486. From Power Law to Proprietary Insight: Unlocking Early-Stage Alpha, Data-Driven VC, and Building a Next-Gen Firm (Nnamdi Okike)

This episode of TFR is brought to you by Ramp, the spend management platform we use here at TFR. They're offering listeners a $150 just to take a demo. We've never had an offer quite like this. Claim your $150 before this offer is gone at our partner link, ramp.com/partner/tfr. And this episode of TFR is brought to you by the American Arbitration Association, where smart startups and investors turn to for fast, efficient, and cost effective dispute resolution. Visit adr.org/tfr to learn more. Welcome to the podcast about venture capital, where investors and founders alike can learn how VCs make decisions and reach conviction. Your host is Nick Moran, and this is the full ratchet. Namdi Okike joins us today from New York City. He's the cofounder and managing partner at six four five Ventures, an early stage VC firm investing in software and software enabled startups. Six four five has invested in companies including Residence, acquired for 1,000,000,000, Iterable, Overtime, Lee Gaps, Rent Spree, and Setpoint, amongst others. Prior to June, NAMI NAMI spent 8 years at Insight Partners and invested in standout companies like Prevalia and Mimecast, which were acquired for 600,000,000 and 6,000,000,000 respectively. Nnamdi, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate the opportunity. Great to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on, sir. I mean, you guys have accomplished a lot. You know, you've done a lot at six four five. It's a very well respected firm in the industry, so it's a pleasure to have you. Good place to start. Maybe maybe some quick backstory on, you know, your path to venture. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Great question. Great way to start. You know, so I first got interested in technology when I was in college. I didn't have any family background in it. My parents weren't in in tech. Really, all I knew about tech at the time was, you know, I like tech products. You know, I was kind of a early user of the Internet and you know? But I didn't know anything about how tech companies worked or how they were financed. So when I was in college, it was kinda like the .com boom, so a long time ago, kinda like early days of the Internet. And I had some friends who were, like, doing startups and starting companies. I was like, oh, that's really cool. You know, like, didn't know that was something you could do, you know, and and it kinda intrigued me. So I said, wow, I wanna learn more about kinda how this all all works. And so, you know, I was at Harvard College undergrad, and you couldn't take any classes at their business school. That was one of the rules, but you could cross register it over at MIT, MIT b school, the Sloan School. Sure. And so I audited a couple of classes, and one class was called new enterprises. It's a pretty legendary class now. It's …