many public market investors look at biotech for example as lottery tickets right yeah which is a horrible label to carry many people in Tech like made a lot of money because someone in the past did really important research the time scales are long enough that like they
might be dead so we can't really pay it back but we can pay it forward and enable people to do the research that will then enable someone in the future to make a fortune off of some new technology free markets fail in certain circumstances exist yeah I think that there's a fundamental tension around
Government research where on the one hand as taxpayers we want the government to be responsible with our money on the other hand in order to do this really ambitious research you need to be a little bit irresponsible like really good research is not a priority justifiable
well hello everyone it is Jim o shanesy with yet another infinite Loops I am very excited to announce today's guest Ben Reinhardt who is on the oceany advisory Council and run speculative Technologies a nonprofit lab working to unlock Tech that hasn't quite found a
home yet and also as I learned about about it from you at our offsite and uh reading all about it that often is at odds with a startup mentality but first Ben welcome you've been incredibly patient with me we've had to we've had to cancel this like three or four times
in a row and I just keep thinking wow Ben is just gonna stare at me during the whole thing welcome thank you I I play long games so this is just yet another uh version of that well let's get into that a little bit I I was really attracted uh to you and speculative Technologies because I believe that we
really have to take as many paths towards Innovation and Discovery as we possibly can and I'm very intrigued by the model that you are using uh based am I correct on DARPA for the most part in part yes and if if you wouldn't mind for our listeners and viewers just taking us
through what speculative Technologies do does and and and the goals totally so the the goal at the end of the day is to get more awesome technology into the world right to and then you know like all the down good Downstream things of that abundance and flourishing and you
know going to space and and all that good stuff right so that's that's the the goal and and the trick is that there's um like there are a lot of constraints all preventing uh a large set of Technologies from doing that and so the way that we are attemp to address that that problem um
uh you could think of our our model WR very broadly as uh finding awesome program leads and giving them the tools and resources to sort of do whatever needs to get done to get that technology to a point where it can get out into the world right and so when I say getting
out into the world many people think of spinning off startups but it could also look like licensing IP spinning off a nonprofit open sourcing things um many different ways and uh sort of Within These programs uh we we sort of divide them up into uh four major phases so the
first phase is uh Road mapping so we we really believe that planning is actually really important for successfully Building Technology uh and then uh during that that planning we identify the the biggest risks um that would be like okay if this this fact were true
this technology would be completely worthless um and so we we have a drisking phase where we do uh quick fast experiments to address those questions and then there's kind of like the actual build the technology phase um and that could look like everything from uh
coordinating uh a number of other entities uh you know academic Labs startups uh to to work together to to uh sort of push the technology forward but could also look like spinning up a team in house um and sort of like a whole the whole spectrum between those and then
the last phase uh is is the the actual getting the technology into the world and um we I feel like many people neglect that part where they're like okay we're going to get it to like it's going to work and then like magically it will it will get out into the world so
we we really try to like explicitly build that in um and so I'm happy to unpack any of that but that's kind of our our broad model yeah let let's do that because uh when we first talked about it I I like the sequencing you put in place here because it's one thing to like uh be a Visionary and have all
sorts of ideas right but they have to be uh you have to make the vision a reality right and so I'm I'm very interested in the road mapping and and the risk let's get deeper into that do you find that a lot of say startups for example that take funding from VCS or other sources do do you think they're
doing this right or do you think that they're just so consumed by like what they're focusing on that road mapping risk assessment Etc often gets overlooked I think that so so I I think that it often gets overlooked right so obviously there there are some startups
that do that do it very well um um but I think it it both gets overlooked and also to some extent the the incentives are not to uh not to do that right because the the whole idea with um first road mapping and then doing drisking experiments is that uh there are sort of
like many stages at which if you're being honest you would say like actually this is not a good idea we should not be pursuing this but you know you take a bunch of money and uh you're you're invest are not going to say oh okay like that's that's fine like shut it down
like you know it's like we tried like everybody go home um the the the push is much more towards like okay now you like you need to like pivot and really try to find okay where where could we um build this technology towards it which is not necessarily bad right like that can lead
to to great things right like this is how like slack became slack right like it started as a video game and then they were like okay um but I also see it uh very often when when it's there're sort of like more general purpose Technologies right like where you know
there's like this very broad vision for this technology that could be applicable in applicable in many different areas and then uh this this sort of like pressure to just do something then pushes them towards um some like very very Niche thing where it gets stuck and
then never sort of realizes its full potential so I think that yes in in many situations this is not sort of the the way that startups operate yeah and I think the interesting thing there is like Charlie Munger used to always say everything comes back to incentives right and the the forcing
function often of like getting big funding often leads at least in my experience uh to uh situations where people just feel so compelled to stay on the path right yep that if you did the right Road mapping you would have said oh wait a second like maybe not do you
think that there is a way around that in startup space or is it uh organizations like yours for example where where you're a nonprofit you you don't have that pressure as it were you as you said in the beginning you play the long game all of which I completely am sympatico
with you on do do do you think that there is a way that uh a start up like what best practice could they follow and more importantly could investors follow yeah where they would be more flexible with startups and pivots yeah I think I mean I certainly think that there are ways to improve it like I mean
one thing is um is like tranching I think is is to some extent underused it sort of outside of of um like biotech right so biotech to some extent is kind of amazing at getting technology out into the world because you have these like very very clear milestones and uh
right with like coupled to um FDA trials and so um instead of sort of like the the start need to raise this like huge War chest all at once they can have these negotiations where they're like okay if we do these very clear experiments right like is sort of like the risky experiments if we're succeed
at like success at those look looks like this um Everybody agrees on that and we know like okay if we hit those then we'll get more money um and because sort of like both the startups and the investors and and everybody agrees on what those what those what success looks
like what successful Milestones look like and then also look knows what sort of like the whole the the whole pipeline is very sort of like certain in a way right like the outcomes are uncertain but like the structure is very certain um then that sort of lets this process
happen to a large extent um whereas in other Technologies there's you know like people argue like okay like is this data good is this bad um you know like the goal the the goal post will will constantly move investors will be like ah I said that this would be something
that I would want to like if you if you showed this data I would invest but now I'm like rethinking it um and so there's much less uh like much less certainty so if if somehow it's like it's almost like this coordination problem right like if it investors were like to both were were more on
board with making like hard commitments around Milestones um and then also uh I think this is less something like less something that anybody can control but like if somehow we could have uh more certainty about the the outcome right in the sense that like with Pharmaceuticals
you're pretty sure like if youve passed through all the FDA trials you will unlock a n billion dollar market whereas with many other Technologies the market certainty is much higher um and so figuring out that that piece at the the market uncertainty at the end soing also
let you then like back propagate all that sort of value through the chain um but I I think that that's you know how I think the the system could be improved I mean also there there's also the thing of like just um fting scills right like most VC funds uh are are 10year funds
and not like going back to incentives like not it's not just that they're 10year funds but that they are always raising their next 10year fund like three to five years into that 10-year fund and then they need to like they're going to their limited partners and
saying hey like I need to like they need to show results in those first you know three to five years that they can then take to their LPS um and so so that actually compresses time scales even more um and so uh yeah like I think that there is is something where if you had a like
30-year time scale you'd be able to do very different things um than than these these much more more compressed time scales but then but then like you know time value of money comes in and like the returns that you need on that 30-year time scale like much larger than
uh on the compressed time scale so it is it is it's a tricky problem that's all to say I don't know what do you think like have have you thought about you know much more about Finance than I do yeah I actually have thought a lot about it and I think the temporal aspect of
investing vexes many many investors both professional and amateur alike um you know there's this concept of hyperbolic discounting which is you you you collapse your view to like a quarter or you know at Best in in public markets a three-year window and one of the findings from the research that I did
and published in wks on Wall Street is that literally the worst strategy can look good over a three to five year sometimes even a 10y year look back and and so th this problem is incredibly intriguing to me because now that we're doing the work that we're doing we're
seeing it in Venture as well well we have a mismatch between the time scale of the investors as you quite rightly say they've already got the 10-year fund but they're already raising for the next 10year fund any normal investor is going to say how have you done how have you done in
that last fund and so it creates tremendous pressure on the general partner to show results uh over shorter periods of time and one of the things that intrigues me so much about what you're doing is you definitely recognize that and therefore you know most of your
commitments are over three to five years if I'm right if I remember my my reading correctly and and so what I would put back to you Pharmaceuticals are a really interesting example that you gave because many public market investors look at biotech for example as Lottery
right yeah it's like there's no traditional form of analysis for public market investors very different in private markets but for for public market investors to um you know have even a coherent thing so they so they get the label right which is oh that's a
lottery ticket which is a horrible label to carry if you're trying to do like world changing species changing and advancement and Innovation yeah so I so you're absolutely right that the there's a huge disconnect both on incentives on time scales on all of these things and
you know one of one of my other ideas which kind of went nowhere was I used to have this idea that I got from a guy I read I can't remember his name but I read it in uh the Journal of portfolio management and he called it I think his name was Kirby he called it the coffee can portfolio
and what he meant by that that shows you when when he wrote it was a long long time ago did not come again it's also called the rip B Winkle portfolio and it is this idea that if you could get investors to commit to a much longer time scale you could literally do things and create things
that are not possible if you're looking at the next quarter and and so I I definitely like the way that you are setting things up and the benefits of your type of model the the question then becomes to go further down your list how do you get that Tech out let's say you
you achieve because you have this longer time scale you you achieve great things because you have a very different class of investors or contributors Etc what happens like when you have a a team with a Eureka moment yeah how do you get that out into the wild the
frustrating answer is it depends in the sense that it really depends on the technology and and to a large extent like that is one of the big things that we actually try to address in Road mapping right like so you say Okay assume assume that we crush it what happens and so it could like and to to
some extent you need to be sort of like doing the work to make that happen through the program right like you can't just get to the end and then say like okay cool let's get this out to the world um right so uh like there the obvious ones are like okay like it's at
the point where it actually makes sense to start a startup um they like license it to a large company that can manufacture the thing at scale um it could look like you know is it is it like the if maybe our theory of change was like okay the thing that this technology really needs is like this
huge data set that a whole bunch of other people can use to uh like discover new things um maybe it looks like open sourcing that data set or licensing it to a number of different organizations that could use it right like uh like one one example of this would be uh
potentially like building a massive data set about uh uh material properties right like inputs and and outputs um that someone could then use to discover a new superconductor or whatever um uh oh like it could it could look like um potentially like spinning out a
nonprofit or like low profit company um right so you could imagine uh if if the work was to make like some kind of like new scientific instrument that would be uh very like valuable to the world but it's like okay the market for it is you know like you know $10 million a year
right like that's not a venture investable thing but if you get it to the point where you can just sort of like you know like sell a product and then use that money to to keep people employed um that's a really valuable thing and then you like so those are sort of like and and then you can start
to be like more clever um an example from from dark by like is that uh this one program manager uh actually went to I believe there was a biomedical device company and said like okay if we get this crazy technology to work will you promise to integrate it into your
products and start selling it and they're like we don't think that you'll it'll ever work but sure right and so so sort of like lining up things uh beforehand um and so like there there's sort of like this whole and then and then there sort of like a long tale just being
clever um about about how it gets into the world and like that that depend like it requires planning it also requires like of like it it puts uh nonobvious requirements on the technology while you're developing it um like the the way that you wanted like you know like maybe
it needs to interface with this thing that has like these like very tight like tolerance requirements and so you like need to make sure that you can make a a fiber that hits like exactly the specs or it won't be able to work um it often and I I flag that because if you don't
know that you're targeting that even while you're doing the real like science behind the technology you can you can miss the mark and like that's I mean that that is one of my criticisms of uh academic technology development where it usually happens in a vacuum and they're
like oh like it works great but there's some very specific requirement uh for doing the thing that they they claim it need it's able to do that means that they they don't actually uh doesn't get out into the world successfully and this has been a problem and one of the interests one of the
reasons I was so interested in the work you are doing is this this seems to be a problem that has persisted persisted and and gets all sorts of things attached to it that maybe shouldn't be let me explain uh you know the the the whole thing with open AI being a
nonprofit um and then suddenly wow we discovered an amazing world changing technology ah We're Not Gonna Be nonprofit anymore right yeah that can often lead people who have very good intentions right like I think the intentions when they set up open AI were spectacular right yeah let's make it a
nonprofit let's be open let's make it open source let's all of these things and then the prophets come in and we want we we we want to get them and so I I think that what happens is in my view obviously that colors the views of people who might be disposed towards
yeah we need all of this stuff right like I I'm I don't think they come much more free market adherent than me but free markets free markets fail in certain circumstances exist yeah and like the idea behind that is yes the reason free markets work is because
there is a failure correction mode usually built into them and sometimes that can be regulated away you can get regulatory capture you can get all of these things that we actually see every day happening especially in Innovative Technologies and and I just wonder where
the solution lay because I'm DARPA is a perfect example all very like I would maybe even love to do a documentary on Dar on DARPA because so many people are unaware of everything DARPA either created itself or helped nurse along and birth into reality and and yet and yet there there seems to be
again this tribalism of today I think is toxic because there's there's there's the camp that is no you know we we don't want any government involvement in this that's just like they're nothing or it's the startup versus the academic listen there is room for all of these and they
should work with one another and I know that's something you're working on how how how take us through how you convince people because you're very compelling well I mean honestly I'm I'm still trying to figure that out like you are maybe one of the people who are
convinced but uh it it is a smaller number of people than I would like there to be um I just like just like I exactly share your sympathies where like like if if a market can solve the thing absolutely like right like people people think that I'm like like anti- market
like it's you know it's like I'm running a nonprofit I'm like the only reason I'm doing that is because like I can't go to investors with a straight face and say like I will I will make you stock market beating returns right like like that's the only reason I'm I'm doing that um
but yeah like I I think it's the the trick is like stepping back the way I I see sort of like every institution as having like some set of uh of work that it does really well and some work that it does poorly um and and various constraints on sort of like it's it's like action space or like institutional
moves that it can make uh for for audio listeners and making air quotes around those um and uh I I think the the the trick is just being very honest about what what different institutions do well and what they do poorly where the gaps are and then what new institutions we
can create to fill those gaps and bridge between them and sort of support this like like these flavors of work um and uh right and so it's like the government is good at some set of things right and then we can like break that down as like the NSF is like the NSF NF is actually
like quite good at funding like really sort of like I I I uh cringe a little bit at the the terms like basic and applied science but like really basic science like like what happened if we like mix these chemicals together right like that really basic stuff and like derpa is
quite good at uh funding like military focused like weird research um and but then sort of like the the thing to do is that we we need to start like breaking it down and say like oh like there's like this set of work that isn't happening like so so for example like the thing that I I see
specul Technologies as really becoming good at doing is uh enabling work that does not make sense as a product yet is biggest through but at the same time like needs to be useful right so we're like we're constantly pushing on like okay yeah but like is it
useful um and and I think that we need like many many more institutions that sort of like cover the landscape to to some extent my my bigger theory is that we we've almost had um like institutional uh uh consolidation right so like we we've gone from a world where you have like like a this thriving
ecosystem of many different institutions and big ones and small ones to like everything being like either at least in sort of like the The Innovation um again air quotes Innovation landscape it's like you have like Academia and then you have like big companies and then you
have startups and you have and like government and like that's it and and it's like there are many there are many other potential things and there have been many other potential things and so I'm like trying to make there be this world again where um you have like many
different institutions and people and ideas can kind of smoothly move between them one of the things that originally attracted me to you and and speculative Technologies was exactly that we need we we seem to be in a kind of a holding pattern at least to me um where the the
the the the camps that would benefit greatly from working together have uh an animosity towards doing so and and so you see on the one hand in the old days we got a bell Labs because AT&T had a monopoly on telephones yep and and so they were they were essentially kind of a quasi
governmental company even though they were a private company they could afford the largess of funding Abel Labs that did that type of basic research that you are talking about and now in the era of efficiency in the era of breaking monopolies up not supporting them uh
that seems to have gone by the wayside then you look at at government and you know a lot of the things going on there seem to me at least to be with not funding the kind of big audacious hairy breakthroughs right like Moon shots that to me seems like a missed opportunity I
mean like I I I everyone's on and on about the government spending is out of control and everything and in many aspects they are correct but like the amount that we're giving towards research shots whatever you want to call it like that seems to me to be an ideal
role for a government agency to either oversee and work with all of the what we've been talking about work with Academia work with nonprofits work with startups to to make those things happen why isn't that happening I think that there's a fundamental tension around
Government research where on the one hand as as taxpayers we want the government to be responsible with our money uh on the other hand uh in order to do these these like this really ambitious research you need to be a little bit irresponsible like it is not like really good research is not
a priority justifiable and sort of like the like number one prerogative of government bureaucracies is make sure everything is Justified and so that's that's one big reason why like I like I I think that sort of I don't believe that government can and should fund all work
that doesn't make sense as a for-profit company right like like no notionally yes like governments should uh respond to market failures but I think like that's that's one piece that that really does leave a gap the other piece is uh at the end of the day all government
spending uh it needs to sort of like go through politics right and um like like you have all the the all the senators and representatives from all the states and each one sort of like is in like their incentive is to look out for for their state and their State's interests
um but what that leads to is um sort of like and and not just States but like there there's many different things going on and so what that leads to is like the government sort of tried to like overload um the the goals of any funding and so an example that I always go to is the fact that um many research
grants going to academics to do science to do technology are simultaneously training grants and so they specify like this money must be spent on gra students because not only do we want more science but we also want a technically trained Workforce which is true right like we we
do want a great technically trained Workforce in the US but what that then does is is now that that money has this dual purpose and uh it makes it so like okay like this money is only earmarked for grad students so one not only do you have your technology being developed by
effectively like trainees right it's like saying like Okay we're going to have like this new product we're just going to have the interns build it um you wouldn't do that and then two uh it means that say you're you're a scientist and you're running a big lab and you see
uh potential like ways to to increase your productivity right like there's there's a way that you could bring in machines to do Automation and do all that um you a have very little incentive to do that because all your grants are going towards just more or labor and B
you're often not allowed to do that like you are literally not allowed to spend that money on equipment and those are those requirements are all Downstream of the political process that is deciding how to spend this money um and so I think like those are s of the the the
both the the responsibility piece and then the like multi-purpose piece um are the two reasons why uh Government funding really does have constraints on the amount of like really ambitious uh research thaty it can go towards in my view politics itself is Downstream of
culture and I want and and and I wonder whether we if we could get uh a culture that was more uh focused on making the future a much better place for our uh you know I have six grandchildren what one of my goals with everything we're doing at oan ventures is I want them to live in a
great world I want them to live in a world that is you know still coming up with a awesome discoveries and Innovations and everything yeah heck yeah and I worry you mentioned the the restrictions put on these grants it's one of the reasons in our tiny tiny way
with our fellowships and our our grants we have no restrictions on them yeah and we do that for this very reason right who am I to say like to tell you how you should run your nonprofit right yeah and so I think training also becomes important and that's something that you
do for for example talk a little bit about the research leaders Playbook because one of the things that I also like about what you're doing is you're creating material and tools that allow people to get trained in a very different mindset right and and so if you wouldn't mind taking us through kind
of the seven phases of the research Playbook uh that would be helpful yeah so just just for context uh the the research leaders Playbook is uh this effectively kind of like a it's a it's a Playbook it's a textbook um for people who are running what we we call
coordinated research programs so this is sort of a madeup umbrella for basically like uh like ambitious uh research programs aimed at doing useful stuff but like don't make sense in Academia or or companies um and so like for example like Thera programs or focused research organizations are
are sort of two examples of these um and uh the uh and and so but like there there's this skill set that is very hard to pick up on the job um that you need to to run these because you both sort of like need your your hat of uh to some extent you're an entrepreneur right like
you're you're figuring out new ideas you're bringing together teams to to build them um you're getting them out into the world right like those are all things that entrepreneurs do but at the same time um to some extent you're you're also a scientist in the sense that like the the thing that really
matters is getting to the truth making thing work um it doesn't matter like how well you can sell it and so um so the the sort of like the the skills that this is the the Playbook um we also run a uh a research accelerator that's sort of like a like y combinator but for
inculcating these skels and getting people to do it um uh so anyway that that's a lot of background um let's see I do not have the uh exact exact phases memorized but the so there there's the way that I would sort of break it down is like there's um there's kind of like program design right so
this is uh everything from uh uh Road mapping as I mentioned but also like talking to lots of people figuring out you know who's on board with a vision uh like who like what are their incentives how do you like how do you structure this program so that uh like sort of as
I was was talking about before so that it will both produce a useful thing and then have it be able to get out into the world right so it's the the program design is sort of all around uh all around that um and then there's like actually running the program and so
that's everything from like how do you how do you manage uh misaligned incentives how do you man like when do you like kill kill a project right like that's really hard like when you when you fire people um uh you know how like and then there's like really sort of like tactical things
like you know like how do you think about making a g chart for for all these things um and then finally there's like I think there's being like selling this whole thing um where uh at the end of the day you you still need like even if you're not selling a product you still
need to sell an idea to someone whether it is whether you're pitching uh you know a DARPA program officer or DARPA program or DARPA office director um that they should like pay you to run this program whether you're pitching a philanthropist um you still need like
and then you also need to like sell it to the people who are going to sort of join you on the journey and so um that's that's like a broad overview of the sorts of things uh that uh and I I think it's like something that I I wish I learned much earlier in my life is is
that you need all of this right so you need the science planning you need the sales you need the the like being able to talk to people but then like go like really deep on a technical subject um and and sort of our our current ways of trading people don't sort of cover all
of those one of the natural uh communities I would think that might be interested in funding uh these uh type of moonshot type of uh basic research that leads to really cool things maybe would be the people who made a pile in other technology in other innovation in in any of those things are you finding
that they're the most receptive to your donor base not not really and so there's look there's this attitude that I'm gonna caricature right so like very few people actually have this level of it um but but the the thought and this is like really sort of common among sort of the
the Silicon Valley Tech people crowd which it the thought goes um if something is valuable to the world um uh you should be able to capture enough of its value to make it a good investment assuming that you have investors who have uh uh who are willing to take on
sufficient risk and if you are unable to capture that value if you're unable to basically build a company that is is super valuable then either uh that thing is is not actually value like not actually valuable or um it's a skill issue and and it's just like you are not the right
person to capture that value um and and so you sort of to to a large extent like uh a lot of tech people don't do philanthropy um and and this is yeah this is just a a thing that I've I've found over time and you know I love to and I think it's also very coupled to
this attitude uh which is again like kind of well founded that like nonprofits are very inefficient and like not and are kind of a waste of money and like they're not wrong right like a lot of nonprofits are waste of money and so it's like it's it's very hard to to say
like no like you know it's like we we operate like a startup in the sense that like we are very uh conscious of like how we spend money and we try to be incredibly efficient um and and like I I and so I think those two coupled things actually make it so that uh a lot of technology
people uh don't fund us I guess the the last piece is is that many of the people who made their money off of Technology themselves uh did not do the research to create that technology right so uh most of the like they they definitely created like the software but like very few
people who who made their money uh like in the doom boom or more recently uh like did the research to like did research on transistors right like they didn't go from from doing that um and so they don't quite have a great mental model of like research and and how that
works and the things that that one should expect from it um and so to some extent I'm I'm like trying to to educate people and sort of like make this pitch that like no like this is this is actually uh important um like the the a thing an idea I'd love to like inculcate
in culture is this idea of like paying it forward basically that um you know like many many people in Tech like made a lot of money because someone in the past did really important research and that person is not going to be able to capture the value of their research both because um like it's like often
there'll be someone who tried something it failed and then like but it gave someone else the idea and it's just like you can't propagate it back the time scales are long enough that like they might be dead um and but so we so we can't really pay it back but we can pay
it forward um and enable people to do uh the research that will then enable someone in the future to to like make uh Fortune off of some new technology um that that is a thing that I would love to like incept in culture um I'm not sure how to incept cultures but very open to
suggestions I I it does seem to me that there is an opportunity there though because the you know uh I had a guest on will store who wrote I love all of his work but his probably best known work is uh the status game and and and he talks about how I I was convinced that I
didn't play status games and so I started reading uh his work and and other works and and I sadly concluded that we are all playing status games are all playing status games and it seems it seems like it's deep in our DNA and and so one one of the suggestions that he
has in the book which I heartily endorse is there there's various status games right and and one is the one we're talking about right here in other words you can play a game a status game get massive prestige let's say you put together a Consortium of all of these seemingly unwilling
people in technology who have made huge generational Fortunes in uh in the free market like what about putting together a Consortium that does this site this type of funding and yeah like what what is the reward you're getting you're getting a psychic return on value
invested there's a a a charity that I uh Support called the Acumen fund and they treat it they treat it like Venture investing and like like the returns that they're getting the from their donors right it's like wow how cool is it that and you know fill in
the blank yeah this person solved micro Finance in Indonesia Etc and it does seem to me like this could if I was trying to orchestrate this I would I would maybe turn it in to a virtuous status game or Prestige game totally yeah I mean like I I I 100% agree I think like being honest in front of a
whole bunch of people like I think operational like I'm I'm still figuring out how to operationalize that right like it's to to some extent it is uh it's it's like you you kind of need to bootstrap it somehow um right where it's like you you need once once something once it becomes
a thing in people's heads that like doing this is high status then people will continue doing it but it's like like you I think to some extent you need like someone weird to have some like high status wins and it like and so like I mean one thing that uh uh some folks have talked
about is like kind of like you know like like fors lists like having some kind of list for like people who have done the most interesting things with their money um or something like that uh that's that's sort of one way but um yeah and and to some extent there there's also
this like tension where I think sort of like has almost like a hold over from previous eras of philanthropy like you know like the Rockefellers and carneg um there's like to some extent like that era sort of put an emphasis on the philanthropist stepping into the
background of like not taking credit for the things that they funded and to some extent I think that was actually a huge mistake where it's like yeah like you know it's like uh you know people people fund like these like hundred million dollar buildings at universities uh then to put their put
their name on it it's like okay like why not just just like fund a warehouse spend the rest of that money on actual work and then just like put their name on on the actual work and it's like you know it's like you come up with like a new technology and you name it right
like the names of Technologies last and and theories and ideas last much longer than buildings right you know um name units after people like people should be able to like buy units named after them yeah I think uh I think we're on to something because I if you look at what
gets celebrated your idea of the Forbes list um uh everyone every industry uh has an award right so yeah for those who love entertainment of course the Academy Awards or the the king over there or queen and and you know TV has its it has emys Etc and it seems to me that those
types of things would be not only helpful but also really great because if you did them right they would be a celebration they would be a celebration of that person's contribution toward advancing ourselves as a species right yeah and so it definitely seems to me
that that would be a a thing that would be good to work on I as you were talking I was thinking of I don't know if you're a curve Your Enthusiasm fan but uh I am and Larry David gave a big section of a building uh but he gave it anonymously and then he of course got into a very
very tricky situation that he was trying to escape from and was trying to escape into the building which was locked and there's a scene of him pounding on the door saying I'm Anonymous I'm anonym and and and so I I defin think that you're right about that in the in
the form of I mean like Andrew Carnegie classic example all of the libraries that the United States have not all of course many of the libraries especially in smaller towns they have these beautiful libraries because carnegi built them all and those types of things should be in my mind celebrated and and
um you know encouraged um can I Riff on the the LI actually like back to our previous point about uh like the role of government um I think that the Carnegie Library is actually a really interesting example of uh collaborations between philanthropy and government that I think we could take
lessons from for research in the sense that so uh and Andrew Carnegie would would go to these towns and he' say hey I will pay the cap I pay for this library to be built but you the town need to commit to paying operation expenses for this Library um and like a
lot of phist just like don't want to be on the hook forever uh for things and so I think like uh the there aren't a lot of things where uh there's actually like something where where a philanthropist says like okay like I will sort of like to some extent like take on the risk right like so I was
saying like government's not great at doing things that are like weird or uh irresponsible so it's like okay the philanthropist does like the like the the the pays for the to get it to the point where it's responsible enough and then somehow like has this like very
explicit hand like handoff to government um and it actually can tie even further back into the conversation of like like trones and Milestones of like having more explicit like okay having FL to be fund some like research institution to the point where like you know it has
this track record and then the government's like oh okay like now that it has this track record will take it over um I think that's a very underused uh way of doing things yeah I think that um if we could get a structure in place where that goes very smoothly great great things can
come from that um switching Switching gears a little bit to what you're focused on right now why the heavy F why the heavy focus on materials and Manufacturing yeah um so in addition to them being awesome um I I like I will I will assert that um like basically
materials of manufacturing underpin civilization um you know it's like we think of when when you think of of like technologies that really like help people often you think of medicine um you think of things that are addressing climate change right like you think of
technologies that are like really addressing like burning problems um but at the end of the day uh materials of manufacturing are are the things that enable those so like for example um like stainless steel invented in 1915 uh you could not have uh the syringes that we
used the liver vaccines uh you could not have the steel bats that we use to like produce most of our medicines um and then you just like look like you know I I I put on my historian hat and you look back in history and just like new materials and Manufacturing methods to
turn those materials into useful stuff is what enabled all the thing like human flourishing right so it's like you unlock you you make iron and that lets you make things like nails and uh and plows that can plow many like much more land than you could with copper but like
copper was really useful um and and bronze like still let you do plow a lot more things than you could it's like a stick right and um and then like you know stone tools like that let us conquer the world and so uh just sort of like looking at the The Arc of History like you know it's like we name ages
after materials because like that's really sort of like the the foundational thing um so in addition to them being very important I think they're they're actually like uh under uh underlooked at right like people don't like they're they're always the thing behind the thing um
and it's like most of us don't think about how all the stuff around us was actually manufactured but like that was all manufactured with technology that someone had to invent um and then uh sort of like you know we're focused on things that I describe as being like too
researchy to be a startup but too coordination or engineering heavy to be in an academic lab and materials and Manufacturing uh so they fall into that Gap much more often uh than than other Technologies and so between that sort of like neglected uh fals the Gap and importance
like those are those are why we have that Focus as you were responding I I as you know we also have a uh book publisher called infinite books and I was listening to you and and you almost titled a book you could write the thing behind the thing and you know harking
back to your example of stainless steel you know I I've never gone down that thought process right like stainless steel yeah that's the thing behind the thing but look at everything that resulted from that basic Discovery in 1915 what a great because again keeping with the idea culture is up here
politics itself is Downstream of culture one of the objectives of what we're trying to do at a Ventures is look for things to root for right and that sounds like a great use case like I I would certainly read a book about you know I I always quip we didn't leave the
Stone Age because we ran out of stones right yeah we we we we left the Stone Age because out of the human mind came all of these other Concepts like iron and and everything else steel doesn't exist in nature it came out of the human right yes and so that would also kind of
tie in with trying to create a uh a very prestigious uh uh calling if you will uh for these new basic materials like for example I know you're working on nanom modular Electronics on demand without etching silicon or expensive facilities like how cool would that be and like I'm
I'm creating in real time here audience so let's see if you agree with me let's do it like the book for example or the show or this could be a movie this could be a lot of different things right to ignite I I always think I was so impressed by that JFK speech that yeah
created the Apollo Mission created we choose to go to the moon and do the other things exactly and and and yet that speech ignited the culture that was like godamn it we're we're going to do it even though we had no means at the time that he gave that speech to even conceive of
how we're gonna get there right and and and I think like right now uh musk with the Chopsticks catching the rocket yeah like Believe It or Not people get really inspired when they watch that stuff and it predisposes many I I hope to think wow what if right and so the idea that
you could look at things like uh stainless steel show all of the things that sprung from that but then do a speculative one that says what might spring from nanom modular Electronics right yeah I mean absolutely I mean like to some extent like that's that's part of
the roading process right like you at least like this this is also attention with a lot of these technology like with speculative Technologies is that uh uh little little s Little T um is that you can have a guess about what it will be used for and but you don't actually know
like I suspect like the people who were making stainless steel originally had no idea that it was like they could conceive of a bioreactor like the idea like like the idea that it's like okay we'll be using the stainless seal as this vessel for like eoli that we have genetically like DNA hadn't been
discovered that we were going to go in and like modify the DNA of these organisms but these organisms will need this like stainless steel bat in order to to grow right like like they wanted to make nice knives and forks which is great right like like I really like stainless steel
knives and forks um but uh yeah it it's so so I think it's both like you both want to speculate but also be aware that there's like so many other things that one can't even imagine yet yeah and that's why I'm such a huge fan of David Deutsch and his book The Beginning of
infinity if we could get people to reframe things and understand it seems seem to me excuse me to be uh part of our basic human OS to believe that we know everything there is to know and and your example of the stainless steel is a great example right like if you look
back at the history of innovation what you find is the original when they originally came up with motion pictures motion picture cameras what did they do they filmed plays because that's what they were used to right it takes a while for the new use cases to percolate to
Bubble Up and do all of that sort of stuff and so it it definitely seems to me that if we could change the idea he's got a great line in the book The Beginning of infinity where he says you know what were people saying about the internet and quantum physics in 1900
well they weren't saying anything about the internet or quantum physics in 19 00 because we hadn't invented them or discovered them yet and so how as someone who's in the trenches literally I H how do you how do you try to negotiate these these seemingly intractable conflicts another
thing that we've talked about and you've written about is there's there's a tension right now and it seems to me to be growing right between you know show us your your work your uh you know uh we don't care about what your credentials are and then of course Academia cares very very deeply
and in many circumstances quite correctly what your credentials are like how do you navigate how do you navigate those two worlds uh I think to some like maybe in in one word it would be uh or two words maybe it' be like trust and iteration in the sense that or
like feedback loops where uh like I'm I'm naturally a very trusting person and so like I I tend like I I I like to believe that people are capable of great things so to some extent it's like okay like instead of just going off of like having some sense and also thinking about like what's
behind a credential right so it's like the like credentials to some extent are like a way of just like of compressing information about what someone's capabilities are and so instead of just going off for credential kind of being like sort of spending like being UNL and
like thinking like okay like sure like what what what what do I actually want from this credential so I think about um uh like like program leads like where for the in the Playbook right like one one might think of like a PhD but it's like you know it's like you
don't need a PhD but you do need to have like been in the trenches like doing this like the hard technical work uh with like deep deep uncertainty and like that is a thing that one often gets with a PhD but is also possible to get in many different ways um so that's that's
one uh way of doing it and then also just like I think that you you also to some extent like build up taste like you can kind of like talk to someone for a while and and sort of see if they're full of crap um am I allowed to say that uh of course no this is a you can you
can say this is a sweet um yeah yeah so so like yeah so uh to some say yeah also have to like tune your BS detector um and right like there are people with like tons of credentials who are completely useless um and so so I think that's the the so it's like some combination of like not being lazy and
like willing to like spend the time and like that goes for the Technologies too right where it's like really spend the time to like dig into uh uh like what are we actually talk you about here let's like unpack it let's like explore a little and like to your point about the the problem
becoming worse I think in the the like everybody's attention spam has been collapsing everybody wants like your 30 minute your 30 second elevator pitch and if they're not excited after a 30- second Pitch they're like oh clearly this is worthless um and so I I think
the the trick is is to some extent just like not having that attitude and being willing to like really engage with something and dig into it yeah I think that uh the the challenges are numerous right because of everything you just said and and the idea behind the elevator pitch like what you do is
specifically not suit it to an elevator pitch right yeah it it it it is suited to a to a longer conversation to a memo to get them to understand exactly what's going on and uh it it also does seem to me to be uh require TR High agency not just on the part of the people who are
doing the research right but also on the part of the people who are funding it right oh yeah because it seems to me that we have a lot of great historical examples of how we and again I'm being native this year and I don't mean to but I live in America and America has a
really good history of the private sector in Dow libraries Andrew Ari of of doing a lot of things that in other countries uh I used to be the chairman of the board or of the board of uh the Chamber Of Music Society of lick Center um and we had we had European guests and
they're like we still can't get over the fact that in America it's all privately funded all of these amazing orchestras are privately funded because in Europe they're all government funded and you know remaining neutral as to which is superior it seems to me that specifically in America we should really
be leading the way on this I think because we it's part of our you know our uh DNA in in this country and what other roadblocks are are you seeing because to me you know you're creating aspirational culture spir uh Spirit uh culture of Excellence Adventures like this this
seems to be a tale that makes it a ton of sense and I'm just wondering have you found that certain funders are are more natural funders of this type of research could you get for example I think of the huge endowments at uh the IBS could you ever
convince them to to fund something like this and do it in a Consortium so that it's not just Yale or not just Harvard not just Princeton yeah um I I'll certainly try um I I don't know like it's it's a it's a great question yeah like I mean talk about institutions that should have a
long enough time scale right um I did this I don't I don't know like I I did a a Monti Carlo simulation of of our organization and so like I said earlier like I I don't think I could tell an invest say to an investor that uh we would beat the stock market but on a
30-year time scale I can say that I think that there's a one in a thousand chance that we will we will like drastically outperform the stock market um just like based on this idea like okay there's some chance that like some company will spin out right um I I don't yeah like I don't know um I
think it's it's certainly wor trying uh sort of to to like to your previous Point like so I'm kind of unabashedly American um and I I think that like sort of our history of uh of like Civic organizations right like like private Civic organizations um to some extent
like we we've moved away from that a little bit and and I I'd really like to to bring it back it's like I'm sure you know the like the toille story where he's like the difference between the Americans and the Europeans is like when there's a tree that falls across the
road the Americans just like get a crew together and moves the tree and then the like the French people just sort of like sit around and wait for the government to come move the tree and to some extent I I really like that culture and I think I I I worried that we we've moved away
from it a little bit um and so I think to some extent and to some exent like I think we are leading we still like you know it's like there's way more philanthropy in the United States than anywhere else in the world um we do have a lot of philanthropic funding towards a lot of
science um I I think that the the thing that the the sort of like logical jump that I'm trying to push is like one both like sort of helping people see that it's not just funding s of health related things or or like things that address like very immediate problems that uh will unlock the future um and
and and are the market failures but things that are sort of like the thing behind the thing um and and that's just uh it's it's hard for for people to wrap their heads around and so like if like yeah if if in uh in in media in Internet media and interet books like if you help
people see that I think that that's incredibly powerful yeah it's you know I just think that uh our mission in particular is uh we think things need a rites we think that things need to be reframed uh as an example science fiction science fiction which I love it
used to be very very positive and and then it and then it just became almost in one felt swoop very dystopia and and no listen I get that I've read I loved the road by Cormac McCarthy and like literally talk about a downer of of a book but so beautifully written and so I'm not saying we all
have to be Raw all the time I just think that we need to rebalance culture we need to and and like you I'm also unabashedly American and and the thing that I love about this country is that we were kind of we we H almost have a different DNA right because all of the
people who came here what were they typical absolutely not these were people who would be willing to give up their home country in many circumstances their families their loved ones everything they knew to come take a risk in this country that is not the profile of a
normal human being right there's even a book called called The hypomanic Edge what makes America unique right and and so I definitely think that trying to change the culture is even again that sounds so Grand o it isn't meant to it's like hey why don't we just get some more
books in science fiction that are really not dystopia that are like look at all of these cool things that could happen and speculate about them so it's not panish or peng glossi and like the Future's So Bright we got to wear shades we just definitely think a little nudge
A little nudge where we celebrate these types of people where we celebrate the crazy idea like Kennedy's okay Mr President we have no tools right now to get to the moon but we're on it we're on it right and and so I definitely think that what you are doing is something
that I personally want to see much much more of and I definitely think that you know another thing that might change it is do you do you have right now a a thing right right now with all of the various projects that you're working on what looks the most promising because
again if you get a Tipping Point where something where there was a lot of naysayers and everyone's saying a that'll never work it's like the right brother yeah and then you just need the one the one win yeah yeah so the honest truth is that uh most of the projects that we're working on are are kind of
bottlenecked Upstream of showing those results so we've done some of the drisking projects on uh this this making air Nom mod Electronics program which is basically this idea of making a new paradigm for making Electronics where instead of etching silicon um the way
that we've been doing for the past 70 years to make you know your CPUs and your gpus it might be possible to actually make uh transistors kind of the way that make chemicals in a back uh ship them anywhere in the world and then lay them down and wire them together on
demand um so we've done some like initial uh work that shows that like this is not impossible right so that's that's the the the closest thing um but the like the the the frustrating part is that I I think that um the nature of the works that we're doing is it's like it's
very hard to tell what's promising until we've actually like run the like so the whole point of these programs is to show what's promising whereas like if we knew if we knew a priori that something was the most promising one then you almost wouldn't need to do these research
programs at all you just feel like okay like this is super promising let's go start a company um there's this uh like concept that I I I have where I call things like lean ideas or fat ideas and lean ideas are are ideas is that you don't need that much money to tell whether it's a good idea or not you
don't need that much time or resources and like I think that the market is like very efficient in in lean ideas right like you can try them out and they if the ones are good they go on to to do awesome things the real trick is like these fat ideas where you actually need
to there's just like this like deep nighty and uncertainty that you need like time and resources to even resolve whether it's a good a good idea or a bad idea and like people are not as I mean for good reason um it's much harder to show whether those are are good or bad so I I like to answer your
question I think Nom module Electronics is the most promising just because like we that that is the one that we've had the time and money to put some into but um it's also kind of like uh asking someone to say which of their children is like the the smartest right like you
know but are you really gonna say it no you are not as the father of three and grandfather of six you are never ever going to say that exactly and what I think is great uh and I would invite people listening or watching this podcast if you if you think of a great
way to frame this right because it seems to me that like so much is the way you frame a thing right I often give I often give the uh probably Apocrypha but I I think I saw it actually somewhere the idea of uh reframing uh insurance right uh when they originally came up with it
it was called Death Insurance guess how many death insurance policies they sold like none yeah and then some genius came along and said no no no no what we're talking about is life insurance trillion dollar industry and so if we have a listener uh or viewer with this kind of
ability to refres I think that would be really helpful and it would be great if you put it in the comments because I think I don't think that anyone would argue that the goals of what you're doing are stupid misspent any like there are to me at least there seem to be like
no if we were drisking something right like the risks here are obvious like you spend a lot of money and you don't nothing happens right yeah but but it seems to me that the the first reframe should be hey this is very important because and then all of these examples
that we've been discussing here yeah and and like a a way to get people to also elongate their their time Horizon um the the the challenges are are very numerous and yet I think that if we can get it all if we get it reframed to the point where hey it's very prestigious to not only work on
this basic type research uh it's speculative res uh search but it's really cool to fund it and look at this guy he just won the equivalent of the Academy Award or the Nobel Prize because he or she was the one who just funded like the discovery of X right yeah
whatever X happens to be because it does seem that you're creating a new natural home right like when when when I first came across what you were doing I my immediate thought was wow I thought like Academia was doing all of this and they're not and then I thought well gee
wouldn't it be great if there was Xerox park or if there was a a bell labs and well that's passed by too because of just externalities um so the idea of creating a new home again I guess uh the Princeton uh where Einstein was the center for advanced research yep that's
right down the street yeah yeah and it it just it just seems to me that to reignite that purpose within Academia that might be a that might be a rich vein to mine what I I'm sure you've tried that and like what are the reactions yeah well so I I think that there's
there's actually a like the the incentives in there's I I would I would say that there's a tension in the with the incentives in Academia between um the the sort of structure you need to like discover the secrets of the universe which I think Academia is actually very well suited for um you
know it's ultimately an outgrowth in philosophy right like natural philosophy science um and uh and so there's like this heavy focus on novelty there's this heavy focus on like oh what's in interesting um and uh there's there's a heavy focus on like uh sort of like the
the individual and uh sort of all of that and like that's really great for discovering the secrets of the universe and coming up with like new ideas like oh maybe like this is what dark matter is right um I think it's it's not well suited for uh sort of what I would call
like invention or or the creation of new useful Technologies where um it doesn't matter how new the idea is like you know it's like people like will dismiss it like oh that's not new and it's like sure but like nobody's gotten it to work and but like we've gotten this old idea
to work um and uh and you need like large teams of of like professionals um and so like my my I'm I'm also uh to some extent like I am I am uh a radical in the sense of like I I think very much in terms of like creating new institutions uh and I I don't have as good a sense of like how to reform old
ones but I think to some extent we need to actually unbundle what I what I call like pre-commercial technology research from the University um and and create a new home for it and perhaps like perhaps what one could imagine happening is is uh sort of like that like competitive
pressure on Academia sort of like getting to to them to up their game um but I also can think of it I also think that to some extent that's what allowed uh like specialization like one of the the problems that with the university more Broadley and this completely other
conversation but like as a society we have lumped so many roles into the university that it just is not performing any of them well anymore um and so I think that a a thing to do is to really sort of say like okay we have this institution that's specialized in doing pre-commercial technology research
this instit tion that's focused on uh you know uh educating uh like 18 to 22 year olds this institution that's really focused on discovering secrets of the universe um and uh and so so like that's that's sort of where I'm like maybe maybe we can uh get Academia to reform
but I think the better bet is is sort of like pulling off different pieces of that into and giving sort of like creating homes for those specific things I can really sort of specialize into the world yeah well uh I'm getting the hook here uh from my producer it's uh that
means that we've been talking for an hour and a half it seems um fascinating conversation as you know massive supporter of what you're doing you you are you are um it's a very it's a thorny topic because the if you get it right the thing that can result from this are
just so spectacular and and so good for our species good for the plan good for everybody and it just seems to me to be one of those uh questions of fitting the pieces together just like you said maybe de maybe it's decoupling maybe it's like having you know this is the group that
is trying to discover the secrets of the universe Etc uh but um I I think we have a true need for it now I think people are primed for it now too quite frankly yeah like people are just so tired of the oh you know that'll never work and you know that's just like so contrary to
the the basic DNA of at least America and hopefully of many uh uh societies around the world so um I absolutely and lot well we you we'll get actually now the team's going to hate me but I like I'm going to say hey start thinking about this because I think
there might be something there right I think there there might be something there well Ben as as you know um our final question on infinite Loops is you you get to be emperor of the world for one day and you can't kill anyone and you can't put anyone in a re-education
camp but what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can speak two things into it that will incept the entire population of the world for the next day whenever their next day is they're going to wake up and they're going to think that the two
things that youve incepted them with were their own ideas and they're going to say you know what unlike all of those other times when I had these great ideas and didn't act on them this time I'm going to start acting on these two things today and continue what are you going to incept in in the world's
population so uh I don't know if this counts as the first one but I figured out the like equivalent of wishing for more wishes with this question which is I don't know like basically incepting everybody to wake up and read everything that I have written on the internet and
take all of it very seriously that's the hack right um so uh I I'll use that one my first one well well well done well done okay so they're doing that what's number two the second one is this this idea that uh like Frontiers are absolutely critical for Humanity and uh
we like a don't don't really have physical Frontiers anymore B uh they are what leads to positive sum games that I know you you talk about a lot and see that we we really do need new technology and new technology paradigms to create New Frontiers um and like and
so that that benefit both the people on the Frontiers and the people who stay at home um and so I think that that's that's the the other thing I leave people with I love both of them uh how can people find you Ben online and otherwise yeah uh so uh I'm too active on Twitter um the
my my handle is just benore Reinhard so so just my name um you can find our our website at uh spec. te that's like s. te um between those two things I think those are are probably the best plays to to pay attention to what we're doing fantastic Ben thank you so much
for your time I'm a big thank you so much for inviting me let's uh hope that 10 or 20 years from now if I'm still around I hope to be do it well that's the whole that's the other point right like inven exactly yeah so I'm still kicking all right Ben thanks so much for joining me thank you Jim take care