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Defeat does not require any expense or any effort.
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All you have to do is say I'm not to blame.
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That's how people lose in life.
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Whenever they try to externalize the responsibility for their own life, this is the moment everything starts breaking apart.
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People don't want to examine their lives.
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They don't want to examine themselves. It's painful.
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Jim, when people know themselves, when people understand themselves, there is no suffering.
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There is acceptance of their own responsibility.
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That's the most important part. >> Hello everyone.
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It's Jim Oesy with another infinite loops.
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I have a return guest and one of my favorite people actually.
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I said to him before we began recording that, you know, I could just talk to him endlessly and it would end up not as a great podcast because it's all kind of the inside baseball stuff.
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My guest is Arcatie Kulik.
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Arcatie, I love your your path through life.
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You are a trained nuclear physicist.
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Uh, but your your career path was really ciruitous, let's put it that way.
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You started out with uh pay what you want music distribution uh company to booking global headliners to running tour logistics for major movie studios to being the founding partner at RPV a deep tech venture fund.
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You've got a great quote that I love.
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Civilization level progress depends on truth seeeking mechanisms and forcing them into contact with the messy market. Arcade, welcome.
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Jim, thank you very much for having me again.
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It's a pleasure to talk to you always.
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And by the way, I think inside baseball jokes is what our listeners could really benefit from.
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>> You're probably right.
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>> There's so much grand standing in this industry and there is so much noise and chess something and whatnot and very few people are actually talking for real about those things for whatever reasons.
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Thank you for having me, Jim.
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I appreciate the second invite.
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So, so my first question is on that uh career trajectory um what skill survived every jump resilience.
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Resilience and agility which in my opinion is very very close those things because I don't think resilience is about rigidity and just you know banging your head through the wall.
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It's about seeing your goal clearly and finding the path to achieving this goal this way or another way.
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And this is the thing that survives everything, not just my career.
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For example, my fat is very resilient, especially around my belly.
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Uh more more resilient than my eating habits, that's for sure.
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But but but yeah, resilience is very important.
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If you're an entrepreneur, you have to have it.
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Otherwise, you will never be successful.
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You have to be able to wake up and no matter what life throws at you, good and bad, you have to keep moving.
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And when I say good and bad, I mean sometimes really good things distract entrepreneurs.
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You know, firstborn child, this new relationship, this amazing trip, something else.
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There are things that keep our focus, you know, moving a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, and we need to keep it straight all the time.
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and and the uh I agree um agility I I'm glad that you added that to resilience, right?
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Because um you know Ken Stanley has that great book greatness can't be planned and one one of the things that he points out that I really deeply believe in is that you've you've got to be agile.
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In fact, it's at the top of my list when I'm looking at founders because I I I saw a tweet not too long ago that was, "What percentage of companies are got successful doing what their original idea was?" >> Zero. >> Closing in on zero. >> Yeah.
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But yes, >> but but what's interesting to me is I do think deep tech is a really different skill set um than you know a generalist venture capitalist etc.
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And I let's let's talk about that a bit.
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You you've said the hardest problems are humans.
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I I I say that a lot too.
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Um, so if you don't mind, like give me your deep tech human failure taxonomy.
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The top five interpersonal failures that can derail even great science.
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The science is great, but we've got the messy human and human OS hasn't changed very much since the beginning of time.
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I would go on a limp and say that there is no difference in between deep tech software restaurant entrepreneur.
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It's it's all pretty much the same set of human problems.
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If we talk about human operational system, it's pretty much the same stuff all the time.
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And we see it all over the place.
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Whatever type of business they build, if they build a small restaurant chain or even a single cafe in Pakistan, if they build an AI in California, or if they're building some kind of a government related focus agency in France, the human mistakes are always going to be the same.
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And by the way, I would even go further and say that interpersonal relationship is prone to the same types of mistakes.
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People have the same they do the same stupid stuff at home with their spouses.
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People do the same stupid stuff with their friends and so on and so forth.
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I don't think there is any specific deep tech thing.
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Sure, there is a flavor of a little bit geekier people, you know, a little bit more PhD, a little bit more introverted, but we've seen it all in software industry on its own.
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I would argue that a system administrator is an even more introverted person than a PhD.
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One of my good friends, Richard Silverstein, the head of our scientific board, he's he told me a joke.
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How do you tell an introvert from an extrovert on a scientific conference?
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>> Oh, by >> an extrovert is looking at your shoes when he's talking, not on his own.
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>> But you deal a lot with that those types.
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You know exactly what I'm talking about. >> I do. >> So, sure. Sure.
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Maybe, you know, we talk about a little bit more geekier, intellectual, less sociable people in deep tech than than say in movie business or media business.
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But I would say that they're not that far from developers and from the coders that built all of the software that you and I use on a daily basis.
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Same look at Steve Bosnjak if we have to go all the way back.
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same same idea same type of person I think it boils down to couple of things there is an in intrapersonal and interpersonal things when it comes to intrapersonal it is what I call founders agency in my opinion it's the combination of three things is the resilience we talked about it is their obsession or passion can They put their heart not just their mind into it.
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Can they do they really obsess about that particular problem and it is capacity? Can they figure it out?
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Because as much as I would love to figure out something in biology, I have zero training.
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I have zero understanding of that.
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I will never be a successful biotech founder.
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So it's ability to wake up every day and go at it with passion and capacity that would be intrapersonal.
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So something about that particular person and if that there is one of those things are missing I would never make an investment in the first place.
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Sure over time those things can fluctuate.
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Somebody can have a better day a worse day but usually they stay there.
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If they are there in the first place they will stay there.
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Then we come to in interpersonal things.
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How people communicate with other people.
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And this is much harder to gauge.
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You can play and act for a while that that you know how to do those things.
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But when stress comes into an equation and stress can come from personal life as well, people change and their behavior change and they show their ugly sides pretty pretty dramatic in a pretty dramatic fashion.
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I would argue that the most important thing in business and in personal life is always communicate.
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Always talk to each other.
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Be open and be genuine especially about the difficult problems.
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Whether it's your wife, whether it's your husband, whether it's your business partner or your client, be ready and ask them for those hard conversations.
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Is about is it about me leaving my socks next to the bed or not washing the dishes in the evening?
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I want my wife to tell me that she's pissed about that.
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I want her to share frustration.
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And if it's a client who's not happy with my service, I want him to share his frustration.
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People who shy away from those conversations are the one that fail at interpersonal things.
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>> Again, you and I agree so much.
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Um, that was the one rule when I was still running Oshani Asset Management was we overcommunicate when things are going against us. >> Yep.
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>> You do not The urge with many people is like you've had a great quarter or a great year and you're just calling all of your clients.
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And I would I would say no.
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Quite quite the opposite. Do not do that.
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the time that we're going to overcommunicate are when things are really shitty >> and and the and this comes into the problem of humans, right?
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A lot of people just feel so uncomfortable with that that they'll do almost anything to avoid it.
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And it it's like human OS.
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I've been fascinated by human OS all my life.
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But like if you lean into the things that you really kind of just don't want to do, oh my goodness, there's so much alpha there.
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Because I remember during the great financial crisis, I was on the phone with one of our bigger clients and he he was unhappy with me to say the least.
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Uh but he did he closed off the conversation by saying, "You know what?
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you're the only incoming call I got from one of our managers today.
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And that just kind of blew me away.
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The the the ability to have difficult conversations is such an important aspect of running a business.
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And yet, and it's so obvious, right, to me and to you.
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Uh what what what else other than uh and and I love the way by the way that you extend it to not just business to your wife to your family to all of those things.
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That kind of continuity just gets you in the habit of being like okay hit me what what have I done that's wrong this time?
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>> I think it's intellectually easy but it's emotionally very hard.
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A lot of people, especially subconsciously, try to shy away from those things because like they don't want to hurt somebody.
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Look, the whole idea about not responding to somebody's email if the answer is no. Like, come on. Why? Just say no. But no.
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Well, if I say no, I will hurt their feelings.
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If you don't reply to me, you hurt my feelings even more.
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And like you and I can go all the way down the rabbit hole of Marcus Aurelius and gastral therapy and talk about like can anyone but you hurt your own feelings.
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Is it really only the external part to hurt you or is it about your perception of what they did that hurts you?
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That's a whole different layer of that whole conversation.
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In my opinion, it is very important to communicate openly and freely about everything with anyone because otherwise we all become locked in into the small shells of our own worlds and we drift apart and then they they have to collide and that's when real pain happens and people come into conversation with very different assumptions about all those things. >> Yeah.
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And uh the I I love that nod to the perception, right?
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That's another thing that I look for when looking for partners, people to work with, people to invest in is are they outer oriented or are they inner oriented?
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And by that I mean listen, read what they say.
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When something doesn't go their way, does the finger point outward?
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I'm not terribly interested in that person, right?
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Cuz it's always somebody else's fault.
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There is a there was a Russian musician called Moisci, one of the best poets Russian has ever seen in the 21st century.
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Uh he's a hip-hop artist, but he has some really really deep thinking embedded into his songs.
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And one of the things, of course, it's not going to be pathetic when I translate it, but one of the things he says is um the defeat does not require any expense or any effort.
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All you have to do is say, "I'm not to blame. I'm not to blame."
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He's like, "That's all you need." And it's very easy.
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And that's how people lose in life.
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Whenever they try to externalize the responsibility for their own life, this is the moment everything starts breaking apart.
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At the end of the day, it's you who made those choices, who made those decisions to end up in that point in life.
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And if you keep on um delegating responsibility, yeah, this will all go downwards from there. I agree. But it's hard, Jim. It is hard.
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It is hard to understand that it's it's on us. It's always on us.
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And it's again, it's not just business, personal life, your friends, your your spouses, everything around you.
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It was your decision that put you in this position.
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And if this position is horrible, what was the famous saying by Churchill?
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If you're going through hell, keep going. >> Going. Yeah. >> Exactly.
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>> At some point, you will get out of there. So that that's it.
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But unfortunately, it's easy for you and me to say about that.
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Maybe because of the life experiences that shaped us.
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Maybe because of how we got brought up.
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Maybe because of all the scars that you and I have, it is much easier for for some other people.
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Much much harder for some other people to embed this thinking and embed this philosophy of life.
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>> My my son has a friend who has the dichotomy of looking at people prefall or postfall.
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And by that he means what you you just mentioned.
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We have a lot of scar tissue, you and me.
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And so we're both postfall.
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And one of the things that I have noticed about postfall people, is they don't do that. Not my fault. Not my fault.
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In fact, they're quite the opposite.
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They're like, "Okay, that's on me."
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And every company that I've ever started, that's Well, let me add an asterk. Not the first company. I had to learn it.
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I had to learn it at my first company. >> Oh, that close.
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That hits a little close to home.
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>> And boy, did I learn it. >> Oh, yeah.
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>> Because I got repeatedly punched in the face.
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And you know, I was young. I was 28. I was arrogant.
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I was all of these things that needed to be beaten out of me.
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And I remember the first couple of times I'm like, "Woo, that didn't go the way I was planning."
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One of the most embarrassing moments of my life was when I showed my wife, we've been together for a while at that point.
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One of my emails to one of my employees when I was 22.
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I'm not going to go into details because I don't want to embarrass myself again publicly, but I've shown the email to my wife and she's like, "Oh my god, if I met you when you were 22, I would have never even went on a date with you, you arrogant asshole." Oh my god. >> Go ahead. >> Yeah. Yeah.
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But that's actually an interesting theme.
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I I mean I love to build mental models of everything >> and and I wonder is there is there some value to that initial arrogance, right?
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Is there some value to you know what?
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I'm going to change the world and and yeah, I I think so.
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But then it really requires getting punched repeatedly in the face and and learning some humility.
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I think >> yes I agree and um yeah it's it's it's a it's an interesting way how how you see how people go arrogant humble more arrogant more humble and then some of them just go into stratosphere of arrogance and we see those examples every day in the media for example and um some people never learn humility some people never learn to understand how their ego can control And this is a sad story.
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It's it's like with addicts, you know, whether it's gambling or alcohol, doesn't matter.
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Any kind of whenever one function of your psyche controls the whole behavior, that person is a slave of that function.
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Again, whether it's ego or addiction or I I had a not even a friend, an acquaintance who told me that he had a sex addiction.
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And I was like, that's that's not a thing.
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something invented by rich folks to explain themselves away in the court of law during the divorce proceedings.
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He's like, "No, no, you don't get it.
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I can see a girl's wrist on a steering wheel of a car and I will cancel all of my meetings until I get a date with her." I'm like, "You serious?" He's like, "Yeah."
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I'm like, "Oh my god, that's a real thing."
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But unfortunately uh when when a single function controls the person, I think that's it's a really lopsided version of a of a person.
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I would never invest in a founder like that for example. >> Yeah.
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But how how do you parrot those things out um when when you're chatting with a potential uh founder?
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Uh let's go through some of the questions that you that you ask to to see.
19:14
Uh oh, this this guy might might be brilliant, but he's uh blocking traffic uh on I 95 and I don't want to invest in that guy.
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>> Well, it's a combination of things, right?
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I I don't necessarily care uh when it comes to founders if um if they have that or other preferences and how they spend their time.
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But here are a couple of questions that that I usually ask.
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I would ask the father, "How do you deal with stress?"
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And I would always get, "Well, I go exercise. I go I go meditate. I go blah blah blah." I'm like, "Great."
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And when all of that fails, what happens?
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And then and then you see they're like, "Oh, damn.
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I I got all of my lies in front of me already out. What do I say now?"
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And their eyes start darting left, right, left, right.
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And and you can see how they think about it.
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Some of them actually tell me the truth at that point.
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Like one of the best answers I've ever heard was like I talk to my mom. >> That makes sense.
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When when I'm losing my when I have no idea how to deal with my own internal struggles, I call my mom. That's real.
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Somebody told me I play video games for a couple of hours. That's also real.
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Is it a good way to deal with stress? I don't know.
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And maybe for that person it helps, but I'm not going to judge. That's completely fine.
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Somebody told me I would like if nothing helps I'm just gonna open a bottle of wine and you know have a silent evening in front of a fireplace.
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Is it good for his health? Maybe not.
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Does it help him to get through the day? It does.
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That's one question I ask.
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Another question I ask is assume you got acquired by whoever is the leader in your industry and you get a position of a chief scientific officer, chief techn technological officer, CEO, whatever. would you take it? And they're like, yes.
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I'm like, so why don't you just go and apply for a job, dude?
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Get your salary in a couple of years in the same time span of the next 10 years that you're going to battle every day through building your startup.
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You you're going to have a very comfortable job and you can raise in the ranks in this corporation, become this sea level, whatever.
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They're like, I never thought about it.
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And I'm like, oh, great, dodged the bullet, not going to invest.
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Another thing that I often ask people and I used to ask that when I was hiring people in in my previous life as an entrepreneur is assume you have a billion bucks in your bank account.
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You took care of all of your families, relatives, homes, cars, etc.
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You've spent two, three years touring the globe, going on parties, flying jets, whatever you have in your system, all of your teenage and child fantasies.
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What do you do on a Monday morning?
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and that you either either a person have an answer and then you dig deeper or they don't have an answer and that's the first time they think about it.
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So I'm trying to put people into the theoretical situations when there are no constraints around them of that type or another type or when there or in other theoretical situations when there too many constraints of a certain type and that's how you start understanding how they act on the fringes in extreme situations.
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Does it give you a full picture? Of course not.
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You will never know a true color of a person until you've worked with them for some time.
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And both you and I have heard stories of people building multiple companies together for 30 years plus and then having a falling out. You know, things happen.
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Not a single human is a static system.
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So, as much as I want to say that I've got some answers, they're only partial answers.
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Always you know that you've been doing investment for a while.
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There is never a whole picture. Yeah.
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And uh that was the thing that intrigued me so much and got me obsessed with markets, right?
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>> The the you're never getting the full picture.
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You have to learn to infer.
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You've got to learn that it's it's a base rate game.
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You're you're going to be wrong a great deal of the time.
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And mistakes are portals of opportunity in my opinion.
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And like but again that's that goes back to prefall and postfall right um because the the the underlying process is often just incredibly boring and dull.
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In other words, okay, what's the base rate?
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How often did did this occur? What's my base rate? Okay, let's see.
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I Everything I'm doing like every choice we make really is a bet.
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It's a bet on some outcome.
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And and if my friend Annie Duke calls people who focus on just the outcome of a single bet as they are, he she calls it resulting.
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In other words, let's say we'll just make it pure gambling, right?
24:26
So you and I have money together and we bet on landing in the roulette wheel of red two. Okay?
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and it it lands in red three.
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>> People who are who are what Annie calls resultters say, "Oh, our entire strategy was wrong from that one from that one spin of the wheel."
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But you would, that's a silly example, but it really underlines the fact that people do it.
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It's much more difficult to see when it gets much more complex, but people do that and take that attitude far more often than one would expect.
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Uh yes, one of my venture partners and a good friend Pete Jarvis, he keeps on drilling a hole in my skull every time about baian versus frequentist statistics.
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He's like, you need to think about your confidence level and your level of your belief, not about the statistical probability of something happening.
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And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
25:32
And in investment, that's even more true.
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And the the idea of I would to defend those guys who try to make uh to try to learn something from just one shot.
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The idea is good try to accelerate your learning cycle, but try to condense your learning cycle.
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that the underlying core idea is a good idea. They just do it wrong.
25:54
It's like assuming that I can have a physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger by doing one squat and one chest pump and that's it.
26:01
I'm I'm going to look like a like like Arnold. That's not how it works.
26:05
But but if it did and I could just do one squat in my life and have an amazing physique of my lower body, I would definitely do do it.
26:15
But that's just not how these things work in life.
26:17
Yeah, you probably want to accelerate your learning cycles.
26:21
It's just not the way to do it. >> Totally agree.
26:24
Um, and another one that I've noticed, I'd be curious as to your uh um reaction is time preferences.
26:30
So, time preferences, if you have a very long time preference, right?
26:41
I I used to say continually my my uh my view my time horizon is infinite right and by that I mean I have children grandchildren hopefully great grandchildren I have uh organizations that I would like to support etc.
26:58
So like my time preference is not literally but figuratively infinite >> when when hyperbolic discounting is a real problem in public market investing but I think it's a problem in startups in in all areas of life.
27:17
H how do you look for some a potential founders?
27:21
How do you calibrate their time preference methodology?
27:32
I think I should embed this as an explicit thing.
27:34
I don't think I have it explicitly done right now.
27:36
I don't think I ask people about their time preference.
27:39
I would also go on a, you know, on a little bit of a stretch here and say that there are some founders who win because of a very short-term preference and some founders who win because of a very long-term preference. >> It depends.
27:52
It depends on how their psyche works.
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psyche works. for somebody a very clear goal get this pilot get this client get like they they work in a very sprint oriented manners but they recharge every week or every month and then they sprint again and sprint again and sprint again and that's how they win and we know
28:12
about organizations say I would argue that Google was an organization like that they've tried so many products over their lifetime so many of them failed but some of them stuck and some of them are the best in the market right now and then we have organizations like Amazon which is a marathon runner with a very
28:27
long time horizon was like okay if we can sell books we can sell anything and then they expanded expanded expanded and now they do everything they have pharmacy they have medical services they they have so many different things AWS on its own I think that it's a good idea
28:42
for me to add time preference is an explicit metric but I never thought about that when I evaluated founders June thank you for for showing me a blind spot appreciate you man >> sure of course um that That kind of leads me to uh a question I've always and I don't know that it's specific to deep tech. Um
29:00
Um I think it's probably more generalized, but what what are some of things you've noticed where where they're basically lying, but they're not lying to you, they're they're lying to themselves.
29:22
>> H that's the hardest part of them all.
29:24
And um that's the hardest for two very different reasons.
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It is the hardest one to distinguish because people can really say something with a lot of belief.
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And when you recognize that is the hardest one emotionally because you're like ah you're such a good man.
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You're such a such a smart person.
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Why do you have to live in this world full of illusions?
29:46
It's emotionally tough when you see somebody talented apply themselves into the wrong direction just because they had a couple of assumptions.
29:52
figured out in the wrong way.
29:54
Um, this to me is those repeated questions, layered questions.
29:59
The one I've shared with you before is how do you deal with stress when blah blah blah and okay, when all of that fails, what do you do next?
30:05
This is one of those things.
30:07
Another tool is we have for example, we focus very much on the founders motivation.
30:12
One of the lessons learned is we have one of our portfolio companies, the one that I promise not to mention by name, fantastic founders.
30:21
they will be successful but it's never going to be a VC scale business.
30:25
It's going to be a lifestyle business for those entrepreneurs.
30:29
So probably our investment is not going to do that well if at all.
30:33
But the point is now I am asking about founders ambitions three times in the process.
30:39
very early on in a very kind of short way, 30 seconds.
30:41
At some point, some of my partners will ask him about an ambition in a very different way, different phrase, and maybe spend 10 minutes on that.
30:50
And then the very very last point before we make an investment when I meet them in person, I would talk about their life goals and their ambitions, not necessarily tied to the company, but in general, I would say things like assume everything with this company was successful.
31:05
Assume it is whether public or acquired.
31:08
You know you're you're you've made it.
31:11
What happens to your in your life next?
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How do you change after that happened?
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Not your company, not your family.
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How will you yourself change?
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And those I think it's all variations of layered questions.
31:25
variations of layered questions. keep on digging a little bit deeper with every iteration and try to understand their motivation deeply >> and and so what what answers are you like ah I might be on to something here >> I'm not going to tell you otherwise
31:46
everybody's going to give me those answers no Jim that's not true I would tell you honest answers honest answers the Think about the the way I see it, you know, like everybody's talking product market fit or founder market feed is the most important thing. When we talk about
32:05
When we talk about the person not lying to themselves, when we talk about person being able to be honest with themselves, I'm looking for honest answer.
32:17
I genuinely invested in the guy who told me I pop a bottle of wine when I'm stressed.
32:22
I'm like, okay, that's fair.
32:24
You do damage your health a little bit.
32:27
But have I never drank an alcoholic drink in my life? No.
32:32
I had was I blackout drunk when I was 18? Yes, I was. More than once. >> Yeah. Who was it?
32:40
>> Wh Why Why would I be a moral judge?
32:40
Why would I put myself on some, you know, very wrong moral high ground in order to don't drink alcohol? Blah blah blah. It's just stupid.
32:49
Another guy who I also invested in, he's like, I play video games with my friends when I'm stressed out.
32:54
I can go on like four or five hours binge playing with my friends multiplayer.
32:58
I'm like, "Yeah, I get that. I do the same stuff.
33:00
There is nothing wrong with that."
33:02
Um maybe somebody would also say, "You're a bronest man and you play video games. How dare you?"
33:08
I'm like, "Go jump or something." Whatever.
33:11
Like the point is if they're honest with themselves, that's what I'm looking for.
33:17
And for different people, honesty would take different forms.
33:22
Just to wrap up my point about founder market fit, there is the founder founder fit.
33:26
It's a weird way to put it, but my wife and I were talking about that.
33:29
You know how they all say be aligned with your true self?
33:35
This whole spiritual/sychological/ esoteric knowledge.
33:41
Be true to your ideal self.
33:41
Be the best version of yourself.
33:46
Whatever word you words you put around it, if you're genuine with yourself, then you will succeed.
33:53
It it doesn't mean that it will be without problems, but my wife and I were having a dinner and she's like, I've realized what happens when you're honest with yourself. I'm like, what?
34:04
She's like, suffering goes away.
34:08
>> Pain stays, stress stays, external irritating moments, they all stay.
34:11
It's not that just life becomes a miracle and then you know butterflies in Disney movie.
34:17
No, but your suffering comes from your resistance of those moments.
34:20
When you yourself do not accept what's happening with your life, that's where suffering blooms.
34:27
That's when you start to really hate your life.
34:29
So when people know themselves, when people understand themselves, there is no suffering.
34:35
There is acceptance of their own responsibility of external circumstances of their ability to change what's going on.
34:44
That's the most important part.
34:47
>> Your wife is extremely wise >> because that just rings so true to me.
34:58
Uh most suffering comes from attachments.
35:01
And if those attachments are to how badly you feel about this particular outcome, the why me, you know, all of that you don't understand that you are literally programming yourself.
35:17
There's a great line, you know, the happy man lives in a happy world, the sad man lives in a sad world, the angry man lives in an angry world.
35:27
And that's because they are attached to those things.
35:29
And and the way your wife put it is just really nails it uh so succinctly because it it is so difficult to get people to understand that simple truth.
35:46
And you I like your uh what you appended to it. Suffering goes away.
35:51
The problems don't go away.
35:54
The stress doesn't go away. None of that changes.
35:57
But your whole attitude, the way you attack it, the way you either correct it or say, "Okay, I've got to learn from this particular mistake, etc.
36:09
, that changes dramatically." >> Yes, 100%.
36:14
And the whole the whole idea of psychology, the whole idea of say Buddhism or whatever other markers of realism mentioned before, all of them are talking about pretty much the same idea.
36:26
Accept your responsibility, accept who you are, accept where you are in life and start acting consciously towards the direction you're looking forward to.
36:34
I was surprised to learn there is a thing called act.
36:36
It's acceptance and commitment therapy.
36:38
It's this new wave of therapy.
36:41
I I was never a client or anything of of that particular but I read about it online.
36:45
I was like that's so powerful.
36:47
Accept your feelings and emotions in a moment.
36:52
Commit to your values and take action in the direction of your values.
36:58
The problem with that, Jim, is that before people can act in that way, before people can do it, they either have to experience the fall, they either have to have a lot of scar tissue or they should be very lucky with how they were brought up in the first place.
37:12
And the society and the civilization we live in today does not promote that thinking.
37:19
It's so much easier to blame somebody else.
37:20
It's so much easier to point fingers.
37:22
It's just it's it's easier on every single level not to accept responsibility for your life.
37:31
And this is something if I see behaviors like that, this is a hard pass for me immediately on any founder and if I ask questions like I would ask them to tell about a story of how they were not happy in the relationship or how things went with their previous boss.
37:46
The moment I see this behavior, the the fingerpointing, that's when I get really my my my ears go very high.
37:56
I'm like, what's going on here?
37:59
Yeah, learned helplessness is maybe one of the most toxic mind viruses that has been making the rounds in Western civilization for the last 20, 30 years.
38:11
And the results are very predictable. Yeah. Yeah.
38:18
And we we see it every day in the media today. Yeah. Unfortunately. >> Yeah.
38:24
>> That's that's very sad. I agree.
38:24
The the Lord helplessness is not it's something where I am losing my stuff with my brother.
38:37
Like I'm losing my composure sometimes with my young. He's 23 years old.
38:39
But I'm like, "Oh, dude, you're old enough to start understanding those things. Come on." I love him dearly. He's an amazing person.
38:49
It's just sometimes he would say things and my eyes were like, "So why?" I'm like, "Seriously?"
38:56
But then I remember myself in his age like, "Yeah, seriously." Surprising at all. >> It is. It is always helpful.
39:02
I've been a journal keeper all my adult life.
39:06
Actually, I started as a teen and oh my god, I'm so happy I did that because like I can look back and I just laugh.
39:18
>> I bet you didn't laugh at the moments when you were writing those things down in a very angry manner.
39:26
>> Very insightful on your part. >> All right.
39:29
I Here's one that that I was thinking about uh for you specifically.
39:34
You've got no pitch deck. Okay.
39:34
I'm going to give you three things.
39:36
I'm going to give you the lab notebook.
39:38
I'm going to give you their hiring plan.
39:41
And I'm going to give you three customer emails.
39:47
What would you be able to infer from those three things?
39:53
>> I assume I cannot ask for any follow-ups.
39:54
I cannot ask to talk to a customer. Nothing. Right.
39:56
I can only get those deliverables. >> Only make a deal.
40:01
>> I would not make an investment.
40:01
I need to see the people.
40:03
That that's my honest answer, Jim.
40:05
I need to talk to people.
40:07
>> So based on on paper on paperwork, I would never make an investment in the first place.
40:13
>> But if you ask me what I would be interested the most, customer interviews, then the hiring plan, and I don't care about lab notes.
40:19
Back to your original point of how many companies succeeded exactly in the direction they wanted to succeed in the first place.
40:28
The lab notes is just an artifact of their original idea that will be pivoted many times before they actually succeed.
40:36
So I don't care for lab notes at all as long as there is some non like I would skim through that to make sure there is no crazy statements like husion reactor the size of your tabletop or something that you know something that breaks the second law of thermodynamics.
40:50
So as long as there is no absolute nonsense there I would probably not even pay pay attention to that.
40:56
I care about customers and I care about hiring plan because again business is system of humans interacting with other humans and customers is one is external interaction and hiring plan is internal interaction.
41:12
Every time I hire somebody I create an individual career plan for that person for at least the next three years.
41:16
So that person and I have a clear set of goals, mutual goals on how to make that person successful in my company and how to make their life as stressless as possible because they know they're going to get a salary bump, they're going to get a bonus bump, they're going to get some additional maybe equity or something else as long as they hit their goals and their life becomes so much less anxious, so much less ambiguous.
41:42
They can just focus on delivering on it daily and they know how they will progress.
41:46
So I would care about customer interviews and hiring plan. That's it. >> Interesting.
41:54
Another thing that we agree on is, you know, truth seeeking mechanisms, right? Rituals, routines, etc.
42:03
What's the smallest daily ritual you've seen in a lab or a team that predicts integrity under pressure?
42:19
I don't know if I can mention anything about the team dynamics but I can talk about specific rituals of specific people >> that predict their future success.
42:31
Please >> in in my opinion what is really important is any kind of self-reflection whether it's meditation journaling or anything like that or just staring at the wall being in the silence is very important.
42:45
Another really weird, probably the smallest one that I've seen is people who put their phone away at 7 or 8 p. m. or 900 p. m.
42:54
They just leave their phone in the office or whatever in a separate room and they don't go to the bed with with a phone.
42:59
And this is one of the things that weirdly enough is one of the biggest predictors of success.
43:03
And I think the reason is that it shows the level of self-control that very few of us have very few of us.
43:10
In terms of the team dynamics, I I'm not involved in day-to-day businesses of my operating companies.
43:20
So, I wouldn't know in the first place.
43:22
And uh going and telling you about how my company succeeded because of the things that I embedded into my companies is a little bit too self-promoting and egotistical.
43:30
And I also think it's it's a bad advice is the survivors bias.
43:34
It's like this famous picture with a plane full of bullet holes and how they tried to armor those bullet holes which they should never have done.
43:43
>> It's the same thing here.
43:43
Different teams through different times would have different rituals that work.
43:46
For somebody it would be a daily standup meeting to review the sprint.
43:50
For somebody it would be annual strategy sessions.
43:55
It depends on the manager, on the team, on the customers on the market. So many things.
43:58
self-control, the the ability to reflect, the ability to do it on a daily basis to get what was that uh also it's a meme.
44:08
It's like if you if you improve by 1% every day, you get like a huge outcome by the end of the year.
44:15
If you degrade by 1% every day, you you go very very low.
44:18
Just a tiny habits of making yourself better.
44:24
your cognition, your psychology, your empathy, whatever you're working on today, your belly fat.
44:29
And it again keeps a sink into our conversation.
44:37
>> You see this pain point for me. >> I can see that.
44:40
Um but you know, again, I I agree.
44:44
Um I I and I I agree through like lots of experiences and watching people particularly under stress, right?
44:57
>> I I had uh numerous people in that had worked for me over the years that you know I and I'm not going to name anyone here, but I I had two really interesting examples.
45:11
One guy was absolutely not from central casting uh for his particular job and people would like ask me about it and I would say watch him and how he operates in the 10% of the most stressful times and you will understand why I love working with him. Right?
45:37
In other words, a lot of pe a lot of times people just look at the surface of things and you you're that's a really bad way to make decisions.
45:48
Uh I had another uh colleague who was literally from central casting like looked to part, walked to walk, talked the talk but then under extreme stress collapsed and you know there's this an odd thing for a quant like me to say but intuition becomes very important and and by that I I mean, I'm not just talking about, ooh, I I have this intuition.
46:23
No, intuition gets better and better through repeated exposure to the pattern, right?
46:30
In other words, an imbued intuition.
46:33
You've seen the same thing so many times, all of a sudden, your spidey senses start activating >> and and and so uh t now very typical of a quant.
46:47
How how do I create an algorithm of this?
46:54
>> What about mind map Jim? >> Well, exactly.
46:58
Um, >> can I can I pause here for a second because I think it's a very important thing I want to add.
47:05
>> Uh, people use intuition and gut feeling interchangeably, which I think is a big cognitive fallacy.
47:11
Intuition is exactly what you said. It's a very heady thing.
47:13
It's very much in your head.
47:15
I've seen the same pattern.
47:17
Chess helps you develop your pattern recognition.
47:20
Chess is not about intelligence.
47:22
Chess is purely about pattern recognition and that's how you can train your intuition.
47:25
Gut feeling is something very instinctual.
47:29
It's it's a it's a body feeling.
47:31
That's something that actually comes from your your guts and goes up.
47:35
If intuition goes up from up to down, then it's a very important distinction.
47:43
And that's something I also talk to my founders a lot. Listen to your body. Listen to your brain.
47:47
Those are very different things and sometimes they will be contradicting.
47:50
One of my other venture partners, he says a full body yes is when we do an investment. It's a very good thing.
47:57
My mind, my heart and my guts all point in the same direction.
48:03
And when there is a conflict, when there is a contradiction, that's when you should pay more attention than usual because that's usually when something is off.
48:11
It can be off in a good way or off in a bad way, but something is off in that moment.
48:14
I just wanted to make this distinction but that's it >> that that is an excellent distinction.
48:20
Um and I I do something similar.
48:20
Um when when the gut and the head don't agree that's when I really start writing.
48:30
>> Uh because I think I think of writing as thinking.
48:32
Um you know a lot of people are don't agree with that.
48:36
I I I passionately believe it.
48:39
Um, how do you know like until you write out your idea, you don't know if your idea is any good or not?
48:49
The the the need to externalize it.
48:53
And I and and I'm very old school in that I actually >> I wanted to ask you about that.
48:56
I wanted do you mean typing or you mean writing with a hand? Yeah. Yeah. Writing.
49:00
That's a different skill.
49:03
>> It's a different thing.
49:05
>> It's it's completely different.
49:05
And so like if you came into my office here, you would just Yep.
49:10
You would just find pens galore and notebooks everywhere because it is so different.
49:18
It's a different part of our brain.
49:21
It's a different way of doing things.
49:26
Then once I've written it, once I've physically written it with my hand, I'll look and I'll be like, I am such a dumb for, oh, there's something here.
49:37
Then then I'll move it over and type it out and do that type of stuff.
49:40
But I always start with writing.
49:42
And it it I I it's like sometimes I feel like the old man shouts at clouds when I'm talking to younger founders, right?
49:55
Because they look at me like I'm insane.
49:58
They're like, "Uh, uh, okay, Grandpa, but uh, you know, we keep all our notes, you know, in fill in the blank, right?"
50:07
But whatever the computerized notetaking system is. >> What's next?
50:13
Are you going to teach us how to use pay phone?
50:20
I mean, there are certain things and there is a lot of, by the way, there is a lot of neuroscience behind the the micro motor functions of your hands.
50:28
There are some some weird weird ideas that if you teach yourself how to write with with another hand and you write the same thing with different hand never tried it never never so I'm not an experienced practitioner of that I've
50:41
heard people who do that as well they would try to write the same thing with different hands because apparently it activates different hemispheres of your brain and you can have different experiences when you write it out. It
50:49
experiences when you write it out. It might be an overkill uh especially for those younger founders but yeah I think whatever helps but look that's exactly the example of when you when you ask me what's the right answer the right answer
51:02
is honest answer the one that works for you for somebody else it could be walking and dictating stuff you know and then listening to them talking about that but for you writing down makes it easier that's that's a fantastic example of when I will say yeah let's proceed because you're genuine Yeah. Um,
51:19
Um, and and the the um I don't I don't even know how to put this.
51:30
The I'm I'm left-handed, right?
51:33
So, uh the the joke is I'm the only one in my right mind. >> Okay.
51:43
But I think that's also part of it with me again because the world conspires against me.
51:49
I'm a left-hander and I write on a on a notebook this way and so I'm always scraping my hand against the metal, but uh I I like the way you react to that because I agree with you for other people and that was also a big part of my early when I was starting my first company.
52:11
I would write everything out.
52:13
My grandfather called it premeditating.
52:16
And and and it's basically what he taught me how to do was here's what I want.
52:21
Here's what happens if I get it good and bad.
52:27
>> Here's what happens if I don't get it good and bad.
52:29
It's the It's the dual nature, right?
52:32
It forces you into a completely different train of thought than no, I know I'm going to get it.
52:38
I just know I'm going to get it.
52:43
And you also don't think about the externalities of well a lot of bad might happen in your life if you actually get that.
52:51
That kind of ties in with your question about you've got a billion dollars in the bank.
52:55
What are you going to do the next day? Right. Your company's gone. All of that's gone.
53:03
You've spent your I I love your example.
53:05
You've you've fulfilled all of your teenage fantasies. What's next?
53:13
>> They are important though.
53:13
Those are the things that very many people are optimizing for without even understanding that that's what they're optimizing for.
53:20
And how many stories in every single culture whatever you take Indian culture, Chinese, Western culture there in every single culture there are stories of a person achieving their goal and understanding that now their life is empty.
53:35
And maybe this goal was never their goal.
53:37
It was something imposed on them by their family, by their associate, whatever.
53:40
But it was never their goal.
53:42
And now they're completely lost.
53:44
And they have all of this money and this beautiful house and whatever else they want in their lives, cars, yaks, haram, whatever. And they feel nothing.
53:55
And they're absolutely empty inside.
53:56
And um there is a reason why this is a transcendent story through all the cultures because it's very human.
54:03
It's it's more biological than even cultural imposed.
54:08
So I think it's important to understand why you leave your life and why you go there, why you do anything in the first place.
54:16
And usually when I start talking about the stuff, my friends are like, "Are come on, that's too complicated itself."
54:21
So I'm just going to stop myself right now.
54:24
I do have exercises that that I give my friends if they're interested on how to dig deeper, how to go through those layers of fake meanings, how to actually get to your own own core.
54:36
And many people will have very different things that they expected to hear there in in their heart and the very very deep layers of their motivation.
54:45
And they would come out of those exercises with big eyes and like oh my god, never thought about that.
54:51
Gosh, I should probably go my whole life.
54:58
>> There's a great and I and I'm uh and I'm paraphrasing it, but Jed McKinna has this great quote where he says uh he quotes Socrates saying the unexamined life is not worth living.
55:08
And he goes, I know most people are terrified to even examine that statement.
55:16
I have a horrible saying which I think might might have a ring of arrogant to arrogance to that but I genuinely I I honestly feel like that and the way and that's my phrase I didn't read it anywhere life devoid of meaning seeks
55:32
distractions >> and to me this is very important because whenever I feel that I want to spend a few more minutes on Reddit or I want to spend 10 minutes watching some YouTube video or I want to do something that is a clear distraction. There is no value. There is no value.
55:48
I'm not talking about walking a dog for example or spending a night with my friends.
55:51
Those are different things.
55:51
But when I I I really clearly want to get distracted or maybe pop this bottle of wine, right?
55:58
And kind of go into this spylight of mine for a while.
56:00
I'm like, that's a red flag. What's going on?
56:03
Why do you want to get distracted?
56:05
Is it that the task you need to do is complicated and you don't feel great about it?
56:10
Is it that you feel that what you're doing right now is meaningless?
56:14
Like I train my brain to treat those signals as a red flag.
56:17
Oh, I want to get distracted. What's going on? What's going on? Stop. Pause. Breathe. Figure out.
56:25
And maybe sometimes get distracted.
56:28
Maybe you're just stressed.
56:28
Maybe maybe you need some meaningless time in your life.
56:32
Half an hour of just pure stupidity.
56:34
And then I would take some random boring not boring random poorly written sci-fi book.
56:40
Not not Azimov, not classics, but some kind of a whatever.
56:45
One of those modern books when there is no meaning like blah blah blah 10 pages later look at it back to business.
56:48
But that's that's very true.
56:52
People don't want to examine their lives.
56:54
They don't want to examine themselves. It it's painful, Jim.
57:00
>> And and it's also, you know, people who who desire power over other people um not influence power, >> they're very different. They're very different.
57:13
>> Um, they have almost perfected the It's I always think of the Wizard of Oz.
57:17
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
57:20
And that's the person you need to pay attention to because I, you know, my first job when I was a teenager was I was a professional magician. I loved magic.
57:31
Other people had Farah Faucet on their wall.
57:34
I had Houdini >> and Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
57:36
I'm a geek, but I I loved it.
57:41
But but but one of the one of the things that I really learned was oh my god people are so easy to distract and and it really stuck with me.
57:52
Um and and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
58:00
You can't It's like oh my god.
58:00
And we've weaponized it and scaled it, >> right?
58:06
Tik Tok, you know, Instagram reels, like all of it is not good for moving society forward in my opinion. I'm not saying ban them.
58:18
I'm not saying get rid of them.
58:20
I'm saying learn some discipline like like you read 10 pages of a of a newer sci-fi novel.
58:25
There are strategies you can pursue, >> but then again, all of them demand willpower.
58:34
And beyond that, look, traditional media, radio and TV and newspapers, all the same stuff.
58:39
Alcohol totally the same stuff.
58:43
>> It's now social media is just more much more efficient in that.
58:45
All of those dopamine cycles, all of this, like here's a cute puppy.
58:49
Here is some very very negative news about somebody killed. Here is a cute kitten.
58:53
Here is some new outrageous political news.
58:55
And like they they put people into this cycle of ups and downs and people get consumed.
59:01
The social media just got very good at that. But it was always here.
59:06
And it is not because there is some kind of an evil overlord sitting there trying to distract people.
59:11
It's because people are willing to be distracted.
59:13
They're happy to be distracted.
59:15
They don't want to face certain um there is I don't even recall what kind of movie it is or or a cartoon.
59:23
I think it was a cartoon.
59:23
There is a character who tries meditation and he sits there, he puts his hands like a and then he see like burning corpses and he's like, "Oh my god, never again tells you everything you need to know about your inner world."
59:38
The moment you stay with yourself for a minute in silence, have I told you about my silent retreats?
59:45
Have we ever talked about that? >> No. No.
59:47
every every year in January and August, usually around January and August, I do a three-day silent retreat. I stay at home.
59:54
I don't go to any deep any monasteries or anything like that because I think it's in my opinion it's kind of counterproductive. But I stay for 3 days.
1:00:05
No phones, no music, no writing, no reading, no painting, no of course no games, no movies, no communication.
1:00:10
I don't talk to anyone, including my wife.
1:00:15
Not even my dog, which is the hardest one, by the way, because he would do stuff when when I cannot shout at him.
1:00:20
So, um, three days of silence, three days of no communication of any sorts with other people or with other media.
1:00:29
The first day you're going to clean up your whole house cuz you had all those chores.
1:00:32
Then the second morning, you wake up and like, God, what's going on?
1:00:38
And then on the third day, you start really really seeing your own movements.
1:00:43
You start understanding yourself.
1:00:43
You spend time in meditation.
1:00:45
You spend time in talking to yourself and understanding getting closer to yourself.
1:00:49
As as weird and esoteric as it sounds, twice a year, three days, everybody can find a long weekend.
1:00:58
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, everybody can find it.
1:01:00
Even if you have the busiest job in the world, you can have a day off.
1:01:06
Not a single bite so far.
1:01:06
Not a single person in the office is doing that. Not even my wife.
1:01:12
Um but then again from what I understand like when I was telling this to my friends they're like that sounds like a prison.
1:01:21
I like I never thought about I to me it's very liberating.
1:01:25
It allows you to to reconnect with yourself.
1:01:27
And people would tell me that feels like I'm in a maximum security prison. >> Yep.
1:01:33
I I do a a different version of that.
1:01:37
Um I don't do it every day, but I try to uh every morning uh I just sit with no phone, no music, no books, nothing and sit in silence for between 15 and 20 minutes a day.
1:01:51
Um and I also have a sensory deprivation tank which I absolutely adore.
1:01:59
Um that takes I don't do that every day.
1:02:03
Uh, but I I try to do it at least every other week and you do it for about 45 minutes to an hour and it's really something.
1:02:11
Um, >> well, when you float in the salty water >> in darkness, no music >> and it literally feels like you're floating in space >> and because the water is your body temperature.
1:02:27
And I got to tell you, I I I think I've gotten more out of those two practices than almost anything else I do.
1:02:41
Why do you think other than I feel like I'm in a maximum security prison?
1:02:47
Why do you think that people it is it simply they they they don't want to examine that statement of the unexamined life is not worth living or is there something else kind of the cult of busyiness?
1:03:02
>> There is definitely a force of habit for sure.
1:03:04
That's how that's a thing that just happens.
1:03:07
Lots of people are in the habit of checking their phone or whatever.
1:03:11
Like there is the bad habit and addiction are different things for a reason.
1:03:16
Like there are some people who have bad habits.
1:03:18
They don't necessarily have addiction to alcohol or something.
1:03:21
They have a bad habit of popping a can of beer. Yeah.
1:03:24
>> When they come back from from work.
1:03:24
It's not that they're alcoholics.
1:03:27
If they replace it with a can of coke or replace it with something else, it will still be the same bad habit for them.
1:03:33
>> Um I think it's it's a force of habit.
1:03:36
So just pure reflector human thing.
1:03:36
But at the core of it, at the core of it is that we are offered so many meanings by other external forces.
1:03:49
Whether it's your culture, your religion, your family, your country, we're offered so many answers to this question of meaning that it's easy to accept something and never examine that honestly and genuinely with yourself.
1:04:02
yourself. There's a very good old Jewish joke about a young boy coming to a rabbi and like rabbi what's the meaning of life and he's like dear boy do you really want to trade this fantastic question for some simple answer and I think this is the core of it a lot
1:04:19
of people don't want to ask this question a lot of people they have to face themselves all the good and bad and ugly that that is contained in them and all of us we're human beings we all have good and bad and ugly None of us are saints. And I mean maybe
1:04:33
And I mean maybe maybe some of them are.
1:04:36
I've never Have you met a saint person in your life? >> Never. >> Me either.
1:04:42
>> Even even Dalai Lama says he's not a saint. He's not enlightened.
1:04:44
He's not whatever kind of a moniker you want to attach to that state.
1:04:50
>> We all have we all contain multitudes.
1:04:52
We all have good and bad sides.
1:04:52
We all have good and bad sides. and facing your ugly sides, facing your desires, facing your anger, facing your fears, facing all of that stuff is very difficult for people to them it's they get attached as you say like oh if I have it that defines me if I'm angry about the guy who just cut me in the traffic and I want to shout at him and
1:05:15
blah blah it makes me a bad person doesn't makes you human you got a you got afraid your fear converted into anger and now you're like I you blah blah blah like I know a couple of people who are perfect at that usually women but but um um but the point is I think people don't want to get close to themselves because they don't want to see the real picture. They want to live in this
1:05:41
They want to live in this imaginary world of me being a knight in a shining white arbor that has never touched a speck of dirt in my life and this beautiful fantastic ideal self and clinging to this picture is the best way to never becoming the picture. I could not agree more.
1:06:00
Jung has that wonderful uh quote about um until you integrate your shadow i. e.
1:06:10
all the things that you don't like about yourself, right?
1:06:12
Um you you will look at what happens in your life and call it fate.
1:06:20
And I just that I remember the first time I read that I'm like, "Holy is he ever right."
1:06:27
>> My favorite psychologist of all times. >> Mine too. Mine too.
1:06:32
>> I've read all of his books.
1:06:32
when I was going through this period of fall in my life that that that you mentioned when I was acquiring all of this scar tissue, it was not the easiest period in my life.
1:06:41
I I lost my girlfriend, I lost my business, like a lot of stuff like seemingly at the same time just collapsed around me.
1:06:47
So at that point I was okay, I need to understand what's going on with me.
1:06:52
Why do I react like that?
1:06:53
And I started reading deeply.
1:06:53
the concept of shadow, the concept of anima, the concept of synchronicity.
1:07:01
I think those are the three most powerful ideas that he that he has written down.
1:07:04
I know there are lots of critics.
1:07:06
I know that a lot of people think he's outdated. I don't know.
1:07:09
I I don't care honestly about that.
1:07:11
I think he has some very serious tools that he gives you. Not ideas, not concepts. Tools he gives you. Go ahead and apply them.
1:07:18
Sometimes it does feel gym.
1:07:21
Sometimes it does feel like cutting yourself open without any anesthetics and then taking that that stuff out from your guts and looking at that and understanding how ugly all of that looks and then sealing yourself back up.
1:07:32
It doesn't feel nice, >> but then again, that's the only way forward.
1:07:38
The only way I know, maybe there are people who know how to do it easier and better.
1:07:41
Please introduce me if you know those people.
1:07:45
>> I don't know them because like you same same sort of thing.
1:07:49
Um, I was in a period when in my early 20s where I was just feeling like I I was almost nihilistic.
1:07:59
It was like why bother with anything, you know?
1:08:04
>> And and uh I had read some Yung when I was in college.
1:08:08
Uh but I went on a deep dive and like you I'm like, "Okay, I found my guy."
1:08:14
because it and and I love the your the way you correctly phrase it.
1:08:20
He gives you tools, right?
1:08:23
And you're going to use those tools differently than maybe I use those tools, but we both get to use those tools.
1:08:31
So I which which leads me to another thing I wanted to ask you about.
1:08:38
You know, you've lived in different countries, different business cultures.
1:08:41
What do you think is the most misunderstood between like American startup energy, you know, and the we talked about it a little earlier that the chest thumping and all of that and sort of posts Soviet technical rigor, right?
1:08:58
The Okay, so technical rigor post Soviet technical rigor is a myth on its own.
1:09:10
There are some very talented people granted post Soviet it's been 35 years at that point when Soviet doesn't exist anymore.
1:09:18
Um I >> So okay so so let's let's make it more modern.
1:09:24
Um I I had Dan Wong on who wrote a difference between Americanist legalism and China's engineering cultures.
1:09:33
>> May maybe that's a more fresh metaphor.
1:09:37
I don't think that Russia today has the same rigor when it comes to science and technology as Soviet Union had.
1:09:44
>> I just want to put it out there. >> Okay.
1:09:46
>> I think that they have lost a lot of really talented people.
1:09:48
Not a single uh really talented physicist with whom I studied together is still in Russia. Everybody immigrated.
1:09:54
Every single one of them left.
1:09:56
of them left. uh Russia is going through the early it was going through early ages of capitalism and this kind of puberty of capitalism in the 90s and now it's it's a fullblown you know you know yourself judge yourself what Russia
1:10:11
became in the last I want to say 10 years or so it is pretty clear where the country country is treading the US is not a homogeneous culture either LA versus New York are very very different social interfaces Miami versus Seattle very different value systems. It's I
1:10:27
It's I cannot say that the whole US is the same thing.
1:10:31
I can I can compare San Francisco startup culture versus say um some kind of idealistic Soviet Union physicist/engineer and then the differences will come from society that brought those people up.
1:10:47
San Francisco, take your risks, shoot your shot.
1:10:49
You failed, good for you. Now you know more.
1:10:52
A lot of people in San Francisco if they failed at their first startup would actually that would be seen as a good thing >> by a lot of VCs.
1:11:00
If you talk about Germany or France or Russia or any European, you failed once, definitely going to fail again, never going to get any money because this is the the the culture where they don't tolerate mistakes that well.
1:11:12
When you talk about some kind of idealistic Soviet scientist, that would be a person who is driven by the by the party, by the ideals of the party, whether it's conquering space or building the hugest nuclear rocket to topple the United States or whatever it is.
1:11:27
By the way, the the funniest dichotomy of a Russian person is that they either want to turn us into nuclear rubble or they want a green card. Those two things.
1:11:41
>> We're lucky that more want the green card. >> Either or. No in between.
1:11:50
So that's that's genuinely true.
1:11:50
So I think that a person who was brought up in the Soviet society and again I'm talking more about the not lived experience but what I've heard from my parents and grandparents. >> Sure.
1:12:05
>> The Soviet Union had some good things about the respect for teachers and scientists about about the ethical codex of an officer of army.
1:12:12
The officer of army was a very honorable person.
1:12:14
If you're an officer of army you are a person who is held to a very high ethical standard.
1:12:21
You're not here to bribe.
1:12:23
You're not here to cheat.
1:12:23
You're not here to abuse your power.
1:12:24
They had some things figured out, right?
1:12:26
A lot of people were driven by the ideology of building this communism.
1:12:30
So the drivers are different.
1:12:33
United States, the biggest the biggest and the most important thing about the United States is a universally accepted personal responsibility for your life.
1:12:43
And this is the biggest differentiator from all the other countries in the world. China, Germany, Russia.
1:12:53
This is probably the most important part.
1:12:54
Everybody here, even the US understands that you're on your own.
1:12:57
And I think it's a good thing because it makes people face those questions that we talked about a couple of minutes ago. >> Yeah.
1:13:06
Um I I I agree with that assessment.
1:13:09
the um a lot of the older cultures of Europe and Asia don't are not mistake tolerant >> and and I I've always had this idea I bring it up a lot when I'm talking to people uh of America almost has a different DNA in that basically all of the people at least originally who who came to America, what was different about them than their brother or sister who stayed in Ireland or Moscow or wherever, right?
1:13:46
What was different about them was many of them were willing to get on a boat with absolutely nothing.
1:13:56
you know, maybe $10 in their pocket, take a very arduous journey across an angry ocean and and come here and leave all their culture, all their family, everything they knew, right?
1:14:14
And so it created a very different type of citizenry than and then of course we had the platform, right?
1:14:26
the constitutional republic, the rule of law, freedom of speech, all of that where these people could really get busy and but but it's a very different culture.
1:14:38
It is definitely not a monoculture and I and I and I completely agree.
1:14:44
There's uh Bill Bryson has a great book, America One Summer, and it looks at the 1920s, and it's a really fun read, but it also sometimes makes me a little sad because that American culture in my view is it's not going away, but it is certainly not as strong as it was back then.
1:15:06
And it was basically, you know, the the popular memes, you know, you can just do things.
1:15:14
Well, in America in the 1920s, they lived that.
1:15:20
And so, there's a great story about uh Mount Rushmore.
1:15:24
Calvin Kulage was president at the time.
1:15:26
He didn't know that that was going on at all.
1:15:29
And he was vacationing nearby.
1:15:32
And one of his aids said, "Hey, you know, I just heard that there's this guy who's chiseling the the visages of American presidents that he likes into this mountain."
1:15:44
And Koolage is like, "How cool. Let's go look." >> Yeah. Stuff in the US. >> Yeah. Yes.
1:15:56
and and and the difference between that and so many other cultures to me is just incredibly profound.
1:16:03
It's just like yeah, okay, he he's decided he's going to create this this uh these buss of presidents.
1:16:15
No, no one said no, you can't do that.
1:16:18
No one tried to interfere with him.
1:16:20
No one like even cool it. >> Where is your permit? Where is your permit? Exactly. >> Show me your papers. >> Exactly. Exactly.
1:16:32
And and and that what got you this dynamic environment that created this United States, right?
1:16:41
And I I I I'm not calling for pure anarchy.
1:16:46
I I I've been accused more than once of being an anarco capitalist.
1:16:49
I am not an anarcho capitalist, but I I I I love the freedom that this country was based upon, right?
1:17:02
And it's still present in many many forms, but it it you'd probably really enjoy reading it because like wow just you you want to talk about cultural dynam dynamism America during that period like just like off the hook. >> Thank you.
1:17:24
Um what's the book name again?
1:17:26
It's uh America America One Summer >> and I think it's 1920 whatever.
1:17:31
But the author is Bill Bryson.
1:17:38
>> I'm going to download it today.
1:17:40
>> Yeah, it's it's a fun read. >> Thank you.
1:17:42
>> And and you can read >> One Summer One Summer America 1927. >> There we go.
1:17:48
>> Uh it's it's it's a lot of fun. Um >> thank you, Jimmy. >> Of course.
1:17:52
Let's let's get back to um another thing that you say which I let me just stipulate I agree with but I want to hear your reasoning and it's a quote that is science uh basically is science endings are discarded packaging and a happy user.
1:18:12
Um that if I was in academia I would think of that as a gut punch.
1:18:22
If I had to live my life avoiding gut punches, again, nobody can punch you in the gut uh by by saying something.
1:18:30
Only you can punch yourself in the gut by misinterpreting something. >> Totally agree.
1:18:36
The whole idea of u in my opinion the whole idea of understanding the world better.
1:18:42
The whole idea of doing something with that knowledge the end the end point is to make the life of humans better or whoever comes after humans whatever posthuman society we're going to build.
1:18:58
Even if you build a digital twin of Jim and you actually have an infinite timeline and you don't have to ever die and you can be whatever, upload you to a spaceship and go explore the universe and whatnot.
1:19:10
Whatever sci-fi dream, teenage dream you might have.
1:19:12
And by the way, nobody ever gave me that answer.
1:19:17
If I had a billion bucks, what would you do?
1:19:19
I would upload my consciousness into a spaceship.
1:19:20
Maybe maybe I would vibe with the person better.
1:19:23
But uh the the thing is in my opinion there should always be an ultimate goal to anything that you do.
1:19:35
If your ultimate goal is to have a beautiful equation on the white on the on the whiteboard. Cool.
1:19:43
And this is this is where you you end.
1:19:46
You created this equation.
1:19:46
You build a theoretical framework like Maxel did.
1:19:51
Did he contribute a lot to humanity?
1:19:51
Of course, >> very useful equations.
1:19:57
>> People say that roughly 50% of our GDP is thanks to Maxel today.
1:20:00
But then there was another guy who took it to the next step.
1:20:04
There was another guy who took it to the next step.
1:20:06
Somebody created electricity.
1:20:07
Somebody created the internet.
1:20:08
Somebody created all these digital devices.
1:20:12
At the end of the day, it's an effort that spans over generations.
1:20:14
But in my opinion, every single scientific discovery or any any discovery, anything that we understand better around about the world around us should lead to some positive outcome because if it is just an equation, if it's just an article, it's an intellectual masturbation for the lack of better word.
1:20:40
>> You took you took the thought right out of my head.
1:20:41
It's a mastipatory exercise. Yes.
1:20:45
It's it's just stroking my own ego.
1:20:47
Oh, look how how smart I am. Who cares?
1:20:50
Nobody benefited from that. Nobody benefited.
1:20:53
And to me, this is the point of us as venture capitalists is to be those people who help those scientists.
1:21:01
Maybe maybe somebody has an idea on how to heat or cool our buildings with less energy spent.
1:21:07
Maybe somebody has an idea on how to replace the the blood with some kind of oxygen carrying liquid for the sake of emergency.
1:21:14
Somebody else has an idea how to optimize inference in AI.
1:21:20
All of us are trying to make the lives of humans better. And then it makes sense.
1:21:25
If it is just to stroke your own ego, I'm not interested. I'm sorry. It's just whatever.
1:21:30
Go to your own garage, basement, shut your door behind you, and do whatever you want there on your own. Nobody's going to watch.
1:21:39
>> You know, as you bring up ego, I I do make the distinction.
1:21:41
I think when people say people have big egos, what they really mean is that person has a fragile ego.
1:21:52
And and by that I mean that we all know that person, right?
1:21:58
Like uh I try to actively avoid them.
1:22:02
But like when you look at them, it's not that they I don't think actually they have big egos.
1:22:08
I think they have very fragile egos that need constant external reinforcement. Oh, you're so brilliant. Oh, you're so great. Oh, you're so Exactly. Exactly.
1:22:28
I would also say just just following up on what you say that it's not that they have big ego or small ego, fragile or nonfragile.
1:22:35
It's does their ego control them or not?
1:22:37
Is it about them trying to look nice in the eyes of other people?
1:22:44
I mean the I think the people who master their ego can have as little or as much ego in different situations when they need it.
1:22:51
They can they can really tune it down.
1:22:53
they can really tune it up and like make a point and take a sense and dig their heels into that point when they need it and use their ego, their intelligence, their everything as a tools to get what they need to do.
1:23:07
However, when people are driven by their ego and it's all that defines them, that's a very sad picture especially for a rawess person. Very very sad picture. >> Yeah.
1:23:17
>> Yeah. And uh it um well my advice would be everyone listening and watching listen to what we said for most of our conversation if you want to avoid that right and and it's kind of like the the the you got to take that first step you've got to you and and you
1:23:40
know as I was listening to you about people just kind of slipping into life I like that's been another one of my little pet peeves is there are so many shrink wrapped ideologies, belief systems that people just like, oh, okay, you know, it's it's like and and they're they're all across the the board, right? There are religious systems, there are
1:24:05
There are religious systems, there are political systems, there are other social systems that yeah, here you go. Here are the rules. Play by these.
1:24:12
And that's not like what a waste of a life. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:24:19
There is no uniqueness to there is no individuality to there is there is not there is no value to just following other people marching orders.
1:24:30
That's that's how people fall in line.
1:24:32
And what's what's uh I I really really genuinely hate when people call other people NPCs using the non-playing character from video games.
1:24:39
I think it's very derogatory and very inhumane and I don't think there are any NPCs and I don't think there are any players in this world and this is not a video game.
1:24:50
This is not I I just I think it's it's it's so arrogant to call somebody else an NPC.
1:24:58
However, the people who are in say in Hindu tradition, they would call it he's still asleep.
1:25:04
He's walking amongst us asleep.
1:25:06
Um, maybe that's a little bit more of a gentle way to put it, but the point is, yes, people who are never examining their own lives, they will always be prone to being like a ping pong, like a ball in a in a pinball machine just being pushed by other forces.
1:25:20
Today it's your boss, tomorrow it's your guru, the day after it's your spouse, and then the person all around.
1:25:28
And he never had control in his life.
1:25:30
And why did he live his life in that case?
1:25:33
What was the whole point?
1:25:37
I again, wow, I I'd forgotten how much we agree on and even to the terminology.
1:25:44
I I I love that metaphor of they're they're walking in their sleep.
1:25:47
And and I I would argue that many of those shrink wrapped belief systems are ambient to keep them asleep. >> 100%. Yes. Yes.
1:26:02
And >> I mean I I would never thought I would find myself quoting Lenin of all people but he said religion is the opium for for masses or something like that.
1:26:11
>> Yes he did >> and uh I think this is very true and now we have all of the self-help books all of those gurus and psychologists who again keep training you a very simple answer to the question that should never be answered in the first place.
1:26:23
It it should be the question that keeps you awake not not not in literal sleep but in the sense that that that we're talking about. Yeah, 100%. >> Yeah.
1:26:32
And and you know, again, the that's another one of my pet peeves.
1:26:36
I remember seeing one of those ridiculous listicles.
1:26:40
I think it was 2017 or 2018, and I I I just kind of I I had joined Twitter early, but I had looked at it and was like, "Yeah, I don't like back then when I joined in 2009, it was people taking pictures of their lunch, and I'm like, I don't give a about this."
1:27:00
Anyway, uh there was a big a lot I was still in asset management and I had a lot of people telling me, "Oh, no, no, no, Jim.
1:27:07
There's this huge group on Twitter called Bin Twit Financial Twitter.
1:27:12
You you really have to get engaged."
1:27:14
I'm like, "All right, I will."
1:27:16
And so I'm like looking at some of this stuff and I'm just like, "Oh my god."
1:27:21
And so I got so triggered by one of these lists, right, by some guru and that I just composed a thread right the right on the app and I'm like please please don't read these this the these are going to send you in exactly the wrong direction.
1:27:40
There is nothing that unites five things every millionaire does in the morning that's It's just lies. It is.
1:27:52
It's ah well again people are looking for simple answers.
1:27:56
Is it is it not the same reason that conspiracy theories are so popular? >> Yes.
1:28:02
>> They just give you a very simple answer to a very complicated topic like oh yeah now it makes sense because aliens build all of that.
1:28:10
>> Let me give you I'm I I am currently writing a fictional thriller.
1:28:12
My first right and it's a lot of fun. Oh, it's so hard.
1:28:18
It is so much harder than writing non-fiction.
1:28:21
And I've written four non-fiction books, but it's fun.
1:28:26
And and as part of that is this theme, the the one of my villains is like, "No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand.
1:28:32
We sponsor all of the conspiracy theories.
1:28:38
If you want to know where true power is, look for boring.
1:28:45
Look for that which just is the anti-me power. It's in PDFs.
1:28:52
It's in notes from the Bank of International Settlement.
1:28:57
It's from all of these incredibly dull structures that bring no attention to themselves.
1:29:08
>> That's an interesting take.
1:29:08
Well, can I get a draft of your book when you're done? of of course you can.
1:29:13
Um I in fact I I will make you one of my first readers.
1:29:18
Um but it it is it is definitely fun.
1:29:22
Well, I'm I'm getting the hook here from Miss Ena.
1:29:24
It's uh >> I always really just I need to talk to you more just not in terms of podcasting. >> Sure.
1:29:35
>> Let's let's just let's just schedule something.
1:29:36
I'll reach out to your assistant and we can just >> I would I would I I would I would love it. Arc Katie.
1:29:40
Um, as you know, our final question is always the same.
1:29:43
We're going to wave a magic wand and make you emperor of the world. You can't kill anyone.
1:29:51
You can't put anyone in a re-education camp.
1:29:54
In other words, you can't force, but you can persuade.
1:29:56
We're going to give you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it.
1:30:01
And whenever the 8 billion apparently that that number is suspicious, by the way, I've been reading about that.
1:30:11
I don't know whether you have as well.
1:30:12
Uh but I I thought that was interesting.
1:30:15
Anyway, everyone in the world is going to wake up whatever their morning is and they're going to say to themselves, you know what?
1:30:22
I've just had these two great ideas.
1:30:25
These are what you're going to accept.
1:30:27
And unlike all the other times, I'm gonna actually act on these two ideas starting today.
1:30:33
What are you gonna accept in in the world? >> Be true to yourself.
1:30:37
Be true to yourself and be kind to each other. >> I love both of those. H those are great.
1:30:46
Be true to yourself and you cannot be untrue to any other.
1:30:49
What was the Shakespeare line?
1:30:51
It's uh to thine own self be true.
1:30:54
Um, it's in the saliloquy. It's a great one.
1:30:58
I used to I used to know it by heart. I'm getting old. Okay. >> Really appreciate it. Such a conversation. Wow.