Welcome to the Give First Podcast where we explore how generosity drives success in business and in life. I'm Brad Feld and today I'm joined by David Hornick, founding partner at Lobby Capital and the poster child for Adam Grant's bestselling book, Give and Take. David's been living the give first philosophy for 25 years in venture capital, proving that you can do great as an investor while prioritizing relationships over transactions. From being one of the first VC bloggers to running the legendary lobby conference, he's built an extraordinary career on a simple principle: help amazing people achieve their dreams and the universe will take care of the rest. Let's dive into how being genuinely generous became David's competitive advantage.
Hey Brad. And this is the Give First podcast. In the startup world, give first means simply trying to help anyone, especially entrepreneurs, without any expectation of getting anything back. So we'll be talking to mentors and founders about what give first looks like in action and how it makes great entrepreneurship possible.
The following discussion is an expression of personal opinion and does not represent the opinion of TechStars or any company. We discuss are conversations for informational purposes only, including any mention of securities or funds. This is not legal, business, investment, or tax advice and is not intended for use by any investor. Certain of TechStars' funds own or may own in the future securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. Got it.
I'm dyslexic, and it's an interesting challenge in this world when reading is the thing you're supposed to be doing. I still have terrible eyesight because I went to law school and it destroyed my eyes. But as a dyslexic, I should at least have the advantage of excellent eyes. But no, there you go. Oh well, genetics.
That cursed genetic thing. Well, thanks for spending time. I love to think of you for people who don't know you as one of the poster children for the philosophy of give first. Part of that being your very visible presence in Adam Grant's book, Give and Take, and we'll get to that, but let's start with what are you doing today? What excites you? What have you been doing? What are some of the things for people that don't know who David Hornick is that they could tie back to you?
I am a VC. I'm a venture capitalist. I invest in little companies early. I hope they get bigger. That's the day job. But that job is such a strange job because it involves a billion different things and you can do it any way you want to. I've just hit 25 years in the business, and for the last 25 years, the way I've wanted to do it is to just be helpful to all sorts of smart, interesting people in any way I can, and know that at some point in the future, the universe will result in it working out. I believe in a world that is about relationships. I do not believe in a world that is about transactions. For my entire career, my life has been about relationships: how do you meet great interesting people? How do you engage with them on an honest level? How do you help them to achieve the things that will make them happy? And if I'm successful at any of that, then it will work out. And so far that's been the case. The most significant alternative things to the venture world is I've been running this conference called the Lobby for 20 years, and it's brought together a really interesting and fun, lovely group of people. And I've been teaching for about 25 years – law school, business school, undergrad – mostly because I just think students are awesome and I want to spend time with them.
That's fabulous. I know that you raised a fund recently, so maybe just give yourself a little brag on that. What's the fund that you raised and what is it around?
When I joined the venture business, I came into a really astonishing fund called August Capital with some folks who had been very successful. They were the first investors in Microsoft and Sun and Compaq and so on. They were astonishing. I was there for 20 years through August 3, 4, 5, 6, and then the seventh fund. After August 7, I had a conversation with my partner Eric, who had really become my right-hand person, and we said, 'What do we want to do next?' And we decided to bring together the Lobby conference and this community with the firm. So we raised a new fund that was really just a continuation of what we've been doing, but called it Lobby Capital. We raised Lobby One three or four years ago, and we just raised Lobby Two. We're early-stage investors. If you're working on something interesting that involves software and you've made a little bit of progress, then great. Tell me about it. I now have a whole new pot of money and I'm really excited to fund great people.
Hornik, D. (2026, January 6). Episode 106 | The Long Game of Venture and Generosity with David Hornik [Interview transcript]. Techstars. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/622052/
MLA
David Hornik. "Episode 106 | The Long Game of Venture and Generosity with David Hornik." Techstars, 6 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/622052/.
BibTeX
@misc{hornik2026_622052,
author = {David Hornik},
title = {Episode 106 | The Long Game of Venture and Generosity with David Hornik},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Techstars. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/622052/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
