And I went and I tried to buy the company from Steve Jobs for $50 million. He wouldn't sell it. There's $700 billion of capital investment being made in 24 months. I mean, it's an unimaginable number.
Do you think the bubble's going to burst in 2026?
I think it'll be a reckoning.
How many unicorns have you invested into? And can you name all of them?
I've lost count. My movies are only as good as their villains. Ursula, Gaston, Scar, Farquad, Tylung, like I can go on.
Is that bad storytelling or good storytelling?
It's good storytelling to bad outcome.
It's evil storytelling. If anybody knows of Barry Diller, he is a rascal, tough, grinding, hard, demanding person to work for. And for me, it was exhilarating. By the time I was 30 years old, he had made me head of the movie studio. Think about that in the context of today; it's just mind-blowing.
So this is the hot question. What happened in 2025?
Chen Lee and Jeffrey, welcome to Sorcery.
Thanks for having me at your gorgeous office.
Good. Good. Well, our home's your home today, Molly. So, let's do it.
Well, we certainly made it that way walking around. So, I appreciate that.
Well, I want to talk about so many things today. Definitely, we need to go into the origin story of WndrCo, the state of the VC world. We're coming off of a really hot year of 2025 and going into 2026, and we'll also get some of your predictions and more on the fund strategy. So this is the hot question. What happened in 2025?
All right. So I think one thing we observed is new technology just takes time to get molded and shaped into products and into experiences that actually make an impact in people's lives. I think this is really the year where we saw some really cool 'oh yeah, this is different' moments. We can definitely say AI is going to transform how we do X and Y, and it's not just people playing around with 'hey look how this is like a show your friend over their shoulders' type of moment, but really this is a new way of doing business. It's still going to take a decade, I think, from here to fully iron out all the kinks of how companies work, how people collaborate. But it's almost a relief that given all the excitement and hype, this is going to be a wave that we can build around for a decade to come. I mean, I subscribe to what others have said, also subscribe to this view that even if you just froze model development at this moment in time, there's still so much more that we need to figure out and do and productize to actually make delightful products and experiences for consumers and for businesses. So we're excited about what the research and everything is doing, but even if that froze, there is so much to do. That's what's exciting.
Yeah, I mean I think that's it. I think we saw what were the big dreams and promises become tactical, and the tactical revelations had both good and bad in it. And there is real value creation, real productivity. And then I think the other side of it is that it got overheated. I think that the enthusiasm and optimism got ahead of itself. And I think when we look into some of the challenges going forward, the amount of capital allocated for the hyperscalers in this and what they have to achieve in these next two to three years, it's a high bar. There's $700 billion of capital investment being made in 24 months. I mean, it's an unimaginable number. On the other side of that, it needs to produce a result. It needs an ROI. And I think that's still what 2026 and 2027 are going to be revealing. In the meantime, there's lots of great stuff to be done.
Do you think the bubble's gonna burst in 2026?
I don't know whether it's a... I think rather than look at it from the sort of extreme notion of what that means for a bubble to burst, I think there'll be a reckoning here in which those that actually are producing real results and are being deployed in really effective and efficient ways that you can actually see an outcome quickly, and it's real. I think some of the bigger aspirations are not going to all win. I mean, I think that this is not going to be a zero-sum game, a winner-take-all. But I also think at the same time, not everybody is going to win at this.
So I want to talk about some of the breakthroughs and some of the leading companies that you have been fortunate to invest into. So Chenley, how many unicorns have you invested into and can you name all of them?
I've lost count. I think that the special stories are the companies that we got to know the founders early, built a relationship, had that shared vision. You could see the vision. You could also sort of say, 'Yeah, a lot of things need to go right and there's a little bit of a murky mind maze to go through, and then there's setbacks and challenges along the way.' And then when they finally do break through, that's when they get all the celebrations, but we're like, 'Remember those tough dark moments that we were texting late at night about?' It's like, 'Nah, you'll get through this.' That's actually what's more rewarding for me, because you can only control the inputs and the grit, and we all recognize how much macro and luck and just circumstance factor into what ultimately happens. And yeah, that's what I think about day-to-day.
Are there any companies that you're particularly excited about? I know you guys have backed a bridge, Harvey, and a handful of others.
In the... we've been fortunate working with some great founders in the Kurszer and a bridge, Harvey's, and those are just great examples of... who would have thought that multiplying matrices of numbers and predicting the next token can unlock, if you zigzag across two years, things that are transforming how doctors do their work every day, how lawyers do their work, how lawyers and their clients do their work. I love going to startups' offices and getting the vibe and culture of the place. One of the things I do is just kind of look around and see how many screens have that right tab, and it's like wow, Cruise is everywhere. So in a year, if I just did a walk around in an office in 12 months, it just went from zero to 100 practically. And that's what makes this place special. And this is not just startups here. I can go to startups all around the world in New York and London, in Stockholm, and yeah, that right tab is right there. And by the way, the other thing is in the upper right bar on Macs, you can see what are the icons. I used to work at Dropbox, so I'm still like hunting for 'thank god you still have Dropbox.' But we're fortunate to be investors in 1Password, and that's more or less become ubiquitous. We became investors in Granola, and that's effectively become ubiquitous in startups. So between the right pane and the top bar, we invest in the future of work, and you're seeing the future of work on people's screens. That's pretty exciting.
It's pretty exciting. Yeah.
Before we go too far because I know I'm already jumping the gun, but let's talk about the origin story of WndrCo. You guys have such a special firm and it's something that I love. I mean, I'm from LA and so I met Anthony a couple years ago at this point, and the convergence of creativity and storytelling and venture was just so natural to me and I thought it was like an incredible superpower and also entirely motivating and like an ambitious strategy. So, can you walk me through the origin story and how you got together this team?
In spring of 2026, it will be 10 years ago that I sold DreamWorks. And I think it's safe to assume your audience probably knows more about my past than they need to, but there's one little piece of it that I think informs how we got to where we did in putting WndrCo together. A recurring theme through every chapter of my media and entertainment career was the use of technology for storytelling as a competitive advantage. Every couple of years there would be these new amazing innovations coming out of Silicon Valley, and I kept coming up here to find the latest and greatest to then import it back into Hollywood. Steven Spielberg made Jaws, a great documentary 50 years ago. He built a shark, a plastic shark, and dragged it behind a motorboat. And then a number of years later made Jurassic Park, which was really the first live-action movie in which there were these digital creations that were mind-blowing to say the least, and certainly a major evolutionary step in storytelling. In 1989 or 1990, I saw a little short film from Pixar called Luxo Jr., the lamp, and I was just so mesmerized and blown away by it. I actually first tried to hire John Lasseter to come back to Disney. He had been there before I was there and had left. He wouldn't come; he didn't want to leave. Then I went and tried to buy the company from Steve Jobs for $50 million, which was at the point in time when he was struggling with NeXT and actually was kind of financially stretched. He wouldn't sell it. And then we made that three-picture deal that turned into Toy Story, which turned into one of the most transformative moments in Hollywood in storytelling once again, powered by tech. The 3D revolution came along, and we're about to see Mr. Cameron's latest and greatest. I just can't wait to get to a theater to see it, because he's always raising the bar super high. Anyway, so I've always been really enamored, fascinated, and gravitated up here. The first Shrek movie was actually made here in Redwood Shores with a studio with 800 employees. And I got some exposure to some of the early venture capitalists, and I was always attracted to and fascinated by the fact that I felt like there was a sort of common goal. I'm a truffle hunter; they are truffle hunters. Many of the signals that you look for in great founders are the same signals I looked for in great storytellers. So when I sold DreamWorks, I wanted to have a new career. I literally wanted a third act and to start over. There are many things that are attributes, and I have some that are liabilities. In the attribute column, I know what I know, and I actually know what I don't know. So that sent me on the pursuit and hunt to find great partners. Partnership to me is honestly, foundationally, maybe the single most important thing I've had in every chapter of my career, and I continue to believe that today. Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, David Geffen, Steven Spielberg. These were my mentors and partners over the years. And so I set out to find the equivalent for this next chapter, or next act, of my life. And I found that in Sujay and Chenley and Anthony and Jeff Nikken and our most recent, Justin Wexler. We just have a phenomenal partnership, and what's amazing about it is that we're all actually quite unique from one another. I don't know, I can't do... I would so rely on Chenley on the technical side of it, and then he looks to me as the storyteller. And Anthony, who you have met, has just got this incredible social meter and ability to see over horizons and around corners that is invaluable. And then our really sort of guiding light in all of this, Sujay, is just really one of the most exceptional and talented, extraordinary people I've ever known. So that has really been the foundation of the partnership, and what's most exciting to me is that 10 years later, it's never been stronger. We have found the core of what makes us special and unique and how we complement one another and work with one another. And most of all, it's just fun to be here.
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So what was it like going through all those chapters, all those years evolving the practice and the firm and strategy?
Yeah. What probably is less known is that WndrCo started as an investment holding company. And when we got together in 2016, Sujay and I, after leaving Dropbox, we read about John Malone, who comes from Jeffrey's world, Cable Cowboy. We read about the outsiders and some of the over the last 50 to 100 years companies that have been good stewards of capital and built great generational businesses. And that informed a lot of how we thought about starting something new in 2016. Also, when we looked at our skill sets, Jeffrey had spent his entire career founding and building and scaling companies. Sujay and I joined Dropbox when it was about a 20-25 person startup. When we left, it was 2,000 plus people. We had deep conviction that there was something to be done with all the talented folks that we had hired and seen them grow and scale, and that we could do it again in different contexts, in different situations. That's led to us building companies in consumer security and in other areas that we can talk about. And it was really that operating, building-centric mentality that was probably the guiding light to this day of how we operate. Now we have different strategies, different ways of how we work with companies and founders. But it evolved fairly quickly.
Our strategy, as Chenley said, we started as a holdco, and we really wanted to do two things. We wanted to build companies, things that we would start ourselves or we would buy something that had maybe gone sideways and we saw an opportunity around, or literally just looking at market mapping big ideas that could change the world. We always start from a place of as big as we can possibly imagine and dream, and then look for if there is a solution to that problem. If there is, great, can we find a way in? Can we find someone to invest in? And if not, let's just start it ourselves. So we've started eight companies since 2018. The holding company next year will probably be $400 million of free cash flow, extremely profitable and growing really nicely, which is kind of an amazing thing. Along the way, we started to see, as we were building that, there were some great investment opportunities, venture opportunities. The very first one was 1Password. We actually looked at 1Password to make it a part of our consumer cyber security portfolio. It would have been an incredible bolt-on. Problem was it was too far along and too big for us to do it. But what was clear is it was a terrific investment opportunity, and that really was the catalyst for us to say, okay, let's do this in a sort of... pay homage to really three firms that I would say are probably most analogous to what we're doing today and what we continue to aspire to. So, Founders Fund, they built those companies. Peter Thiel and those guys, they started PayPal, they started Palantir. They're builders. They're also world-class investors, and they do both of those things. And there are actually great synergies that come from doing that. The next one that came along to do their version of it, each one driven very much by the uniqueness of the people and the personalities, was Andreessen Horowitz, where Marc and Ben, again phenomenal founders who built incredible companies, came together and at the outset were doing that same thing of having that founders mentality. And the next one up, about four, five, six years ahead of us right now, is Josh Kushner. Today, he is just crushing it. We look at that with great admiration for what he has done and continues to do. And our ambition is we're at bat. We're the next ones up to bat to follow in that tradition. Now, we won't be the same as any of those three, but that's certainly the kind of lane that we find ourselves in today.
When you think about building these companies, what's the process?
