Preview: Sunday Conversation With Data Collective’s Matt Ocko (October 13)

For Sunday Conversation #5, Haywire will host Matt Ocko of Data Collective on Sunday evening, October 13 (the video series has taken a little break, but we’re back!). Ocko’s name is legendary among certain circles in the Valley — mention him and you’ll undoubted hear someone remark, “Ah, yes, Ocko…” as if the sound itself triggers good memories. I don’t know Ocko well, but from following him on Twitter and, more importantly, talking to founders and early-stage investors, he seems to be one of the most-respected, highly-technical technology investors out there. From afar, his LinkedIn profile takes forever to scroll through, but if you stop and dig for a bit, you realize that even before DCVC, Ocko helped found and lead a technology company and has managed several complex technology investment funds across continents. As you will see in this video, he is truly an orthogonal thinker. For this discussion, turns out I live just a few blocks from the DCVC office, so I took a lazy walk over, and then we had a blast hanging out and just shooting the shit. In the videos, which I’ll post next week, we covered a range of topics such as discussing why the climate is so adversarial between founders and investors, the pieces of advice founders and investors need to hear (but don’t), the formation of and future of Data Collective, looking at opportunities in big data (DCVC is a big data fund), and much more. I can’t wait to share these videos. Ocko is the perfect type of guest for this video series — he’s been doing this a very long time, he’s not very loud on social media or hungry for attention, and he’s got the attitude and experience to say what needs to be said.