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I I think I'm naturally optimistic.
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I I talk to founders all the time who are like just, you know, 10 to a thousand times smarter than I am and they have these incredible ideas and they don't write them because writing is hard if you don't do it all the time.
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The people that we get to talk to every day are doing these unbelievable things that if 5% of them are right, the world is a much much better place and nobody else knows about this stuff.
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I think there are plenty of people who are still pessimistic and rightly so.
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And there's just so much cool stuff coming down the pike that I think for at least for our world, it's it's hard to be too pessimistic right now.
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My guest today is Pecky [music] McCormick.
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You probably know him as the proprietor of the not boring media empire.
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He's now got a paid publication where he's doing deep dive articles with domain experts and he's just in general one of the most joyful, optimistic, and fun people that I've ever spent time with.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Pachy. Pachy, welcome. Great to be here.
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>> You know, I was looking back at the first time you were here and you had the not boring newsletter, which I love.
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I'm also a subscriber to the paid version. >> I saw that. Thank you.
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um love your stuff, but you were at about 70,000.
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I think this was in 2021.
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And you know, one of my producers said you actually uh made the announcement of your first $8 million fund on that show. Is that true?
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>> I think that might actually be true.
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I think it was like a little leak before there was any official [laughter] announcement. >> That's really cool.
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But now you're like king of Substack. You've got 250,000.
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And so, first off, congratulations. >> Thank you.
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But you know, we just share so many ideas in common and one of them is about writing.
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Talk to me about your passion about you got to write it down. >> Yeah.
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So I um recently uh just launched paid my my like whole thing with not boring.
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In the beginning I was going to go paid and then I was having so much fun with it growing that I was like I just don't want to limit this by you know in any way at all.
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I'm going to keep it free. And it's been wonderful.
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It's grown really, really well.
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But but recently, I think because Substack has these leaderboards, uh, and you're not on them if you're not paid, I was like, I need to do something paid, but I don't want to put my stuff behind a pay wall. So, what is it?
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And I was thinking thinking I like I thought about a bunch of different ideas.
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And then I realized like I was just sitting there thinking I I'd listen to a lot of podcasts, but I I couldn't think of the first time that or the last time that I heard a new idea that had been like kind of formed on a podcast or in video that like really really stuck.
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And then you think about writing, you think about all the, you know, Ben Thompson and aggregation theory, everything Chris Dixon's written.
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Like in tech, there's like all these canon pieces and they're all written things.
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I talk to founders, >> all you need is attention.
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Attention is all you need.
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>> Attention is all you need.
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Um, and so I I talk to founders all the time who are like just, you know, 10 to a thousand times smarter than I am.
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And they have these incredible ideas and they don't write them because writing is hard if you don't do it all the time.
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I actually tried last year to write less frequently.
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I thought I'd give myself more space and I'd come up with these like beautiful big pieces.
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It's actually harder uh if you don't if you don't just like kind of go.
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So this year I'm just going.
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But they have all these ideas.
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And so I I last year uh was having a conversation with this guy Anjin Kata who makes the daylight tablet. Uh and he had this idea.
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We were just texting back and forth.
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I was like we should write that.
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And he's like I don't write. I'm scared of writing.
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I was like you send me voice notes and I'll write it for you.
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Uh and it went really really well.
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And so decided to uh try to get people to write their very best ideas down.
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I'm trying to figure out kind of what the right uh what the right format is.
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So, we just did one on robotics and it was kind of this company company thesis that was that robotics should actually iterate in small steps instead of like there's not going to be a moment where robots just kind of wake up and can do everything you need to collect all of the data. And so, that was one.
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I have another guy who's going to be be writing about how the cartels move money because he works uh in kind of fraud.
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And so, trying to figure out what you were going to say because he works for the >> he works for the cartels.
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Uh [laughter] he's a good friend of mine.
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But there's just like all these really interesting ideas that people have earned because of what they do or that they are doing what they do because of this idea that they haven't written down anywhere.
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Maybe they'll write it down in a company blog post but those are like 500 words and you know even the best ones are you know not the full thing.
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I think people really like the opportunity to kind of go long and have a canon document where it says kind of like this is how I look at the world and why I'm doing the thing that I'm doing or this is something really interesting that I've I've learned. I like reading.
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I get, you know, I listen to podcasts all the time, but I get most of the ideas from reading and so, uh, trying to bring more of that to the world, >> which I applaud.
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Um, I I've kept journals all my life since I was a teenager and like literally we have stacks and stacks of them.
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I think that writing is thinking. >> Yeah.
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and and I got in the habit of doing it.
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And you know, all of us have these ideas bumping around in our minds.
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And if you just leave it there, you don't really know until you try to write it out.
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Writing things out has killed more stupid ideas than I have had.
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And believe me, men, I have had a plethora of stupid ideas.
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But it is only in the writing.
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And I'm a big believer in writing by hand.
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And there's some neuroscience that suggests that that engages a different part of the brain and and whatnot, but as we were talking about, I'm writing my first fictional novel right now and kind of a system like yours.
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You're co-writing with people.
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I have a writer's room and I have some of the best writers in the world in there.
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world in there. And at the last session we had I was telling you like I told them all about the the story that I was building and it's a thriller and the ideas that they threw my way I was like that is brilliant right and so I just
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you know it's the way they do TV shows right like they always have a team of writers so it's really fun experimenting with it but t take us back to the beginning because your origin story is really interesting you were at a company that wasn't n't doing so well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
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>> And it was the writing that kind of got you on this kick. >> Totally.
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So, my my kind of backstory uh started my career in finance, did that for a little bit, and then went to a company called Breather, which did on demand uh kind of meeting and workspaces.
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And the product was great.
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Everybody that I tell that I worked at Breather, they're like, "Oh, we use Breather. We love the product."
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But the business model was take a 5-year lease, do construction, and then rent it out for an hour at a time.
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And so, you know, if you think we works business model is bad where you do it for months at a time, we did it for hours at a time.
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And when it works, it really, really works because you can, you know, charge a lot more for an hour than you could charging for a month hourly.
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But often it didn't work.
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You know, it was compounded by the fact that we had uh the same investors as Uber.
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And they were like, the thing that you need to do is expand your supply as quickly as humanly possible because that's what Uber did and it worked for Uber.
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Uber didn't sign 5year leases and do construction. We did.
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Uh, and so we ended up with this glut of supply on the map.
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I think we launched one of these little office spaces kind of every day for an entire year, which is also like managing to the metric.
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Like we would put a wall in the middle of a space that should have clearly been one space just to be able to get two spaces on the map, but we did it.
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And we were deeply overs supplied.
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Some spaces like right around here in Union Square did really, really well.
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A bunch of other spaces didn't.
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And so a co-orker of mine, Ben Rollert, and I took Christmas break and we came up with a plan to fix the company.
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And then we wrote the whole thing down.
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Like we had read Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Ruml.
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like we, you know, it's like high on business strategy. We wrote the thing down.
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We presented to the the rest of the exec team.
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Uh they actually gave us, you know, we needed to do something because our margins were negative 25% and you know, we had these kind of like fixed leases. Um oops. Oops.
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Uh so we did that and then uh we we sold it to the rest of the company and it meant for a lot of people like if you were somebody whose job it was to set up a space and it was supposed to be set up one way.
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We said all of a sudden now instead of just doing hourly and kind of daily one space could be hourly but if it's underperforming we're going to sell it monthly for as you know as low as we can still make money.
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Uh and then maybe somebody wants it hourly and we'll have to switch it all back when they're done.
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People's jobs got like a lot harder.
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The sales team had to completely change what they did.
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and everyone read this thing and everyone got really really into it.
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Like the the idea made sense and it was clear and we put it down on paper and so that was the first time that I was like wow like writing actually can kind of like change the way that people even work inside of a company if you can communicate an idea clearly. It worked for a while.
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Margins kind of went up to you know negative or positive 25% which you know isn't isn't going to win like a Nobel Prize for business but is certainly was better than than it was. Did that for a while.
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Finally kind of we brought in a professional CEO.
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We tried to be mini we work with, you know, a thousandth of the resources.
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Uh, and then I left uh because I could see the writing on the wall and then CO hit and the company fell apart.
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But I had taken David Prell's, uh, writing course kind of during that whole process.
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And so when COVID hit and I couldn't start the physical space-based thing that I wanted to do, uh, I decided to just start writing online for three months.
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We had just gotten pregnant with, uh, with our son Devon.
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Um, and I begged my wife to let me write and she did and it just kind of started growing.
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I didn't make a dollar for 9 months, but I was doing the math and I was like, soon I'll turn on, you know, paid subscriptions and if I get a 5% conversion, then at least I'll like maybe be able to pay for rent and food and like hopefully insurance if things go like really really really well.
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Um, and then one thing led to another and and here we are.
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>> I'm a friend of Davids.
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In fact, we gave scholarships to Write of Passage.
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Joe Shaughnessy Ventures did.
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Let's talk about that a bit.
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Like were you uncertain of how how good a writer you were?
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was the what was the reason to take David's course?
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>> The reason to take David's course was I wasn't writing. I liked writing.
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I had maybe like I had a couple of Medium posts like maybe published maybe kind of just you know in Google Docs somewhere word at the time.
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Um I had written I was a philosophy minor in college so I wrote a little bit for that and did well there.
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In high school I liked you know being the class clown but like writing well enough that I could still get an A even if it was like a little bit of a satirical piece.
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And so like there was something there but I I was never a writer.
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I took the course because I saw a tweet and I had said the word innumerate in one of our exact meetings and I got looked at like I had seven heads and got laughed at and I was like well if I don't do something here like my brain's going to fall out of my head.
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Uh and so I took his course cuz I saw a tweet like you know that that next day and I was like yeah that sounds great.
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I'll do something just so I can keep my brain going.
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And I think what it was really really good for was one just confidence.
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Like the the first day there were 50 people in the class.
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The first day we had to write an essay on one of our favorite you know internet writers.
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And so I wrote something on Ben Thompson's work and David called it out as the best piece in the class.
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And I was like, whoa, I might actually be a writer. This is really cool.
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And the other thing was just showing up every week and having to write something, but then having to get it edited by your kind of like small group.
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And if you were the [ __ ] who showed up with nothing, like then, you know, you couldn't really contribute to the group.
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You'd break out in small groups on Zoom.
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Um, and so that was really helpful.
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And then he had a few, I think, really helpful concepts.
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The most helpful of which was the idea of a personal monopoly, which sounds like cheesier than it is, but it's really just like pick a bunch of your different interests and like overlap them until you find something that you're the only person in the world who's going to be good at writing or you'll be the best at writing about that thing.
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And so I went from being like, how am I going to write about tech when like Ben Thompson exists to going if I combine tech and pop culture?
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And so I like wrote stuff about, you know, the Mickey Mouse Club and Joseph Trumpeter.
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Um, and then maybe like a little bit of Philly sports, like there's nobody at that overlap.
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I can I can win that overlap.
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And so I started from there and it was like very on the nose in the beginning, like here's this business and tech idea and here's this pop culture idea and I'm just going to combine the two of them.
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And I would force myself for like the first six months to write about both.
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That got to I mean it was like picking two essays, but I tried to keep the tone uh from that as I kind of started writing a little bit more seriously.
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>> As you've gotten bigger, have you had to deal with audience capture?
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I think a little bit the whole thing is a roller coaster like you know talking about kind of started writing about a topic that you're bound to fail X% of the time.
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I'm writing about startups so you're going to be wrong >> a large percentage of the time just naturally uh but you don't have the upside that you would in a venture portfolio because like you're not going to get a thousandx on your essay.
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And I was doing it as a new writer on the internet very publicly because it started growing kind of in the beginning.
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So I think I I had a really fun first two years and wrote a lot of stuff that like I'm proud of but also like was totally wrong.
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And so I think there was more than audience capture.
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There was just a period for a couple of years actually where like I was just way less confident.
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Um and so I try to write about things that I thought would do well.
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And something changed I guess the past year and like really now where like I do not care like you know like last year I was writing I wrote 40,000 words on the electric tech stack.
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I wrote this piece means and meanings that we were talking about before uh which is you know more philosophical.
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I'm a philosophy minor you know 16 years ago.
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I'm I'm no philosopher and then like kind of all manner of 33,000 words on a an internet startup in Colombia.
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Like just kind of whatever I find the most fascinating I think that kind of comes across on the page.
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If I find it fascinating I'll do a better job on it and other people will too.
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So I think I've done largely a good job at avoiding audience capture.
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It was more of just a like confidence thing I would say in the middle. >> Yeah.
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I remember, correct me if I'm wrong, but that like that you went through a period where like everyone was being really mean to you.
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[laughter] It was a short period, right?
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So like I I am still uh you know fascinated by crypto.
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Uh I think like you know open decentralized networks are are like this beautiful thing, but they also I think I underestimated because I'm this optimist like that if people see the opportunity to do bad things, they will.
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And like there's nothing more of an opportunity than like an open decentralized network full of money.
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uh to to attract the drifters.
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And so like stable coins are doing really really well.
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Bitcoin is like kind of doing, you know, in turbulence like what it's what it's supposed to.
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I I moved to that in my flight to safety during uh during liberation.
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It's like there's a lot that I still really love about crypto, but I got fascinated by it.
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I was writing about it a bunch in 2021 and 2022.
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And when that tanked, I kind of just got, you know, beat over the head with that.
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There was one in particular where I had gotten on a podcast Logan Bartlett's show with Zack Weinberg when he was this was the first of a series where he just started ripping anybody who uh who did anything related to crypto.
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anything related to crypto. And it was eight at night and my son had just thrown up on me and like I I like wiped off my shirt and got on the podcast and then Zach was like what's like one real use case for uh for crypto and and so I I like pulled something out of out of my ass and I was like you know mortgages on
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the blockchain you know like some something like that just was not was not thinking and he ripped me apart which was fine except this guy Lauron took the clip uh and just it went like super viral that I was this like complete idiot uh and it That all started happening while, you know, the throw up had turned into uh RSV and we were in the hospital with my son. So I was like
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So I was like on like sleeping on the floor of the hospital like looking at Twitter with the whole internet dunking on me and it was just like the worst possible experience.
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And so that was I like that was actually I think like a confidence turning point.
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turning point. And like not just me, I think actually like people and I don't think I'm just feeling this like I think people lost confidence like in anything that I said after that experience which at the time was like brutal and now I think it was like the greatest thing in the world cuz one I think just going through that like you realize it
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actually doesn't matter and people forget but then two because now like I don't know like that's the worst it's going to get on the internet and it wasn't that bad and uh I think like I I probably was for being like such a novice investor writer like I probably did have too much hubris and like confidence in what I was writing and I think that made the writing fun and fresh. But like it is a weird experience
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But like it is a weird experience to start as a novice on something with that much kind of visibility cuz now I feel like I'm a 10 times better investor.
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I probably like, you know, know what I'm talking about on the writing side and I'm a better writer.
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But needed to kind of go through that like you're not that hot [ __ ] uh to to kind of get to this point.
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I remember when I cuz I did see that clip on Twitter and I thought at the time >> that might be the best thing that ever happened to him. Huh?
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Because I I went through something similar, but we didn't have an internet during the com boom.
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Like all of our stuff was large cap value or small cap growth, which were in nuclear winters back then.
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I got attacked by the Wall Street Journal, by Jason Zw, who's now a good friend, right?
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I got attacked in books in in books.
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You know, Oshanosi should have called his book What Works on Wall Street until I wrote this book.
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And [laughter] it was [ __ ] brutal, but in hindsight, it was absolutely liberating because, you know, you got to get punched in the face.
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You learn to be much more humble.
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>> I could not agree more.
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It was such a weird time.
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weird time. like just co in general on the internet was weird and everything was moving so fast and I just had this belief that like I remember I can't name the company but like there was this company that was like would you like instead of doing what you're doing would you take this absolute dream job like like I couldn't have made up if you told me like make up the I wouldn't have because it would have been like too cool
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of a job and I was like no way cuz like next week someone's going to offer me something even cooler like that was kind of like the way that it felt I'm making myself probably sound like more of an [ __ ] than I was but it just like on
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an upward slope it like really felt like things were just like going to keep going and at some point they'd just be like do you want to be the president or something which would be a terrible job also. Uh and so like really to get
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Uh and so like really to get punched in the face and like really think like you know have to go back and and figure out like what I cared deeply about and want to write about and invest in and all of that like greatest thing that could have possibly happened.
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And you know I my thesis is that it's required.
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If you don't have scar tissue, you're probably not going to make it.
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>> And you get scar tissue by just continuing to persevere and becoming a lot more humble.
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[laughter] >> But one of the great fears is people are terrified to fail, >> right?
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And more importantly, they're terrified to let other people see them fail.
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>> And and what I always try to get them to understand is that's the only road to succeed. Yeah. >> Right.
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because that's the way it works.
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And so it just sometimes drives me really crazy when I talk to like incredibly talented people and I'm like you should write a book or you should start a company or and they're like no people listening right now what advice would you give for that kind of person like how can you be brave and actually do it because nobody will remember. No, no.
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And and we're we're like we're we're past that hopefully now.
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I wouldn't even say it was from that.
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It was from the actually the very beginning when I started writing it.
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I told the story before, but like I legitimately thought if I start writing on the internet as a guy who like didn't I mean I worked at this startup that was like kind of failing at the time and now I'm like here's what I think about startups that at the very least my friends were all going to have a group chat going where they're like what is Paky doing? Is he okay?
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like he went from finance to a failing startup to now he's writing a newsletter called not boring on the internet where he talks about the Mickey Mouse Club.
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Like what is going on here?
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And the truth is that like one people are nicer than you expect.
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I went uh to the playground this weekend with my son.
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I I wrote a little thing on it and he sold for the first time.
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He made these donuts hat doughut hats out of Play-Doh and put tape on them and went to sell them.
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Was going up to grown-ups after getting over his nerves.
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And he afterwards I guess like like father like son just started telling me to write down the lessons that he learned.
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One of which was people are nicer than you expect.
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And so I think that is actually like that is that is one of them.
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The other is that like people just don't care.
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Like you have to fight for their attention.
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So if you're not doing good work, people just don't waste a second thinking about it.
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And if you are like it's only upside of course there's like the downside of getting punched in the face and and all of that but I think it really it is so asymmetric the upside for the downside because it is so hard to grab people's attention positive or negative and if even if it's negative to hold their attention for more than two hours.
19:47
So >> and the other thing you were early on which was one of the reasons why I was intrigued by you back in 21 was optimism. >> Yeah.
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I I am what I call a rational optimist, a Deutschian optimist, I guess.
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I had reread his I I read the book when it came out, The Beginning of Infinity, and and I liked it and I enjoyed it and everything, but then I reread it and I got so much more uh out of it the second time I read it.
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I did a thread on Twitter, but back then it was kind of hard to be an optimist.
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You were really going counteryclical.
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Are you naturally optimistic?
20:23
I I think I'm naturally optimistic.
20:25
Uh and I think one of the things that made 22 23 weird and made me write a piece called optimism.
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Then we started this weekly dose of optimism was that things like people seem so at least like in our part of the internet. >> Yeah.
20:38
>> So down in the dumps like meanwhile, you know, we have mRNA vaccines and then just like everything that's come out of that.
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We have now what is, you know, AI.
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We had tech companies that are actually going back into the physical.
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the people that we get to talk to every day are doing these unbelievable things that if 5% of them are right, the world is a much much better place and nobody else knows about this stuff.
20:59
And so it's kind of like I I'm naturally optimistic.
21:01
I will look at like, you know, I think crypto is a great example.
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Like I'll see that and I'll see like the positives of what crypto can be like way more than I can see like what all the downsides uh will be.
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And so it's not like a purely positive thing to be that kind of optimist. Like there's rational.
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much as like a total dumb optimist, but that was like a real dissonance for me.
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Like kind of getting to see what I saw every day and having people be like the world is so bad.
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Like we have all these problems.
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Climate change this was it's crazy.
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It feels like people don't think climate change is going to kill us all anymore.
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But even just like three years ago, uh there was what was it the Atlantic that article like how could you possibly have kids in like a burning drowning world or something like that that I wrote a long response piece to when you talked to all these companies like in nuclear in solar in batteries that are like doing the actual work to fix the problem.
21:45
Uh and so I think my natural optimism just was met with this like gold mine of all these people who made me more and more optimistic which so uh I wanted to go fight the fight.
21:54
Now it feels like we're just kind of like preaching to the choir because I think everyone's gotten uh gotten more optimistic or not everyone everyone kind of in our world at least.
22:01
But it was very weird for a little while there that people were so so pessimistic. >> Yeah.
22:05
And I I think one of the reasons for that is it's so much easier to be a pessimist, right?
22:10
Oh, you can nay anything.
22:13
I always look for things to root for as opposed to against because honestly it's [ __ ] easy to root against like whatever and and it's lazy and it's it it bothers me though because I just see so much wasted potential, you know what I mean?
22:32
>> And and that time in particular, I was feeling like you.
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It was like [laughter] >> like people, you know, honestly, it's like that old Louis CK bit about having Wi-Fi on a plane, right?
22:44
>> Although it is frustrating now, [laughter] >> but Yes. >> Yeah.
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But where he's like, I can't believe it.
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I'm 30,000 ft above the air and I can scroll on the internet.
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And he goes, then it goes out and you go, what the [ __ ] [laughter] >> Yeah.
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Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.
23:00
I think was like his punch line on that one.
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And I that's exactly how it felt.
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And then you had everybody like people who were I remember listening to one all-in podcast when Chamath was like I can't believe people got so irresponsible during I [laughter] was like what are you people come on.
23:15
And so it was like not just the pessimism but it [laughter] was like the people who led the parade were like what were you guys?
23:23
>> You are exhibit A my friend.
23:24
>> You are exhibit [laughter] A my friend.
23:26
Uh and so it was just like all all of that kind of kind of combined.
23:28
But I think now hopefully uh people are feeling more more optimistic about things. >> Yeah.
23:34
I I do sense that it's kind of a regime change and like the the the idea that everything's going to [ __ ] right, is losing ground maybe for the first time in a long time.
23:46
What do you What do you think some of the reasons for that are?
23:49
>> I was just going to ask you that.
23:51
[laughter] I'm lucky that I'm on the host side of this conversation.
23:54
I think in our part of the world that's probably true.
23:58
I think like there still is a lot of like you know I'll I'll still if I say anything good about AI on the internet still you're going to get a bunch of people like are you kidding me?
24:06
This is like the worst thing in the world.
24:07
Uh it's going to kill the planet.
24:09
It's going to you know I can't believe you would even use this like blah blah blah blah blah.
24:13
And so I think there are plenty of people who are still pessimistic and rightly so.
24:15
And you know the job market can be tough for young people.
24:18
I I I think it's our part of the world and that's the part of the world that I know best kind of you know tech and uh NVC.
24:22
Um but I think in our part of the world like you get punched in the mouth enough a few times in a row like there was co everything was going to fall apart and then it did really well and then 2022 23 happened and then we're saved by AI and then like you look around it just again all the things that are happening right now like I saw Mario Gabriel did a a podcast with um with the founder of reflect orbital today.
24:44
So now we have satellites that are going to reflect the sun's beams onto solar farms to keep solar farms operating 24/7.
24:50
And all this stuff is like actually really happening.
24:55
In the past week, uh the DOE and NASA said that that we're going to put nuclear reactors on the moon and then a company said that we're going to put hotels on the moon and like probably neither is going to happen on the expected timeline, but like the fact that we're actually talking about these things as like plausible things is absolutely amazing.
25:09
What's happening in medicine is is unbelievable.
25:13
[clears throat] like Empic and and the the like are miracle drugs.
25:17
Uh my friend who used to work with me, Elliot Hersburg, wrote a piece on the GitLab founder yesterday and his uh attempt to cure can like he had he was diagnosed with cancer.
25:26
Uh he's this like great systems thinker and he'd kind of gotten to the end of the line and they're like, "Sorry bud, this is the end of the line."
25:32
And he's like, "Well, that's that stinks."
25:33
Like that's not how I want this to end.
25:35
And so he kind of just flew around the world and came up with like all of these different, you know, ways to test himself and do different trials on himself.
25:43
And because he had a ton of money, he was able to like be this end of one character who could go figure it out and went into remission and like actually beat this like incurable cancer.
25:52
And Elliot's point was like the thing that this guy is doing is this like very bespoke thing that only one rich person can do today.
25:57
This is going to be accessible to all of us very very soon.
26:01
You know, maybe 20 years.
26:01
And you know, medicine that takes takes a while to to change, but like that is incredible if we're getting to the spot where one, you know, early detection of cancer really really helps.
26:10
Um, but then two, we have a bunch of therapeutics that are coming to market that that could help uh just beat it once and for all.
26:18
Like it's it's pretty hard to be uh too bummed right now if like that's the soup that you're swimming in.
26:22
Not to mention, it's just like I think the amount of fun people are having uh impacts uh their pessimism or optimism.
26:30
Like it's really fun to wake up every morning and be like, "All right, assistant."
26:32
Like, "Go do exactly what I want you to do, and then I'm going to go focus on the thing that I want to focus on."
26:37
Like kind of the thing that even a couple of years ago, we were all saying, which is like the AI will do the stuff that you don't want to do, and then you'll do the stuff that you want.
26:43
Like actually, for the first time right now, I kind of kind of feel that where I just get to like think about what I want to write about and write while I have this research assistant doing all this stuff for me.
26:53
And it's just a really fun time to to be doing this.
26:55
And so hopefully, you know, I think the the big important thing will be whether the benefits of all this diffuse and like how how quickly we can get all this tech that we're excited about at the early stages benefiting actual people.
27:06
But there's just so much cool stuff coming down the pike that I think for at least for our world, it's it's hard to be too pessimistic right now.
27:14
>> It's also a time when, you know, context is really important and a lot of people don't have it. >> Yeah.
27:22
Um, you know, uh, I was saying on the drive-in when I was 11 years old, like literally women couldn't get credit cards without their husband's signature.
27:33
Um, my oldest sister, who unfortunately died, was married to a black guy from Trinidad.
27:38
Their marriage was illegal in half of the states of the United States.
27:44
I mean, really, seriously [ __ ] up. Yeah.
27:47
>> And people who lack that context really can't see how much forward progress we as a society have made.
27:55
And when you know all of that, right?
27:58
And then you see in just like 50 years the changes that America I mean I I would be hardressed to find other societies that changed I think directionally in a good way >> uh as quickly as the United States right and so context I think is is super important but I also think that you know the you're talking about the AI and so we have our own AI hardware software ware installation.
28:30
Um, and we have a genius who's programming it.
28:32
You're going to see some pretty cool things come out commercially ultimately from our AI lab.
28:38
So, one of the things I had the AI lab do was go through every innovation and find out the reaction to it.
28:45
And there's a thing called an pattern, which is a primitive pattern, right?
28:49
That if you can extrapolate from that pattern, you can see really cool things.
28:53
The pattern for innovation is like unchallenged.
29:00
Go all the way back to writing.
29:00
Go all the way back to writing. Socrates said no that's a bad idea [clears throat] >> virt and it follows the same pattern right so what happens and the reason it happens in my opinion is le let's take photography when photography came on the
29:18
scene painters of portraits were really unhappy [laughter] right and so but it happens for novels it happened for photography uh music when records came out symphony orchestras took full page ads out in newspapers saying that's not real music. Real music
29:36
Real music you have to hear live. Right?
29:40
So what's really happening is the prior regime that was really really good at that particular skill gets nuked by an innovation >> and like they're unhappy about that [laughter] and they're they start coming up with every kind of reason.
29:58
One of the ones that's really interesting is they shift from outcome, right?
30:02
Like, so how should you judge a book or a piece of writing or a movie or whatever?
30:07
Well, what did you get out of it? Did you enjoy it? Was it a good story? Did you learn something?
30:14
Did you change your mind about something? Right?
30:16
The outcome was what was important.
30:18
What happens and it happened across all of these innovations.
30:23
innovations. they change the the playing field and they stop talking about outcomes and they start talking about process right and well no if you're using AI which by the way we use in every aspect of Ojanna ventures and which I'm using in concert with my human
30:42
writers like I literally could not be writing this fiction book without AI >> because the research alone it would take me I would have to hire hundreds of people and let them loose Tucson libraries all around the United around the world >> and it just wouldn't get done. You know
30:57
>> and it just wouldn't get done. You know what's that just made me think of that it does take away like the thing I was saying about like it frees you up to do the for a lot of people I think that's uncomfortable to like be freed up to do the creative like that is the hard part of this whole thing and it is really comfortable to say like I can't get my book out because I have to go to this
31:15
library and you can sit in the library for hour and you're working on your book and so you feel like you're doing this really amazing productive thing and it I guess prevents you from doing the hard work of actually sitting there and thinking about what you want to write about and the questions that you'd want to ask AI and the research that you wanted to do when you have to move faster yourself. And so like I'm sure a
31:29
And so like I'm sure a lot of this is just I mean people are bad at change, right?
31:34
And so like they're used to doing something one way.
31:37
Their identity tied to one thing and we're we're bad at change. >> Yeah.
31:40
And you know of course the paradox everyone wants things to improve but they don't want anything to change. Right.
31:47
But then that what's interesting about the zero pattern is it gets overcome and you know like movies when VHS came out [snorts] Hollywood spent millions of dollars trying to kill it. >> Yeah.
32:01
>> They they lobbyied Congress.
32:01
They did every I think the guy's name was Valente and you would see him everywhere on the news like this is piracy.
32:09
This is this is not the way movies were meant to be watched.
32:14
They're meant to be watched in a theater.
32:15
And it was a big huge thing until they're like, "Oh, we might actually be able to make a buck on this."
32:23
And then of course you look at their revenue streams, they're making so much more money because of the innovation, right?
32:29
And it's interesting because it's if you know about how things get innovated and and found like I was just reading this great book, the story of money and the piece on uh Gutenberg is amazing.
32:42
So Gutenberg was basically a grifter.
32:48
[laughter] He was a jeweler.
32:50
He was obsessed with striking it rich, right?
32:53
And he not only was a he a jeweler, he grew up in wine country.
33:00
And so wine presses, he was looking at those.
33:04
The problem with printing before Gutenberg was people had come up with stuff, right?
33:10
But they could never give uniform pressure when they published it down to the ink.
33:15
And so it smeared all over the place.
33:17
And everyone thought, "This is awful. This is horrible."
33:18
And he figured, "No, no, no."
33:21
Cuz he was a jeweler, he could do the fonts much, much better because that's what he was trained to do.
33:28
And then he figured out the way to make the pressure thing.
33:31
But do you know why he did it?
33:33
Because he wanted to get rich.
33:36
And literally the only game in town was the Catholic Church.
33:41
And so back then, this is such a great story.
33:45
Back then, the church was making bank on so-called letters of indulgence.
33:50
Basically, they were selling you t heaven tickets. It's amazing. It's amazing.
33:55
[laughter] But there were so many people who wanted them.
33:59
There was a supply demand mismatch because all of them were done by a scribe on, you know, with a quill with the fancy letters and calligraphy and everything and then signed by the bishop, right?
34:11
So even though there was a demand for a hundred of these letters, they could only produce 10.
34:16
And so Gutenberg goes to the local bishop and shows him a printed letter of indulgence.
34:24
And the bishop is like almost wets himself. Where do I sign up? They finance him.
34:29
He get he gets all the financing from the Catholic Church, which by the way was also the lender of choice back then.
34:37
And the bishop is thrilled. He loves it.
34:40
But Gutenberg is like, "No, I got to do more."
34:43
And his eyes set on Pope Pius I pious.
34:50
He had kids in different countries. He wrote erotica. Yes.
34:55
[laughter] And he was also incredibly vain.
34:57
And because he wrote so much, his eyesart started to go.
35:02
And the thought of having to wear glasses to read to a congregation really offended his vanity.
35:11
So Gutenberg did a Bible just for Pope Pas. It was beautiful.
35:15
Being a jeweler, the cover of the Bible was all encrusted with beautiful jewels.
35:21
But when you opened it up, the fonts were this big so that he could read it without glasses on.
35:29
And Pas was like, "Where do I sign?"
35:33
And so literally, they gave him all the financing.
35:35
But they didn't think because they thought, "This is amazing.
35:38
We're going to get 100x the revenue from the letters of indulgence.
35:44
We're going to get these beautiful Bibles."
35:46
But he forgot that there were other people who might use the printing press too. >> Yeah. >> Enter Martin Luther.
35:55
But even that Lu Luther came from mining country and they were in a huge bare market.
36:01
His whole family was in it.
36:03
And so he got triggered when the pope sent the prelates and everything to his town to raise money for the beautifification of the Vatican.
36:14
and they're all in these incredibly fine robes and everything.
36:19
Meanwhile, Luther's family is starving and he's like, "Fuck that."
36:22
[laughter] And thus, you got the thesis nailed to the church wall.
36:28
>> Man, they need to teach history differently because this is so cool.
36:29
And I did not know any of this. >> I didn't either. Did he get rich?
36:35
>> Uh, he was proflegate.
36:35
>> Uh, he was proflegate. [laughter] So he sounds he was basically the oldfashioned term for him was he was a bounder [laughter] >> and he what's really fascinating about it is the real history is so much more interesting than than what we've been
36:53
taught right you always I I always before reading this I always thought of Gutenberg as this very studious academic type guy no I I also picture everybody from history as old almost >> same with the last portrait they have is what you picture them as Right. And not
37:06
And not like a vital young farmer or whatever.
37:11
>> But like the second order effects of publishing created like everything and the it gave us the ability for the first time in history to timebind our ideas and send them forward into history and and like the profound changes of that like and but then again like the book I'm reading is the history of money, right? in the story of money.
37:33
And what was another reason Lutheranism and Protestantism took hold?
37:39
Well, all of the because like Germany was a confederacy of duchies.
37:45
It was not a unified country and they were all competing with each other.
37:48
That's why it took hold there because as the author of the book points out, the Chinese had already figured out printing.
37:55
But because they were centralized under the the god king of the emperor, they squashed it.
38:03
They didn't want ideas that were not supported by the emperor to get out there.
38:08
In Germany, it was like the wild west and so all of them could get out. Pamplets got huge.
38:14
The thing about Martin Luther, he was like literally one of the bestselling authors of all time at that time, but it was all pamphlets.
38:24
And the key thing was the the priesthood spoke Latin.
38:28
And [clears throat] I I always joke that the priesthood says the incantations in in Latin because they don't want the ley to know what they're on about.
38:37
[clears throat] And Luther published in German.
38:39
It was the first time ever.
38:41
And so like most people were illiterate, right?
38:44
And so the pamphlets were meant to be read in the town square and they were.
38:50
And then he published like hundreds of thousands of these pamphlets and they made their way all across all of the citystates of Germany.
39:01
And then the princes of those states were like, you know, if I convert to this new form of Christianity, I can seize all of the church's lands.
39:09
[laughter] It's, you know, follow the money. >> Wow.
39:17
>> And so they're like, "Yes, please."
39:17
I mean, Henry VIII, yeah, he wanted to get married a couple of times, but the thought just had him salivating that I can seize all of the church's lands if I convert.
39:30
And, you know, Protestantism is born. >> Humans are amazing. >> We are.
39:36
Humans are really amazing.
39:38
[laughter] >> We really, really are.
39:40
>> I mean, like, yeah, the fact that so much innovation comes from greed and war is like a a very weird feature of of humanity. >> Yeah.
39:49
But I mean it makes sense, right?
39:51
Like of course and you know also in this book, do you know what a floren is? >> Yeah, the money. >> Yeah, the money.
39:58
>> Florence minted the floren and created the world's first reserve currency because it was, you know, 25 karat gold always uniform.
40:08
They had the it was done by merchants, right?
40:11
Church was very unhappy about that.
40:14
But they literally became the world's reserve currency because of liquidity.
40:19
And that's what created the renaissance was the ability to trade in your own currency because like literally the US dollar gives us inordinate privileges and like crazy privileges.
40:34
when you can when the world uses your currency to price all of the other goods, you have advantages that simply don't exist for for other things.
40:47
And the same thing happened over in Florence.
40:48
So one of the ideas that I I think somebody like you should explore.
40:54
There is so much alpha sitting in history books.
40:57
When you start seeing like these connections and this was new for me like I'd heard I had heard about it earlier but that's why I picked up the book and like reading it I'm like this is amazing and you know I learned that like Fibonacci Leon his real name was Leonard uh Leonardo of Pisa I think uh he wrote the first best-selling business book. >> No way. >> Yeah.
41:21
And it was written for merchants and it was basically defined the time value of money.
41:27
And it was the book that made lending take off that made all of it took it away from the church.
41:33
And >> how do you not know this? >> Same with me, dude.
41:38
I I like I'm a late night guy.
41:41
And so I I read every night and like last night I'm just like I can't stop reading [laughter] this book. This is amazing.
41:50
But it's like it's almost kind of like a hidden history because it's the real history. >> Yeah.
41:56
>> So the dynamism of eras like sometimes they're really shortlived like back to Florence, right?
42:02
The Florence of the Renaissance was like a marvel and it was done by merchants like the Medachche.
42:06
Do you know what that name derives from?
42:09
It met it derives from medicine.
42:11
They were doctors that I did not >> and they were founders of the doctor's guild and then they took the name Medi but like so the church talk about a network the church had the most incredible network on earth still probably has pretty good network on earth but literally they were like yeah no this has to stop and so they sent this crazy monk and that's where the term bonfire fire of the vanities comes from.
42:45
He went and he convinced all these people, you're going to hell.
42:47
You are definitely going to hell because of your vanities, which was beautiful art, beautiful furniture, all that kind of stuff.
42:55
And so they literally had bonfires of beautiful thing.
42:58
You know, Florence won, church catches up.
43:04
[laughter] But it's a long long- winded way to get your opinion on like I think that there are certain elites who really don't want things to change that much and what do you think about that?
43:17
Like do you I kind of think we're entering a battle but it's a battle of elites but it's intra elite and and I kind of say one side is the empire and the other side is the rebel alliance.
43:30
>> Who do you think is on each?
43:30
Are there like surprising people that you would put on each side? So surprising factions.
43:35
>> Uh so World Economic Forum is the Empire.
43:38
>> Uh the guys at A16Z are the Rebel Alliance.
43:43
I count myself as a member of the Rebel Alliance.
43:45
>> I'm also in in the Rebel Alliance.
43:45
And I I think that's completely right.
43:52
And I think that you know this is not like an AI thing.
43:53
This started with I think social media probably was a huge driver of of this that anybody could go out there and say the thing that they believed and compete for attention.
44:03
I think there's been some bad things about social media and there's been some very very good things about social media. This being one of them.
44:08
I think Davos is going on.
44:08
I guess there's a lot of people there that are important but like who cares?
44:11
Um and you're not waiting for Davos to tell you what's going to be important this year and like it's actually maybe a negative signal.
44:18
Um whereas I just wrote this piece on on A16Z and I think >> I read it. Yeah.
44:22
I thought it was really well done. Thank you.
44:24
>> My friend Alex Dano is gonna tear that place.
44:26
I mean, he's he's so smart.
44:28
>> He's so That was That was a I've called this to people recently a divinely inspired hire. And I I think it is.
44:32
I think Alex Denko is amazing and I was shocked to see it, but it it makes all the sense in the world when you think about what they're trying to do, the impact that he can have by making all of I mean, it's kind of what like what I'm trying to do in a small way with just A16 Zcale resources and Alex Denko level talent is a pretty crazy thing to think about.
44:52
But I think one of the things that does not come off about them uh is how humble they are almost in their philosophy which is just like if there are smart people out there doing a thing even if we don't really fully understand the thing yet we're going to go find the very smartest of the people who are doing that thing and we're going to back them.
45:11
And in that case they built the best machine to be levered to things being different and better in the future.
45:16
whereas the empire is is le to to things staying exactly the same or like they they benefit from things staying exactly the same.
45:24
So there's there's just that natural tension there.
45:26
And I think that's that's happening uh in a very big way.
45:28
I mean my my whole thesis and it's this is another one that like maybe seemed uh seems less interesting now than it did a couple years ago like optimism but just that I think people underestimate just how uh quickly the largest companies in every industry can change.
45:43
I mean, and how much bigger those companies will become when they do.
45:48
I like the the fun example.
45:50
I mean, like SpaceX, obviously, but they were competing with like kind of a dead launch market.
45:53
And I think is a really fun one because let's say you get to even a quarter of the primes revenue, but you're doing it at 40% margins as opposed to, you know, contractually guaranteed 8% margins and you're growing faster.
46:06
That just becomes a much much bigger company.
46:07
And the world keeps getting bigger.
46:09
Obviously, internet businesses just have a much larger TAM.
46:12
And so I think like things change really fast.
46:14
But then I think you know the the established elites are and and incumbents more generally are just going to get flipped really really quickly and that is a scary prospect that you can only fight dirty essentially because you're not going to win the technological battle.
46:26
You're not going to win the battle for talent and probably as like a Boeing you're not going to win the you know the battle for hearts and minds.
46:32
And so yeah I think you're absolutely spot on that that that battle seems to be happening.
46:36
Well, and I also think that this is kind of a unique time uh where like for example the number of people who said to me, why the hell are you opening a publishing company?
46:50
>> Well, because the inefficiencies of the ex like I I love to say that and look, I owe a tremendous amount of my success to the four books I wrote, right?
47:01
Especially what works on Wall Street.
47:01
I was absolutely my career was turbocharged by McGraill and by other publishers that I published with and and loved right but by the same token that the innovation just isn't there and we now have the tools right the means as you would say to make meaning for our human readers and you know some of it is just so simple and the fact that they're not adopting it it's not because they're stupid They're not.
47:32
There's a lot of really smart people running legacy publishing companies, but they feel that they need to be backward compatible to the way they used to do things, right?
47:43
And so, and they've got tons of employees that, you know, they who want who who wants to be in the Wall Street Journal for mass layoffs and have those put at the foot of techn technological improvements, right?
47:56
So, we can build one from the ground up and that's what we're doing.
48:01
A lot of people I think experience publishing and then say there we're definitely we're going to go build a better publisher.
48:06
I think that a lot of people have tried something like this. >> Yeah.
48:10
>> What do you think people get wrong and what are you doing differently there?
48:13
>> I I think that the traditional publishers uh are still very much based on status and prestige and they want to be a little mysterious.
48:22
Um like so for example, if you're an author uh I still get statements from What Works on Wall Street but I get them twice a year. royalty statements.
48:30
I have no idea how they're calculated.
48:33
It's literally a a sheet of paper with a check, which is nice, which is nice.
48:39
>> But they are un in my view, right?
48:39
The the author has become incredibly underserved by traditional publishing.
48:50
We are looking at authors as like stars and we are going to do everything in our power to make them stars.
48:57
What does that if practically mean?
48:59
It means that you don't have a two-eek window to market a book.
49:06
You have a window that never closes. We have AI workflows.
49:08
We have team members who are constantly monitoring the books, right?
49:15
And then we continue marketing it forever. Like boys in the boat.
49:22
Um like when it came out, nothing, just thud.
49:25
And it was because they didn't really think about the fact that, you know, we should probably send this to rowing crews or things like that.
49:36
And so, I don't know, I I'm sure I'm getting the timing wrong, but like six months later, they they they give a twoe window usually to marketing a book and then move on because they I And again, they have to six months later, I think the author himself, Jimmy Sony, my editor-inchief, knows this better, but was like, you know what?
49:55
I'm just going to start giving this to like rowing clubs and all that.
49:58
And it absolutely exploded.
50:01
It sold I think you know hundreds of thousands of copies.
50:05
I read it got made into a movie.
50:07
The other great example is Slow Horses which they have on Apple TV now.
50:15
>> Um >> the story of that is like crazy.
50:16
His publisher there said, "No, this type of writing isn't your lane."
50:21
and like they're real big on lanes, right? We erase lanes.
50:27
And so, but the other thing that we're doing is we're faster.
50:30
We are publishing a book uh that the author really really wanted it published at a particular time.
50:40
She went to the big publishing houses and they're like, "Oh, no.
50:44
That that's going to take three years."
50:45
And we're like, "We'll we'll do it for you."
50:47
Utter transparency to the author.
50:49
They're going to have dashboards that show where they're selling, where they're not.
50:53
They're going to be able to see that hopefully in real time.
50:55
Ongoing marketing, much greater share of royalties.
51:02
Basically, the model is 50/50 until we recoup our expenses, 70% to the author, 30% to Infinite Books. How can we do that? Technology.
51:14
That's the only way you can do it.
51:14
We look at the author and the reader. Those are our clients.
51:18
If a book just fits our kind of thesis as well, we can get it done for you really quickly.
51:24
We market it much more extensively and you're going to make a lot more money.
51:30
Literally, one of our goals internally, and Jimmy's going to hate me for saying this in public, but we want to turn every author that works with us into a millionaire. >> Yeah. >> And we can, right?
51:38
Like, and and and that's just like a different way of thinking about it.
51:44
And you know, simple things like AB testing cover art.
51:50
Like, why are they not doing that?
51:52
>> What I love about this answer is I think a lot of people see AI and technology and they're like, we're just going to be faster. And that's half of it.
51:56
But the counterpositioning piece or like understanding where legacy is like stuck, respecting them, realizing they're smart, but knowing that either because of tradition or probably because of business model, they're stuck doing a particular thing.
52:09
So, if you can run fast at that weak spot, then that's the that's the holy grail there. Absolutely.
52:15
And you know, kind of our internal mantra is we only do win-win things.
52:20
We're not going to do anything any zero sum.
52:22
We're not going to do anything that disadvantages.
52:24
And I've been like that for a long time.
52:25
Like so, for example, we got a lot of opportunities back when the payday loan uh companies were coming online and I was just like, "No, I will not do that because that's predatory lending on the people who can least afford it." >> Like, no. Yeah.
52:44
>> And then as after we sold OSAM, I'm like, you know what?
52:46
I think I'm just going to make that the mantra of the new company.
52:49
It's just everything has to be win-win.
52:51
And the way we look at it is the author is going to win huge, right?
52:56
Because they're going to have a view into their their books and writing that they've never had before.
53:00
And authors are very clever people.
53:03
And they're going to be, "Oh, I didn't even think about that.
53:07
Yeah, I should do that, that, and this and that."
53:08
and and they're going to get a much greater share of the revenue again because the margins work for us because of technology.
53:19
I just think that cultural evolution, company evolution takes a long a lot longer than a lot of people think, but it's, you know, you mentioned Shrupter uh earlier like creative destruction. >> Yep.
53:33
>> And it happens and it happens and it will continue to happen.
53:35
And so my view is always just embrace it.
53:38
And like you with the with the newsletter, which is brilliant.
53:44
You're you're putting out really good material.
53:45
I love the co-written thing.
53:48
I think that's a really genius idea actually.
53:50
But you're also using it as top of funnel for your venture activities.
53:54
What are you excited about now in venture?
53:57
I mean, kind of everything that I was just talking about like, and again, I think the hardware thing and even complex businesses is like a thing that's gotten a little bit more attention over the past couple of years, but I think it was like 2022.
54:08
It was like the in the midst of all this bare stuff.
54:12
I kind of realized like we' invested in Replet.
54:16
We' spent a bunch of time in crypto where there's composability and I was like, man, it seems like it's going to be like really hard to build enduring software businesses to now.
54:22
And like obviously there are exceptions to that rule in in very big ways.
54:26
Um and certainly AI I put in a different category but started getting really excited and I think I've kind of always been really excited about this idea of just like hard thing like things that are like really really really hard to do and the the manifestation of that now is these just like [clears throat] complex vertically integrated businesses that are trying to compete directly with incumbents and just win categories.
54:46
Anderil and SpaceX for everything.
54:48
We did uh along with Patrick actually a base power company um which is you know this this battery company uh starting down in Texas but will go everywhere.
54:57
And I think because there a million things that go into why a company like that would be exciting but I've spent a lot of time studying energy.
55:06
I think the stuff happening on the generation side, on the nuclear side, on the solar side is really really exciting on the the kind of usage side, the demand side, electric vehicles and drones and smart every all of that AI, you know, certainly a big user of energy. All really exciting.
55:19
If both of those continue to grow, the thing that you need is batteries.
55:24
And if you want batteries, the best place to put them actually to balance the grid is next to the home.
55:30
And if you want to be next to the home with a battery, the best place to start for a million different reasons is in Texas.
55:34
And so like finding the company that has the battery next to the home in Texas with the great people is like that is what I dream of.
55:41
We invested in this company that I that I wrote about Somos Internet that I think is probably the most similar business in the world uh to what base power company's doing.
55:50
They're down in Colombia.
55:52
They're building what looks like, you know, a regular ISP.
55:54
And so half the investors who look at it are like, why in the world would I ever want to do uh an ISP in Colombia, they're fully vertically integrated on a new architecture building all of their own hardware pretty much at this point uh in China.
56:07
They are doing active Ethernet with now they're going to have uh kind of two fibers directly into the home.
56:13
So it's almost like your home is a node in like a data center.
56:15
home is a node in like a data center. 10 gigabit internet for you know practically you know no money compared to to what you'd be getting today are laying their own kind of national backbone like just this fully vertically integrated thing but because of all of that you can give this better experience to the consumer than they're used to
56:30
having and you own one of three utilities into the home uh I don't think there's going to be a water or gas company so it's essentially your power and your internet are the two things that there can be a startup and so if you own that real estate next to the home the things that you can do both the kind of integrating up and down are just tremendous. And so I'm looking for these
56:48
And so I'm looking for these businesses that like are doing a lot of really hard stuff.
56:52
It took almost, you know, 5 years to get to the the spot that they're at now where they're like just humming and really really growing fast.
56:57
But I think if that doesn't become the largest kind of telco in in Latin America at the very least, like something has gone horribly wrong because they have a product that's better, faster, and cheaper in a way that no incumbent's going to be able to hire the team to go out and do that.
57:12
They have all this fiber that they've already laid that they're not going to go want to rip up.
57:14
They're, you know, buying all of their equipment from Huawei and, you know, they don't know how to do it themselves.
57:20
The, if you look at it, even in American telco, like the R&D line item is like zero dollars.
57:26
Like they don't do any of their own R&D.
57:27
And like that's exactly who you want to compete with.
57:29
And what I love about the opportunities right now is that I think for the first time in a while, instead of just saying we're going to build software to help industries, people are saying, "Oh, cool.
57:37
We have all this software.
57:38
We have all this technology.
57:39
Let's just build a better thing and go compete."
57:41
and people think that that's possible.
57:42
Uh, and it's starting to happen in a real way.
57:44
So, those are the types of things I'm excited about on the venture side.
57:47
>> Do do you look outside the United States because you're mentioning obviously this is outside of the US.
57:52
One of the things that we experimented with was um a dedicated fund that we don't run so it's we're an LP uh but it's in Bangladesh, right?
58:04
And like literally the the valuations there for an idea here that would be pre- money 100 million it's like five.
58:16
>> And what's really cool is all the young people there are like a nation of entrepreneurs.
58:24
>> And do do you primarily what's your geography look like?
58:27
geography look like? I do it mostly US and then if there is a version of this business model this kind of vertical integrator business model that is happening you know that I think is the best version of that in their industry somewhere in the world great we did a
58:41
mining company in Australia called Earth AAI that's doing really really really well um and uh we did that in Colombia just kind of uh personally just put a small kind of like kind of early uh intel check in a drone delivery company in India and so like if the best version of a thing is happening somewhere else in the Great. I think a lot of it happens in
58:58
I think a lot of it happens in the United States, but if the best version of it is happening elsewhere, I'm happy to do that. >> Yeah.
59:04
And one of the things we've seen in Bangladesh is they just poured over ideas that start here.
59:08
Uh but they actually make them better uh because they're doing kind of the second iteration.
59:14
The valuations are are much lower.
59:17
They can learn from the US startups mistakes.
59:19
That's a very interesting uh line for us.
59:22
The other thing what's your view on like all the startups because I have a pretty specific view that are like rappers of large language models.
59:35
I was very bearish back to the humility point like I think one of the things that that continues to happen is you're bearish then you get like there was one it looked like a rapper company.
59:44
I'm not going to give specific valuations because we'll give it away, but even like 18 months, I talked to the founder and I was like, what do you think about like I know this is like, you know, I'm a loser for asking this, but like how do you think about like over time building Moes in this business?
59:58
And he's like, I build good products.
1:00:01
And I was like, all right, well, it's been good talking to you.
1:00:04
18 months later, it's worth 33 times more than it was when I talked to him.
1:00:07
So, [laughter] you know, jokes's on me.
1:00:09
And I don't know if that's a short-term thing or a long-term thing.
1:00:10
I think each use case I I think each example each situation ends up being probably a little bit different.
1:00:19
I mean like you know cursor now moving down into the models I think is like a really really interesting company doing something really unique that that people seem to love.
1:00:26
Will they be worth 10x in 5 years potentially.
1:00:30
Will they be worth 10 times less in 5 years potentially.
1:00:32
Like I think the anthropic open AI fight is even super interesting right now.
1:00:35
we were saying before like claude is is just like has by far kind of become my favorite uh model to use.
1:00:41
I just think it's moving so so so fast.
1:00:43
I've largely I have probably like a a fairly uninformed view because I've largely stayed away.
1:00:49
stayed away. I think there's so many smart people fully focused on AI software uh and foundation models that like I have no I mean I I could like write about companies and and invest that way and so there's some edge but like there's just so much to keep up with and I I'm so fascinated by this other part of the world that fewer
1:01:05
people are fascinated by that I there's like some comparative advantage at least that that I have there but I don't know what's your what's your very specific view my specific view is there's an pattern there a primitive there as well and whenever like a new technology really ignites the imagination of the society. Hundreds of companies get
1:01:22
Hundreds of companies get started.
1:01:25
So for example at the turn of the 20th century 1900 there was something like 200 car companies in America.
1:01:33
One of them was actually an electric car company.
1:01:35
And what happens is they try everything and then slowly the winner emerges and the winner that emerges is not always the best product, right?
1:01:48
And so I think you know the classic VHS beta >> Brian Arthur stuff. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:01:53
I mean but so I think that most of them are gonna get nuked. >> Yeah.
1:02:00
>> Uh because very difficult to establish a moat.
1:02:02
Um one of the things that we are working on in terms of commercializing some of the AI workflows that we're doing and and the actual AI itself just really good picks and shovels.
1:02:16
I I'm not going to name what it is, but there's a very common thing that everybody uses, everybody uses.
1:02:22
And our our CTO has made that like 50x better.
1:02:27
I was talking to uh another friend of another portfolio company of ours and he's like, "Do you realize how if you just sell this just this thing alone, you you're going to do incredibly well?"
1:02:43
So I do think that there is lots of room there. >> Yep.
1:02:49
>> Um but rappers I know.
1:02:49
And then the fun part about what we do though is like I'll sit I I have been sitting out rappers.
1:02:58
I will continue to sit out rappers.
1:02:59
And one thing that I pass on inevitably will have made up for all of the things that I got wrong probably.
1:03:06
If you had invested, I'm going to get the numbers wrong on this, but you might not actually know, if you had invested in in Amazon at the peak of the dot bubble, I think you would have like made up all of your losses.
1:03:17
You know, I think I forget exactly like I've run this before, but there's something like it car it out returned all of the losses of the dot crash.
1:03:25
>> Yeah, it's actually true.
1:03:25
I I wrote a piece for which I was vilified in April of 1999 called the internet contrarian.
1:03:33
And in it I said the crash that is going to come is going to have 85% of these companies carried out feet first DOA.
1:03:43
But the example that I gave of a company that would probably survive was Amazon. >> No way. >> Yeah. And you bought too. >> Hang on.
1:03:50
Because I had a I had a thesis.
1:03:54
I said Amazon will probably go on to do extraordinarily well, but first it's going to go down 90%. It went down 93%. Wow.
1:04:03
>> And then one of our models picked it up [laughter] >> because we're quants, right?
1:04:06
So, but you know, it's really interesting because that was the first time I experienced um information cascades and homo leading to homogeneity of views.
1:04:18
And back in April of 1999, you were a heretic that was going to get burned at the stake for saying anything negative about companies.
1:04:29
And I was like I was 39 and like the comments that I got on on because it was a blog post for my company.
1:04:39
The comments I got were like, "You're an old fogy.
1:04:42
You were like, "You're only 39.
1:04:44
You sound like you're 95 years old.
1:04:46
You don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about." And all that.
1:04:50
In my journals, I wrote about it saying, "I have never experienced this uniformity of opinion."
1:04:55
And it made me feel I'm I'm right [laughter] becau because because like literally when you have that kind of thing and he and and I made bad decisions because of that too.
1:05:10
If you think that you're not going to be affected by the just everyone thinking the same thing at the same time and the information cascades, you're crazy.
1:05:21
How much of what's happening now feels like that or and how much is it different?
1:05:28
>> It's pretty different this time around.
1:05:30
I I I think that there is still a lot of skepticism uh around it.
1:05:34
We haven't seen now we have on the investment side, but we we haven't seen what was fueling a lot of that was the public loving the internet. Wait a minute.
1:05:47
I can buy any book I want on this. Are you kidding me? Right?
1:05:53
And so the novelty of that was was different.
1:05:57
I mean, because we're all been so used to being online.
1:06:00
Now, listen, I think, you know, Job said, uh, computers were bicycles for the mind.
1:06:05
I think AI is rocket ships for the mind.
1:06:09
>> And but like anything else, it's only going to be as good as the user, right?
1:06:15
And the same power laws are going to apply.
1:06:17
Don't use a free version of one of the big large language models and ask it a stupid question and get a stupid answer and then say that sucks, right?
1:06:27
You you you need to come up that learning curve.
1:06:29
But what's interesting is it's capping that kind of, you know, incredible excitement that the general public had.
1:06:37
I I do not think that this is nearly the same kind of situation.
1:06:43
>> Were there more public internet stocks than there are public ass?
1:06:47
I Yes, that has to be a big piece of this. >> Huge piece of it.
1:06:49
The minute like public markets are available to the public's imagination and like Globe.
1:06:57
com, the valuations of these companies when they went public and then like they would go public at a ludicrous valuation and then triple >> after it.
1:07:08
And I remember getting a call during this time period because you got to remember and let's be really clear I a lot of my success was being born at the right time, right? I was born in 1960.
1:07:21
I was one of the first geners of computers.
1:07:25
Like if Ben Graham had access to my computers and the database, he would have written What Works on Wall Street, right?
1:07:33
But the other thing that was super nice for me was I got married at 22 in 1982 and we began the longest decline in interest rates in like a hundred years.
1:07:44
If interest rates are going down, stocks are going this way.
1:07:50
Talk about a tailwind, right?
1:07:50
And so like I was just incredibly lucky to be fascinated, really obsessed by the stock market at that time.
1:08:00
So super lucky around that starting to feel because I experienced the crash of 1987. I [ __ ] that up.
1:08:09
I had a bunch of puts and I let my emot that's how I became a quant.
1:08:11
I was always quantitatively oriented but I had all these puts because I had a model right a quant model and it said be bearish.
1:08:21
And so I had amassed in my young life the largest put position I had ever had.
1:08:27
And I let my emotion because most people don't know before the real crash there was a mini crash the day before.
1:08:33
I was getting called by all the brokers who I was using, right?
1:08:37
Because you called everyone back then and they're like, "Dude, close your position.
1:08:41
You just got back to even you.
1:08:44
You close your position because these are going to expire."
1:08:46
And I was totally emotional about it.
1:08:48
The model said, "Don't close your position." I closed my position.
1:08:53
The next day, the market crashed.
1:08:56
I would have made a fortune. >> Oh yeah. >> In all of those puts.
1:08:58
And that was the push that was like, you know what?
1:09:01
Maybe I'm the enemy here.
1:09:03
[laughter] Maybe my human OS, I'm no different than anyone else, right? I'm emotional.
1:09:07
I get I let emotions get to me.
1:09:10
But then going in, it also tempered me, right?
1:09:14
Because it's like, okay, you might be able to see some signs that things are getting a little frothy.
1:09:23
[laughter] So, I was a year early on the internet call. The the crash.
1:09:27
combomb didn't happen until uh early 2000, but I got a call from the president of my company who was in Arkansas in a McDonald's and he's like, "Jim, you know, all this stuff, you've been gotten you've gotten pretty bearish on a lot of stuff." And I went, "Yeah."
1:09:44
And he goes, "I think this is going to increase your bearishness." And I went, "What?"
1:09:47
And he goes, "I'm in a McDonald's in Arkansas.
1:09:52
There's a bunch of people with their shotguns and hunting gear on and CNBC is on the TV [laughter] and I'm like, "Oh, fuck."
1:10:04
That was kind of the version of uh you know, the shoe shine boy telling Joe Kennedy.
1:10:10
>> Uh but so I I I don't see that as much, but but I definitely see the adoption cycle is speeding up.
1:10:18
Are you finding that as well?
1:10:20
Yes, even in my uh kind of personal usage like I I I've been almost proud of myself for how removed I've been and like I'm not going to invest in the app layer and like I'll be fine sleeping at night if I miss out on things that I you know don't believe in the business case for.
1:10:33
I think like just even talking about my personal adoption curve went from like using it a lot to over the break.
1:10:38
I think like a lot of people and in the past few weeks since Claude has gotten better using it all the time and even now I'm like [ __ ] did I like miss this whole thing?
1:10:45
Like was I was I wrong here?
1:10:48
And so I'm just trying to be, you know, trying to be more conscious of like those those thoughts and emotions because I that's probably, you know, either a sign that this time is different for the first time and like this is the big one.
1:11:01
>> Most dangerous words in [laughter] the market this time. It's different. >> Exactly.
1:11:04
Or I'm starting to like lean into that.
1:11:07
And so I'm just like I really try to like I meditate daily now.
1:11:08
Like I really want to like actually watch my thoughts and and understand if I'm getting swept up because I very clearly can.
1:11:15
But it does seem like on the internet, so there's that echo chamber and so it feels like the adoption cycle is faster.
1:11:20
But even talking to my friends who are not, you know, part of tech Twitter, people are using it all the time and people are amazed and they want to talk about it and so that is starting to happen.
1:11:27
But then there's no unless you want to be like there's a lot of people now who like just become like you talked to a lot of Uber drivers who are just like online stock pickers now.
1:11:36
[laughter] And so unless you're like that level where you want to like you're doing second order stuff and you're like buying nuclear because of or like starting to buy quantum because of like some thing that might happen, >> you're right, like there's there's not as easy an outlet for someone to get excited and be like, "Oh, there's a fairly cheap thing that I can go buy like and express my belief."
1:11:50
And so that probably Yeah.
1:11:52
It probably like uh breaks that adoption to total craziness. >> Yeah.
1:11:58
The challenge with that is time horizons, right?
1:12:01
We we really do not want to turn the younger generation into like hopped up.
1:12:06
I want to make I want to double my money in a day because that usually leads to um you know tragedy and despair.
1:12:15
But by the same token like I love the idea that they we've really democratized the tools that make it available but again it's all how are you going to end up using it right?
1:12:26
If you're gonna end up using it like a like a slot machine, that's going to lead to bad things.
1:12:33
If you're not, the world is your oyster as a as a young investor right now.
1:12:38
Um, and you know, things like, again, back to context, I I I wish more people knew that like Isaac Newton lost his entire fortune in an internet AI company of the day, but it was a South Sea trading company, right?
1:12:54
The graphs are identical.
1:12:58
>> Like you plot you plot the South Sea, right?
1:13:02
And you plot the NASDAQ, they they're identical.
1:13:06
And and that's not because they're completely different industry, completely different thing. It's because of us.
1:13:13
>> My take away from that Jim Simons book, >> yeah, >> was essentially that his machines were just really good at understanding when humans were being irrational and just trading against us when we're rational.
1:13:20
>> And that's and that's basically what my thesis was, too.
1:13:22
It was basically technology, innovation, industry change minute by minute.
1:13:27
Markets change minute by minute.
1:13:29
Human OS millennia by millennia doesn't budge a bit.
1:13:32
So arbitrageing human nature is the less sustainable edge and it and it works for public markets super well, but it also works in private markets, right?
1:13:42
What do you ever see because you you must see huge deal flow now. What are the ones?
1:13:49
And don't name any companies, please, but just kind of give me categories or pitches just like you're just like, "Yep, nope."
1:13:55
Goes right into the circular filing.
1:13:56
I have to confess something that if you know, current or future LPs are listening, sorry.
1:14:02
I I've I do a lot more like subject line straight to the trash.
1:14:09
Like, I really am trying to be more just more thoughtful about like what I even take into the top of funnel.
1:14:13
And I'll be super happy if I invest in five companies this year and they're things that I love and like I don't have a thesis because if the fusion company that I invested in when I thought Fusion was like a completely uninvestable category like if I had studied for the rest of my life I never would have come up with the idea that he had come up with that makes it feel more investable.
1:14:34
So I'm not thesis driven in that way but there's just like I have a tighter box now.
1:14:38
Uh and so there's a lot of small ideas that go right into the trash. Uh that's obvious.
1:14:43
Anything that's not differentiated for me goes right into the trash.
1:14:47
Differentiated short-term, structurally different like built in a way to to maintain that differentiation over time.
1:14:53
So there's not a particular category like there's nothing even like for for me to pick on in particular.
1:14:56
I think people are trying a lot of like really interesting things and we will see what what works.
1:15:02
I have not made uh a robotics investment yet although I think there's a lot of like kind of single use case stuff that's really really interesting.
1:15:10
But really for me, it's like is this thing something that not 12 other people are building and like I just don't have the time of day to like pick the best of the 15 entrepreneurs going after the same the same thing when there's so many other like really big opportunities out there. >> Yeah. I don't know.
1:15:24
Like it's a pretty boring answer, but it's just like my top of funnel used to be like your entire brand is not growing.
1:15:30
No, I used to [laughter] take I used to take >> I it must have been 20 pitches a week in the beginning >> and now it's >> four or five, right?
1:15:41
Like it just I really want to tighten all of that and let's flip it around.
1:15:44
Uh what innovative business models are you seeing that you're like, "Wow, okay, this is really really intriguing."
1:15:54
Man, I'm I'm going super off-brand here and I'm gonna come up with with uh boring ones again. >> You know what?
1:16:04
I think I've got now the title for the podcast. >> Boring. [laughter] I don't know.
1:16:11
I mean, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's going to happen like how do you pay for workers as opposed to uh you know for for seats or like all the different AI stuff I think is is super interesting.
1:16:20
is is super interesting. I think the interesting business model to me is like whatever works best for the industry that it's in and like a way that's kind of like I'm bad at doing these answers because like it's so use case specific like I I think I mentioned that company Earth AI uh and so to to go back on to
1:16:35
them a little bit they uh started out building uh you know back in the in 2018 so preai started building AI models to do mineral discovery in Australia were a Y combinator company they sold to explorers and they could actually make some sales cuz like explorers will raise some cash and then they'll be willing to spend it uh and then they disappear, right? Like you'll get a $50,000
1:16:55
Like you'll get a $50,000 contract selling them this thing.
1:16:56
Either they go under or or you just never hear from them again because they've either found something they haven't.
1:17:01
So, you can't like train your model on that.
1:17:03
You have no idea if your business is doing well.
1:17:05
And so, finally, the guy was like, "You know what? I'm going to go out.
1:17:07
I'm going to build my own drilling rigs and I'm going to go out into the field.
1:17:10
I'm going to like actually see if this thing works.
1:17:12
I'm just going to build one.
1:17:12
I'm going to like see if we're actually like coming close to anything.
1:17:15
we'll go with like we will tell our explorer customers that we will go with you and dig the hole for you, drill the hole for you just to know if we're actually finding something or not.
1:17:25
And so he did that and then they decided to build their own rigs.
1:17:28
And now they they were just like, you know what, if if and I think this is true in most of these categories in these vertically in integrated things where you start out selling software, you sell to a customer that is a really bad customer and if someone's a bad customer that they're probably a pretty good competitor to have and so they started just competing.
1:17:43
Now they make their own drilling rigs.
1:17:44
They have they've made three discoveries with potentially a fourth.
1:17:47
And I bring all this up because the business model here is essentially where in Australia where they're starting.
1:17:54
If you start if you can find something that's like not brownfield, which means not next to like an existing site or something that people have done before.
1:18:00
If you can like actually find green field discoveries and no one's been there before, you plant your flag.
1:18:06
That is yours kind of in perpetuity.
1:18:10
So you find that you have a cheaper uh drilling rig.
1:18:12
You go out to the spot, you drill it, it's yours, and then you develop it a little bit.
1:18:16
And if you can drill cheaper and faster than you can develop it faster, you sell a stake in that business.
1:18:20
The drilling rigs are not particularly expensive, but you sell a stake in that deposit uh to a minor to somebody midstream.
1:18:26
And then you take that cash and you buy more drilling drilling rigs and you work down this like 650 target list in Australia and that just spins in this like unbelievably beautiful way.
1:18:38
like literally the first time that you sell a stake in a deposit, you can just like spin this machine that kind of keeps going forever and ever as long as people need metals and minerals, which I I think we will for for a while.
1:18:48
think we will for for a while. And so like that's not like a trend that I'm seeing in the market, but that is something that in that particular use case and I actually said no to it at first because I was like I'm not going to invest in the Ukrainian guy who started a mining company in Australia, but we'd been doing Elliot who I
1:19:01
mentioned earlier uh and I were doing some biotech investing and I was like this actually feels like kind of what the biotech kind of platform business model is where you use technology to develop an asset and then sell it off and then take that and invest in more but it's that with like perpetual rights on the deposit that you're finding. And
1:19:16
And so like all of what I do is like trying to find these one-off things.
1:19:19
And by building this top of funnel, that's what I'm looking for are these like really one-off things that specifically work for the industry that they're trying to beat. >> Yeah.
1:19:27
Our first really big client at my first company Capital Management was had done extraordinarily well in mining in gold mining and he was a wonderful man and uh gave me my time horizon.
1:19:38
I was sitting with him uh out west.
1:19:42
There were pictures of all of his grandkids on the table next to where we were sitting.
1:19:47
I had because he was elderly at the time.
1:19:51
And so I had brought these really conservative portfolios, right?
1:19:53
Like and he's like looking at him, he's this, you know, cowboy to the boots, right? Weathered face. Loved this man.
1:20:02
Anyway, and he goes, "What'd you bring me this [ __ ] for?"
1:20:07
And I'm like, "Well, I mean, given your age."
1:20:10
[laughter] and and he looked at me, he goes, "You don't get it. You don't get it."
1:20:14
And he points at his grandkids.
1:20:16
He goes, "My time horizon is infinite." And I I loved that.
1:20:22
And it changed my own thinking because that's the answer I give now because I have grandchildren.
1:20:28
I hope to have great grandchildren.
1:20:29
I have organizations that I would like to continue to support, etc.
1:20:32
And what that does is almost like a magic spell like my time horizon is infinite.
1:20:38
meaning you will make decisions in a completely different manner.
1:20:44
But the reason I bring him up was he also like gold miners miners in general are the biggest risk junkies that I have ever met in my life.
1:20:55
And he told me this really funny joke.
1:20:57
He's like um he also was a pilot and that's how he actually found he trained his eye to see certain impressions that meant there's gold in them the aisles.
1:21:08
Anyway, so we're in the plane and we're we're on the thing and he's showing me all the stuff that he sold to this big company and uh he goes, "Uh, do you hear about the minor who died and went up to heaven?"
1:21:20
And I went, "No, no, tell me about him." He goes, "Well, yeah."
1:21:22
He got up there to heaven and St.
1:21:24
Peter came out and said, "I'm sorry.
1:21:27
This is really unusual, but um we're full up with miners.
1:21:33
You know, we got a quota.
1:21:35
We normally don't ever get many of them up here because you guys are so crazy, but like all these are wonderful guys and they're in heaven.
1:21:41
And minor goes, "So, you're telling me?"
1:21:44
He goes, "You got to go to the other place."
1:21:46
And he goes, "But I've led a great life."
1:21:48
And he goes, "He goes, listen, I'll make you a deal.
1:21:55
They're all over there because they love hanging out together.
1:21:56
You can go over there and say something to them, and if anyone leaves, then we'll open a slot for you."
1:22:03
And the guy goes, "Okay."
1:22:03
He goes over and shouts to the other miners, "Gold found in hell."
1:22:09
And they all [laughter] dash for the elevator to go down to hell. And St.
1:22:15
Peter goes, "That's brilliant. Welcome."
1:22:17
And he goes, cuz he's walking away.
1:22:19
And he goes, "What are you doing?"
1:22:21
And he goes, "I'm joining those guys.
1:22:23
There might be something to that rumor." [laughter] >> So, yep.
1:22:30
>> So, yep. I [snorts] mean like it is a super high-risk uh you know and the other joke he told me was uh what what what do you call most gold mines um a a a dark a a dark hole with a liar at the other end [clears throat]
1:22:50
but if you can figure out a way to innovate like you've just described like potentially and what you want I think is like none of the explorers have the resources to go out and 12 of them, but if you have a portfolio, like actually you're in a pretty good spot. And so that's the that's the
1:23:06
And so that's the that's the innovation on this one.
1:23:07
So, >> and and let's let's go back to writing.
1:23:11
Like what are you most excited about?
1:23:14
Like do you plan out what what what you're going to be presenting or does it just grab you and then you like go with that? >> Yeah.
1:23:23
So now now actually a little bit more now that I'm doing these co-written essays with people.
1:23:25
So they I have to have some sort of a content calendar uh just because I'm working with other people on it.
1:23:32
>> The thing that is most exciting me about those is that like I would not have predicted the ideas that particular people would have given their kind of given their industry.
1:23:39
Uh you have to kind of get through layer one uh and get through like kind of the pitch idea and then you talk for a while and you're like nope that is a thing that we should be writing about and that just keeps happening over and over and over again.
1:23:50
So I'm really excited for that this year.
1:23:52
probably the category that I want to explore the most uh that I haven't done yet and that that I just need to take the time to go do I think bio electricity like all the Michael Leven work is the most fascinating thing in the world and my like very dumb take on it.
1:24:07
I wrote that electric stack piece and if we're in this electric era >> I bet just kind of cosmically that the body is going to turn out to be more electric uh and and more electrically kind of controllable uh than than previously thought.
1:24:20
But like the results that they're getting, >> doesn't the heart have its own generate its own electrical electrical field?
1:24:25
I think that >> that's that sounds that sounds right to me.
1:24:30
But like everyone listening, I will look that up after [laughter] we're done. >> Yeah.
1:24:34
>> But I mean the the the whole body is just like kind of more, you know, more electrical.
1:24:38
>> Sing the body electric.
1:24:39
>> Sing the body electric.
1:24:39
I went back and the book was terribly written.
1:24:41
Uh but really really interesting. Um >> great title. >> Great title.
1:24:46
But like you could regrow amphibian legs by applying, you know, just by putting a cuff around it and applying the right care to it.
1:24:52
And there's I think there's just a lot there.
1:24:56
>> Well, you know, Maxwell is a great example of a guy who I don't think gets enough credit.
1:25:00
Like his work spawned more innovation than almost any other one from that period.
1:25:07
And like right now a lot of people say Maxwell who right we have we have a a piece coming up that is Maxwell Maxwell adjacent a piece with a quantum magneticist.
1:25:18
So, I'm not the one who's actually actually going to be writing that, but talking about kind of why humans are so bad at rocking.
1:25:25
>> And is that is that the strategy going forward for the paid?
1:25:26
Is are they all going to be co-written or you going to sometimes do solos?
1:25:31
>> I think it'll be a com I think free I want to keep like the big kind of tentpole pieces just like out there.
1:25:34
But there might be ones like you know that piece that I was saying I wrote about my son selling stuff that probably Yeah, that's cool. >> Yeah.
1:25:43
like that probably stays like I want to have a spot actually where I can feel free to like write more kind of like short stuff uh that I don't feel like I'm spamming 257,000 people with.
1:25:52
Um I'm only spamming the people who've been nice enough to pay me.
1:25:54
So, thank you and and sorry in advance.
1:25:55
Uh but it's that's the spot where I want to just experiment a lot more.
1:26:01
>> And and is that kind of going forward?
1:26:03
Is that going to be the are the twin engines going to be the paid always keeping the free? Yep.
1:26:10
>> Um and kind of using both as top of funnel for the uh venture.
1:26:13
Any plans to raise another fund or >> Yeah. Okay.
1:26:20
And you can't talk about it? >> No. Yeah.
1:26:22
Incredibly excited about like that that kind of opportunity set that we're talking about right now. And I've been surprised.
1:26:27
I think in the beginning that my thesis on the original fund was maybe if I have this newsletter, people will let me write about them and then they'll let me invest.
1:26:35
And and that was more people read it than I thought and were just like, "Oh yeah, you write a small check and we read not boring, so come on in."
1:26:41
I think now like the way that I'm thinking about it is I want to be the best in the world at this like one thing, which is like telling kind of stories about these companies and then everything that goes around that.
1:26:50
It can't just all be company stories, but I want to be the best uh in the world at that at that one thing.
1:26:54
And I think particularly for the type of business that I'm interested in, but for companies generally, like you see a lot of companies out there hiring chief storytellers or narrative officers or whatever, I think I can do that.
1:27:04
Uh but then apply, you know, like add distribution to it, add kind of like just the fact that the audience likes to come to not boring to read like these really deep long things that that, you know, we've been told that people uh don't read anymore.
1:27:15
So I think this combination of uh investing in this type of company and writing just like is is way more fun than I thought and way cooler than I thought.
1:27:23
So either am or will be raising against that that thesis uh soon.
1:27:28
>> That kind of brings me full circle to the original, you know, your idea that I I never got an actionable idea from a podcast.
1:27:35
I think that you're going to see this type and of course obviously I have I'm I'm reasoning based on my priors. Let's be very clear.
1:27:43
But the kind where a conversation, it's more of a freewheeling conversation, but then the people who are listening or watching can go to a piece of writing that you mentioned, right?
1:27:57
And and that's where they the idea discovery comes.
1:28:00
They get it by listening to to it, but there needs to be a next step.
1:28:05
And I think that that type of podcast is going to continue to do like really really well. >> Totally.
1:28:14
I think I put it in the piece, but I think that podcasts are like unbelievably good for getting to know people.
1:28:22
Like this type of conversation where we're just sitting here and talking about a bunch of different things.
1:28:25
This would be like the weirdest essay, you know, the weirdest written thing of all time.
1:28:29
Nobody would sit through this whole maybe you you said that you read transcripts sometimes, but like it's not the kind of thing that you'd want to ever read because like there's this back and forth, there's our faces, there's all of that.
1:28:37
But any idea that I've said on this, at least me personally, I would do a much better job expressing that idea in writing.
1:28:44
And I think a lot of people given the time and, you know, a week to work on something or a month to work on something will do a much better job expressing that that idea.
1:28:53
And then to your point, once they have it, then you can go out and kind of just repeat it. >> Yeah.
1:28:57
And and it's the conversation that introduces them to the concept.
1:29:01
And so I I'm still very bullish on that and I think that uh that will continue.
1:29:06
But I'm also completely agree with your thesis that you got to get it in writing, right?
1:29:14
Yeah, >> because if you if you don't have it in writing, you haven't really thought about it because writing is thinking and you know these kinds of things can be great and lead you to all of those cool pieces.
1:29:29
But you probably cuz again imagine if if we were going to talk the way we write then you'd get really [ __ ] bored. [laughter] >> Yes, 100%.
1:29:39
writing has just been so oversold and video is great and podcasts are great and part of this is just like this could be me, you know, I'm I'm about to be 39 so maybe this is me being old.
1:29:50
Uh but like writing doesn't feel like something that's going to go away and so I think it's really oversold and I'm you know I think having just announced this to the world the amount of people that are like yeah I actually do want to come on and write my thing uh has really blown me away.
1:30:01
So I think writing is coming back.
1:30:03
>> Yeah, as investors call it a deep value opportunity >> because I agree with you. it's not going away.
1:30:10
And in fact, I think quite the opposite.
1:30:12
I think that the people like if I was giving advice to a young person today, I would say learn how to write really, really well.
1:30:20
And because not only is it going to improve your ideas because writing is thinking.
1:30:24
[snorts] Uh but you know, everyone else is doing TikTok.
1:30:31
Go the other way and and you're probably going to g going to end up really well.
1:30:36
Well, Py, this has been like as I anticipated it. Super fun.
1:30:38
I I love talking to you because I I love your optimism.
1:30:43
I I I remember when I first saw you, right? I'm like, "Oh, finally.
1:30:50
Finally, we have a young person out there saying not the sky is falling and oh, woe is me, but look at all these great things that are going on in the world."
1:31:01
As you might remember, even though it was a long time ago, we our final question is um we're gonna make you the emperor of the world. You cannot kill anyone.
1:31:10
You cannot put anyone in a re-education camp, but we are going to hand you a magical microphone.
1:31:14
And you can say two things into it.
1:31:18
And the two things that you say into it are going to incept the entire population of the world.
1:31:25
They're going to wake up whenever their next morning is and they're going to say, you know, unlike all the other times when I woke up with a great idea, I got two this time and I'm actually going to start acting on them right now.
1:31:39
What two things are you going to incept into the world? Be you.
1:31:43
I think that's a big one.
1:31:43
That's my goal for the year, probably the rest of my life.
1:31:46
And I don't know, be joyful and energetic like that that I'm I'm giving advice to myself now, but these are the things that I'm telling myself.
1:31:51
we're so lucky to be in the situation that we're in right now.
1:31:55
Um, and so I think one, you know, there there's just like differentiation and and just like kind of being unique and interesting and like authentic to who you are.
1:32:03
I I think, you know, I think you have to learn as you get older that that is like the most important thing.
1:32:07
But I'm really also just trying to be like as joyful and energetic as I can be because like the world just becomes more fun that way.
1:32:15
Um, and you're the prime example of this, [laughter] but the world just become as soon as you're like, "Hey, I'm going to experience whatever happens with joy, it just gets joyful. It's it's wonderful."
1:32:23
So, uh, those are those are the two things >> I I love both of them.
1:32:25
I'm reminded of Oscar Wild's be yourself, everyone else is taken.
1:32:30
[laughter] >> And but I also like the idea of authenticity is just you I see so much advice like online, right? Like be authentic.
1:32:42
In other words, be a fake. Yeah.
1:32:44
[laughter] And and ape this person over here.
1:32:47
>> Here's how you talk authentically. >> Exactly. This has been a blast.
1:32:50
Uh we'll have all of your info on the show notes and can't wait till next time. >> This is so much fun. I can't wait.