Podcasts about Thiel

It looks like the Libertarians of Silicon Valley suddenly love government when they need the government to bail them out. Socialism for the mega-rich, taxes and fascism for the rest of us. In this week's episode, we delve into the fantasy hellscape of Peter Thiel, his investments in surveillance tech and A.I. that would give aspiring autocrats like him unstoppable power; Dictator Xi of China as a warning of what could happen to the United States if the Silicon Valley Libertarian Fascist Brigade usher in Big Brother 2.0, why Democrats aren't doing more to stop them (because some are cashing in!). Thiel's allegedly instigated banking collapse comes at an opportune time. Rattling the economy when the 2024 presidential elections are around the corner will drive economic anxiety and uncertainty at a time when Democrats need to defend the White House. This will pave the way for a wannabe fascist dictator like Ron DeSantis, the Viktor Orban of Florida, who is using the kind of anti-gay laws Putin used to consolidate power in Russia. DeSantis just gave an interview to Walter Duranty of Fox News, telling Tucker Carlson that supporting Ukraine in the face of an existential genocide from a modern day Hitler is not in the U.S. interests, which means he's secured Russia's help in the upcoming election. In our bonus episode, we answer questions from our listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher. This week's discussion includes why we should keep an eye on Russia's threat of invading Moldova (again!) to open up a new front to seize Ukraine; how to hold onto hope and push back against corruption; and how to organize one's life to be creative and productive despite the hellscape we find ourselves in, and a fun story about a recent run-in with Hillary Clinton, possible Gaslit Nation listener? If you want to keep Gaslit Nation going and support the show, join our community of listeners on Patreon to get access to weekly bonus shows, ask us anything in our regular Q&As, and join live events. We couldn't produce the journalism the world needs without you!  Show Notes: Opening clip: https://twitter.com/jonsarlin/status/1634712724117794817 Closing clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU1kS2jUpnY Formal Reprimand of Rep. Frank Is Urged by House's Ethics Panel https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/20/us/formal-reprimand-of-rep-frank-is-urged-by-house-s-ethics-panel.html A lot of people heard what Barney Frank said about the new banking law. Few knew he works for a bank. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/24/a-lot-of-people-heard-what-barney-frank-said-about-the-new-banking-law-few-knew-he-works-for-a-bank/ GOP blames Silicon Valley Bank's collapse on ‘ESG' policies. Here's what to know. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/14/svb-esg-woke-investing/ Congress just approved a bill to dismantle parts of the Dodd-Frank banking rule https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/congress-just-approved-bill-dismantle-parts-dodd-frank-banking-rule-n876516 Ron DeSantis says backing Ukraine is not in the U.S. interest, a sign of a GOP divided https://www.npr.org/2023/03/14/1163363579/desantis-trump-ukraine-republican-split Congressional Stock Trading - If You Don't Know, Now You Know | The Daily Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Vyyc6YCKk Dozens in Congress beat stock market in 2022 despite downturn on Wall Street: analysis https://nypost.com/2023/01/06/dozens-in-congress-beat-stock-market-in-2022-analysis/      

For the first episode of the Newcomer podcast, I sat down with Reid Hoffman — the PayPal mafia member, LinkedIn co-founder, Greylock partner, and Microsoft board member. Hoffman had just stepped off OpenAI's board of directors. Hoffman traced his interest in artificial intelligence back to a conversation with Elon Musk.“This kicked off, actually, in fact, with a dinner with Elon Musk years ago,” Hoffman said. Musk told Hoffman that he needed to dive into artificial intelligence during conversations about a decade ago. “This is part of how I operate,” Hoffman remembers. “Smart people from my network tell me things, and I go and do things. And so I dug into it and I'm like, ‘Oh, yes, we have another wave coming.'”This episode of Newcomer is brought to you by VantaSecurity is no longer a cost center — it's a strategic growth engine that sets your business apart. That means it's more important than ever to prove you handle customer data with the utmost integrity. But demonstrating your security and compliance can be time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Until you use Vanta.Vanta's enterprise-ready Trust Management Platform empowers you to:* Centralize and scale your security program* Automate compliance for the most sought-after frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR* Earn and maintain the trust of customers and vendors alikeWith Vanta, you can save up to 400 hours and 85% of costs. Win more deals and enable growth quickly, easily, and without breaking the bank.For a limited time, Newcomer listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/newcomer to get started.Why I Wanted to Talk to Reid Hoffman & What I Took AwayHoffman is a social network personified. Even his journey to something as wonky as artificial intelligence is told through his connections with people. In a world of algorithms and code, Hoffman is upfront about the extent to which human connections decide Silicon Valley's trajectory. (Of course they are paired with profound technological developments that are far larger than any one person or network.)When it comes to the rapidly developing future powered by large language models, a big question in my mind is who exactly decides how these language models work? Sydney appeared in Microsoft Bing and then disappeared. Microsoft executives can dispatch our favorite hallucinations without public input. Meanwhile, masses of images can be gobbled up without asking their creators and then the resulting image generation tools can be open-sourced to the world. It feels like AI super powers come and go with little notice. It's a world full of contradictions. There's constant talk of utopias and dystopias and yet startups are raising conventional venture capital financing.The most prominent player in artificial intelligence — OpenAI — is a non-profit that raised from Tiger Global. It celebrates its openness in its name and yet competes with companies whose technology is actually open-sourced. OpenAI's governance structure and priorities largely remain a mystery. Finally, unlike tech's conservative billionaires who throw their money into politics, in the case of Hoffman, here is a tech overlord that I seem to mostly agree with politically. I wanted to know what that would be like. Is it just good marketing? And where exactly is his heart and political head at right now?I thought he delivered. I didn't feel like he was dodging my questions, even in a world where maintaining such a wide network requires diplomacy. Hoffman seemed eager and open — even if he started to bristle at what he called my “edgy words.”Some Favorite QuotesWe covered a lot of ground in our conversation. We talked about AI sentience and humans' failures to identify consciousness within non-human beings. We talked about the coming rise in AI cloud compute spending and how Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are positioned in the AI race.Hoffman said he had one major condition for getting involved in OpenAI back in the early days when Musk was still on board.“My price for participation was to ask Elon to stop saying the word “robocalypse,” Hoffman told me. “Because I thought that the problem was it's very catchy and it evokes fear.”I asked Hoffman why he thought Musk got involved in artificial intelligence in the first place when Musk seems so worried about how it might develop. Why get the ball rolling down the hill at all, I wondered?Hoffman replied that many people in the field of artificial intelligence had “messiah complexes.”“It's the I am the one who must bring this — Prometheus, the fire to humanity,” Hoffman said. “And you're like, ‘Okay, I kind of think it should be us versus an individual.'” He went on, “Now, us can't be 8 billion people — us is a small group. But I think, more or less, you see the folks who are steering with a moral compass try to say, how do I get at least 10 to 15 people beyond myself with their hands on the steering wheel in deep conversations in order to make sure you get there? And then let's make sure that we're having the conversations with the right communities.”I raised the possibility that this merely suggested oligarchic control of artificial intelligence rather than dictatorial control. We also discussed Hoffman's politics, including his thoughts on Joe Biden and “woke” politics. I asked him about the state of his friendship with fellow PayPal mafia member Peter Thiel. “I basically am sympathetic to people as long as they are legitimately and earnestly committed to the dialogue and discussion of truth between them and not committed otherwise,” Hoffman said. “There are folks from the PayPal years that I don't really spend much time talking to. There are others that I do continue because that conversation about discovering who we are and who we should be is really important. And you can't allow your own position to be the definer.”I suggested that Thiel's public views sometimes seemed insincere.“Oh, that's totally corrosive,” Hoffman said. “And as much as that's happening, it's terrible. And that's one of the things that in conversations I have, I push people, including Peter, on a lot.”Give it a listen.Find the PodcastRead the TranscriptEric: Reid, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm very excited for this conversation. You know, I'm getting ready for my own AI conference at the end of this month, so hopefully this is sort of a prep by the end of this conversation, we'll all be super smart and ready for that. I feel like there've been so many rounds of sort of AI as sort of the buzzword of the day.This clearly seems the hottest. When did you get into this moment of it? I mean, obviously you just stepped off the Open AI board. You were on that board. Like how, when did you start to see this movement that we're experiencing right now coming.Reid: Well, it's funny because my undergraduate major was artificial intelligence and cognitive science. So I've, I've been around the hoop for multiple waves for a long time and I think this kicked off actually, in fact, with a dinner with Elon Musk years ago. You know, 10-ish years ago, Elon and I would have dinner about once a quarter and he's like, well, are you paying attention to this AI stuff?And I'm like, well, I majored in it and you know, I know about this stuff. He's like, no, you need to get back involved. And I was like, all right. This is part of how I operate is smart people from my network tell me things and I go and do things. And so I dug into it and I went, oh yes, we have another wave coming.And this was probably about seven or eight years ago, when I, when I saw the beginning of the wave or the seismic event. Maybe it was a seismic event out at sea and I was like, okay, there's gonna be a tsunami here and we should start getting ready cause the tsunami is actually gonna be amazingly great and interesting.Eric: And that—is that the beginning of Open AI?Reid: Open AI is later. What I did is I went and made connections with the kind of the heads of every AI lab and major company because I concluded that I thought that the AI revolution will be primarily driven by large companies initially because of the scale compute requirements.And so, you know, talked to Demis Hassabis, met Mustafa Suleyman, talked to Yann LeCun, talked to Jeff Dean, you know, all these kind of folks and kind of, you know, built all that. And then it was later in conversations with Sam and Elon that I said, look, we need to do something that's a for pro humanity. Not just commercial effort. And my price for participation, cause I thought it was a great idea, but my price for participation was to ask Elon to stop saying the word robocalypse. Because I thought that the problem was that it's very catchy and it evokes fear. And actually, in fact, one of the things I think about this whole area is that it's so much more interesting and has so much amazing opportunity for humanity.A little bit like, I don't know if you saw the Atlantic article I wrote that we evolve ourselves through technology and I'm, you know, going to be doing some writings around describing AI as augmented intelligence versus artificial intelligence. And I wanted to kind of build that positive, optimistic case that I think is the higher probability that I think we can shape towards and so forth.So it's like, okay, I'm in, but no more Robocalypse.Eric: I appreciate the ultimate sort of network person that you tell the story through people. I always appreciate when the origin stories of technology actually come through the human beings. With Elon in particular, I'm sort of confused by his position because it seems like he's very afraid of AI.And if that's the case, why would you want to, like, do anything to sort of get the ball rolling down the hill? Like, isn't there a sort of just like, stay away from it, man, if you think it's so bad. How do you see his thinking? And I'm sure it's evolved.Reid: Well, I think his instinct for the good and the challenging of this is he tends to think AI will only be good if I'm the one who's in control.Eric: Sort of, yeah.Reid: Yeah. And this is actually somewhat replete within the modern AI field. Not everybody but this. And Elon is a public enough figure that I think, you know, making this comment of him is not talking at a school.Other people would, there's a surprising number of Messiah complexes in the field of AI, and, and it's the, I am the one who must bring this, you know, Prometheus, you know, the Fire to humanity. And you're like, okay, I kind of think it should be us, right? Versus an individual. Now us can't be 8 billion people, us as a small group, but I think more or less you see the, the folks who are steering with a moral compass try to say, how do I get at least 10 to 15 people beyond myself with their hands on the steering wheel in deep conversations in order to make sure you get there and then let, let's make sure that we're having the conversations with the right communities.Like if you say, well, is this going to, you know, institutionalize, ongoing, um, you know, power structures or racial bias, something else? Well, we're talking to the people to make sure that we're going to minimize that, especially over time and navigate it as a real issue. And so those are the, like, that's the kind of anti Messiah complex, which, which is more or less the efforts that I tend to get involved in.Eric: Right. At least sort of oligarchy, of AI control instead of just dictatorship of it.Reid: Well, yeah, and it depends a little bit, even on oligarchy, look, things are built by small numbers of people. It's just a fact, right? Like, there aren't more than, you know, a couple of founders, maybe maximum five in any, any particular thing. There is, you know, there's reasons why. When you have a construction project, you have a head of construction, right?Et cetera. The important thing is to make sure that's why you have, why you have a CEO, you have a board of directors. That's why you have, you know, you say, well, do we have the right thing where a person is accountable to a broader group? And that broader group feels their governance responsibility seriously.So oligarchy is a—Eric: a chargedReid: is a charged word. And I,Eric: There's a logic to it. I'm not, I'm not using it to say it doesn't make sense that you want the people to really understand it around, around it. Um, I mean, specifically with Open AI, I mean, you, you just stepped off the board. You're also on the board of Microsoft, which is obviously a very significant player.In this future, I mean, it's hard to be open. I get a little frustrated with the “open” in “Open AI” because I feel like there's a lot that I don't understand. I'm like, maybe they should change the name a little bit, but is it still a charity in your mind? I mean, it's obviously raised from Tiger Global, the ultimate prophet maker.Like, how should we think about the sort of core ambitions of Open AI?Reid: Well, um, one, the board I was on was a fine one and they've been very diligent about making sure that all of the controls, including for the subsidiary company are from the 501(C)(3) and diligent to its mission, which is staffed by people on the 501(C)(3) board with the responsibilities of being on a 5 0 1 board, which is being in service of the mission, not doing, you know, private inurement and other kinds of things.And so I actually think it is fundamentally still a 501(C)(3). The challenge is if you kind of say, you look at this and say, well, in order to be a successful player in the modern scale AI, you need to have billions of dollars of compute. Where do you get those billions of dollars? Because, you know, the foundations and the philanthropy industry is generally speaking bad at tech and bad at anything other than little tiny checks in tech.And so you said, well, it's really important to do this. So part of what I think, you know, Sam and that group of folks came up with this kind of clever thing to say, well, look, we're about beneficial AI, we're about AI for humanity. We're about making an, I'll make a comment on “open” in a second, but we are gonna generate some commercially valuable things.What if we struck a commercial deal? So you can have the commercial things or you can share the commercial things. You invest in us in order to do this, and then we make sure that the AI has the right characteristics. And then the “open”, you know, all short names have, you know, some simplicities to them.The idea is open to the world in terms of being able to use it and benefit from it. It doesn't mean the same thing as open source because AI is actually one of those things where opening, um, where you could do open source, you could actually be creating something dangerous. As a modern example, last year, Open AI deliberately… DALL·E 2 was ready four months before it went out. I know cause I was playing with it. They did the four months to do safety training and the kind of safety training is, well, let's make sure that individuals can't be libeled. Let's make sure you can't create as best we can, child sexual material. Let's make sure you can't do revenge porn and we'll serve it through the API and we'll make it unchangeable on that.And then the open source people come out and they go do whatever you want and then wow, you get all this crazy, terrible stuff. So “open” is openness of availability, but still with safety and still with, kind of call it the pro-human controls. And that's part of what OpenAI means in this.Eric: I wrote in sort of a mini essay in the newsletter about, like tech fatalism and it fits into your sort of messiah complex that you're talking about, if I'm a young or new startup entrepreneur, it's like this is my moment if I hold back, you know, there's a sense that somebody else is gonna do it too. This isn't necessarily research. Some of the tools are findable, so I need to do it. If somebody's going to, it's easy if you're using your own personhood to say, I'm better than that guy! Even if I have questions about it, I should do it. So that, I think we see that over and over again. Obviously the stakes with AI, I think we both agree are much larger.On the other hand, with AI, there's actually, in my view, been a little bit more restraint. I mean, Google has been a little slower. Facebook seems a little worried, like, I don't know. How do you agree with that sort of view of tech fatalism? Is there anything to be done about it or it's just sort of—if it's possible, it's gonna happen, so the best guy, the best team should do it?Or, or how do you think about that sense of inevitability on if it's possible, it'll be built?Reid: Well, one thing is you like edgy words, so what you describe is tech fatalism, I might say as something more like tech inevitability or tech destiny. And part of it is what, I guess what I would say is for example, we are now in a AI moment and era. There's global competition for it. It's scale compute.It's not something that even somebody like a Google or someone else can kind of have any kind of, real ball control on. But the way I look at it is, hey, look, there's, there's utopic outcomes and dystopic outcomes and it's within our control to steer it. Um, and even to steer it at speed, even under competition because.For example, obviously the general discourse within media is, oh my God, what's happening with the data and what's gonna happen with the bias and what's gonna happen with the crazy conversations, with Bing Chat and all the rest of this stuff. And you're like, well, what am I obsessed about? I'm obsessed about the fact that I have line of sight to an AI tutor and an AI doctor on every cell phone.And think about if you delay that, whatever number of years you delay that, what your human cost is of delaying that, right? And it's like, how do we get that? And for example, people say, wow, the real issue is that Bing chat model is gonna go off the rails and have a drunken cocktail party conversation because it's provoked to do so and can't run away from the person who's provoking it.Uh, and you say, well, is that the real issue? Or is it a real issue? Let's make sure that as many people as we can have access to that AI doctor have access to that AI tutor that where, where we can, where not only, you know, cause obviously technology cause it's expensive initially benefits elites and people are rich.And by the way, that's a natural way of how our capitalist system and all the rest works. But let's try to get it to everyone else as quickly as possible, right?Eric: I a hundred percent agree with that. So I don't want any of my sort of, cynical take like, oh my God, this version.I'd also extend it, you know, I think you're sort of referencing maybe the Sydney situation where you have Kevin Rus in New York Times, you know, communicating with Bing's version of ChatGPT and sort of finding this character who's sort of goes by Sydney from the origin story.And Ben Thompson sort of had a similar experience. And I would almost say it's sad for the world to be deprived of that too. You know, there's like a certain paranoia, it's like, it's like, oh, I wanna meet this sort of seemingly intelligent character. I don't know. What do you make of that whole episode? I mean, people really, I mean, Ben Thompson, smart tech writers really latched onto this as something that they found moving.I don't know. Is there anything you take away from that saga and do you think we'll see those sort of, I don't know, intelligent characters again,Reid: Well for sure. I think 2023 will be at least the first year of the so-called chatbot. Not just because of ChatGPT. And I think that we will have a bunch of different chat bots. I think we'll have chatbots that are there to be, you know, entertainment companions, witty dialogue participants.I think we'll have chatbots that are there to be information like Insta, Wikipedia, kind of things. I think we'll have chatbots that are there to just have someone to talk to. So I think there'll be a whole, whole range of things. And I think we will have all that experience.And I think part of the thing is to say, look, what are the parameters by which you should say the bots should absolutely not do X. And it's fine if these people want a bot that's like, you know, smack talking and these people want something that you know, goes, oh heck. Right?You know, like, what's, what's the range of that? And obviously children get in the mix and, and the questions around things that we already encounter a lot with search, which is like could a chat bot enable self-harm in a way that would be really bad?Let's really try to make sure that someone who's depressed doesn't figure out a way to harm themselves either with search or with chat bots.Eric: Is there a psychologically persuasive, so it's not just the information provided, it's the sense that they might be like walking you towards something less serious.Reid: And they are! This is the thing that's amazing. and it's part of the reason why like everyone should have some interaction with these in some emotional, tangible way. We are really passing the Turing test. This is the thing that I had visibility on a few years ago because I was like, okay, we kind of judge, you know, intelligence and sentience like that, Google engineers like it.I asked if it was conscious and it said it was because we use language as a way of doing that. And you're like, well, but look, that tells you that your language use is not quite fully there. And because part of what's really amazing about, “hallucinations”—and I'm probably gonna do a fireside chat with the gray matter thing on hallucinations, maybe later this week—where the hallucination is, on one hand it says this amazingly accurate, wonderful thing, very persuasively, and then it says this other thing really persuasively that's total fiction, right? And you're like, wow, you sound very persuasive in both cases. But that one's true and that one's fiction.And that's part of the reason why I kind of go back to the augmented intelligence and all the things that I see going on with in 2023 is much less replacement and much more augmentation. It's not zero replacement, but it's much more augmentation in terms of how this plays. And that is super exciting.Eric: Yeah. I mean, to some degree it reflects sort of the weakness in human beings' own abilities to read what's happening. Ahead of this interview, I was talking to the publicly available ChatGPT. I don't know if you saw but I was asking it for questions and I felt like it delivered a very reasonable set of questions. You know, you've written about Blitzscaling, so [ChatGPT] is like, let's ask about that. It's, you know, ask in the context of Microsoft. But when I was like, have you [ChatGPT] ever watched Joe Rogan? Have you ever been on a podcast? Sometimes maybe you should have a long sort of, you should have a statement like I'm doing right now where I sort of have some things I'm saying.Then I ask a question. Other times it should be short and sweet. Sometimes it, you know, annoys you and says oligarchy, like explaining to the chat bot. [In an interview, a journalist] can't just ask a list of like, straightforward questions and it felt like it didn't really even get that. And I get that there's some sort of, we're, we're starting to have a conversation now with companies like Jasper, where it's almost like the language prompting itself.I think Sam Altman was maybe saying it's like almost a form of plain language like coding because you have to figure out how to get what you want out of them. And maybe it was just my failure to explain it, but as a journalist replacing questions, I didn't find the current model of ChatGPT really capable of that.Reid: No, that's actually one of the things on the ChatGPT I find is, like, for example, you ask what questions to ask Reid Hoffman in a podcast interview, and you'll get some generic ones. It'll say like, well, what's going on with new technologies like AI and, and what's going on in Silicon Valley? And you know, and you're like, okay, sure.But those aren't the really interesting questions. That's not what makes me a great journalist, which is kind of a lens to something that people can learn from and that will evolve and change that'll get better. But that's again, one of the reasons why I think it's a people plus machine. Because for example, if I were to say, hey, what should I ask Eric about? Or what should I talk to Eric about and go to? Yeah, gimme some generic stuff. Now if I said, oh, give me a briefing on, um, call it, um, UN governance systems as they apply to AI, because I want to be able to talk about this. I didn't do this, but it would give me a kind of a quick Wikipedia briefing and that would make my conversation more interesting and I might be able to ask a question about the governance system or something, you know, as a way of doing it.And that's what AI is, I think why the combo is so great. Um, and anyway, so that's what we should be aiming towards. It isn't to say, by the way, sometimes like replacement is a good thing. For example, you go to autonomous vehicles and say, hey, look, if we could wave a wand and every car on the road today would be an autonomous vehicle, we'd probably save, we'd probably go from 40,000 deaths in the US per, you know, year to, you know, maybe a thousand or 2000. And you're like, you're shaving 38,000 lives a year, in doing this. It's a good thing. And, you know, it will have a positive vector on gridlocks and for climate change and all the rest of the stuff.And you go, okay, that replacement, yes, we have to navigate truck jobs and all the rest, but that replacement's good. But I think a lot of it is going to end up being, you know, kind of, various forms of amplification. Like if you get to journalists, you go, oh, it'll help me ask, figure out which interesting questions to add.Not because it'll just go here, here's your script to ask questions. But you can get better information to prep your thinking on it.Eric: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up like the self-driving car case and, you know, you're, are you still on the board of Aurora?Reid: I am.Eric: I've, you know, I covered Uber, so I was in their self-driving cars very early, and they made a lot of promises. Lyft made a lot of promises.I mean, I feel like part of my excitement about this sort of generative AI movement is that it feels like it doesn't require completeness in the same way that self-driving cars do. You know? And that, that, that's been a barrier to self-driving cars. On the flip side, you know, sometimes we sort of wave away the inaccuracy and then we say, you know, we sort of manage it.I think that's what we were sort of talking about earlier. You imagine it in some of the completeness that could come. So I guess the question here is just do you think, what I'm calling the completeness problem. I guess just the idea that it needs to be sort of fully capable will be an issue with the large language models or do you think you have this sort of augmented model where it could sort of stop now and still be extremely useful to much of society?Reid: I think it could stop now and be extremely useful. I've got line of sight on current technology for a tutor, for a doctor, for a bunch of other stuff. One of the things my partner and I wrote last year was that within five years, there's gonna be a co-pilot for every profession.The way to think about that is what professionals do. They process information, they take some kind of action. Sometimes that's generating other information, just like you see with Microsoft's co-pilot product for engineers. And what you can see happening with DallE and other image generation for graphic designers, you'll see this for every professional, that there will be a co-pilot on today's technology that can be built.That's really amazing. I do think that as you continue to make progress, you can potentially make them even more amazing, because part of what happened when you move from, you know, GPT3 to 3.5, which is all of a sudden it can write sonnets. Right? You didn't really know that it was gonna be able to write sonnets.That's giving people superpowers. Most people, including myself—I mean, look, I could write a sonnet if you gave me a couple of days and a lot of coffee and a lot of attempts to really try.Eric: But you wouldn't.Reid: You wouldn't. Yeah. But now I can go, oh, you know, I'd like to, to, um, write a sonnet about my friend Sam Altman.And I can go down and I can sit there and I can kind of type, you know, duh da, and I can generate, well, I don't like that one. Oh, but then I like this one, you know, and da da da. And, and that, that gives you superpowers. I mean, think about what you can do for writing, a whole variety of things with that. And that I think the more and more completeness is the word you are using is I think also a powerful thing. Even though what we have right now is amazing.Eric: Is GPT4 a big improvement over what we have? I assume you've seen a fair bit of unreleased, stuff. Like how hyped should we be about the improvement level?Reid: I have. I'm not really allowed to say very much about it cause, you know, part of the responsibilities of former board members and confidentiality. But I do think that it will be a nice—I think people will look at it and go, Ooh, that's cool. And it will be another iteration, another thing as amazing as ChatGPT has, and obviously that's kind of in the last few months. It's kind of taken the world by storm, opening up this vista of imagination and so forth.I think GPT4 will be another step forward where people will go, Ooh, that's, that, that's another cool thing. I think that's—can't be more specific than that, but watch this space cause it'll be cool.Eric: Throughout this conversation we've danced around this sort of artificial general intelligence question. starting with the discussion of Elon and the creation of eventually Open AI. I'm curious how close you think we are with AGI and this idea of a sort of, I mean, people define it so many different ways, you know, it's more sophisticated than humans in some tasks, you know, mini tasks, whatever.How, how do you think we're far from that? Or how, how, how do you see that playing out?Reid: Personally amongst a lot of the people who are in the field, I'm probably on the, we're-much-further-than-we-think stage. Now, some of that's because I've lived through this before with my undergraduate degree and the, you know, the pattern generally is, oh my God, we've gotten this computer to do this amazing thing that we thought was formally the provence of only these cognitive human beings.And it could do that. So then by the way, in 10 years it'll be solving new science problems like fusion and all the rest. And if you go back to the seventies, you saw that same dialogue. I mean, it, it's, it's an ongoing thing. Now we do have a more amazing set of cognitive capabilities than we did before, and there are some reasons to argue that it could be in a decade or two. Because you say, well, these large language models can enable coding and that coding can all, can then be self, reflective and generative, and that can then make something go. But when I look at the coding and how that works right now, it doesn't generate the kind of code that's like, oh, that's amazing new code.It helps with the, oh, I want to do a parser for quick sort, right? You know, like that kind of stuff. And it's like, okay, that's great. Or a systems integration use of an API or calling in an API for a spellchecker or whatever. Like it's really helpful stuff on engineers, but it's not like, oh my God, it's now inventing the new kind of training of large scale models techniques.And so I think even some of the great optimists will tell you of the great, like believers that it'll be soon and say there's one major invention. And the thing is, once you get to one major invention, is that one major invention? Is that three major inventions? Is it 10 major inventions?Like I think we are some number of major inventions away. I don't, I certainly don't think it's impossible to get there.Eric: Sorry. The major inventions are us human beings build, building things into the system or…?Reid: Yeah. Like for example, you know, can it do, like, for example, a classic, critique of a lot of large language models is can it do common sense reasoning.Eric: Gary Marcus is very…Reid: Exactly. Right. Exactly. And you know, the short answer right now is the large language models are approximating common sense reasoning.Now they're doing it in a powerful and interesting enough way that you're like, well, that's pretty useful. It's pretty helpful about what it's doing, but I agree that it's not yet doing all of that. And also you get problems like, you know, what are called one shot learning. Can you learn from one instance of it?Cause currently the training requires lots and lots of compute processing over days or in self play, can you have an accurate memory store that you update? Like for example, you say now fact X has happened, your entire world based on fact X. Look, there's a bunch of this stuff to all go.And the question is, is that one major invention is that, you know, five major inventions, and by the way, major inventions or major inventions even all the amazing stuff we've done over the last five to 10 years. Major inventions on major inventions. So I myself tend to be two things on the AGI one.I tend to think it's further than most people think. And I don't know if that further is it's 10 years versus five or 20 years versus 10 or 50 years versus 20. I don't, I don't really know.Eric: In your lifetime, do you think?Reid: It's possible, although I don't know. But let me give two other lenses I think on the AGI question cause the other thing that people tend to do is they tend to go, there's like this AI, which is technique machine learning, and there's totally just great, it's augmented intelligence and then there's AGI and who knows what happens with AGI.And you say, well first is AGI is a whole range of possible things. Like what if you said, Hey, I can build something that's the equivalent of a decent engineer or decent doctor, but to run it costs me $200 an hour and I have AGI? But it's $200 an hour. And you're like, okay, well that's cool and that means we can, we can get as many of them as we need. But it's expensive. And so it isn't like all of a sudden, you know, Terminator or you know, or inventing fusion or something like that is AGI and or a potential version of AGI. So what is AGI is the squishy thing that people then go, magic. The second thing is, the way that I've looked at the progress in the last five to eight years is we're building a set of iteratively better savants, right?It just like the chess player was a savant. Um, and, and the savants are interestingly different now. When does savant become a general intelligence and when might savant become a general super intelligence? I don't know. It's obviously a super intelligence already in some ways. Like for example, I wouldn't want to try to play, go against it and win, try to win.It's a super intelligence when it comes, right? But like okay, that's great cause in our perspective, having some savants like this that are super intelligence is really helpful to us. So, so the whole AGI discussion I think tends to go a little bit Hollywood-esque. You know, it's not terminator.Eric: I mean, there there is, there's a sort of argument that could be made. I mean, you know, humans are very human-centric about our beliefs and our intelligence, right? We don't have a theory of mind for other animals. It's very hard for us to prove that other species, you know, have some experience of consciousness like qualia or whatever.Reid: Very philosophically good use of a term by the way.Eric: Thank you. Um, I studied philosophy though. I've forgotten more than I remember. But, um, you know, I mean…Reid: Someday we'll figure out what it's like to be a bat. Probably not this time.Eric: Right, right, exactly. Is that, that's Nagel. If the machine's better than me at chess and go there, there's a level of I, you know, here I am saying it doesn't have an experience, but it, it's so much smarter than me in certain domains.I don't, I, the question is just like, it seems like humans are not capable of seeing what it's like to be a bat. So will we ever really be able to sort of convince ourselves that there's something that it's like to be, um, an AGI system?Reid: Well, I think the answer is um, yes, but it will require a bunch of sophistication. Like one of the things I think is really interesting about, um, as we anthropomorphize the world a little bit and I think some of this machine. Intelligence stuff will, will enable us to do that is, well what does it mean to understand X or, or, or, or no X or experience X or have qualia or whatever else.And right now what we do is we say, well it's some king of shadowy image from being human. So we tend to undercount like animals intelligence. And people tend to be surprised like, look, you know, some animals mate for life and everything else, they clearly have a theory of the world and it's clearly stuff we're doing.We go, ah, they don't have the same kind of consciousness we do. And you're like, well they certainly don't have the same kind of consciousness, but we're not doing a very good job of studying like what the, where it's similar in order it's different. And I think we're gonna need to broaden that out outcome to start saying, well, when you compare us and an eagle or a dolphin or a whale or a chimpanzee or a lion, you know, what are the similarities and and differences?And how this works. And um, and I think that will also then be, well, what happens when it's a silicon substrate? You know? Do we, do we think that consciousness requires a biological substrate? If so, why? Um, and, you know, part of how, of course we get to understand, um, each other's consciousness as we, we get this depth of experience.Where I realize is it isn't, you're just a puppet.Eric:  [laughs] I am, I am just a puppet.Reid: Well, we're, we're talking to each other through Riverside, so, you know, who knows, right. You know, deep fakes and all that.Eric: The AI's already ahead of you. You know, I'm just, it's already, no.Reid: Yeah. I think we're gonna have to get more sophisticated on that question now.I think it's, it's too trivial to say because it can mimic language in particularly interesting ways. And it says, yes, I'm conscious that that makes it conscious. Like that's not, that's not what we use as an instance. And, and part of it is like, do you understand the like part of how we've come to understand each other's consciousness is we realize that we experience things in similar ways.We feel joy in similar, we feel pain in similar ways and that kinda stuff. And that's part of how we begin to understand. And I think it'll be really good that this may kick off kind of us being slightly less kind of call it narcissistically, anthropocentric in this and a broader concept as we look at this.Eric: You know, I was talking to my therapist the other day and I was saying, you know, oh, I did this like kind gesture, but I didn't feel like some profound, like, I don't, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I did it. It felt like I did the right thing should, you know, shouldn't I feel like more around it?And you know, her perspective was much more like, oh, what matters is like doing the thing, not sort of your internal states about it. Which to me would, would go to the, if the machine can, can do all the things we expect from sort of a caring type type machine. Like why do we need to spend all this time when we don't even expect that of humans to always feel the right feelings.Reid: I totally agree with you. Look, I think the real question is what you do. Now that being said, part of how we predict what you do is that, you know, um, you may not have like at that moment gone, haha, I think of myself as really good cause I've done this kind thing. Which by the way, might be a better human thing as opposed to like, I'm doing this cause I'm better than most people.Eric: Right.Reid: Yeah, but it's the pattern in which you engage in these things and part of the feelings and so forth is cause that creates a kind of a reliability of pattern of do you see other people? Do you have the aspiration to have, not just yourself, but the people around you leading better and improving lives.And obviously if that's the behavior that we're seeing from these things, then that's a lot of it. And the only question is, what's that forward looking momentum on it? And I think amongst humans that comes to an intention, a model of the world and so forth. You know, amongst, amongst machines that mean just maybe the no, no, we're aligned.Well, like, we've done a really good alignment with human progress.Eric: Do you think there will be a point in time where it's like an ethical problem to unplug it? Like I think of like a bear, right? Like a bear is dangerous. You know, there are circumstances where pretty comfortable. Killing the bear,But if the bear like hasn't actually done anything, we've taken it under our care. Like we don't just like shoot bears at zoos, you know? Do you think there's a point where like, and it costs us money to sustain the bear at a zoo, do you think there are cases where we might say, oh man, now there's an ethical question around unpluggingReid: I think it's a when, not an if.Eric: Yeah.Reid: Right? I mean, it may be a when, once again, just like AGI, that's a fair way's out. But it's a when, not an if. And by the way, I think that's again, part of the progress that we make because we think about like, how should we be treating it? Because, you know, like for example, if you go back a hundred, 150 years, the whole concept of animal rights doesn't exist in humans.You know, it's like, hey, you wanna, you want to torture animal X to death, you know, like you're queer, but you're, you're, you're allowed to do that. That's an odd thing for you to do. And maybe it's kind of like, like distasteful, like grungy bad in some way, but , you know, it's like, okay. Where's now you're like, oh, that person is, is like going out to try to go torture animals! We should like get them in an institution, right? Like, that's not okay. You know, what is that further progress for the rights and lives? And I think it will ultimately come to things that we think are, when it gets to kind of like things that have their own agency and have their own consciousness and sets of existence.We should be including all of that in some, in some grand or elevated, you know, kind of rights conceptions.Eric: All right, so back back to my listeners who, you know, wanna know where to invest and make money off this and, you know.Reid: [laughs] It isn't from qualia and consciousness. Oh, wait.Eric: Who do you think are the key players? The key players in the models. Then obviously there are more sort of, I don't know if we're calling them vertical solutions or product oriented or whatever, however you think about them.But starting with the models, like who do you see as sort of the real players right now? Are you counting out a Google or do you think they'll still, you know, sort of show?Reid: Oh no. I think Google will show up. And obviously, you know, Open AI, Microsoft has done a ton of stuff. I co-founded Inflection last year with Mustafa Suleyman. We have a just amazing team and I do see a lot of teams, so I'm.Eric: And that's to build sort of the foundational…Reid: Yeah, they're gonna, well, they're building their own models and they're gonna build some things off those models.We haven't really said what they are yet. But that's obviously going to be kind of new models. Adept, another Greylock investment building its own models, Character is building its own models, Anthropic is building its own models. And Anthropic is, you know, Dario and the crew is smart folks from Open AI, they're, they're doing stuff within a kind of a similar research program that Open AI is doing.And so I think those are the ones that I probably most track.Eric: Character's an interesting case and you know, we're still learning more about that company. You know, I was first to report they're looking to raise 250 million. My understanding is that what's interesting is they're building the models, but then for a particular use case, right?Or like, it's really a question of leverage or like, do people need to build the models to be competitive or do you think there will be... can you build a great business on top of Stability or Open AI or do you need to do it yourself?Reid: I think you can, but the way you do it is you can't say it's cause I have unique access to the model. It has to be, you know, I have a business that has network effects or I'm well integrated in enterprise, or I have another deep stack of technology that I'm bringing into it. It can't just be, I'm a lightweight front end to it because then other people can be the lightweight front end.So you can build great businesses. I think with it, I do think that people will both build businesses off, you know, things like the Open AI APIs and I think people will also train models. Because I think one of the things that will definitely happen is a lot of… not just will large models be built in ways that are interesting and compelling, but I think a bunch of smaller models will be built that are specifically tuned and so forth.And there's all kinds of reasons. Everything from you can build them to do something very specific, but also like inference cost, does it, does it run on a low compute or low power footprint? You know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, AI doctor, AI tutor, um, you know, duh and on a cell phone. And, um, and so, you know, I think like all of that, I think the short answer to this is allEric: Right. Do you think we are in a compute arms race still, or do you, do you think this is gonna continue where it's just if you can raise a billion dollars to, to buy sort of com GPU access basically from Microsoft or Amazon or Google, you're, you're gonna be sort of pretty far ahead? Or how do you think about that sort of the money, the money and computing rates shaping up?Reid: So I kind of think about two. There's kind of two lines of trends. There's one line, which is the larger and larger models, which by the way, you say, well, okay, so does the scale compute and one x flop goes to two x flops, and does your performance function go up by that?And it doesn't have to go up by a hundred percent or, or two x or plus one x. It could go up by 25%, but sometimes that really matters. Coding doctors, you know, legal, other things. Well, it's like actually, in fact, it, even though it's twice as expensive, a 25% increase in, you know, twice as expensive of compute, the 25% increase in performance is worth it. And I think you then have a large scale model, like a set of things that are kind of going along need to be using the large scale models.Then I think there's a set of things that don't have that need. And for example, that's one of the reasons I wasn't really surprised at all by the profusion of image generation, cuz those are, you know, generally speaking, trainable for a million to $10 million. I think there's gonna be a range of those.I think, you know, maybe someone will figure out how to do, you know, a hundred-million version and once they figured out how to do a hundred-million dollar version, someone also figured out how to do the 30-million version of that hundred-million dollar version. And there's a second line going on where all of these other smaller models will fit into interesting businesses. And then I think a lot of people will either deploy an open source model that they're using themselves, train their own model, get a special deal with, like a model provider or something else as a way of doing it.And so I think the short answer is there will be both, and you have to be looking at this from what's the specific that this business is doing. You know, the classic issues of, you know, how do you go to market, how do you create a competitive mode? What are the things that give you real, enduring value that people will pay for in some way in a business?All of the, those questions still apply, but the, but, but there's gonna be a panoply of answers, depending on the different models of how it playsEric: Do you think spend on this space in terms of computing will be larger in ‘24 and then larger in 25?Reid: Yes. Unquestionably,Eric: We're on the, we're still on the rise.Reid: Oh, yes. Unquestionably.Eric: That's great for a certain company that you're on the board of.Reid: Well look, and it's not just great for Microsoft. There are these other ones, you know, AWS, Google, but…Eric: Right. It does feel like Amazon's somewhat sleepy here. Do you have any view there?Reid: Well, I think they have begun to realize, what I've heard from the market is that they've begun to realize that they should have some stuff here. I don't think they've yet gotten fully underway. I think they are trying to train some large language models themselves. I don't know if they've even realized that there is a skill to training those large language models, cause like, you know, sometimes people say, well, you just turn on and you run the, run the large language model, the, the training regime that you read in the papers and then you make stuff.We've seen a lot of failures, of people trying to build these things and failing to do so, so, you know, there's, there's an expertise that you learn in doing it as well. And so I think—Eric: Sorry to interrupt—if Microsoft is around Open AI and Google is around Anthropic, is Amazon gonna be around stability? That's sort of the question that I'll put out to the world. I don't know if you have.Reid: I certainly don't know anything. And in the case of, you know, very, very, very, um, a politely said, um, Anthropic and OpenAI have scale with huge models. Stability is all small models, so, hmm.Eric: Yeah. Interesting. I, I don't think I've asked you sort of directly about sort of stepping off the Open AI board. I mean, I would assume you would prefer to be on the board or…?Reid: Yeah. Well, so look, it was a funny thing because, um, you know, I was getting more and more requests from various Greylock portfolio companies cause we've been investing in AI stuff for over five years. Like real AI, not just the, we call it “software AI”, but actual AI companies.For a while and I was getting more and more requests to do it and I was like oh, you know, what I did before was, well here's the channel. Like here is the guy who, the person who handles the API request goes, go talk to them. Like, why can't you help me? I was like, well, I'm on the board.I have a responsibility to not be doing that. And then I realized that, oh s**t, it's gonna look more and more. Um, I might have a real conflict of interest here, even as we're really carefully navigating it and, and it was really important cause you know various forces are gonna kind of try to question the frankly, super deep integrity of Open AI.It's like, look, I, Sam, I think it might be best even though I remain a fan, an ally, um, to helping, I think it may be best for Open AI. And generally to step off a board to avoid a conflict of interest. And we talked about a bunch and said, okay, fine, we'll do it. And you know, I had dinner with Sam last night and most of what we were talking about was kind of the range of what's going on and what are the important things that open eyes need to solve? And how should we be interfacing with governments so that governments understand? What are the key things that, that, that should be in the mix? And what great future things for humanity are really important not to fumble in the, in the generally, like everyone going, oh, I'm worrying. And then I said, oh, I got a question for you. And he's like, yeah, okay. I'm like, now that I'm no longer on the board, could I ask you to personally look at unblocking, my portfolio company's thing to the API? Because I couldn't ever ask you that question before. Cause I would be unethical. But now I'm not on the board, so can I ask the question?He's like, sure, I'll look into it. I'm like, great, right? And that's the substance of it, which I never would've done before. But that wasn't why, I mean, obviously love Sam and the Open AI team.Eric: The fact that you're sort of a Democratic super donor was that in the calculus? Or, because I mean, we are seeing Republican… well, I didn't think that at all coming into this conversation, but just hearing what you're saying. Looking at it now, it feels like Republicans are like trying to find something to be angry about.Reid: WellEric: These AI things, I don't quite…Reid: The unfortunate thing about the, the most vociferous of the republican media ecosystem is they just invent fiction, like their hallucination full out.Eric: Right.Reid: I mean, it just like, I mean, the amount of just like, you know, 2020 election denial and all the rest, which you can tell from having their text released from Fox News that like, here are these people who are on camera going on where you have a question about, you know, what happened in the election.And they're texting each other going, oh my God, this is insane. This is a coup, you know, da da da. And you're like, okay. Anyway, so, so all like, they don't require truth to generate. Heat and friction. So that was, wasn't that no, no. It's just really, it's kind of the question of, when you're serving on a board, you have to understand what your mission is very deeply and, and to navigate it.And part of the 501(C)(3) boards is to say, look, obviously I contribute by being a board member and helping and navigate various circumstances and all the rest. And, you know, I can continue to be a counselor and an aid to the company not being on the board. And one of the things I think is gonna be very important for the next X years, for the entire world to know is that open AI takes its ethics super seriously,Eric: Right.Reid: As do I.Eric: Does that fit with having to invest? I mean, there are lots of companies that do great things. They have investors. I believe in companies probably more than personally I believe in charities to accomplish things. But the duality of OpenAI is extremely confusing. Like, was Greylock, did Greylock itself invest a lot or you invested early as an angel?Reid: I was the founding investor as an angel, as a, as a program related investment from my foundation. Because like I started, I was among the first people to make a philanthropic donation to Open AI. Just straight out, you know, here's a grant by Wednesday, then Sam and Crew came up with this idea for doing this commercial lp, and I said, look, I, I'll help and I have no idea if this will be an interesting economic investment.They didn't have a business plan, they didn't have a revenue plan, they didn't have a product plan. I brought it to Greylock. We talked about it and they said, look, we think this will be possibly a really interesting technology, but you know, part of our responsibility to our LPs, which you know, includes a whole bunch of universities and else we invest in businesses and there is no business plan.Eric: So is that the Khosla did? Khosla's like we invested wild things. Anyway, we don't care. That's sort of what Vinod wants to project anyway, so yeah.Reid: You know, yes, that's exactly the same. So I put them 50 and then he put in a, I think he was the only venture fund investing in that round. But like, there was no business plan, there was no revenue model, there was no go to market…Eric: Well, Sam basically says, someday we're gonna have AGI and we're gonna ask you how to make a bunch of money? Like, is he, that's a joke, right? Or like, how much is he joking?Reid: It's definitely, it's not a 100% joke and it's not a 0% joke. It's a question around, the mission is really about how do we get to AGI or as close to AGI as useful and to make it useful for humanity. And by the way, the closer you get to AGI, the more interesting technologies fall out, including the ability to have the technology itself solve various problems.So if you said, we have a business model problem, it's like, well ask the thing. Now, if you currently sit down and ask, you know, ChatGPT what the business model is, you'll get something pretty vague and generic that wouldn't get you a meeting with a venture capitalist because it's like “we will have ad supported”... you're like, okay. Right.Eric: Don't you have a company that's trying to do pitch decks now or something?Reid: Oh yeah, Tome. No, and it's awesome, but by the way, that's the right kind of thing. Because, because what it does is you say, hey, give me a set of tiles, together with images and graphics and things arguing X and then you start working with the AI to improve it. Say, oh, I need a slide that does this and I need a catchier headline here, and, and you know, da da da.And then you, and you know, obviously you can edit it yourself and so on. So that's the kind of amplification. Now you don't say, give me my business model, right?Eric: You're like, I have this business model, like articulate it.Reid: Exactly.Eric: Um, I, politics, I mean, I feel like we, we live through such like a… you know what I mean, I feel like Silicon Valley, you know, has like, worked on PE everybody be able to, you know, everybody can get along. There's sort of competition, but then you sort of still stay close to any, everybody like, you, you especially like are good, you know, you you are in the PayPal mafia with a lot of people who are fairly very conservative now.The Trump years broke that in some ways and particular, and that, yeah. So how did you maintain those relationships?I see headlines that say you're friends with Peter Thiel. What is, what's the state of your friendship with Peter Thiel and how, how did it survive?I guess the Trump years is the question.Reid: Well, I think the thing that Peter and I learned when we were undergraduate at Stanford together is it's very important to… cause we, you know, I was a lefty. He was a righty. We'd argue a lot to maintain conversation and to argue things. It's difficult to argue on things that feel existential and it's ethically challenged is things around Trump. You know, the, you know, Trump feels to be a corrosive asset upon our democracy that is disfiguring us and staining us to the world. And so to have a dispassionate argument about it is, it's challenging. And it ends up with some uneven ground and statements like, I can't believe you're f*****g saying that, as part of dialogue.But on the other hand, you know, maintaining dialogue is I think part of how we make progress as society. And I basically sympathetic to people as long as they are legitimately and earnestly and committed to the dialogue and discussion of truth between them and committed otherwise.And so, you know, there are folks from the PayPal years that I don't really spend much time talking to, right?. There are others that I do because that conversation about discovering who we are and who we should be is really important. And you can't allow your own position to be the definer.It almost goes back to what we were talking about, the AI side, which is make sure you're talking to other smart people who challenge you to make sure you're doing the right thing. And that's, I think, a good general life principle.Eric: Well, you know, I feel like part of what my dream of like the Silicon Valley world is that we have these, you know, we have, Twitter is like the open forum. We're having sincere sort of on the level debates, but then you see something like, you know, the…Reid: You don't think it's the modern Seinfeld show I got? Well, not Seinfeld, um, Springer, Jerry Springer.Eric: Yeah, that's, yeah. Right. But I just feel like the sort of like, if the arguments are on the level issue is my problem with some of the sort of, I don't know, Peter Theil arguments, that he's not actually publicly advancing his beliefs in a sincere way, and that that's almost more corrosive.Reid: Oh, that's totally corrosive. And as much as that's happening, it's terrible. And that's one of the things that I, um, you know, in conversations I have, I push people including Peter on a lot.Eric: Yeah. Are you still, are you still gonna donate a lot, or what was, what's your, are you as animated about the Democratic party and working through sort of donor channels at the moment?Reid: Well, what I would say is I think that we have a responsibility to try to make, like with, it's kind of the Spider-Man ethics. With power comes responsibility, with wealth comes responsibility, and you have to try to help contribute to… what is the better society that we should be living and navigating in?And so I stay committed on that basis. And I do think there are some really amazing people in the administration. I think Biden is kind of a good everyday guy.Eric: Yeah.Reid: In fact, good for trying to build bridges in the country. I think there are people like Secretary Raimondo and Secretary Buttigieg who are thinking intensely about technology and what should be done in the future.And I think there's other folks now, I think there's a bunch of folks on the democratic side that I think are more concerned with their demagoguery than they are with the right thing in society. And so I tend to be, you know, unsympathetic to, um, you know…Eric: I know, Michael Moritz, it's Sequoia, that oped sort of criticizing San Francisco government, you know, and there's, there's certainly this sort of woke critique of the Democratic Party. I'm curious if there's a piece of it sort of outside of he governance that you're…Reid: Well, the interesting thing about woke is like, well, we're anti woke. And you're like, well, don't you think being awake is a good thing? I mean, it's kind of a funny thing. Eric: And sort of the ill-defined nature of woke is like key to the allegation because it's like, what's the substantive thing you're saying there? And you know, I mean we we're seeing Elon tweet about race right now, which is sort of terrifying anyway.Reid: Yeah. I think the question on this stuff is to try to say, look, people have a lot of different views and a lot of different things and some of those views are, are bad, especially in kind of minority and need to be advocated against in various… part of why we like democracy is to have discourse.I'm very concerned about the status of public discourse. And obviously most people tend to focus that around social media, which obviously has some legitimate things that we need to talk about. But on the other hand, they don't track like these, like opinion shows on, like, Fox News that represent themselves implicitly as news shows and saying, man, this is the following thing.Like there's election fraud in 2020, and then when they're sued for the various forms of deformation, they say, we're just an entertainment show. We don't do anything like news. So we have that within that we are already struggling on a variety of these issues within society. and we, I think we need to sort them all out.Eric: Is there anything on the AI front that we missed or that you wanted to make sure to talk about? I think we covered so much great ground. Reid: And, and we can do it again, right. You know, it's all, it's great.Eric: I love it. This was all the things you're interested in and I'm interested in, so great. I really enjoyed having you on the podcast and thanks.Reid: Likewise. And, you know, I follow the stuff you do and it's, it's, it's cool and keep doing it. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Casey and Dave almost made it to the end on January without doing a bad DVG episode but if anyone is going to remedy that it's Moisty Magic. This week on DVG Casey and Dave are joined by Lauren Thiel and Moisty Magic in what everyone can only hope will be the worst episode released this year. Despite Dave and Lauren's attempts to keep the episode on track Casey and Moisty ensure the smut flows freely. Moisty's talking A Serbian Film, Lauren's talking The Notebook, Dave's in love with Frank Grillo and Casey burps more than ever. Moisty believes so heavily in this episode that if you send a screenshot of this episode playing on your device along with your email they will send you a very special personalised photo. Listen to Dave's Video Graveyard on itunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.or direct download the mp3 from the link below:https://www.buzzsprout.com/186739/12134959-worst-episode-ever-with-lauren-thiel-moisty-magic.mp3?download=trueFollow Moisty Magic:https://www.instagram.com/missmoisty/https://www.instagram.com/politicswithapinup/https://www.buzzsprout.com/1868811Follow Lauren at the following:https://linktr.ee/LaurencomedyStalk us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or send us your sweet nothings at davesvideograveyard@gmail.com#laurenthiel #davesvideograveyard #movies #film #davesvideograveyard #moviepodcast #filmpodcast

“What choices are you making?” In this episode, Kelly Thiel shares her journey of becoming unapologetically glorious. She enlightens us on how we could rediscover our own personal brand of gloriousness. She talks about her experience with the notorious NXIVM cult and how she was able to gain back her freedom and take back control of her destiny. “You cannot control everything, but you can choose what you do.” Connect with Kelly Thiel: Website: https://www.kellythiel.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekellythiel/ Bridget's Story: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Kelly-Thiel-ebook/dp/B005MMFZT2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=kelly+thiel&qid=1638297861&sr=8-1 Seduced Documentary: https://seduceddocumentary.com/thewomen/KellyThiel/ Thank you for joining me on this MIRROR TALK podcast journey. Kindly stay connected by subscribing or following on any platform. Please do not forget to leave a review and rating. Let us connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mirrortalk.podcast/ More inspiring episodes and show notes here: https://mirrortalkpodcast.com/ Your opinions, thoughts, suggestions and comments matter to us. Share them here: https://mirrortalkpodcast.com/your-opinion-matters/ I love, see and appreciate you.

In Episode 21 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin introduces you to billionaire investor and technocrat who takes money from the CIA, is partnered with the IRS, donates to transhumanist and singularity causes, and is helping build the technocratic prison planet. Dustin ties Thiel, Lars Buttler, Deepak Choprah, and Ray Kurzweil together in their quest for immortality and transhumanism. Dustin showcases several new companies that prove the Fourth Industrial Era is in full swing. Dustin begins introducing the technocrat's investments in psychedelics. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 21 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin introduces you to billionaire investor and technocrat who takes money from the CIA, is partnered with the IRS, donates to transhumanist and singularity causes, and is helping build the technocratic prison planet. Dustin ties Thiel, Lars Buttler, Deepak Choprah, and Ray Kurzweil together in their quest for immortality and transhumanism. Dustin showcases several new companies that prove the Fourth Industrial Era is in full swing. Dustin begins introducing the technocrat's investments in psychedelics. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 21 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin introduces you to billionaire investor and technocrat who takes money from the CIA, is partnered with the IRS, donates to transhumanist and singularity causes, and is helping build the technocratic prison planet. Dustin ties Thiel, Lars Buttler, Deepak Choprah, and Ray Kurzweil together in their quest for immortality and transhumanism. Dustin showcases several new companies that prove the Fourth Industrial Era is in full swing. Dustin begins introducing the technocrat's investments in psychedelics. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 21 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin introduces you to billionaire investor and technocrat who takes money from the CIA, is partnered with the IRS, donates to transhumanist and singularity causes, and is helping build the technocratic prison planet. Dustin ties Thiel, Lars Buttler, Deepak Choprah, and Ray Kurzweil together in their quest for immortality and transhumanism. Dustin showcases several new companies that prove the Fourth Industrial Era is in full swing. Dustin begins introducing the technocrat's investments in psychedelics. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Colin interviews Stephanie Thiel, owner and founder of Honeybee Wildflowers. Enjoy the episode! Thanks for listening! Connect with Stephanie on instagram: @honeybeewildflowers Visit honeybeewildflowers.com for more info! Contact Colin: https://www.colinandcarly.com/ Johnson City Living is hosted by Colin Johnson with Keller Williams Realty in Johnson City, TN.

As a child, SmartSweets founder Tara Bosch used to eat candy for breakfast. As an adult, the entrepreneur is eating her competitors for lunch. Launched in 2016, Bosch created SmartSweets as an alternative to the vast majority of legacy candy brands whose products are made with high amounts of sugar and often include artificial colors and flavors. The Canadian entrepreneur was ambitious from the start, envisioning the company as a global player in the multi-billion dollar confectionary industry.  Leading with a message of “Kick Sugar, Keep Candy,” the brand markets a range of low-sugar candy in familiar formats, including gummies, licorice, sour snacks, lollipops and caramels. Primarily sweetened with allulose, a naturally occurring sweetener that is found in foods like raisins and figs, the products typically contain 1-3g of sugar per bag or serving size. Within four years of its debut, SmartSweets was carried by over 25,000 stores in North America, including Target, Kroger, Walmart and Whole Foods and generating $100 million in annual sales. The remarkable growth drew the attention of private equity firm TPG Capital in 2020, which acquired a majority stake in the company for $360 million. In this episode, Bosch spoke about her emphasis on great taste as a way to distinguish SmartSweets from both similarly positioned and traditional candy brands, how prioritizing a lean business model in its early development enabled the company to be nimble and outpace its competitors, why its growth strategy is built around “patient urgency” and how the brand's highly effective social media strategy drove consumers to its retailers. Show notes: 0:45: Tara Bosch, Founder, SmartSweets – Taste Radio editor Ray Latif spoke with Tara Bosch about her homebase of Vancouver, why she accepted a Thiel fellowship in lieu of a college degree, how she addressed the stigma of bad taste in low-sugar candy and why she envisioned SmartSweets as a brand with broad appeal. She also explained the value of first mover advantage and having very specific annual objectives, building a team of generalists and the “radical focus” driving SmartSweets social media strategy. Brands in this episode: SmartSweets, Snickers

In Episode 49 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin discusses Peter Thiel's new Prison Planet contracts with the government and explains why Thiel is neither a conservative or libertarian. Dustin analyzes Elon Musk's unveiling of his new humanoid robot and with this is a bad sign for humanity. Dustin breaks down Bruce WIllis' possible digital twin deep fake deal and why it really matters. Dustin shares a new restaurant app designed to put an end to wait staff and why blue collar folks need to speak up now. Dustin breaks down a World Economic Forum conference on the blending of the digital and physical worlds. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 49 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin discusses Peter Thiel's new Prison Planet contracts with the government and explains why Thiel is neither a conservative or libertarian. Dustin analyzes Elon Musk's unveiling of his new humanoid robot and with this is a bad sign for humanity. Dustin breaks down Bruce WIllis' possible digital twin deep fake deal and why it really matters. Dustin shares a new restaurant app designed to put an end to wait staff and why blue collar folks need to speak up now. Dustin breaks down a World Economic Forum conference on the blending of the digital and physical worlds. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 49 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin discusses Peter Thiel's new Prison Planet contracts with the government and explains why Thiel is neither a conservative or libertarian. Dustin analyzes Elon Musk's unveiling of his new humanoid robot and with this is a bad sign for humanity. Dustin breaks down Bruce WIllis' possible digital twin deep fake deal and why it really matters. Dustin shares a new restaurant app designed to put an end to wait staff and why blue collar folks need to speak up now. Dustin breaks down a World Economic Forum conference on the blending of the digital and physical worlds. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 49 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin discusses Peter Thiel's new Prison Planet contracts with the government and explains why Thiel is neither a conservative or libertarian. Dustin analyzes Elon Musk's unveiling of his new humanoid robot and with this is a bad sign for humanity. Dustin breaks down Bruce WIllis' possible digital twin deep fake deal and why it really matters. Dustin shares a new restaurant app designed to put an end to wait staff and why blue collar folks need to speak up now. Dustin breaks down a World Economic Forum conference on the blending of the digital and physical worlds. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PART 2 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PART 6 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PART 5 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PART 4 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PART 3 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PART 1 - Goin' Postal; Paine & Maria Blow Torch Tucker, Hannity, Musk, Thiel, Fauci, Trump, Taibbi, and the Grifter Circus; Plus What Happened to us Free-Range Humans?'SIMPLY PUT -- We Cannot Say Much of the 'Really Good Stuff' on HereThat's Why We Created Paine.tvYOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***GET the Intel that's Too Hot For Anywhere Else atPAINE.TVCONTRIBUTE TO THE SHOW BY CLICKING THIS LINK -- *** DONATE HERE ***...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We've heard much talk and debate about the modern motorcycle, with its computer systems and how it affects one's ability to ride in remote or far off places. Some riders insist on riding bikes that have older technology, while others say the new systems are reliable and are worth the risk of the remote chance of having a problem. The choices for new motorcycles without computer technology is dwindling quickly as manufacturers modernize their line-up, complying with emissions requirements around the globe. But what is this system that we're so afraid of? This computer system that is so magical, mysterious and yet loathsome for a rider with a broken one? Is it really as difficult, as out of reach, as impenetrable and difficult to understand as many would have you believe? This, travel and motorcycles on today's episode of ARR. Photos and links for this episode can be found on our website at adventureriderradio.com Adventure Rider Radio is the original and longest running adventure motorcycle and travel podcast and has been produced weekly since 2014! You can count on us to be there for you every Thursday with a new and exciting episode, we never miss a week. And we hope we can count on you for your support. Become a Patreon supporter for just $5 a month and get a sticker and ad-free listening. Make a one time donation of just $10 and we'll send you a sticker. A donation of $50 or more also gets you a shout-out on RAW. To become a supporter please head over to the Support page on our website. Thank you!

In Episode 97 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin begins a deep dive into technocrat Joseph Lubin who is the co-founder of Ethereum along with Peter Thiel Fellow Vitalik Buterin. Buterin began working on Ethereum in 2013 and Thiel funded him to continue his work in 2014. In 2015, Buterin launched Ethereum and Lubin founded ConsenSys, Lubin is working with various government and “private” sector companies to develop CBDC infrastructure for the Central Banks. Lubin is connected to the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and Bank for International Settlements on CBDC architecture. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are joined by Jason Van Thiel, the director of research for Helios - investment management, wealth management, and FinTech platform. We discuss how technology has changed the landscape for financial advisory, wealth management, and asset management in terms of how advisors work with their clients and their need to do more for them. We talk about the baby boomer retirement trend and the consolidation that it is causing within the industry. Jason also gives insight into how advisors can be proactive in their communication with clients by leveraging technology and segmenting their books to deliver personalized communication. We then delve into Helios' white-labeled back office solution that allows advisors to outsource asset management programs while continuing to own their asset management program. Jason shares his experience as a former employee of large household name firms and provides tips on how financial advisors can remain disciplined during this challenging market environment, such as using trend-following methods. Tune in now to gain valuable insight into how technology is revolutionizing financial advising! [00:07 - 13:42] The Wealth Management IndustryTechnology has enabled financial advisors to provide more services to their clientsHelios provides a white-labeled back office solution for advisors to focus on where they excelHelios uses the term "insourced CIO" which is different from an outsourced CIOAdvisors need to pay attention to data points and give clients simple, cogent information [13:43 - 22:34] Being Relevant in an Ever-Changing IndustryLoosened barriers to spinning out with service providers and partnersGenerational change and wealth transfer from baby boomers to millennials/Gen ZAcademic trends following research can guide risk positioningAlternatives to the market such as fixed income, direct real estate, private credit, etc. becoming more attractive [22:35 - 31:35] Leveraging Technology to Democratize Investment Management Democratization of investment management has made it easier for financial advisors to access different platformsFinancial advisors should increase communication and transparency with clients during times of uncertaintyClients should be segmented and given personalized communications based on their preferences [31:36 - 33:42] Closing Segment Quote/s: "But I think with technology as an enablement, if you do that smartly and intelligently that will help the advisor and the shop that's done their homework lead to better outcomes." - Jason Van Theil Connect with Jason:Email: jason.vanthiel@heliosdriven.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvanthiel/ Connect with me on LinkedIn!LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, AND LEAVE US A REVIEW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on. Thank you for tuning in and Stay Tuned for the Next Episode COMING SOON!

I had fun chatting with Aarthi and Sriram.We discuss what it takes to be successful in technology, what Sriram would say if Elon tapped him to be the next CEO of Twitter, why more married couples don't start businesses together, and how Aarthi hires and finds 10x engineers.Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan are the hosts of The Good Times Show. They have had leading roles in several technology companies from Meta to Twitter to Netflix and have been founders and investors. Sriram is currently a general partner at a16z crypto and Aarthi is an angel investor.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Timestamps(00:00:00) - Intro(00:01:19) - Married Couples Co-founding Businesses(00:09:53) - 10x Engineers(00:16:00) - 15 Minute Meetings(00:22:57) - a16z's Edge?(00:26:42) - Future of Twitter(00:30:58) - Is Big Tech Overstaffed?(00:38:37) - Next CEO of Twitter?(00:43:13) - Why Don't More Venture Capitalists Become Founders?(00:47:32) - Role of Boards(00:52:03) - Failing Upwards(00:56:00) - Underrated CEOs(01:02:18) - Founder Education(01:06:27) - What TV Show Would Sriram Make?(01:10:14) - Undervalued Founder ArchetypesTranscriptThis transcript was autogenerated and thus may contain errors.[00:00:00] Aarthi: it's refreshing to have Elon come in and say, we are gonna work really hard. We are gonna be really hardcore about how we build things.[00:00:05] Dwarkesh: Let's say Elon and says Tomorrow, Sriram, would you be down to be the [00:00:08] Sriram: CEO of Twitter Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I am married to someone. We [00:00:12] Aarthi: used to do overnights at Microsoft. Like we'd just sleep under our desk,, until the janitor would just , poke us out of there , I really need to vacuum your cubicle. Like, get out of here. There's such joy in , Finding those moments where you work hard and you're feeling really good about it. [00:00:25] Sriram: You'd be amazed at how many times Aarthi and I would have a conversation where be, oh, this algorithm thing.I remember designing it, and now we are on the other side We want to invest in something , where we think the team and the company is going to win and if they do win, there's huge value to be unlocked. [00:00:40] Dwarkesh: Okay. Today I have the, uh, good pleasure to have Arty and Sriram on the podcast and I'm really excited about this.So you guys have your own show, the Arty Andre Good Time show. Um, you guys have had some of the top people in tech and entertainment on Elon Musk, mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Yang, and you guys are both former founders. Advisors, investors, uh, general partner at Anderson Horowitz, and you're an angel investor and an advisor now.Um, so yeah, there's so much to talk about. Um, obviously there's also the, uh, recent news about your, uh, your involvement on, uh, twitter.com. Yeah, yeah. Let's get started. [00:01:19] Married Couples Starting Businesses[00:01:19] Dwarkesh: My first question, you guys are married, of course. People talk about getting a co-founder as finding a spouse, and I'm curious why it's not the case that given this relationship why more married people don't form tech startups.Is, does that already happen, [00:01:35] Aarthi: or, um, I actually am now starting to see a fair bit of it. Uhhuh, . Um, I, I do agree that wasn't a norm before. Um, I think, uh, I, I think I remember asking, uh, pg p the same thing when I went through yc, and I think he kind of pointed to him and Jessica like, you know, YC was their startup , and so, you know, there were even pride.There are a lot of husband and wife, uh, companies. Over the last like decade or so. So I'm definitely seeing that more mainstream. But yeah, you're right, it hasn't been the norm before. Yeah, the, the good time show is our project. It's [00:02:09] Sriram: our startup. Very, I mean, there are some good historical examples. Cisco, for example, uh, came from, uh, uh, husband, wife as a few other examples.I think, you know, on, on the, in, on the pro side, uh, you know, being co-founders, uh, you need trust. You need to really know each other. Uh, you, you go through a lot of like heavy emotional burdens together. And there's probably, and if you, you're for the spouse, hopefully you probably have a lot of chemistry and understanding, and that should help.On the con side, I think one is you, you're prob you know, you, you're gonna show up at work, you know, and startups are really hard, really intense. And you come home and both of you are gonna the exact same wavelength, the exact same time, going through the exact same highs and lows as opposed to two people, two different jobs have maybe differing highs and lows.So that's really hard. Uh, the second part of it is, uh, in a lot of. Work situations, it may just be more challenging where people are like, well, like, you know, person X said this person Y said this, what do I do? Uh, and if you need to fire somebody or you know, something weird happens corporate in a corporate manner, that may also be really hard.Uh, but having said that, you know, uh, [00:03:13] Aarthi: you know, yeah, no, I think both of those are like kind of overblown , like, you know, I think the reason why, um, you know, you're generally, they say you need to have you, it's good to have co-founders is so that you can kind of like write the emotional wave in a complimentary fashion.Uh, and you know, if one person's like really depressed about something, the other person can like pull them out of it and have a more rational viewpoint. I feel like in marriages it works even better. So I feel like to your first point, They know each other really well. You're, you're, you are going to bring your work to home.There is no separation between work and home as far as a startup is concerned. So why not do it together? Oh, [00:03:51] Sriram: well, I think there's one problem, uh, which is, uh, we are kind of unique because we've been together for over 21 years now, and we start for, we've been before, uh, let's not. Wow. There's gonna be some fact checking 19 on this video.99. Close enough. Close enough, right? Like close enough. He wishes he was 21. Oh, right, right, right. Gosh, feels like 21. We have do some, um, [00:04:15] Aarthi: editing on this video. No, no, no. I think 20 years of virtually knowing, 19 years of in-person. [00:04:20] Sriram: There we go. Right. Uh, fact check accurate. Um, ex experts agree. But, um, you know, but when you first met, we, we originally, even before we dating, we were like, Hey, we wanna do a company together.And we bonded over technology, like our first conversation on Yahoo Messenger talking about all these founders and how we wanted to be like them. And we actually then worked together pretty briefly when you were in Microsoft. Uh, before we actually started dating. We were on these sort of talent teams and we kind of met each of the word context.I think a lot of. You know, one is they have never worked together. Um, and so being in work situations, everything from how you run a meeting to how you disagree, uh, you know, uh, is just going to be different. And I think that's gonna be a learning curve for a lot of couples who be like, Hey, it's one thing to have a strong, stable relationship at home.It'll be a different thing to, you know, be in a meeting and you're disagreeing art's meetings very differently from I do. She obsesses over metrics. I'm like, ah, it's close enough. It's fine. , uh, it's close enough. It's fine. as e uh, here already. But, uh, so I do think there's a learning curve, a couples who is like, oh, working together is different than, you know, raising your family and being together.I mean, obviously gives you a strong foundation, but it's not the same thing. Have you guys [00:05:25] Dwarkesh: considered starting a company or a venture together at some point? [00:05:28] Aarthi: Yeah. Um, we've, uh, we've always wanted to do a project together. I don't know if it's a, a startup or a company or a venture. You have done a project together,Yeah, exactly. I think, uh, almost to today. Two years ago we started the Good Time Show, um, and we started at, uh, live Audio on Clubhouse. And, you know, we recently moved it onto video on YouTube. And, um, it's, it's been really fun because now I get to see like, it, it's neither of our full-time jobs, uh, but we spend enough, um, just cycles thinking through what we wanna do with it and what, uh, how to have good conversations and how to make it useful for our audience.So that's our [00:06:06] Sriram: project together. Yep. And we treat it like a, with the intellectual heft of a startup, which is, uh, we look at the metrics, uh, and we are like, oh, this is a good week. The metrics are up into the right and, you know, how do we, you know, what is working for our audience? You know, what do we do to get great guests?What do we do to [00:06:21] Aarthi: get, yeah, we just did our first, uh, in-person meetup, uh, for listeners of the podcast in Chennai. It was great. We had like over a hundred people who showed up. And it was also like, you know, typical startup style, like meet your customers and we could like go talk to these people in person and figure out like what do they like about it?Which episodes do they really enjoy? And it's one thing to see YouTube comments, it's another to like actually in person engage with people. So I think, you know, we started it purely accidentally. We didn't really expect it to be like the show that we are, we are in right now, but we really happy. It's, it's kind of turned out the way it has.[00:06:59] Sriram: Absolutely. And, and it also kind of helps me scratch an edge, which is, uh, you know, building something, you know, keeps you close to the ground. So being able to actually do the thing yourself as opposed to maybe tell someone else, telling you how to do the, so for example, it, it being video editing or audio or how thumbnails, thumbnails or, uh, just the mechanics of, you know, uh, how to build anything.So, uh, I, I dot think it's important. Roll up your sleeves metaphorically and get your hands dirty and know things. And this really helped us understand the world of creators and content. Uh, and it's fun and [00:07:31] Aarthi: go talk to other creators. Uh, like I think when we started out this thing on YouTube, I think I remember Shram just reached out to like so many creators being like, I wanna understand how it works for you.Like, what do you do? And these are people who like, who are so accomplished, who are so successful, and they do this for a living. And we clearly don. And so, uh, just to go learn from these experts. It's, it's kind of nice, like to be a student again and to just learn, uh, a new industry all over again and figure out how to actually be a creator on this platform.Well, you know [00:08:01] Dwarkesh: what's really interesting is both of you have been, uh, executives and led product in social media companies. Yeah. And so you are, you designed the products, these creators, their music, and now on the other end, you guys are building [00:08:12] Sriram: the, oh, I have a great phrase for it, right? Like, somebody, every once in a while somebody would be like, Hey, you know what, uh, you folks are on the leadership team of some of these companies.Why don't you have hundreds of millions of followers? Right? And I would go, Hey, look, it's not like every economist is a billionaire, , uh, uh, you know, it doesn't work that way. Uh, but during that is a parallel, which, which is, uh, you'd be amazed at how many times Aarthi and I would have a conversation where be, oh, this algorithm thing.I remember designing it, or I was in the meeting when this thing happened, and now we are on the other side, which is like, Hey, you might be the economist who told somebody to implement a fiscal policy. And now we are like, oh, okay, how do I actually go do this and create values and how? Anyway, how do we do exactly.Create an audience and go build something interesting. So there is definitely some irony to it, uh, where, uh, but I think hopefully it does give us some level of insight where, uh, we have seen, you know, enough of like what actually works on social media, which is how do you build a connection with your audience?Uh, how do you build, uh, content? How do you actually do it on a regular, uh, teams? I think [00:09:07] Aarthi: the biggest difference is we don't see the algorithm as a bra, as a black box. I think we kind of see it as like when the, with the metrics, we are able to, one, have empathy for the teams building this. And two, I think, uh, we kind of know there's no big magic bullet.Like I think a lot of this is about showing up, being really consistent, um, you know, being able to like put out some really interesting content that people actually want to, and you know, I think a lot of people forget about that part of it and kind of focus. If you did this one thing, your distribution goes up a lot and here's this like, other like secret hack and you know Sure.Like those are like really short term stuff, but really in the long term, the magic is to just like keep at it. Yeah. And, uh, put out really, really good content. [00:09:48] Sriram: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's good to hear. . [00:09:53] 10x Engineers[00:09:53] Dwarkesh: Um, so you've both, um, led teams that have, you know, dozens or even hundreds of people.Um, how easy is it for you to tell who the 10 X engineers are? Is it something that you as managers and executives can tell easily or [00:10:06] Sriram: no? Uh, absolutely. I think you can tell this very easily or repeat of time and it doesn't, I think a couple of ways. One is, uh, Uh, before, let's say before you work with someone, um, 10 x people just don't suddenly start becoming 10 x.They usually have a history of becoming 10 x, uh, of, you know, being really good at what they do. And you can, you know, the cliche line is you can sort of connect the dots. Uh, you start seeing achievements pile up and achievements could be anything. It could be a bunch of projects. It could be a bunch of GitHub code commits.It could be some amazing writing on ck, but whatever it is, like somebody just doesn't show up and become a 10 x person, they probably have a track record of already doing it. The second part of it is, I've seen this is multiple people, uh, who are not named so that they don't get hired from the companies actually want them to be in, or I can then hire them in the future is, uh, you know, they will make incredibly rapid progress very quickly.So, uh, I have a couple of examples and almost independently, I know it's independently, so I have a couple of. Um, and I actually, and name both, right? Like, so one is, uh, this guy named, uh, Vijay Raji, uh, who, uh, was probably one of Facebook's best engineers. He's now the CEO of a company called Stats. And, um, he was probably my first exposure to the real TenX engineer.And I remembered this because, uh, you know, at the time I was. Kind of in my twenties, I had just joined Facebook. I was working on ads, and he basically built a large part of Facebook's ad system over the weekend. And what he would do is he would just go, and then he con he [00:11:24] Aarthi: continued to do that with Facebook marketplace.Yeah. Like he's done this like over and over and over [00:11:28] Sriram: again. . Yeah. And, and it's not that, you know, there's one burst of genius. It's just this consistent stream of every day that's a code checkin stuff is working. New demo somebody, he sent out a new bill or something working. And so before like a week or two, you just like a, you know, you running against Usain Bolt and he's kind of running laps around you.He's so far ahead of everyone else and you're like, oh, this guy is definitely ahead. Uh, the second story I have is, uh, of, uh, John Carmack, uh, you know, who's legend and I never worked with him in, uh, directly with, you know, hopefully someday I can fix. But, uh, somebody told me a story about him. Which is, uh, that the person told me story was like, I never thought a individual could replace the output of a hundred percent team until I saw John.And there's a great story where, um, you know, and so John was the most senior level at Facebook and from a hr, you know, employment insecurity perspective for an individual contributor, and it at, at that level, at Facebook, uh, for folks who kind of work in these big tech companies, it is the most, the highest tier of accomplishment in getting a year in a performance review is something called xcs Expectations, or, sorry, redefines, right?Which basically means like, you have redefined what it means for somebody to perform in this level, right? Like, it's like somebody, you know, like somebody on a four minute mile, I'll be running a two minute mile or whatever, right? You're like, oh, and, and it is incredibly hard sometimes. You doing, and this guy John gets it three years in a row, right?And so there's this leadership team of all the, you know, the really most important people on Facebook. And they're like, well, we should really promote John, right? Like, because he's done this three years in a row, he's changing the industry. Three years in a row and then they realized, oh wait, there is no level to promote him to Nick be CEOWell, maybe I don't think he wanted to. And so, uh, the story I heard, and I dunno, it's true, but I like to believe it's true, is they invented a level which still now only John Carmack has gotten. Right. And, um, and I think, you know, it's his level of productivity, uh, his, uh, intellect, uh, and the consistency over time and mu and you know, if you talk to anybody, Facebook work with him, he's like, oh, he replaced hundred people, teams all by themselves and maybe was better than a hundred percent team just because he had a consistency of vision, clarity, and activity.So those are [00:13:32] Aarthi: the two stories I've also noticed. I think, uh, actually sheam, I think our first kind of exposure to 10 x engineer was actually Barry born, uh, from Microsoft. So Barry, um, uh, basically wrote pretty much all the emulation engines and emulation systems that we all use, uh, and uh, just prolific, uh, and I think in addition to what Fred had said with like qualities and tenets, Um, the, I've generally seen these folks to also be like low ego and kind of almost have this like responsibility to, um, mentor coach other people.Uh, and Barry kind of like took us under his wing and he would do these like Tuesday lunches with us, where we would just ask like, you know, we were like fresh out of college and we just ask these like really dumb questions on, you know, um, scaling things and how do you build stuff. And I was working on, uh, run times and loaders and compilers and stuff.And so he would just take the time to just answer our questions and just be there and be really like, nice about it. I remember when you moved to Redmond, he would just like spend a weekend just like, oh yeah. Driving you about and just doing things like that, but very low ego and within their teams and their art, they're just considered to be legends.Yes. Like, you know, everybody would be like, oh, Barry Bond. Yeah, of course. [00:14:47] Sriram: Yeah. It, I can't emphasize enough the consistency part of it. Um, you know, with Barry. Or I gotta briefly work with Dave Cutler, who's kind of the father of modern operating systems, uh, is every day you're on this email li list at the time, which would show you check-ins as they happen.They would have something every single day, um, every day, and it'll be tangible and meaty and you know, and you just get a sense that this person is not the same as everybody else. Um, by the, this couple of people I can actually point to who haven't worked with, uh, but I follow on YouTube or streaming. Uh, one is, uh, Andrea Ling who builds Serenity Os we had a great episode with him.Oh, the other is George Hart's, uh, geo Hart. And I urge people, if you haven't, I haven't worked with either of them, uh, but if I urge which to kinda watch their streams, right? Because, uh, you go like, well, how does the anti killing build a web browser on an operating system? Which he builds by himself in such a sharp period of time and he watches stream and he's not doing some magical new, you know, bit flipping sorting algorithm anybody has, nobody has seen before.He's just doing everything you would do, but. Five bits of speed. I, yep, exactly. [00:15:48] Dwarkesh: I I'm a big fan of the George Hot Streams and Yeah, that's exactly what, you know, it's like yeah, you, he's also curling requests and he is also, you know, you know, spinning up an experiment in a Jupyter Notebook, but yeah, just doing it [00:15:58] Aarthi: away way faster, way efficiently.Yeah. [00:16:00] 15 Minute Meetings[00:16:00] Dwarkesh: Yeah. That's really interesting. Um, so ar Arthur, I'm, you've gone through Y Combinator and famously they have that 15 minute interview Yes. Where they try to grok what your business is and what your potential is. Yeah, yeah. But just generally, it seems like in Silicon Valley you guys have, make a lot of decisions in terms of investing or other kinds of things.You, in very short calls, you know. Yeah. . Yeah. And how much can you really, what is it that you're learning in these 15 minute calls when you're deciding, should I invest in this person? What is their potential? What is happening in that 15 minutes? [00:16:31] Aarthi: Um, I can speak about YC from the other side, from like, uh, being a founder pitching, right.I think, yes, there is a 15 minute interview, but before that, there is a whole YC application process. And, uh, I think even for the, for YC as, uh, this bunch of the set of investors, I'm sure they're looking for specific signals, but for me as a founder, the application process was so useful, um, because it really makes you think about what you're building.Why are you building this? Are you the right person to be building this? Who are the other people you should be hiring? And so, I mean, there are like few questions or like, one of my favorite questions is, um, how have you hacked a non-computer system to your advantage? Yeah. . And it kind of really makes you think about, huh, and you kind of noticed that many good founders have that pattern of like hacking other systems to their advantage.Um, and so to me, I think more than the interview itself, the process of like filling out the application form, doing that little video, all of that gives you better, um, it gives you the, the entire scope of your company in your head because it's really hard when you have this idea and you're kind of like noodling about with it and talking to a few people.You don't really know if this is a thing. To just like crystallize the whole vision in your head. I think, uh, that's on point. Yes. Um, the 15 minute interview for me, honestly, it was like kind of controversial because, uh, I went in that morning, I did the whole, you know, I, I had basically stayed at the previous night, uh, building out this website and, uh, that morning I showed up and I had my laptop open.I'm like really eager to like tell them what you're building and I keep getting cut off and I realize much later that that's kind of my design. Yeah. And you just like cut off all the time. Be like, why would anybody use this? And you start to answer and be like, oh, but I, I don't agree with that. And there's just like, and it, it's like part of it is like, makes you upset, but part of it is also like, it makes you think how to compress all that information in a really short amount of time and tell them.Um, and so that interview happens, I feel really bummed out because I kind of had this website I wanted to show them. So while walking out the door, I remember just showing Gary, Dan, um, the website and he like kind of like. Scrolls it a little bit, and he is like, this is really beautifully done. And I was like, thank you.I've been wanting to show you this for 15 minutes. Um, and I, I mentioned it to Gary recently and he laughed about it. And then, uh, I didn't get selected in that timeframe. They gave me a call and they said, come back again in the evening and we are going to do round two because we are not sure. Yeah. And so the second interview there was PG and Jessica and they both were sitting there and they were just grueling me.It was a slightly longer interview and PG was like, I don't think this is gonna work. And I'm like, how can you say that? I think this market's really big. And I'm just like getting really upset because I've been waiting this whole day to like get to this point. And he's just being like cynical and negative.And then at some point he starts smiling at Jessica and I'm like, oh, okay. They're just like baiting me to figure it out. And so that was my process. And I, by the evening, I remember Shera was working at. I remember driving down from Mountain View to Facebook and Sheam took me to the Sweet Stop. Oh yeah.Which is like their, you know, Facebook has this like, fancy, uh, sweet store, like the ice cream store. I [00:19:37] Sriram: think they had a lot more perks over the years, but that was very fancy back then. [00:19:40] Aarthi: So I had like two scoops of ice cream in each hand in, and, uh, the phone rang and I was like, oh, hold onto this. And I grabbed it and I, and you know, I think it was Michael Sibu or I don't know who, but somebody called me and said, you're through.So that was kind of my process. So even though there was only 15 minutes, mine was actually much longer after. But even before the, the application process was like much more detailed. So it sounds [00:20:01] Dwarkesh: like the 15 minutes it's really there. Like, can they rattle you? Can they, can they [00:20:06] Aarthi: you and how do you react?Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I also think they look for how sex you can be in explaining what the problem is. They do talk to hundreds of companies. It is a lot. And so I think, can you compress a lot of it and convince, if you can convince these folks here in three months or four months time, how are you going to do demo day and convince a whole room full of investors?[00:20:27] Sriram: Yeah. Yeah. For, I think it's a bit different for us, uh, on the VC side, uh, because two things. One, number one is, uh, the day, you know, so much of it is having a prepared mind before you go into the meeting. And, for example, if you're meeting a. very early. Are we investing before having met every single other person who's working in this space, who has ideas in the space.So you generally know what's going on, you know, what the kind of technologies are or go to market approaches are. You've probably done a bunch of homework already. It's usually, uh, it does happen where you meet somebody totally cold and uh, you really want to invest, but most often you've probably done some homework at least in this space, if not the actual company.Um, and so when you're in the meeting, I think you're trying to judge a couple of things. And these are obviously kind of stolen from Christ Dixon and others. Um, one is their ability to kind of go walk you through their idea, ma. And so very simply, um, you know, the idea MAs is, uh, and I think say the biology of Christen came with this, the idea that, hey, um, uh, How you got to the idea for your company really matters because you went and explored all the data ends, all the possibilities.You're managing around for years and years, and you've kind of come to the actual solution. And the way you can tell whether somebody's gone through the idea Mac, is when you ask 'em questions and they tell you about like five different things they've tried, did not work. And it, it's really hard to fake it.I mean, we, you maybe fake it for like one or two questions, but if you talk about like how we tried X, Y, and Z and they have like an opinion what of the opinions, if they've thought about it, you're like, okay, this person really studied the idea, ma. And that's very powerful. Uh, the second part of it is, uh, you know, Alex sample.Uh, uh, one of my partner says this, Yes, some this thing called the Manifestation Framework, which sounds like a self-help book on Amazon, but it's not, uh, uh uh, you know, but what if is, is like, you know, so many, so much of early stage startup founders is about the ability to manifest things. Uh, manifest capital, manifest the first hire, uh, manifest, uh, the first BD partnership.And, um, usually, you know, if you can't, if you don't have a Cigna sign of doing that, it's really hard to then after raising money, go and close this amazing hotshot engineer or salesperson or close this big partnership. And so in the meeting, right? If you can't convince us, right? And these are people, our day job is to give you money, right?Like, if I spent a year without giving anybody money, I'll probably get fired. If you can't, uh, if you can't convince us to give you money, right? If you wanna find probably a hard time to close this amazing engineer and get that person to come over from Facebook or close this amazing partnership against a competitor.And so that's kind of a judge of that. So it is never about the actual 60 Minutes where you're like, we, we are making up of a large part of makeup of mind is. That one or two conversations, but there's so much which goes in before and after that. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of [00:22:57] What is a16z's edge?[00:22:57] Dwarkesh: venture capital, um, I, I'm curious, so interest and Horowitz, and I guess why Combinator too?Um, but I mean, any other person who's investing in startups, they were started at a time when there were much less capital in the space, and today of course, there's been so much more capital pour into space. So how do these firms, like how does A 16 C continue to have edge? What is this edge? How can I sustain it [00:23:20] Sriram: given the fact that so much more capital is entered into the space?We show up on podcasts like the Lunar Society, , and so if you are watching this and you have a startup idea, Uh, come to us, right? Uh, no. Come, come to the Lunar society. . Well, yes. I mean, maybe so Trust me, you go in pat, you're gonna have a find, uh, a Thk pat right there. Uh, actually I, you think I joked, but there's a bit of truth.But no, I've had [00:23:40] Dwarkesh: like lu this [00:23:40] Aarthi: suddenly became very different [00:23:43] Sriram: conversation. I have had people, this is a totally ludicrous [00:23:46] Dwarkesh: idea, but I've had people like, give me that idea. And it's like, it sounds crazy to me because like, I don't know what, it's, what a company's gonna be successful, right? So, but I hasn't [00:23:55] Aarthi: become an investor.[00:23:57] Sriram: I honestly don't know. But it is something like what you're talking about Lu Society Fund one coming up, right? You heard it here first? Uh, uh, well, I think first of all, you know, I think there's something about the firm, uh, um, in terms of how it's set up philosophically and how it's set up, uh, kind of organizationally, uh, and our approach philosoph.The firm is an optimist, uh, uh, more than anything else. At the core of it, we are optimist. We are optimist about the future. We are optimist about the impact of founders on their, on the liberty to kind of impact that future. Uh, we are optimist at heart, right? Like I, I tell people like, you can't work at a six and z if you're not an optimist.That's at the heart of everything that we do. Um, and very tied to that is the idea that, you know, um, software is eating the world. It is, it's true. 10 years ago when Mark wrote that, peace is as true now, and we just see more and more of it, right? Like every week, you know, look at the week we are recording this.You know, everyone's been talking about chat, G p T, and like all the industries that can get shaped by chat, G P T. So our, our feature, our, our idea is that software is gonna go more and more. So, one way to look at this is, yes, a lot more capitalists enter the world, but there should be a lot more, right?Like, because these companies are gonna go bigger. They're gonna have bigger impacts on, uh, human lives and, and the world at large. So that's, uh, you know, uh, one school of thought, the other school of thought, uh, which I think you were asking about, say valuations, uh, et cetera. Is, uh, you know, um, again, one of my other partners, Jeff Jordan, uh, uh, always likes to tell people like, we don't go discount shopping, right?Our, the way we think about it is we want to, when we're investing in a market, We want to really map out the market, right? Uh, so for example, I work on crypto, uh, and, uh, you know, we, you know, if, if you are building something interesting in crypto and we haven't seen you, we haven't talked to you, that's a fail, that's a mess, right?We ideally want to see every single interesting founder company idea. And a category can be very loose. Crypto is really big. We usually segmented something else. Or if you look at enterprise infrastructure, you can take them into like, you know, AI or different layers and so on. But once you map out a category, you want to know everything.You wanna know every interesting person, every interesting founder you wanna be abreast of every technology change, every go to market hack, every single thing. You wanna know everything, right? And then, uh, the idea is that, uh, we would love to invest in, you know, the what is hopefully becomes the market.Set category, uh, or you know, somebody who's maybe close to the, the market leader. And our belief is that these categories will grow and, you know, they will capture huge value. Um, and as a whole, software is still can used to be undervalued by, uh, a, you know, the world. So, um, we, so, which is why, again, going back to what Jeff would say, he's like, we are not in the business of oh, we are getting a great deal, right?We, we are like, we want to invest in something which, where we think the team and the company and their approach is going to win in this space, and we want to help them win. And we think if they do win, there's a huge value to be unlocked. Yeah, I see. I see. Um, [00:26:42] Future of Twitter[00:26:42] Dwarkesh: let's talk about Twitter. [00:26:44] Sriram: Uh, . I need a drink. I need a drink.[00:26:48] Dwarkesh: um, Tell me, what is the future of Twitter? What is the app gonna look like in five years? You've, um, I mean obviously you've been involved with the Musk Venture recently, but, um, you've, you've had a senior position there. You were an executive there before a few years ago, and you've also been an executive at, uh, you've both been at Meta.So what [00:27:06] Sriram: is the future of Twitter? It's gonna be entertaining. Uh, uh, what is it El say the most entertaining outcome is the most, [00:27:12] Aarthi: uh, uh, like, best outcome is the most, uh, most likely outcome is the most entertaining outcome. [00:27:16] Sriram: Exactly right. So I think it's gonna be the most entertaining outcome. Um, I, I mean, I, I, I think a few things, uh, first of all, uh, ideally care about Twitter.Yeah. Uh, and all of my involvement, uh, you know, over the years, uh, uh, professionally, you know, uh, has, it's kind of. A lagging indicator to the value I got from the service person. I have met hundreds of people, uh, through Twitter. Uh, hundreds of people have reached out to me. Thousands. Exactly. Uh, and you know, I met Mark Andresen through Twitter.Uh, I met like, you know, uh, people are not very good friends of mine. We met through Twitter. We met at Twitter, right. There we go. Right. Uh, just [00:27:50] Aarthi: like incredible outsized impact. Yeah. Um, and I think it's really hard to understate that because, uh, right now it's kind of easy to get lost in the whole, you know, Elon, the previous management bio, like all of that.Outside of all of that, I think the thing I like to care about is, uh, focus on is the product and the product experience. And I think even with the product experience that we have today, which hasn't like, dramatically changed from for years now, um, it's still offering such outsized value for. If you can actually innovate and build really good product on top, I think it can, it can just be really, really good for humanity overall.And I don't even mean this in like a cheesy way. I really think Twitter as a tool could be just really, really effective and enormously good for everyone. Oh yeah. [00:28:35] Sriram: Twitter is I think, sort of methodically upstream of everything that happens in culture in uh, so many different ways. Like, um, you know, there was this, okay, I kinda eli some of the details, uh, but like a few years ago I remember there was this, uh, sort of this somewhat salacious, controversial story which happened in entertainment and uh, and I wasn't paying attention to, except that something caught my eye, which was that, uh, every story had the same two tweets.And these are not tweets from any famous person. It was just some, like, some, um, you know, somebody had some followers, but not a lot of, a lot of followers. And I. Why is this being quoted in every single story? Because it's not from the, you know, the person who was actually in the story or themselves. And it turned out that, uh, what had happened was, uh, you know, somebody wrote in the street, it had gone viral, um, it started trending on Twitter, um, and a bunch of people saw it.They started writing news stories about it. And by that afternoon it was now, you know, gone from a meme to now reality. And like in a lot of people entertainment say, kind of go respond to that. And I've seen this again and again, again, right? Uh, sports, politics, culture, et cetera. So Twitter is memetically upstream of so much of life.Uh, you know, one of my friends had said like, Twitter is more important than the real world. Uh, which I don't, I don't know about that, but, uh, you know, I do think it's, um, it has huge sort of, uh, culture shaping value. Yeah. I thing I think about Twitter is so much of. The network is very Lindy. So one of the things I'm sure from now is like five years from now, you know, what does that mean?Well that, uh, is that something which has kind of stood the test of time to some extent? And, um, and, uh, well the Lindy effect generally means, I don't think it's using this context with ideas like things which, with withstood the test of time tend to also with some test of time in the future, right? Like, like if we talked to Naim is like, well, people have lifting heavy weights and doing red wine for 2000 years, so let's continue doing that.It's probably a good thing. Um, but, but, but that's Twitter today. What is the future of Twitter? Well, uh, well, I think so one is, I think that's gonna continue to be true, right? 10 years from now, five years from now, it's still gonna be the metic battleground. It's still gonna be the place where ideas are shared, et cetera.Um, you know, I'm very. Unabashedly a a big fan of what Elon, uh, as a person, as a founder and what he's doing at Twitter. And my hope is that, you know, he can kind of canoe that and, you know, he's, you know, and I can't actually predict what he's gonna go Bill, he's kind of talked about it. Maybe that means bringing in other product ideas.Uh, I think he's talked about payments. He's talked about like having like longer form video. Uh, who knows, right? But I do know, like five years from now, it is still gonna be the place of like active conversation where people fight, yell, discuss, and maybe sometimes altogether. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, the Twitter, [00:30:58] Is Big Tech Overstaffed?[00:30:58] Dwarkesh: um, conversation has raised a lot of, a lot of questions about how over or understaffed, uh, these big tech companies are, and in particular, um, how many people you can get rid of and the thing basically functions or how fragile are these code bases?And having worked at many of these big tech companies, how, how big is the bus factor, would you guess? Like what, what percentage of people could I fire at the random big tech [00:31:22] Sriram: company? Why? I think, uh, [00:31:23] Aarthi: yeah, I think. That's one way to look at it. I think the way I see it is there are a few factors that go into this, right?Like pre covid, post covid, like through covid everybody became remote, remote teams. As you scaled, it was kind of also hard to figure out what was really going on in different parts of the organization. And I think a lot of inefficiencies were overcome by just hiring more people. It's like, oh, you know what, like that team, yeah, that project's like lagging, let's just like add 10 more people.And that's kind of like it became the norm. Yeah. And I think a lot of these teams just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I think the other part of it was also, um, you lot of how performance ratings and culture of like, moving ahead in your career path. And a lot of these companies were dependent on how big your team was and uh, and so every six months or year long cycle or whatever is your performance review cycle, people would be like, this person instead of looking at what has this person shipped or what has like the impact that this person's got had, uh, the team's done.It became more of like, well this person's got a hundred percent arc or 200% arc and next year they're gonna have a 10% increase and that's gonna be like this much. And you know, that was the conversation. And so a lot of the success and promo cycles and all of those conversations were tied around like number of headcount that this person would get under them as such, which I think is like a terrible way to think about how you're moving up the ladder.Um, you should really, like, even at a big company, you should really be thinking about the impact that you've had and customers you've reached and all of that stuff. And I think at some point people kind of like lost that, uh, and pick the more simpler metric, which just headcount and it's easy. Yeah. And to just scale that kind of thing.So I think now with Elon doing this where he is like cutting costs, and I think Elon's doing this for different set of reasons. You know, Twitter's been losing money and I think it's like driving efficiency. Like this is like no different. Anybody else who like comes in, takes over a business and looks at it and says, wait, we are losing money every day.We have to do something about this. Like, it's not about like, you know, cutting fat for the sake of it or anything. It's like this, this business is not gonna be viable if we keep it going the way it is. Yeah. And just pure economics. And so when he came in and did that, I'm now seeing this, and I'm sure Sheam is too at like at eight 16 Z and like his companies, uh, but even outside, and I see this with like my angel investment portfolio of companies, um, and just founders I talk to where people are like, wait, Elon can do that with Twitter.I really need to do that with my company. And it's given them the permission to be more aggressive and to kind of get back into the basics of why are we building what we are building? These are our customers, this is our revenue. Why do we have these many employees? What do they all do? And not from a place of like being cynical, but from a place of.I want people to be efficient in doing what they do and how do we [00:34:06] Sriram: make that happen? Yeah. I, I stole this, I think somebody said this on Twitter and I officially, he said, Elon has shifted the overturn window of, uh, the playbook for running a company. Um, which is, I think if you look at Twitter, uh, you know, and by the way, I would say, you know, you know the sort of, the warning that shows up, which is don't try this at home before, which is like, so don't try some of these unless you're er and maybe try your own version of these.But, you know, number one is the idea that you, you can become better not through growth, but by cutting things. You can become better, by demanding more out of yourself and the people who work for you. Uh, you, you can become better by hiring a, you know, a higher bar, sitting a higher bar for the talent that you bring into the company and, uh, that you reach into the company.I think at the heart of it, by the way, uh, you know, it's one of the things I've kinda observed from Elon. His relentless focus on substance, which is every condition is gonna be like, you know, the, the meme about what have you gotten done this week is, it kinda makes sense to everything else, which is like, okay, what are we building?What is the thing? Who's the actual person doing the work? As opposed to the some manager two levels a about aggregating, you know, the reports and then telling you what's being done. There is a relentless focus on substance. And my theory is, by the way, I think maybe some of it comes from Iran's background in, uh, space and Tesla, where at the end of the day, you are bound by the physics of the real world, right?If you get something wrong, right, you can, the rockets won't take off or won't land. That'd be a kalo, right? Like what, what's a, the phrase that they use, uh, rapid unplanned disassembly is the word. Right? Which is like better than saying it went kaboom. Uh, but, you know, so the constraints are if, if, you know, if you get something wrong at a social media company, people can tell if you get something really wrong at space with the Tesla.People can tap, right? Like very dramatically so and so, and I think, so there was a relentless focus on substance, right? Uh, being correct, um, you know, what is actually being done. And I think that's external Twitter too. And I think a lot of other founders I've talked to, uh, uh, in, sometimes in private, I look at this and go, oh, there is no different playbook that they have always I instituted or they were used to when they were growing up.We saw this when we were growing up. They're definitely seen some other cultures around the world where we can now actually do this because we've seen somebody else do this. And they don't have to do the exact same thing, you know, Elon is doing. Uh, they don't have to, uh, but they can do their variations of demanding more of themselves, demanding more of the people that work for them.Um, focusing on substance, focusing on speed. Uh, I think our all core element. [00:36:24] Aarthi: I also think over the last few years, uh, this may be controversial, I don't know why it is, but it somehow is that you can no longer talk about hard work as like a recipe for success. And you know, like growing up for us. When people say that, or like our parents say that, we just like kind of roll our eyes and be like, yeah, sure.Like, we work hard, like we get it. Yeah. But I think over the last couple of years, it just became not cool to say that if you work hard, then you can, there is a shot at like finding success. And I think it's kind of refreshing almost, uh, to have Elon come in and say, we are gonna work really hard. We are gonna be really hardcore about how we build things.And it's, it's very simple. Like you have to put in the hours. There is no kind of shortcut to it. And I think it's, it's nice to bring it all tight, all back to the basics. And, uh, I like that, like, I like the fact that we are now talking about it again and it's, it's sad that now talking about working really hard or having beds in your office, we used to do that at MicrosoftYeah. Uh, is now like suddenly really controversial. And so, um, I'm, I'm all for this. Like, you know, it's not for everyone, but if you are that type of person who really enjoys working hard, really enjoys shipping things and building really good things, Then I think you might find a fit in this culture. And I think that's a good thing.Yeah. I, [00:37:39] Sriram: I think there's nothing remarkable that has been built without people just working really hard. It doesn't happen for years and years, but I think for strong, some short-term burst of some really passionate, motivated, smart people working some really, you know, and hard doesn't mean time. It can mean so many different dimensions, but I don't think anything great gets built without that.So, uh, yeah, it's interesting. We [00:37:59] Aarthi: used to like do overnights at Microsoft. Like we'd just like sleep under our desk, um, until the janitor would just like, poke us out of there like, I really need to vacuum your cubicle. Like, get out of here. And so we would just like find another bed or something and just like, go crash on some couch.But it was, those were like some of our fun days, like, and we look back at it and you're like, we sh we built a lot. I think at some point sh I think when I walked over to his cubicle, he was like looking at Windows Source code and we're like, we are looking at Windows source code. This is the best thing ever.I think, I think there's such joy in like, Finding those moments where you like work hard and you're feeling really good about it. [00:38:36] Sriram: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you [00:38:37] Next CEO of Twitter?[00:38:37] Dwarkesh: get working hard and bringing talent into the company, uh, let's say Elon and says Tomorrow, you know what, uh, Riam, I'm, uh, I've got these other three companies that I've gotta run and I need some help running this company.And he says, Sriram would you be down to be the next, [00:38:51] Sriram: uh, next CEO of Twitter Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I am married to someone. No, uh uh, no, uh uh, you know, you know when, uh, I don't think I was, the answer is absolutely not. And you know this exactly. Fun story. Um, uh, I don't think it says in public before. So when you, when I was in the process, you know, talking to and nor words and, you know, it's, it's not like a, uh, it's not like a very linear process.It's kind of a relationship that kind of develops over time. And I met Mark Andreen, uh, multiple times over the years. They've been having this discussion of like, Hey, do you want to come do venture or do you want to, if you wanna do venture, do you wanna come do with us? And um, and, and one of the things Mark would always tell me is, uh, something like, we would love to have you, but you have to scratch the edge of being an operator first.Um, because there are a lot of, there are a lot of ways VCs fail, uh, operator at VCs fail. Um, and I can get, get into some of them if you're interested, but one of the common ways that they fail is they're like, oh, I really want to go back to, um, building companies. And, uh, and now thing is like antis more than most interest, like really respects entrepreneurship, fraud's the hard of what we do.But he will, like, you have to get that out of a system. You have to be like, okay, I'm done with that word. I want to now do this. Uh, before you know, uh, you want to come over, right? And if you say so, let's have this conversation, but if not, we will wait for you. Right. And a woman telling me this all the time, and at some point of time I decided, uh, that, uh, you know, I just love this modoc.Um, you know, there are many things kind of different about being an operator versus a BC uh, and you kind of actually kind of really train myself in what is actually a new profession. But one of the things is like, you know, you kind of have to be more of a coach and more open to like, working with very different kinds of people without having direct agency.And it's always a very different mode of operation, right? And you have to be like, well, I'm not the person doing the thing. I'm not the person getting the glory. I'm here to fund, obviously, but really help support coach be, uh, a lending hand, be a supporting shoulder, whatever the, uh, the metaphor is, or for somebody else doing the thing.And so you kind of have to have the shift in your brain. And I think sometimes when VCs don't work out, the few operator on VCs don't work out. There are few reasons. Uh, number one reason I would say is when an operator, and I, I hate the word operator by the way, right? It just means you have a regular job.Uh, you know, uh, and, uh, but the number one reason is like when you have a regular job, you know, you're an engineer, you're, you're a product manager, you're a marketer, whatever. , you get feedback every single day about how you're doing. If you're an engineer, you're checking in code or you know your manager, you hire a great person, whatever it is.When you're at Visa, you're not getting direct feedback, right? You know, maybe today what I'm doing now, recording this with you is the best thing ever because some amazing fund is gonna meet it and they're gonna come talk to me, or maybe it's a total waste of time and I should be talking some else. You do have no way of knowing.So you really have to think very differently about how you think about patients, how we think about spending your time, and you don't get the dopamine of like, oh, I'm getting this great reinforcement loop. Um, the second part of it is because of that lack of feedback loop, you often don't know how well you're doing.Also, you don't have that fantastic product demo or you're like, you know, if an engineer like, oh, I got this thing working, the builder is working, it's 10 x faster, or this thing actually works, whatever the thing is, you don't get that feedback loop, uh, because that next great company that, you know, the next Larry and Sergey or Brian Armstrong might walk in through your door or Zoom meeting tomorrow or maybe two years from now.So you don't really have a way to know. Um, so you kind of have to be, you have a focus on different ways to do, uh, get. Kind of figured out how well you're doing. The third part of it is, uh, you know, the, uh, the feedback loops are so long where, uh, you know, you, you can't test it. When I was a product manager, you would ship things, something you, if you don't like it, you kill it, you ship something else.At, at our firm in, you invest in somebody, you're working with them for a decade, if not longer, really for life in some ways. So you are making much more intense, but much less frequent decisions as opposed to when you're in a regular job, you're making very frequent, very common decisions, uh, every single day.So, uh, I get a lot of differences and I think, you know, sometimes, uh, you know, folks who, who are like a former CEO or former like VP product, uh, uh, I talk a lot of them sometimes who went from, came to BC and then went back and they either couldn't adapt or didn't like it, or didn't like the emotions of it.And I had to really convince myself that okay. Hopefully wouldn't fate those problems. I probably, maybe some other problems. And, uh, uh, so yes, the long way of saying no, , [00:43:13] Why Don't More Venture Capitalists Become Founders?[00:43:13] Dwarkesh: um, the desk partly answer another question I had, which was, you know, there is obviously this pipeline of people who are founders who become venture capitalists.And it's interesting to me. I would think that the other end or the converse of that would be just as common because if you're, if you're an angel investor or venture capitalist, you've seen all these companies, you've seen dozens of companies go through all these challenges and then you'd be like, oh, I, I understand.[00:43:36] Sriram: Wait, why do you think more VCs driven apart? You have some strong opinions of this . [00:43:40] Dwarkesh: Should more venture capitalists and investors become founders? I think [00:43:43] Aarthi: they should. I don't think they will. Ouch. I dunno, why not? Um, I think, uh, look, I think the world is better with more founders. More people should start companies, more people should be building things.I fundamentally think that's what needs to happen. Like our single biggest need is like, we just don't have enough founders. And we should just all be trying new things, building new projects, all of that. Um, I think for venture capital is, I think what happens, and this is just my take, I don't know if Farram agrees with it, but, um, I think they see so much from different companies.And if you're like really successful with what you do as a vc, you are probably seeing hundreds of companies operate. You're seeing how the sausage is being made in each one of them. Like an operating job. You kind of sort of like have this linear learning experience. You go from one job to the other.Here you kind of sort of see in parallel, like you're probably on like 50, 60 boards. Uh, and oftentimes when it comes to the investor as like an issue, it is usually a bad problem. Um, and you kind of see like you, you know, you kind of see how every company, what the challenges are, and every company probably has like, you know, the best companies we know, I've all had this like near death experience and they've come out of that.That's how the best founders are made. Um, you see all of that and I think at some point you kind of have this fear of like, I don't know. I just don't think I wanna like, bet everything into this one startup. One thing, I think it's very hard to have focus if you've honed your skillset to be much more breath first and go look at like a portfolio of companies being helpful to every one of them.And I see Sure. And do this every day where I, I have no idea how he does it, but key context, which is every 30 minutes. Yeah. And it's crazy. Like I would go completely and say, where if you told me board meeting this founder pitch, oh, sell this operating role for this portfolio company. Second board meeting, third, board meeting founder, pitch founder pitch founder pitch.And that's like, you know, all day, every day nonstop. Um, that's just like, you, you, I don't think you can like, kind of turn your mindset into being like, I'm gonna clear up my calendar and I'm just gonna like work on this one thing. Yeah. And it may be successful, it may not be, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.It's a very, very different psychology. I don't know. What do you [00:45:57] Sriram: think? Well, Well, one of my partners Triess to say like, I don't know what VCs do all day. The job is so easy, uh, uh, you know, they should start complaining. I mean, being a founder is really hard. Um, and I think, you know, there's a part of it where the VCs are like, oh, wait, I see how hard it is.And I'm like, I'm happy to support, but I don't know whether I can go through with it. So, because it's just really hard and which is kind of like why we have like, so much, uh, sort of respect and empathy, uh, for the whole thing, which is, I, [00:46:20] Aarthi: I do like a lot of VCs, the best VCs I know are people who've been operators in the past because they have a lot of empathy for what it takes to go operate.Um, and I've generally connected better with them because you're like, oh, okay, you're a builder. You've built these things, so, you know, kind of thing. Yeah. Um, but I do think a lot more VCs should become [00:46:38] Sriram: founders than, yeah. I, I think it's some of the couple of other things which happened, which is, uh, uh, like Arthur said, like sometimes, uh, you know, when we see you kind of, you see, you kind of start to pattern match, like on.And you sometimes you analyze and, and you kind of, your brain kind of becomes so focused on context switching. And I think when need a founder, you need to kind of just dedicate, you know, everything to just one idea. And it, it's not just bbc sometimes with academics also, where sometimes you are like a person who's supporting multiple different kinds of disciplines and context switching between like various speech students you support.Uh, but it's very different from being in the lab and working on one problem for like long, long years. Right. So, um, and I think it's kind of hard to then context switch back into just doing the exact, you know, just focus on one problem, one mission, day in and day out. So I think that's hard, uh, and uh, but you should be a founder.Yeah, I think, yeah, I think more people should try. [00:47:32] Role of Boards[00:47:32] Dwarkesh: . Speaking of being on boards, uh, what the FTX Saga has raised some questions about what is like the role of a board, even in a startup, uh, stage company, and you guys are on multiple boards, so I'm curious how you think about, there's a range of between micromanaging everything the CEO does to just rubber stamping everything the CEO does.Where, what is the responsibility of a board and a startup? [00:47:54] Aarthi: What, what, what are the, this is something I'm really curious about too. I'm [00:47:57] Sriram: just, well, I just wanna know on the FDX soccer, whether we are gonna beat the FTX episode in interviews in terms of view your podcast, right? Like, so if you folks are listening, right?Like let's get us to number one. So what you YouTube like can subscriber, they're already listening. [00:48:10] Aarthi: What do you mean? Get us [00:48:10] Sriram: to number one? Okay, then, then spread the word, right? Like, uh, don't [00:48:13] Aarthi: watch other episodes. It's kinda what you [00:48:15] Sriram: should, I mean, if there's [00:48:16] Dwarkesh: like some sort of scandal with a 16 Z, we could definitely be to fdx.[00:48:21] Sriram: Uh, uh, yeah, I think it's gonna, well, it's gonna be really hard to read that one. Uh, , uh, uh, for for sure. Uh, uh, oh my goodness. Um, uh, but no, [00:48:29] Aarthi: I'm, I'm genuinely curious about [00:48:31] Sriram: these two. Well, uh, it's a few things, you know, so the multiple schools of thought, I would say, you know, there's one school of thought, which is the, uh, uh, you know, which I don't think I totally subscribe to, but I think some of the other later stages, especially public market folks that I work with sometimes subscribe to, which is the only job of a, uh, board is to hire and fire the ceo.I don't think I really subscribe to that. I think because we deal with more, uh, early stage venture, um, and our job is like, uh, you know, like lot of the companies I work with are in a cdc c, b, you know, they have something working, but they have a lot long way to go. Um, and hopefully this journey, which goes on for many, many years, and I think the best way I thought about it is to, people would say like, you want to be.Wave form dampener, which is, uh, you know, for example, if the company's kind of like soaring, you want to kind of be like kind the check and balance of what? Like, hey, okay, what do we do to, uh, you know, um, uh, to make sure we are covering our bases or dotting the is dotting the, crossing The ts be very kind of like careful about it because the natural gravitational pool of the company is gonna take it like one direct.On the other hand, uh, if the company's not doing very well and everybody's beating us, beating up about it, you're, you know, your cust you're not able to close deals. The press is beating you up. You want to be the person who is supportive to the ceo, who's rallying, everybody helping, you know, convince management to stay, helping convince, close host, hire.So, um, there are a lot of things, other things that go into being a board member. Obviously there's a fiscal responsibility part of things, and, um, you know, um, because you kind of represent so many stakeholders. But I think at the heart of it, I kind of think about, uh, you know, how do I sort of help the founder, uh, the founder and kind of dampen the waveform.Um, the other Pinteresting part was actually the board meetings. Uh, Themselves do. Uh, and I do think like, you know, about once a year or, uh, so like that there's every kind of, there's, there's almost always a point every 18 months or so in a company's lifetime where you have like some very decisive, interesting moment, right?It could be good, it could be bad. And I think those moments can be, uh, really, really pivotal. So I think there's, there's huge value in showing up to board meetings, being really prepared, uh, uh, where you've done your homework, you, you know, you've kind of had all the conversations maybe beforehand. Um, and you're coming into add real value, like nothing kind of annoying me if somebody's just kind of showing up and, you know, they're kind of maybe cheering on the founder once or twice and they kind of go away.So I don't think you can make big difference, but, uh, you know, I think about, okay, how are we sort of like the waveform, the, you know, make sure the company, [00:50:58] Aarthi: but I guess the question then is like, should startups have better corporate governance compared to where we are today? Would that have avoided, like, say the FTX [00:51:08] Sriram: saga?No, I mean, it's, I mean, we, I guess there'll be a legal process and you'll find out right when the FTX case, nobody really knows, you know, like, I mean, like what level of, uh, who knew what, when, and what level of deceptions, you know, deception, uh, uh, you know, unfolded, right? So, uh, it, yeah. Maybe, but you know, it could have been, uh, it could have been very possible that, you know, uh, somebody, somebody just fakes or lies stuff, uh, lies to you in multiple ways.[00:51:36] Aarthi: To,

Check out our article "Malta Citizenship by Investment 2022: The Ultimate Guide": https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/second-passport/malta-citizenship-by-investment/ Get Our Help: https://nomadcapitalist.com/apply/ Join Our Email List and be the First to Hear about Breaking News and Exciting Offers https://nomadcapitalist.com/email Get on the waiting list and join us for the next Nomad Capitalist Live: www.nomadcapitalist.com/live/ Malta — The island nation of more than 500,000 people shares similarities with any Southern California beach town. With a Mediterranean climate, Malta attracts tourists from across the European continent, hoping to squeeze out the last days of the summer sun in mid-September. Among those whom Malta has attracted is Peter Thiel, the Los Angeles-based technology investor, who has become one of the biggest individual donors in recent U.S. elections. He has applied for citizenship to Malta, according to documents viewed by The New York Times and three people with knowledge of the matter. Thiel, a PayPal co-founder and the first outside investor on Facebook, backed Donald Trump in 2016 with a late $1.25 million donation. And in this midterm election cycle, he has spent about $30 million supporting the campaigns of more than a dozen Republican candidates, who have pledged to combat perceived globalist influences on the U.S. government and to put “America First." In this video, Andrew shares Peter Thiel's passport portfolio. Andrew is reading this article: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-10-18/peter-thiel-malta-jd-vance-blake-masters The Nomad Capitalist is the world's most sought-after expert on legal offshore tax strategies, investment immigration, and global citizenship. We work exclusively with seven- and eight-figure entrepreneurs and investors who want to "go where they're treated best." Nomad Capitalist has created and implemented plans for 1000+ clients and helped them to go offshore, keep more of their wealth, and enjoy an unprecedented level of global freedom. Our growing team of researchers, strategies, and implementers add to our ever-growing knowledge base of the best options available. We've built our team around our holistic approach to serving the needs of globally-minded entrepreneurs and investors. Our growing team of researchers, strategies, and implementers add to our ever-growing knowledge base of the best options available. In addition, we've spent years studying the behavior of hundreds of clients in order to help people get the results they want faster and with less effort. About Andrew: https://nomadcapitalist.com/about/ Our Website: http://www.nomadcapitalist.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=nomadcapitalist Buy Andrew's Book: https://nomadcapitalist.com/book/ DISCLAIMER: The information in this video should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Nomad Capitalist can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.    

Hey guys! This week we have Nicholas E. Radice on the podcast. Nicholas is a distressed and real asset investor with a unique approach to markets. Nicholas is from Upstate NY and got his start in distressed investing after growing up in the midst of a manufacturing collapse in his hometown. After graduating from Cornell University, Nicholas worked under famous distressed investor Ian Cumming, before starting his own private investment holding company, backed by Peter Thiel. This podcast dives into Nicholas's unique investment approach as he combines lessons from Cumming and Thiel into the forgotten corners of the markets like microcaps, dark stocks, and real asset plays. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to follow Nicholas on Twitter @NICKRADICAL4. Here's a time-stamp of our discussion: [0:00] Introduction [6:00] Reducing Complexity [9:02] Finding What Matters Most [16:15] Defining Circle of Competence [28:00] Short Term Skeptic, Long Term Optimist [35:00] Lessons from Ian Cumming & Peter Thiel [60:00] Discarding Ideas Quickly [72:00] Dark Stocks, OTC Stocks, and Microcap Ideas [74:23] Mistakes of Omission [80:05] Closing Questions Finally, a big thanks to the following sponsors for making the podcast a reality. Mitimco This episode is brought to you by MIT Investment Management Company, also known as MITIMCo, the investment office of MIT. Each year, MITIMCo invests in a handful of new emerging managers who it believes can earn exceptional long-term returns in support of MIT's mission. To help the emerging manager community more broadly, they created emergingmanagers.org, a website for emerging manager stockpickers. For those looking to start a stock-picking fund or just looking to learn about how others have done it, I highly recommend the site. You'll find essays and interviews by successful emerging managers, service providers used by MIT's own managers, essays MITIMCo has written for emerging managers and more! Tegus Tegus has the world's largest collection of instantly available interviews on all the public and private companies you care about. Tegus actually makes primary research fun and effortless, too. Instead of weeks and months, you can learn a new industry or company in hours, and all from those that know it best. I spend nearly all my time reading Tegus calls on existing holdings and new ideas. And I know you will too. So if you're interested, head on over to tegus.co/valuehive for a free trial to see for yourself. TIKR TIKR is THE BEST resource for all stock market data, I use TIKR every day in my process, and I know you will too. Make sure to check them out at TIKR.com/hive --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/valuehive/support

How well do you know your liver? Yes, really.  In this podcast, I had a great time learning from the smartest 96-year-old ever! - Thelma King Thiel, RN, popularly known as "The Liver Lady". Thelma's crusade against liver disease began five decades ago when she lost her infant son Dean, to a rare and fatal liver disease. She has been a tireless advocate for promoting liver education and the prevention of liver disease for over half a century. She formerly ran the American Liver Foundation and Hepatitis Foundation International for a combined 30 years. Listen as she shares lessons about the liver and why she calls it the 'silent' organ. To learn more about her work, visit: https://www.liver-health.org/     Disclaimer: The views, opinions, beliefs, and resources shared in this podcast are those of the guests, and are not meant to be endorsements of the TIME with Fred Podcast.  

In their first ever conversation, Evan interviews Matt Duron, someone he hoped would get him a gig at his college (Thiel) back in 2007. Unfortunately, 15 years later, Evan has still not played Thiel but he is still friends with Matt. Hear about Matt’s writing exploits, potential books in the works and his reaction to […] The post Matt Duron – Ep141 appeared first on Evan Wecksell.

In Episode 74 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin continues his research and analysis into Peter Thiel, including the companies, government agencies, people, and political organizations that Thiel is involved with. Dustin clearly illustrates that Peter is a technocrat, transhumanist, oligarch, government contractor and partner, and a major influencer in the “New Right” movement. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's an unhappy 200th birthday for us, we do a postmortem of the little rail strike couldn't. Is the blame on the squad, Brandon, the unions, or the workers themselves? And what comes next for rail workers and class struggle in general? In the second half we propose a few theories of Musk's Twitter takeover: Thiel-pilled fascist Musk, Hannah Arendt high-liberalism Musk, Gordon Gecko-style corporate raider Musk, Henry Ford productivist-futurist Musk (and why ultimately we believe none of it really matters.) Support the show at patreon.com/theantifada to hear it! Song: Annie Lennox - Train in Vain

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 79 of "The Dustin Gold Nugget," Dustin briefly explains his deep dive research into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. Now Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 105 of "The Dustin Gold Standard," Dustin deep dives into a blockchain software company called ConsenSys, whose founder Joseph Lubin cofounded Ethereum alongside Thiel-backed Vitalik Buterin. ConsenSys is tied into the Central Bank system and are partners with many “private sector” financial services companies. Ethereum and ConsenSys are connected to the World Economic Forum, Bank for International Settlements, the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Donate to Dustin to help him continue to bring you this level of daily content and keep food on his family's table: https://donorbox.org/dustingoldshow Join the discussion and get the ad-free video version of ”The Dustin Gold Standard,” “The Thomas Paine Podcast,” and access to a Facebook-like website and mobile application where you can network and share intelligence with a group of like-minded folks (Join the Hotwire for Mike's highest level of intelligence): Paine.TV/gold Looking to register your vehicle, but your state is like mine and works hard to stop you from registering an older vehicle? Looking to save money on vehicle property taxes? Don't feel like dealing with the DMV? Contact my friends at DirtLegal where I registered my vehicle: https://www.dirtlegal.com?aff=35  Follow Dustin on Twitter: Twitter.com/dustingoldshow and Twitter.com/hackableanimal Get involved with the Telegram discussion: https://t.me/dustingoldshow Join in on live audio conversations: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow Ask a question and get a 60-second answer from me: https://wisdom.app/dustingoldshow/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices