Chris is the Co-Founder and CEO of Drive Capital. Prior to Drive, Chris was a Partner at Sequoia Capital where he helped launch the firm’s first growth fund.

Chris left Sequoia in 2012 to start Drive in Ohio on a single bet: the best companies in America are getting built outside Silicon Valley (and almost nobody's funding them). Thirteen years later, Drive has handed back over $1 billion to its investors in a market where most funds can't return a dollar.

We talk chasing $2B outcomes instead of $50B, when his lead investor pulled out the day he moved from SF to Columbus, why only 100 of 3,500 firms can raise right now, the welders quitting to drive DoorDash, and why America is the best emerging market on earth.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) America is the best emerging market

(8:13) Why this couldn't have happened pre-2006

(10:48) Top lessons from 10 years at Sequoia

(14:17) Why the "meeting factory" model fails

(21:42) Searching for vacuums

(24:51) Sequoia passed on a company 10 miles too far

(29:37) Greece's GDP equals Detroit's

(34:34) The biggest tech companies aren't in SF

(40:28) 223 meetings to raise Fund 1

(44:27) Turning one fund into a product catalog

(48:47) The day his biggest LP pulled out

(52:08) Fundraising is a persistence game

(57:36) Returning $500M in a single week

(59:56) Only 12 companies hit $50B in 20 years

(1:01:29) Why Drive owns 30%, not 10%

(1:05:03) Returns over logos, the carry math

(1:10:00) Mindset of VC's outside SF

(1:15:54) How AI unlocks boring, giant markets

(1:19:22) Investing in catalysts, not sectors or geo

(1:25:35) 3,500 firms raised, 100 survived

(1:31:33) OpenAI won't eat every other company

(1:37:46) Compete with yesterday's version of yourself

(1:40:19) Small changes, compounding results

Referenced

Drive Capital: http://drivecapital.com/

Follow Chris

Twitter: https://x.com/ChrisOlsenCMH

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cholsen

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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Leaving Sequoia to Bet on Ohio: Why America is the Best Emerging Market | Chris Olsen, Drive Capital

The Peel with Turner Novak

Leaving Sequoia to Bet on Ohio: Why America is the Best Emerging Market | Chris Olsen, Drive Capital