Inventing the future is the best way to predict the future.

Lux Capital is funding people who disagree with the consensus and have their own view of the future.

Most important companies that are going to exist, have not existed before, so to fund them one has to take risk ,and yet while technology changes, but human nature is a constant, and there's always going to be fraud. By funding scientists, which already go through publications and peer reviews, Lux gets to fund people who know how to backup findings with evidence.

According to Josh Wolfe, the best way to get returns in venture is to have people agree with you, but later, meaning you'd want to seek out undiscovered teams, and convince them to take your money, while no one else is looking at them.

Some of the greatest entrepreneurs in history have never ran a business before, but they were passionate about their products and figured out the rest. In science, Lux is looking for brilliant people who also have an ego to feed, someone who knows what they are doing in science, and also want to be rich.

The best CEOs can tell great stories and inspire others to follow them.

But there are of course storytellers who are also excellent con artists.

Control freaks who want to be involved in every decision don't often do well.

Patience. You can try every technique and tactic in your arsenal, but your kids wouldn't budge. It helps to learn how to be patient in those situations.

Luck and timing play a huge role in success and failure. You might be in a good mood and write an investment check that you would not have done in bad mood. No way to control that, but you can maximize randomness and optionality and cheaply as possible, generating more chances of successes than failures.

The best of technologies start when someone sets to make a product that beats on that sucks.

The worst case scenario, you don't succeed, but otherwise it's mostly an upside. Talk to people, read, understand the field, do your diligent and grow your knowledge over time. Eventually you learn enough and you are no longer just a crazy person with an idea. You get to meet people who know it all, and eventually you put a team together to execute.