22-year-old Jakob Diepenbrock closes $30M Fund II for Discipulus Ventures, backing El Segundo hardware founders before anyone else

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Yeah. Yeah. We got to watch some ads. We haven't done enough ads. Uh let's bring in Jacob Deepen Brock from Discipulus Ventures. Welcome back to the show, Jacob. How you doing?

How you doing?

So, you hoovered up stakes in every single Gundo company and now you hoovered up $30 million for a fund. Tell us the strategy. you tell us how it came together. Congratulations on the fund raise.

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Um, yeah, we just raised 30 million for the the second fund. Some great folks

that's going to pay for a lot of barbecues on the beach.

Yeah.

No, I mean it really No, it really is like the most probably efficient like VC platform strategy ever is just like the the bonfires. The value created at those bonfires is going to be in the multi-billions for sure if not already. Hopefully trillions.

What? Wait, what are you underwriting this fund to?

Do you got to get a trillion dollar company? And is that the new stakes? Are your investors asking you are you going to get us the next trillion dollar company or do you are are you thinking more smaller stakes at seed? Do you want to deploy a lot of the capital into follow on investments, do SPVS? How are you thinking about positioning the fund?

Yeah. Yeah. So the our strategy basically is we get like goodsized chunks for the fund at low prices. We're basically the first investor in all the companies we bring through. Um a lot of them time a lot of times help them incorporate the companies and then help them raise a larger round. So we get it at low prices. We don't actually need that. Obviously it's great for us and I mean we've already seen some of these markups that make the fund look very good given our entry price. Um but yeah I mean the goal is get good ownership for us not too much for the founders at low prices and the multiples look look good much easier. I have a sorry you're like a lot of ownership for us not too much for the found makes sense.

No.

I have a I have a theory that uh we are we're not post defense tech boom like the companies are still booming but we're we're post defense tech incorporation boom and the ratio of defense tech in your hard tech fund will be declining if it's not already. Uh, is that true? Is that borne out in the data? Is that exciting? What else? What else is in the hard tech bucket that's exciting to you these days?

Yeah, we did a lot of defense early on. I think there was a lot of more like gray area. I think there's like a thousand drone companies now, which makes a lot of it less interesting. A lot of missile companies, etc. Um, I think we I think LA is the best place to build hardware. I think Elsundo is the best place to build hardware. And I think all the best engineers in supply chain is already built out here. So we can kind of be as early as possible kind of getting to know the best engineers where the companies like SpaceX and we need to start defense companies early on. But now we're seeing a lot of advanced manufacturing. I think chemicals is really interesting. Um I think the kind of general industrial space energy etc. I think there's a lot of stuff that makes sense to build here because of talent supply chain that is not just purely defense

post SpaceX IPO effect on your business. Are newly liquid SpaceX employees investing in defense tech or are they just investing in luxury real estate? What's going on?

Yeah, I mean I think LA has still has majority of SpaceX. Um I guess people who made money off of SpaceX.

Um so yeah, I think a lot of people will probably start companies now because like they made enough money to be comfortable and they can do whatever they want now. Yeah.

Um I think obviously they have like a lockup period so we'll see where that ends up. Yeah, I think we do have some LPs who are from SpaceX, some people who've made a lot of money off of SpaceX already. I think it'll be good for the companies here as well as for people just starting new stuff.

And we've already seen Radiant and uh and uh Tom Mueller's company, Impulse Space, uh both SpaceX, very successful companies, exciting stuff.

Uh moving forward, are you sticking with like like a batch style approach or are you just going to be writing checks more more flexibly? Where do you think you go? Yeah, I mean I think the core thing we have is like we are close to all the best engineering talent and we can basically kind of index a lot of the up and cominging companies coming out of here. Um, so I think the batch part is like our unique thing that nobody else is doing and is how we're able to I guess generate alpha and and I think we will do follow on um into the companies and more this time than last time but I still think the core thing is like there are plenty of hardware funds that will do preceded seed etc. And a lot of these prices are insane but if we can kind of be as early as possible find these young engineers before they leave and kind of be their launch pad into the right ecosystems of founders and investors etc. That's kind of where we want to come in. So it's going to be vast majority of the capital being deployed into um the co-work companies.

Amazing. Uh what is the what is the state of new talent coming to Elsa Gundo? Is there still a boom there? What's the incubator slash like uh class cohort-based entrepreneurship? Uh get me up to speed on the latest there.

Yeah, I mean I think the the bonfires are a good kind of index on how many people here. I think we our last one we did last Friday we had like probably close to 200 people in that one and they've grown and I mean by a very large amount when we first started they were like 30 40 50 um so yeah lots more people coming I think from all over the world honestly I was in Europe a couple weeks ago and like people were like oh I'm going to build my company in Elsagundo I'm moving from London to I think it's kind of continuing to boom um and the real estate prices are insane which I think also is a a good indicator of that people moving out to Torrent and Hawthorne but yeah definitely lots and lots of people coming from across the world.

Is there uh enough industrial space in in you know Elsagundo, Torrance, Hawthorne like or or does more need to be built?

Yeah. Yeah. Um the prices in Elsagundo are definitely high for sure. Um I think most people when I see somebody opening like a HQ2 or a factory 2, whatever it is, um is now in Hawthorne and Torrance. Long Beach as well, I think, is kind of become pretty popular for people. Um, I I still think like as close as you can be to where all the talent is is kind of the most important thing. So, I think people will continue to stay here, but there's obviously other kind of close by cities that make a lot of sense that people are kind of going there.

Yeah. So, prices are going up, but there's still plenty of capacity.

Yeah. Yeah. And it also has mostly like small small kind of buildings like SpaceX

5,000 ft 10,000 ft R&D facilities and then you scale up and get 100,000 foot warehouse.

And I I also think one of the thing I think is interesting is like I think we've seen companies like Adrian and open a big factory in like the Midwest or the South wherever it is. And I think like that will continue to happen because they're just way way cheaper space input costs matter. I think for kind of the R&D engineering, I think that will continue to be done in the LA area and people will then go and kind of open up the larger factories outside of I think LA for obvious reasons. But I I I always think that kind of R&D and engineering will continue to be done in the LA area.

Last question for me. Are you seeing a huge pull from the AI boom on your portfolio? I'm just imagining, you know, western chemicals, wastewater to fuel industrial chemical startup. like there's probably some data center constructor out there who's like I can make use of that. I got to have water for something or other. Uh it is this something where you're seeing the boom supersonic style expansion into AI applications happening more and more.

Yeah, I think it definitely makes fundraising easier. Like we had one company that was doing like large scale generators were focused on DO originally and then they put like for data centers into the the tagline and they end up raising like a couple weeks after that. Um, but I I think that's that definitely will happen. I I think obviously like if you can position yourself as being in the right trend, that's obviously good for fundraising.

Um, so yeah, a lot of them have some element there, but I wouldn't say like that's kind of dependent upon only data centers, only AI being

Yeah. Yeah.

As large as it is.

That makes a ton of sense. Well, congratulations on

amazing progress. Love seeing you win. I think I think you you uh you have

something that makes other people just really want to see you win. I just feel like you have such a like bottoms up support from

industry, all the founders that you