Sunil Dhaliwal founded Amplify in 2012, and was joined by his longtime friend and colleague Mike Dauber in 2014. Beginning as one of the first solo GP, early-stage, sector-focused funds, Amplify has now grown to a team of 9 partners investing in the next generation of applications tools and platforms for developers, data teams, and ML engineers focused on AI, cloud infrastructure, and data security. Mike and Sunil sit down with Beezer Clarkson, Partner at Sapphire Partners, to discuss their strategy of building for outliers, shaping founders into leaders, and making it easy for their GPs to back non-consensus companies. They also unpack their recent $900 million raise and their first dedicated biotech fund, Amplify Bio.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Amplify: amplifypartners.com

For a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter – delivered straight to your inbox: subscribe.openlp.vc

CHAPTERS:

0:00 Welcome to Origins

2:17 The Origins of Amplify

5:21 Eliminating the Need for “Mr. Business”

10:25 Building Amplify for Outliers

25:08 Being Technical VCs in the Age of AI

28:47 Amplify Bio

36:19 Has Venture Actually Changed At All?

Origins hosts Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners and co-founder of OpenLP, dig into their recent conversation with Will Manidis, SVP at Veradigm AI. They discuss the risks AI introduces to tech incumbents, and its potential to reshape both the healthcare system and improve patient outcomes.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Veradigm: veradigm.com/

Subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter for a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, delivered straight to your inbox.

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins

(1:41) Humor in Venture?

(3:17) Are Incumbents Finally At Risk?

(6:25) How Extremely Online is Nick?

Before he sold his company to Veradigm, Will Manidis’s Science.io developed an AI model that allowed doctors to translate mountains of medical documents into usable data to improve patient outcomes. Today Will is the SVP of AI at Veradigm, and he sits down with Nick and Beezer to discuss how AI is impacting healthcare, how we can develop health systems with better outcomes, and what the future of venture might look like when compared to traditional merchant banking.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Veradigm: veradigm.com/

For a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter – delivered straight to your inbox: subscribe.openlp.vc

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins

(2:01) Human vs. AI Content (Specifically Podcasts)

(6:18) AI And the Future of Healthcare

(17:55) Is Merchant Banking Venture’s Future?

(25:17) When Does Venture Break?

(32:42) “The Only Thing We Should Care About is the Shape of the Return Curve.”

(37:24) “The Constraint Is No Longer Capital.”

Origins hosts Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners and co-founder of OpenLP, unpack their conversation with Zach Weinberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Curie.Bio. They discuss the “innovation energy” that drives new breakthroughs and take a closer look at Sapphire’s approach to biotech investing.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Curie.Bio: curie.bio

Subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter for a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, delivered straight to your inbox.

CHAPTERS:

0:00 - Welcome to Origins

1:28 -Building Something That Wouldn’t Exist Otherwise

4:27 - What’s Sapphire Doing in BioTech?

8:38 - The Market & BioTech

10:05 - "Vitamin O"

Zach Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of Curie.Bio, is redefining early-stage biotech investing with an operator’s mindset and a founder-first philosophy. His approach combines funding with operational support and direct access to world-class drug hunters to dramatically increase odds of success. Today, Zach sits down with Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners to discuss the massive risk associated with traditional therapeutics startups, how pairing a drug discovery partner with a seed investor solves those inefficiencies, and how biotech, the global economy and the political landscape are all closely connected.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Curie.Bio: curie.bio

For a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter – delivered straight to your inbox: subscribe.openlp.vc

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins

(5:08) Was Hunter High School Harder Than Penn?

(10:22) Transitioning From SaaS to Biotech

(20:55) Why Is Building a Biotech Venture Firm So Hard?

(27:55) Building Curie.Bio

(32:24) Zach on Drug Discovery

(43:12) Biotech in China

(49:42) AI in Biotech

(54:51) "The Manhattan Project of Biology"

Origins hosts Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners and co-founder of OpenLP, unpack their conversation with Theory Ventures’ Tomasz Tunguz, discussing how strategies that once set firms apart – like pre-seed or founder-centric investing – become industry standards over time. They dive deep on counter-positioning, adaptability, and the power of differentiation in today’s venture world.

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins

(1:14) Is Tomasz an n=1?

(5:51) How Do Firms Stay Relevant?

(9:12) Do Founders Like Counter-Positioning?

(11:50) Who Is An Emerging Manager/Nick’s Next Career

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Theory Ventures: theory.ventures

Subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter for a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, delivered straight to your inbox.

Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of Theory Ventures, is widely recognized for his analytical approach to venture investing. Now, he’s building Theory with a philosophy rooted in research and data-driven decision-making. Tomasz sits down with Nick Chirls, General Partner at Asylum Ventures and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners and co-founder of OpenLP, to discuss spinouts and succession in established firms and the value of running high-risk, high-reward experiments at specialist firms like Theory. Tomasz also shares his belief that investors will need to adapt to a future where asking the right questions of LLMs will be critical for success.

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins

(4:05) Why Are So Many People Leaving Top Firms?

(12:15) Getting the Probabilities On Your Side

(16:01) Building Highly Concentrated Portfolios

(17:33) Lessons Learned in Fund One

(21:37) Tomasz’s Brand v. Theory’s Brand

(27:15) Using Tech at the Core of Theory

(34:31) Asking the Right Questions in AI

(36:56) Predictions for 2026

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Top Tier Capital Partners: ttcp.com

Subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter for a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, delivered straight to your inbox.

Origins host Beezer Clarkson sits down with her colleague Nate Leung, fellow LP and Partner at Sapphire Partners, to riff on her recent conversation with Nina Achadjian, Partner at Index Ventures. Together, Beezer and Nate walk through the steps Index took to become a franchise - the decisions they made and the mistakes they avoided, plus the firm’s ability to pick excellent companies early. They discuss the edge GPs gain by investing with a broader purpose, as well as the LP POV on the need for distributions and consolidation in 2025.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Index Ventures: indexventures.com

Subscribe to the OpenLP newsletter for a monthly roundup of the latest venture insights, including the newest Origins episodes, delivered straight to your inbox.

CHAPTERS:

(0:00) Welcome to Origins2:04-Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing to Build a Franchise3:43-Liquidity and IPOs

(4:45) 2025 - The Year of Reckoning

(7:13) Let There Be More Distributions9:34-Finding the Great Companies Early