really rules space is probably going to rule the world. That's my SpaceX bull case. I love where I'm from. I love America. And I just believe that if you're an investor, why are you not focused on investing into things that have America's interests best at heart?”

The late-stage to early-stage tension

Most of Kuzma's tech investing to date has been late-stage growth, which he describes as more surefire but capped at 3x to 5x on an IPO or acquisition. He wants the 100x, or ideally the 1,000x. The challenge is that earlier-stage deals require more bandwidth, and basketball comes first. He says he blocks 3 to 7 p.m. at home as study time, working through sector landscapes when he's not on the floor or in film sessions.

The longer ambition is a fund. His access as an athlete, he argues, is a structural advantage: "everybody wants to talk to you," and that can be converted into cap table access at blue-chip companies rather than just social currency.

American Dynamism and the SpaceX thesis

Kuzma's conviction on defense and space comes from a geopolitical frame rather than a product-level thesis. He argues that whoever controls space controls strategic advantage in any future conflict, because warfare on earth is horizontal while space is linear, with the ability to look down on everything below. That asymmetry, combined with the scale of the commercial space economy now opening up, is why he wants exposure to SpaceX and companies getting a valuation lift from the sector.

Andoril fits the same logic: investing in companies aligned with American interests at a moment of real geopolitical tension.

The core investment principle

Asked what advice he'd give a younger version of himself, Kuzma relays what a trusted contact told him: "don't be stupid and follow the money." The practical read is that the best investors have already done the diligence across biotech, defense, and space, and tracking their lead is a more reliable signal than trying to outthink every sector cold. He pairs that with building his own critical thinking, but the foundation is the network.

He has no formal fund yet. The next logical step is taking that network and access and institutionalizing it, the same move Bryant was making.