 There is a rich getting richer Effect and it's it's it's sort of like in the post-war era. It's unprecedented pushing us back to levels that were Observed in the sort of late 19th century early 20th century And welcome back to another episode of Amir approved now before I introduce our amazing guest today a couple of house cleaning notes Number one if you're listening to this on iTunes Please go ahead and leave a review the more reviews we have obviously it helps our rankings And if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, I'm talking to you guys Please make sure to subscribe and hit and hit the bell notification button because YouTube does some funky stuffs here and there And you got to catch our daily Alerts of new videos coming out so without further ado I want to introduce to you today our amazing guests Our guest is Joshua Gans a professor of strategic management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll chair of technical Innovations and entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management University of Toronto Joshua is also the chief economist of the University of Toronto creative destructive lab DDL. What's up? You guys do amazing job prior to 2011 He was he was the foundation professor of management information economics at Melbourne business of school of school of business Joshua Welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for being on The reason I invited you is actually two-fold one. I realized you're in Toronto. I'm like a raw You're in Toronto and number two because of your new book. Yes Innovation plus equality and I love the subtitle here how to create a future that is more Star Trek than Terminator, right? I love Star Trek. Yeah Star Trek is what we're what we're trying to get to that's right. I mean well Oh, yeah, it or at least in at least in the incarnation. I sort of remember the most the next generation It seemed like that's the good one. The ones afterwards. I'm like, oh, no, we're a bit dystopian Yeah, I make it. No, no, but the next generation, you know, you you you have Technology that can basically solve the economic problem, which is not enough stuff You can just make anything you want. There's a famous episode where I don't know how they bring him back Maybe it's similar but Mark Twain was in it. Oh, right. Don't know. They've got they've got the holodeck He had the holodeck and they're talking about like what happened to capitalism. She's like, well, it's been gone for the last like 500 years Well, that was always a star. I mean, I think we used to call it Star Trek socialism It's sort of a version of it. I think I think and in next generation It was always, you know, that was that model, but it was pretty clear that wasn't the case actually I was When speaking to a famous economist about this, it's like 20 25 years ago and I said, oh, well in Star Trek, they've solved the economic problem. He said, no, they haven't You know, there is a limited supply of enterprises. There's only one of those, you know, not everybody can have a starship They're not quite there yet He said be straight. He said you straight. Yeah. Well, there's always competition. It's nature, right? There's competition and they they had I mean obviously these there were wars though different species and other things like that But from the point of view of what we're trying to achieve with regard to sort of technology and society It looks pretty good. And so what's a premise like I Always ask people why they want to write something right because a it takes a lot of your time be what's the message you're trying to Convey to other readers, right? So I'd love to kind of take the journey through the reasoning for writing this Yeah, so it really so there's a couple of factors. So I I most of my study that I do is on innovation Innovation entrepreneurship what drives it the economics, right? Intellectual property all that sort of stuff Andrew Lee my co-author Was up to about 10 years ago was an economics professor like myself and his studies were on inequality and education and things like that and We were sort of talking about that is that the no one had come together and sort of talked about these things with a single voice and One of the reasons why I Personally wanted to do that was I was getting well, this is how I often get interested in stuff I was getting annoyed by what someone was saying and in this case for me It was poor Graham poor Graham's the founder of Y Combinator, right? And he writes these great essays that are the week after our students that you know They teach you about the startup space and things like that and a few years ago. He wrote one on inequality where he was sort of like looking around at his role in the world and looking at the rising inequality and sort of Wanting to write something about it and he basically said I have a confession or something along those lines I am a manufacturer of inequality and What he meant was that he was Funding startup firms and when that all worked out the founders would become billionaires So he was creating Wealth inequality and so he saw himself as that and of course the rest of the essay is and Of course, that's what you have to do Because how are you going to get people to work or innovate or whatever without being able to reap the rewards of it? That's a very standard thing. You know, that's how we think of all investments in one way or another But it really bothered me And it bothered me well one one part bothered me is I wasn't sure if he was manufacturing inequality One reason why he might not be is that he might be funding these startups like Airbnb And then that's allowing a lot of other people to earn money And so in fact there may be well for one of a better term trickle down So it may turn out that he might be making some people rich, but he might be That doesn't necessarily result in inequality if people are poorer people are finding more job opportunities and all that sort of stuff I had a student look into that We're very careful study and it turns out. Yes, he is manufacturing inequality It turns out in California if you look at the more innovative places and against the less innovative ones and do a bunch of things You can it's pretty convincing that the more innovative an area is In terms of funding entrepreneurship or founding entrepreneurship The more inequality there is and it sort of grows over time with those things. So his confession was correct Which brings us to the thing doesn't have to be that way. Does that and when we define inequality? Are we talking about social economic inequality? Well, that's always the thing so so, you know, you know, it's a It's the way we don't get into it sort of into the inequality if you see it when you see it Obviously mode in the sense that If you look at the share of income of the top 1% and compare it to the top or whatever percent Sure. Yeah, and see if that ratio is increasing over time. That's what we call more inequality. It could be income It could be wealth Certainly social mobility comes into that but that's an interesting proposition of itself You know as an economist I don't tend to jump up and down at relative comparisons of things I like like everybody to be better off and I'm less concerned about Where you happen to to be? But what's been happening over the past 30 years or so is by any of these measures in the United States Canada Where have you? There is a rich getting richer Effect and it's it's it's sort of like in the post-war era. It's unprecedented pushing us back to levels that were Observed in the sort of late 19th century early 20th century. And so there is this sort of issue going on And you know, obviously there are a lot of discussions on how to address that most to do with taxation more enlightened ones to do of education and and so on but the problem is that Every time they get to that They finally get to the but of course We can't have too much Redistribution because that will harm innovation and it's like taken Right, certainly, but even on the left taken as a given this poor grand proposition That one of the prices we have to pay for innovation is some people have to get rich otherwise the work won't get done is like a given and Having said, I mean, you know with the creative destruction lab. I've seen hundreds of startups come through and all of them are focused on building businesses that will be sustainable and and and Gonna be self-funding and so I have to do well commercial But never did they sit there and say should we be in Canada rather than the US because of right attack Yeah You know, never were they sort of like thinking about that. No, I'm sure if you said You're not going to be able to earn anything and you'll get the same salary You'll get in the end then we'd have an issue But what we're really talking about in any debates. We're having now over inequality is we're saying should we Change the US into Canada essentially because that's the magnitude of the marginal taxation Or income tax rates that's being talked about or imputed wealth tax or whatever you want to do Or not and and that debate rages in the US where they say if we become Canada We won't innovate anymore and it rages in Canada saying we have to lower our tax rates Otherwise, we can't attract any of these people and yet I see all these people coming through and their problems on starting the businesses and building them and scaling them taxation is Not on the list. That's the least of the worries. It's the least of the and and and you can see why is that By taking an idea all the way to wealth There are all these random events that have to Go in your favor to get to that. Oh, yeah, right the stars have to align exactly and you're gonna be focused on getting past the first few of these initially and so If I say oh your taxes are gonna be 10% higher At the end of the day and you're down here. You're saying that's nothing compared to the variation I'm facing in my income. I'm trying to execute at each of these different points I got bigger problems Getting it. It's not gonna make or break the business gonna do anything and what would that mean anyway? Because by the time I pop out the other end, I'll be one of the richest people in society so I'm not You know, so I have to have one Ferrari rather than five You know, like that's what we're talking about And so I've found it surprising they were taking that as a given that that oh, but innovation We have to be careful about innovation when the evidence will when the theory for starters was was suggesting not and that's why I wrote the book Yeah, so that's why we have innovation plus equality is that there doesn't seem necessarily at the sort of policies We're talking about be a big trade-off between them There are policies that you can sort of have both or at least you shouldn't be saying We want to do this and we got to worry about innovation or vice versa now if you look though at Like you look up you look at Philosophies or ideologies, you know, obviously there's a bell curve, right? You'll have people on the left and those are outliers and you have people on the right and they're outliers But then you have regular people is like leave me alone. I just want to have more like buying power Right, I mean like piss off. Are you crazy people? And if we look at for example Let's say entrepreneurship today or even capitalism in quotes Like when I view capitalism in North America, I don't view it as free market capitalism, right, you know For example, let's talk about the Amazon deal. They get this ridiculous tax break And then me as a little guy. I'm like, well, how do I get in line for this tax break, right? It's crony capitalism, right? You get to such a level where you create this Monopoly, right? And you get all these tax incentives Where for me as like a fundamental capitalist where I believe in competition Hmm, and I like a part in your book you talk about patents and we'll get to that in a second It's a for me I still got to wrap my cognitive dissonance because I see both sides Yeah, I see like well, I need a moat like, you know, but then I was like I know what happens in patent wars. I've seen your first hand like I understand it So it's like I'm sitting at two ends. I'm like, how do we solve this right conundrum because it is a conundrum. Yeah and so What I like about in your book you actually you outline certain I'll say Philosophies but you outline steps that we can take right But let's let's let's go to the patents What's your take on that? So You know, obviously the patent section is a great example It's sort of the thing I just talked about that in order to innovate you need a reward That's that's the underlying premise and of course that some of that has to be true to some degree because You were taking risks You know either if you're becoming an entrepreneur you could have money elsewhere You could have had a quieter life if you're supplying capital for innovation You have to think it's one of the biggest risks starting a business regardless of what you're doing Absolute so there has to be an upside at the end. Yes, right and so one of the you know, obviously If you want to put it in the sort of right way the government coming and expropriating all your wealth is one problem I Don't know if we're talking as I said why not be talking about that. The other problem is competitors Yes, a coming and expropriating your ideas, right? So You know, you like competition When I invent something the problem is competition takes away what I can appropriate Mm-hmm. And so we we naturally have the role for intellectual property protection was to guard against that That's it And and you can see it and you can see it. Well, if I can't earn anything why would you do exactly? Used to be in the early days of CDL and it's interesting how this has changed the early days of CDL People used to come in and say, well, where's your moat? Where is my you're gonna have this idea? How is it going to protect it? And I used to ask that question to I come from that same tradition I sort of ask that, you know, why why do you think you are going to make money out of this? What is you you what have you got going? and in some cases it was like, oh, I'm gonna get a patent and We actually know what that means that that's a still has to be defended and other stuff like that It's not as secure as yeah, it's not that easy. Yeah. I mean, it's it's not bad, but it's not it's not secure and suddenly, you know There are companies the pharmaceutical companies who have an entire apparatus so that they know how to use the patent system So they're to their favor, but not everybody entrepreneurs don't And then others would say, oh, look, I'm just gonna be good at what I do I'm gonna my yeah, I've got this idea others might copy it or whatever, but mine will be the best You know, grow another one, you know, whatever, you know, what Right, yeah, and I used to be very disparaging of that, but that's actually used to be what people came up with quite a ball lot and I think The where we've come to is that, you know, there is there is something to that argument there is something to if you are the person who's had that unique insight and Has some capabilities to be able to bring that market and you compare that with some Experience from other people who stop you from going down the wrong path for two years or something like that. Just keep focused You can get ahead of everybody else now that doesn't mean in the future you won't Be facing competition you will be but you'll be one of the players there And I think this is a one of the blind sides we get from, you know excessive adherence to it the importance of the Excludability that comes with intellectual property being able to shut everybody out I mean being able to shut everybody out is a great thing a mode is really good because if you build a mode Which is costly now in the future you can sit in your castle and have a nice easy life the alternative is you, you know, trudge up that hill and You know, you're going to just have to kick people back for the whole lot That can still earn you money That can still earn you money You know, if you look at for many years Intel and AMD AMD were you know neck and neck with Intel and technical capabilities But Intel were there but first they had a brand name etc. And so they'll five times as profitable You know, it can you know, you can actually you can have that situation And so I think One answer on the intellectual property and patents thing is it's maybe not as necessary as we thought It's not a bad thing and it's not it can it can get you against some of the worst excesses But it's not necessarily as critical the flip side of it though is it can actually Damper innovation in the sense that you know, you get invent something you get a patent On it and even if it's not the best patents in the world, I'm sitting there thinking I can improve your product I go to my investors. They say well, this dude has a patent How do we know he's not gonna sue you? Yeah, how he's not gonna gum it all up. Yeah, etc. And lo and behold That's the easy case where it's just one person. What if there's like six? Yeah things that I'm combining together to do that Well, then we've got a problem because I now can't come and compete with you Which remember was the point of the patent system But at the same time that's not stimulating innovation overall because you've innovated and I could be innovated it and everybody Ahead of me could be innovating and so we've sort of dampened that as well Now what this basically means is that when you have patents, you don't want them to be too broad You don't want them to be too vague. You want them to Cover what they need to cover to stop sort of naked imitation. Yeah, I don't want people and like trademarks I don't like it when people come in and rip off a trademark or whatever like that But but I don't want people to come in and to literally exactly the same thing or if it's pharmaceutical It's the same compound or what have you but I don't want them to stop being able to build on this stuff anyway And so we have to sort of limit the scope of the patent system for that reason And we have to limit the scope of the copyright system for that same You I mean half of the stuff here on YouTube, etc. I mean if MIT press were more annoying They might say oh look, this is here. This is our intellectual property They've been doing that on it. It's happened. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It doesn't surprise me. I have a textbook It's talking about naked obscene monopolies. I have a textbook in Australia It's not my monopoly by choice. I don't like that fact but It has it has its principles of economics and it was writing about product differentiation I want to put a can of coke as the picture in the textbook. Ah, gotcha. We have to get permission permission from them Yeah, yeah, I said it's gonna cost you something And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm putting your freaking free advertising in the thing and saying you have a brand Yeah, that's what I'm doing and that now it's gonna cost you So we swapped it out to Pepsi Anyway, so fortunately we could do that there, but I mean it was ridiculous that that was even an issue Yeah, I mean sort of taking some of these things and putting them in but the the system allowed them to stop that and And I've seen this happen with copyright things before people just stuff they do stuff to it It's it's one of the things that's made YouTube great But you know someone flag something and all of a sudden the whole thing can be pulled down and what that means is the legal system is now using a sort of big slam On you snap down. Whereas what we want is something more nuanced something more balanced something, you know that allows a transactionally easy way of Navigating any of these tickets that occur and so that's that's basically what we think about with patents is that innovators Gonna be able to innovate more easily the fewer people they have to ask permission from I agree and you know there's difference between asking permission and paying a fee if I hold a patent or a copyright thing and I say well you can use my My coke picture. It's gonna cost you 50 bucks and I never think about who's doing it You're sending the 50 bucks and you pay for it just as I would any other service But if you're gonna get there and you send it in and they're gonna say well, it's a textbook might need it They're gonna money. Yeah, maybe we should even have to share with the royalty We're in disaster world exactly. I've all of a sudden have an extra person I have to ask permission from we don't like When you know Regulations that require us to go to government and ask permission for a special case and stuff like we know that that comes up This is the same with things that I give private companies that power to yeah, it's a general philosophy you just want as Much as possible you want innovations to be able to Government there with the weed industry I'm like Well, you know, that's a comp. Yeah, the wind industry is a whole Complicate I think they fumbled the ball in there. Yeah. Yeah completely. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Well, I think I think I Mean, I think there were a few competing factors. I don't know a huge amount of about it, but It's turned into the LCBO right And the LCBO is another thing. Oh, it's actually unusual for you know I come from Australia to Canada my my view on Canada regulation is they they regulate liquids. Yeah And usual thing about cannabis is it's not a liquid Yeah, no, well, I will you know Well, that gives a platform for another political party to do something different there I'm sure that they could raise more money tax revenue if they didn't do it. Oh, yeah. Yeah I'm I'm excited for the legalize. Hopefully they don't fumble the ball on this But the legalization of psychedelic medicine for patients. Okay, that's interesting to me So going back to this You know, we mentioned the Earning per capita has decreased. I think you the books since like 1970s. Yeah. So the yeah the The the the the wage levels of wage. Yeah, basically been stagnant But there's been so there's a couple of reasons for this, right? We can say, you know, since advent of birth control right women are joined the workforce So you have now more workers competing for the same job. That's one factor Other factor can be like we had a lot of the so-called blue worker jobs Exported to other countries. Yes. And so I'm not too sure what the percentage of the workforce was that Was there something else in the book you guys attribute to the fusion and people talk about automation as well I don't know about It's that's harder to Factor so I'm you know, I'm not really sure. I mean it is a it is a puzzle But what's really interesting is it's not so much that it's the fact that the Productivity of labor Has been going up. Yeah, whereas the wages are used to track nicely the wages and the productivity used to and that's exactly what we think should happen But then they've diverged productivity is going up the the wage income is not following with it and You know, that's a sort of a warning sign. There's something odd going on. I think the biggest candidate is Probably a lack of competition in this case on the labor market. Yeah, sometimes in the product market It translates into the labor market as well And that seems to be a lot of activity of what people are exploring at the moment Trying to get a handle on it But it's not going to lead to a different policy conclusion It's going to lead to us the thing we always want to do is have more competition So it's not necessarily a new thing at all Um, there could be some other measurement issues to do with services Although that should that normally used to be a reason why we had sluggish productivity growth that we couldn't measure service as well but We've had Divergence is going the other way. So I don't I'm not sure what's The issues there. I think you know from my for my perspective is that um There are clearly a lot of ways in which we can just There are a lot of obvious policies more so in the us than here in canada There are a few regulations here that are annoying or they put in cartels like we just talked about and things like that Don't do that. Okay We can we can agree on that we can all agree on that I mean canada's blessed compared to australia is that there's a lot of competition from the us that actually keeps it in check But then there are regulations that that add costs. Um, but in the united states, it's a whole other issue. They're sort of like Uh They have these this the same disparity going on um They raise Uh less in tax revenue Um But then again, they take an enormous amount of their You know government spending and spend it on things that are not going to help This is my problem with collecting taxes, right? So we're still interesting That We believe that the government's fiduciary capabilities right are efficient. Yeah Or regardless if I give you a dollar or 10 billion We as um prospectors or observers. We clearly are observing right that fiduciarily. You don't know what you're doing Yeah, so it doesn't matter if I give you a buck right or a hundred billion dollars. You're mismanaging how the money is right deployed Yeah, yeah, you know, like if it was a private sector, it'd be like you're fired. Yeah. Well, hopefully I mean it looks hard to say Look, you know, I I'm in a university system. So, you know, gonna have to convince me that You know the allocation of funds I think it needs just be more transparent. Is it difficult? I think transparency is one way to do it. I think Um, because where does our tax? Okay, you pay income. I pay business tax. You pay income business tax It goes into the black box. Yeah What happens? I don't know. I mean I pop at the other end. I mean if I get too many potholes or things like Or if I'm not getting the health care I need or you know bridges I you know, I I sort of like I as you drive around Canada At the very least compared to driving around the u.s. Or whatever You can see where that there is money going somewhere. So even if you're unhappy that like some fraction of it is completely wasted You know that Canada collects more tax revenue and public services What if they are better than? And you see that and you see that when you deal with I don't know if you've ever lived in the u.s I was briefly in there like when you do things like dealing for instance This is the easiest one to get right dealing with the tax department In the u.s. The irs is this big model if getting access to it getting anything done It's like just a tremendous difficult thing I've I've been pleasantly surprised about how easy it is to deal with the c.r.a You know if someone contacts you you can call them back and you can talk to that Humid human it's like a miracle right when you think about I mean it's like a mirror I mean, it's you know, it's still staff and there's you know, I'm sure there's all man of frustrations, but Well, that's a good start But but so so you get some of these things and and you know in the immigration system you get some You know, there's a mother things that work pretty well here and and stuff like that but I know it's a big question for the ages how we get that more efficient um, you know why it takes Two years to build a bridge somewhere yet if japan has a sinkhole though Aglinton east to west line has been taking a decade. I know three years behind schedule. I live there It's the most ridiculous thing ever. You know as I always wonder about that I look at that and I say why are they taking so long at this line? Because they're building up the road and they're letting people drive. Yeah Man, wouldn't it be better if we just said screw it Eglinton's out of commission for a month. We're just gonna get it all done rip up the road It's it's partly accommodating what like if you see this stuff in japan Remember there's this scene where they they have some sinkhole occurs I saw that and then two days later. It's gone. Yeah and I'm like That was possible If that's possible, there's some learning to be had somewhere on this stuff. Um And I can't mean that they spent A multiple even if they spent two or three times as much in Resources doing that thing compared to the flow on effects and other things in disruption or whatever Wow Well, the city is already getting a lawsuit from the businesses on eglinton. Right the city has done this already with the St. Clair west or St. Clair east the streetcar stuff. Yeah They're like years delayed and you couldn't you couldn't even drive or get to the small businesses right so the businesses are like I've I'm done. Yeah. Yeah. And so they have a might be actually I so I do wonder if they could have If there was a anyway, I don't know enough about this, but I We've sat in enough traffic. This is the problem with traffic. Yeah, as you get your thinking You get your thinking. That's right. You're becoming like a donald trump expert. Why can't they just nuke this whole thing? Come on guys Exactly you start to think of these things And it is a bit of an issue. It's like People start to wonder like when you stand at a airport security line. Why can't why are we doing this? Um never put people in queues. That's when they start to think. Yeah, exactly And so you what I like about I think it was in the At the end of the book, you guys have two sections over here, but you lay out ideas right for Improving so both ideas for improving inequality innovation. How about we go through some of them? Yeah, sure. Um, so I mean there's a few I mean, I'm more My expertise is more on the innovation ones um, so You know, so what we wanted to do is say look, there are here is a list of 10 things that you could do But don't you don't have to worry about inequality You can boost innovation and it'll work without having to raise taxes on someone or lower taxes on someone or anything like that Just go and do them. Um, so one. We've already talked about the pattern system. Yes, you can have that be more sensible um We have one, uh, that I like talking about a lot, which is, um Different ways of how you can get permissionless innovation going For instance With regard to, you know, we currently have, uh, one of the monopoly concerns is social media. Yeah or platforms in general right And we know why you know, why is their facebook so big because there's a network effect. Yep Um, and we also know why it's hard to compete with facebook because You can offer something that was, uh Valuable for one particular person or a group of people But they're not going to switch to you because they can't convince all their friends and family and connections to switch as well and uh, so Basically, you know, that's a problem. You know, we're going to have a monopoly out of that Uh situation and it's not simply as an instance of porting your data What's your data on facebook a few posts and stuff? I mean, that's not the issue Um, it would be an issue if you're on an email operator You can move all your data over and then we're off to the races So what you have to do is you have to get rid of the network effect favoring one entity And we had this problem before in telecommunications when we wanted to move away from these monopoly systems Um, we had to have new telecommunications companies in them We're an obvious issue You should have to be able to call people between all these networks And so, you know, the first thing the regulators understood is okay, we have to have interoperability Now, of course the story there was Uh, they had interoperability and then of course the large networks decided to charge the small networks Of course, so you want to use us? All right. Yeah exactly in all sorts of manner of of crap occurred So it took like a decade or two to wind that around But you know, eventually we got to this situation. We've got that And suddenly in mobiles, we had a much more level flying field from the start and and while mobile prices are way too high in Canada The world Canada's top five. Yeah, no, it's really and the us too. It's like all these countries that shouldn't be shouldn't be right It's like It's great rushes that you want to go and it was it was Mexico not flango I think I think I can and us it's about the same as cuba. I you know, what's going on there That's craziness. Um, so We we got got some of that We could probably get more. I I suspect a more activist competition Authority and a bit more regulation. So how would interoperability Look like with let's say facebook. Yeah, okay. So the the way to think about it on facebook is What are we really doing on facebook? Everybody says we're doing Something unique, but it's actually not that unique What you're doing is you're sending a post And i'm going to relabel that a message to One person or a group of people and the group of people could include the entire world Okay, and moreover you are receiving posts From particular people that you have said I would like to receive. Yes, that's it It's not happening in a call-to-call basis or anything like that, but it's still sending messages back and forth It just so happens that they're going to more people than Then one to one Okay So the the way to solve this problem is if I want to leave facebook I've already said That mr. A mr. B and mr. C or whatever can can send me messages And then I want to leave and they've said they're happy for me to receive them. I leave facebook Okay, and They shouldn't see any difference And I'll get their messages and I'll probably see a difference because it won't be in the facebook Algorithm or ads or some other thing it might be a little slower for all I know or whatever it is But I still be able to have those connections. I'll be able to send messages to them. I'll be able to receive messages to them Because they've already given permission to receive and send Messages from someone with the identity joshua gans. Yes, and so long as when I leave facebook and go to this other thing It's the same identity and there's not a lot of reason why it shouldn't couldn't be yeah Then what's the difference? Yeah, and so if we answer the the term I use for this is identity portability Facebook have already established an identity for me and a group of connections I should be able to take my identity elsewhere But do you really think they're going to do that? Well, so that's interesting. So, you know, I would you know, you think they have to open up their api for there Well, that's right. But so not without regulation. Yeah, obviously they're kind of choose to do that But facebook have sort of made noise. They they already did data portability Voluntarily, of course they did it wasn't going to affect anything Um interoperability is something that they say will they do it? That's another matter now they're a bit And maybe legitimately gun shy on it because Every other time they've done a bit more interoperability. They've ended up with some data bridge and cambridge analytic or and stuff like that I remember the heart of that was allowing people to do stuff So it's very it's not surprising. They're trying to lock that down, but you know, um That's so so they they can legitimately sort of claim that We wouldn't have got it in telecommunications without a regulation mandating it We didn't have number portability without a regulation mandating it Um, we probably need the same here Here's what gives me hope just a just a week or so ago Um, three senators in the us propose something called the access act Okay, and the access act mandated data portability and interoperability or social media network Now it's like three pages long or something. It's not it's like a proof of uh, it's like a a call for stuff So how you'd actually do it and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, but like let's let's bipartisan Ah, so let's yeah, exactly. Let's continue this train of thought like let's say There is some regulation where it's like we have to open up the playing field for competition Right because that's the end they have facebook makes money. It's no different than google's ads. That's that's right um Let's say they do open up and I as a competitor have access That means the interoperability therefore would be the emergence of new social media platforms exactly Got you exactly people would be able to come in and say, you know, I'm gonna have one and No russians allowed. I don't you know, whatever it is you that You know Who knows what the problems we don't get to find out because we've got facebook and facebook has one set of policies and one set of Stuff going on. Um, it doesn't even have interoperability between its own networks No, you like the instagram is separate whatsapp definitely separate. Yeah, um destroyed whatsapp Well, I didn't know it before so Um, you know, that's a whole other issue Also, their incentives to take over these companies and bring them into their mix will be less if uh Well, I don't blame entrepreneurs investors like imagine you create something and facebook comes around like well We're gonna give you two billion dollars. No or 19 billion. Yeah, it's like no no no no me my investors don't want the billions of dollars Please go somewhere else. Yeah, no Well, yeah, oh it was a snapchat snapchat did that. Um, yeah, but they had a they had a plan to go public They already have money, you know, it's different. You and I are private company. Right. You raised 20 million. Oh, no, absolutely Yeah, yeah, you go for it. I mean, no, so that's all fine And and I don't think there's any Extrust law in the world that would have stopped that despite what people are saying about breakups and all that nonsense that Just Microsoft value went up after that. Oh, yeah, so well, that's me. Let's be very clear You know microsoft is the interesting case in point Microsoft was dragged through the courts. Yeah, there was cause for break up and then didn't happen blah, blah, blah And then for 10 years they managed themselves the old way trying to stamp out potential competition And a few years ago they decided to stop They stopped doing that and they focused in on the stuff that they were doing so there's no expansion into Things that no mobile. Yeah. Yeah, Microsoft are dead without mobile nonsense, right? They opened up everything interoperable blah, blah, blah. It's like fuel that And you know up until last week they were the most valuable company in the world I think you're doing a phenomenal job. I mean, it's just incredible and and here's the thing is everybody lists all these tech Monopolies we must break up this this and this Microsoft sitting there. They're the biggest the most valuable company in the world Actually They're the biggest monopoly They're moaning on their money off office. Mm-hmm office and related services basically what slack. Yeah integration They're going to do now is although they didn't buy slack or they have taken it. They haven't no Well, they have well, I don't know they they have their own teams version of that, but maybe yeah, I don't know What will happen there? But you know my but they're still got it's just the biggest monopoly as it always was You know in in terms of the in terms of this thing except no one's upset about it and what it shows you actually with monopolies People are upset If you get a monopoly and you are open to competition So you can use google docs or whatever other things you want to use and you don't have trouble moving between Don't get upset as much about Even though, you know, they're they're they're earning money off that they're earning rents off that all that sort of stuff And my prediction was if facebook were opened up in this way the same thing what happened to them people would say Wouldn't get upset as much anymore. They have a choice. They have an actual choice They'll stay with facebook most likely most people will some other things will come in there Maybe some competition at the fringes. I don't think it would change a huge amount But it would allow that experimentation to occur It'll allow, you know, it wouldn't just be facebook saying what's going to occur in this Yeah And I what gives me hope is two things one is that this bill came up Bipartisan that's a good start. Interestingly the issue is why is bipartisan? There's one thing that both the left and the right at least in the us seem to agree upon They they're all happy to beat up on facebook Yeah, let's keep going like let's go get them It's like let's go do that and you know, I think breaking them up would be a long drawn-out thing Um, I think that's just a gambit the threat that would Tie you all up in this thing Interoperability is the prize Um, and and we could get a lot from that. Um, and that would make facebook's job easier Um, if people were if they people were happy about their misinformation or that the algorithms aren't good enough or that too good or whatever it is Yeah, the facebook can say it's okay. Yeah off you go Right someone else there's room for people to come in doesn't take much to set up You know, there'll be a dozen small little social networks being created by people off you go And just as microsoft was able to do with its thing as well There's a sense in which you know Competition is good and it's very hard to get actual competition. I'm not saying you can actually get it microsoft clearly, you know We don't have actual competition The competition can insulate you Can insulate you on the political side. Mm-hmm. Um, and it also is Being able to have people choose you Um, where they don't feel compelled Uh, just makes people more relaxed about it. Um, these products are not that terrible valuable facebook is zero So complaining too much about facebook is is a funny thing for people to do Um, so, you know, I I kind of think I wish these companies would light it up the competition front, uh I think to some extent apple's done that a a bit there's bits of pieces of it with where people get uh worried about it I think they were for the most part much more open than than they had to be Uh, and uh, I think google has done that to some degree as well Um, uh and and got away with it, which is why when people talk about oh, we should break up google They're not quite sure what they're doing the best is youtube. Yeah is sort of like trying to work out What's going on there, but youtube's an interesting case study. Yeah I think it's one of the best acquisitions in history of acquisitions Yeah, I mean most of google's want to be terrible or they've done terrible things to the companies, but yeah, well they they've Part of my french, but they fucked up youtube in the last like five years Like badly like mismanagement. It's it's it's it's it's it does seem stodgy I mean, that's why streaming has gone elsewhere. Yeah, right, but it's still pretty big It's the biggest online biggest and I've talked to uh, eve allow from to fish in the barrel about this uh in depth Uh in our in our previous podcast and for me it's like I find it difficult to see how a competitor And the current landscape can overthrow a youtube There you have the search engine, which is google so everything's driven to youtube It's integrated together with their ml. Yeah machine learning Uh, you pretty much have every single content creator besides china, right uploading on youtube. Yeah, uh, they have the only unique Monetization they have multiple monetization. You have ad split, which is not gray, but it's better than nothing No one else offers that even facebook doesn't offer that right right You have ways of selling merch directly in there, uh in ways of like streaming and getting tips from your fans And i'm sitting there as like both a tech entrepreneur right and uh inquisitor and i'm like Talk about a mode. I'm like, I just yeah, I find it extremely difficult to see how a company can come around and be like, well You know, yeah, I mean, I think things can come up in like so like the the case in point is uh, twitch Yeah, the twitch has come through, you know, twit which is amazon's greatest The very good position for amazon But more to the point is even even if that hadn't happened that would have Is that you know, that should have been youtube Yeah, you should should have captured that thing but here we had a Initially crappy platform doing able to do live streaming Bit of not having to worry about the copyright implications. Yeah, uh as well So that's another thing that comes into one of the things that supports youtube is that the copyright Uh requirements, you know, they're like the state of the art and able to being on pull down stuff Anybody else comes in there If they grow they'll be liable for all this stuff. Yeah, um, just as youtube was most of youtube was It was dismissed initially as it's all but like I remember the early days as a wild wild west Right, like is what the internet meant for the most craziest app scene stuff He can possibly think about and obviously it's more It's I don't like saying this but these days youtube's more geared towards i'll say corporates Right, it's more and more kicking out individual content creators because their their money is ads Yeah, I think I mean I think the the the problem is The market is extremely competitive the content creation as it is I I so I was in I started blogging in about 2006 And uh, but by about 2009 I built up the sort of largest independent Economics blog in Australia and people used to come to me and say, ah, how much money you're earning? I'm like money You mean money? I gotta put on my pocket for You know, like I pay the yeah various things And the reason was is that Is that the ads, you know, just couldn't generate enough money. Yeah, there was those things We once had a buyout offer at the peak Peak for some stupid reason that I probably should have taken It was like for $50,000 or something. It was like crazy, but uh, and I said, oh, but I like doing this Yeah, like I didn't want to be bothered. Um, but but I think it's just a very competitive mark Uh, I think that youtube youtube has a different space is that you might say it's corporate, but it's still got a lot of the The um, it's a huge education plan. Oh, yeah I mean, you know people uploading stuff that are education materials broadly Just incredible and and and there's a complete gap in the market Is there's no aggregator for that? No, I mean you have to you You still use google you search and you hope something is there that will teach you how to fix something or whatever Um, but you know, there's no sort of taking into quality um, like I I can imagine like if you are If you're just like studying mathematics or something like that You know, there are people that lectures and things like that you can search for stuff and you might have it explained There's nothing writing which of the ones the students really liked and all that sort of stuff Huge potential you're saying we should build a rating system on youtube Uh, I think I think some people have had some ideas of it. Yeah. Well some you know, I think there's I think they're yeah I do think it's missing. Um, I don't know what it would look like for sure. I imagine some reddit types is Um matched to curricular or something. Yeah, I don't know but I you know, I can find any time I need to do something I can sort of find a thing. I've I've repaired my dishwasher several times based on youtube videos activity I'm certainly an expert. I know my way around a toilet. Yeah, don't need a pop up for that toilets are covered I mean listen, I I I think youtube has democratized if you have access of internet to Like the stuff I learned off a con academy alone. Yeah on youtube. It's it's incredible. Amazing. Yeah So going back to me, I have the I have the actual 10 ideas for boosting innovation. So which are the one takes you fancy Yeah, so intellectual property we talked about Um, this one is interesting the grants Yes, why don't we touch base on that? Oh, okay. Yeah, let me just remind myself Oh, yes, so, you know, it's like so Yeah grants are interesting, right? Yes, especially here in Canada. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like So, I mean there are some obvious things that we don't want grants to do. Yes We don't want grants To directly fund things that will otherwise be done Exactly It's not really you don't say but every time so So there is a thing and this is where you know, you know, while I'm coming from the left side I'll agree with your libertarian instincts on the political process When it comes to funding innovation The political process demands wins too early And so what you have as you have politicians And they want to fund stuff, but they also need to have during the time of their During their election cycle a win from it. Yes Well, what are you gonna do if you want to win? Oh, you don't want to take a risk. No You want to for instance fund something that already looks like it's a success Exactly. Yeah, you want to fund something that isn't a a Isn't going to look like it was a big failure But we know that with regard to innovation or innovation of things That's not what you want Like so there was always this discussion in the u.s. Where they funded some solar company and then lost a whole lot of money on it Because solar was It's difficult when it gets picked up And of course the punishment for losing all that money was Huge political things and I'm not saying that, you know, there should have been no punishment for failure But you have to understand That it's just like if you are going to do things innovative you're going to have failures so You know One thing we've done at cdl recently Is we opened up a space stream A space stream. Okay. Space stream. It's led by uh, chris haffield. Okay. Yeah. Why not? Why not, of course It's it's not actually just that he's a public figure. Um, uh He There is something about somebody who has commanded the international space station that makes them a very clear thinker Of what to do. No, the decisive does the question is not a mistake. None. It's no tolerance. It's quite impressive But he also has domain expertise In this area Canada doesn't have a space program. We don't anymore at all. No, none of those sorts of things It's nothing like geographically. We're not in the right place in the world to launch rockets Why set up a space program? Well One is because we're cdl and no one else was doing it But two is like It's it's a thesis All of a sudden we've had thanks to space x and other things a massive drop occurring in the uh cost of accessing space Well, I mean astronomical and it's going to keep going down to some huge degree And so now and now we're not there yet, but now where we are if we continue on that trajectory, we'll be at a point where there will be the ability for people to think of a business that requires access to space and do it. Mm-hmm And that's what the space stream is Now here's the difficult part about that is half these things are like If you do a thought experiment say if I had very cheap access to space, what could I do? I think a lot of ideas that are almost no brainer Momas is that race of decrease. Yes, we still don't know what it is. We don't know what the access is We don't want to you know, all sorts of stuff could happen in the meantime, you know, we're one space x Crash away from things slowing down, etc So it's very very risky But we open that up Because the idea is like you have to sort of start at some point And the expectation is that most of these companies will be failing And they'll be failing for things like timing issues As much as execution and other things we want to lump it in together yet Imagine if and and so it's going to be hard to get capital for those startups We're already off to the races. Yeah hard to get capital for those startups for good solid reason. Yeah, however Let's imagine that the government decided to put up capital for that and said we're going to have space expertise in Canada It's got a benefit. We you know country with very long remote areas and other things like that So just on a global scale that's good People when they talk about going to the moon and the asteroid belt, what are they talking about mining? mining That seems familiar We have expertise there as well And so you can see that you could align some stuff you could have a vision, but it can't be a vision That says we're going to have stuff in orbit. We're going to have stuff on the moon This is where I agree with you where government funding does benefit Because no private individual is just going to give a hundred million dollars. You can't and most of these big innovations Sort of push things along. There's been some sort of government seeding sometimes by accident But you know like something spitting out of a department of defense or whatever Yeah, I think it's good to have you you come to a point where at least r and d is done Then it can go to commercialization But also I've thought about this before I don't know if anyone's done it Maybe canada can be the first where it's like will you cdl space program for example? Yeah Um, you know ontario just had a hundred million dollar tech cluster fund Let's say we have a hundred million dollar space program fund goes into here and then we're attracting. It's a think tank Yeah, right. Okay. Let's bring in the brains. Yeah, we're gonna make stuff. Okay The money that the government gave us comes from taxpayers, right? Directly, yes, right businesses and income tax wherever the streams, but anyways tax dollars to this fund This is where I see an opportunity of You're familiar with ubi. I know he's Yeah, universal basic income. So my buddy floyd. He's leading like ubi works in toronto um, I've always said okay I'm a firm believer in a ubi dividend fund as opposed to just like right right And so like if they have an alaskan in doorway, yeah, exactly, right or equate with the oil funds for everybody Where let's say the space program with the hundred million dollars goes and we discover something, right? It's government funded. We start using it makes a profit, right? Theoretically us as a taxpayers should get some dividend from that. It's it's a way to do it I mean like I don't know how it's aligned in that way. No, they're great I mean, obviously we're mining. So this is where we sort of have historical problems Is it's In mining, you know, most of the stuff there's Think about what what it takes to get rich from a mine. Um, you have to discover something. Mm-hmm Uh, you then have to pull it out and sell it But The fact that it's there already Is an endowment from the land So if I give you just randomly allocated mining rights over a certain thing It's like a gift. Yes. Yes. You have to do some work still to get it out there And we want you to do work. So you should have some upside. Mm-hmm, but you shouldn't necessarily get the whole friggin lot Um, you know a few years ago, uh, Australia actually decided to pass a resource rent tax basically to tax mining Basically and then distribute it was a way of getting income Um, and of course the mining companies push massively back with the lobbyist funding and things like that But it's the kind of thing that we have in mind In other words, if something is there and it's obviously pure luck We should have a stake in it, but the same is on these moonshots. I agree with you now How you do it because you've got to be careful. Um, you don't want to stifle the extra innovation that needs to occur So you have to find some way of measuring. We're mining. It's easy to work out a way. It's like You know, you there's enough certainty there. We can do the calculations and work it out With space would be a little bit harder But not impossible. It's not impossible. There would be ways of which You could set up a sort of corporation or an entity that could hold It can be no different than uniting doing a startup and we hold 10% equity for employees So we have 10% equity of whatever 90% you can do whatever I'm already the reason you even exist right because I'm putting my labor in x I'm paying tax from this random labor And the only reason you have this is because of my labor It's a different story. What's private and fun to do whatever hell you want on Go spend it all burn it all. I don't care. Make trillion dollars But if you're gonna have a government seat and this happens at other things like, uh, you might be quantum computing or some of these other things that long payoffs That might be required. There may be entities that way Yeah, I admit there's attractiveness to it. The only thing is you don't want to stuff that up No, because again, you've got this other side You've got the permissionless innovation for instance creative destruction lab, you know for all of its success It's kind of unique in another way Um, well, we don't put money in although we have some streams that that have some money available, but it's private Um And people sort of talk about well, we've got costs Shouldn't we be raising it shouldn't and so people, you know, whenever we think about funding the cost of a thing like CDL People come and say, oh, well, you should be taking a stake in these companies. That's how you should should get around this And I look at that and I And why I culminated us that and stuff like that and they don't they do stuff and they you know, people make that trade-off But I look at us doing it and I'm like Then when we're getting people who are applying for it, they've got to sit there in the calculation in their mind Yes, they're gonna be we're gonna be sitting on their friggin captains forever. Yes So The difference between that and a mining royalty a mining royalty is not like it's a share of corporation A mining royalty is a if you pull this ton of ore out you pay this amount. Yes If we could work out the same thing Uh, the same measurable planable instrument Then it becomes like the It's still permissionless, but I know what the cost is And that's what you kind of want to come up with I don't know what the solution would be for space And I think we're out there yet And I don't think anyone's proposing putting in the canadian space agency or whatever it's going to be yet It'd be nice if they did but we can think about that but yeah But that's so we have to think of something measurable So you don't want to have something you don't want to harm permission You don't want to you don't want to create a problem. Yes and cap table mess ups startups are It's it's it's a costly piece of crap that these founders had It's not my idea. It's been done before I think some areas in new york I was his name. I forget his name One of the original angel investors in the states anyways, it's How do we stimulate more because when people talk about startups they talk about the for example the fan companies Right, right or they look at the silicon valley companies. I tell people that's a 0.01 percent They're the outliers of outliers, right? You look at the medium of a successful entrepreneur a male. This is a stats male mid 40s, right? Three million dollars to ten million dollars. That's the normal, right? Entrepreneur hopeful. Yeah, you know, maybe as a team of 15 okay So we look at toronto then we look at then this can be applied anywhere actually And we look at surrounding cities in ontario What would be interesting is having a grant like system and this is goes to what amazon got So i'm kind of repeating what amazon but for like me starting off. Yeah, yeah Like can you give me tax-free or maybe like rent-free or something of incentive to have a my operations here? Yeah I'm starting out. I'm whole i'm hiring local. I'm getting people here. I'm not a i'm not a amazon I'm not a google so they do do those sorts of things they have those sorts of things available They're often contingent on hiring enough people and stuff like that trying to create jobs So so that does exist I think There's a tendency to focus on that as the sort of constraint I don't know if space and other things rent and other things are the real constraints I think that's just like this there are options around. Yeah I you know for us it was the constraint was The bigger thing that was uh, you know what silicon valley had that Toronto didn't have was people around who are able to provide the network but advice. Yeah, it's not just a network it's like just being able to It's experience and expertise and so you know if you have a place like canada that hasn't had as many startups Going to scale that means there are fewer entrepreneurs And so you want to make sure you can sort of attract that and so the miracle of what CDL currently has it's It's like an ecosystem in a room Brings together all these people every two months. I've been to a couple of them. They're fantastic but that In terms of remember, I said that you know the between idea and getting some money to it. There are all these steps The more you can push down and de-risk Yes, each one the better it is much better than a break off the rent. Yeah Yeah Much more valuable, you know if I can save you three years of mucking around that's much more valuable than any tax break And rent that I could get and so I think those sorts of things are Uh, what we want to encourage. I mean I I think You know what has surprised us is like when we started out CDL was like I think the first core was 20 companies and people thought well 20 companies. That's yeah How are you gonna do that and now we're up to hundreds a year Where the hell did they all come from? The answer was they were always there always there. Yeah, they're just latent. Yeah Um, and uh, and I don't think it's just a Toronto thing because we've been popping this all right We've got in Halifax this I heard they didn't create awesome stuff over 25 companies here in Halifax. There's a small place That's a small place, but it has some Uh entrepreneurs there and has some others who have stayed there and Calgary is the same thing happening And imagine just forget just Canada just popped around the world. How many of those sorts of things are so The challenge is trying to bow the challenge is not to create a silicon valley The challenge is to to get that same ingredients unlocked in all the places. Yes Now the thing we like silicon valley for me is you know, um You look at like the venture capitalist model The model is very simple. It's like we double down. We want unicorns. So we want asymmetrical returns. Yeah, right We want a thousand percent returns. Yes We look at the the statistics right now less and less companies are going public, right? We look at for example What's that big fund? Um soft bank soft bank So you're gonna outcompete me by just ridiculously Valuating startups. Here's a hundred million dollars. Like we work fiasco. Yeah. Yeah. And so for me It's like I kind of I personally see the running on the wall Right to me was like a pretty much a Ponzi scheme when I first got a long time in the VC. I'm like wait a second Like why is your company worth 30 million dollars? Yeah, am I am I like the schmuck in the room? Am I missing some data points? Like you have zero profit Right. Am I is this like reverse entrepreneurship? Profits don't matter You know, so I kind of see the writing on the wall with this type of I mean it's I mean people I don't know whether there's a bubble in this stuff What it seems to me there's a few things one is I think and it's related to inequality You know, there are a lot of extremely wealthy people. So there's a lot of stuff sloshing about And that's where they end up in the soft banks In these firms like will allocate some of our capital to these highly risk stuff Um, so I think that's going to fuel stuff now part of that's good I mean you shouldn't want to then throw it away and and things like that. I mean I I I want to throw it away like Okay, so I I'm not a name names. They do their job Some do great some do pearly Um, you look at for example companies go public At that point all the value has kind of been extracted by the time it hits whether it's an RTO or an IPO, right? And Uh, let's say retail investors. Hopefully they eliminate the accredited investor. That whole thing is another way of creating inequality Right, although you've got to be careful because the rationale for that is that people um it's Seed funding and but they can go gamble. It's gambling, but they can't go the beautiful again. One is it's Regulated. Yeah to some degree. Um and two is at least, you know the odds I'm not saying anybody gambles and necessarily those are the two but this other stuff is gambling I mean if we had this problem with cryptocurrency Yeah And so you've got to be a little bit careful Well, they have like the jobs act where you can do up to 25k right just kind of erroneous paperwork I think if they streamline that a little bit, I mean, we've got these funds like angel lists and other things like that I mean we could open it up. Yeah, so what I'm trying to get at though is Let's say you and I have a startup. We raised five million series a right We're doing okay. We're not profitable We raise a series B and We're profitable whatever the margin is I think having an option of going faster Something something similar to even how Spotify did the sideways IPL like price discovery but more or less Like I said before they went public the value was extracted How can we and when I'm looking at the stats because less and less companies are opening up the books the valuations are ridiculous It's like oh, we're valued a hundred billion dollars privately So you have to be valued almost a trillion dollars what to go public. You know what I mean So And this is where like security tokens are interesting in the future and not currently right now It's way way way too early But how do we create systems where we can get more companies? Whether it's a new system like an STO or a new type of IPO model where we can get earlier access to retail investors Yeah, I don't you know That's uh That's far. So let me just give you my impression My impression is that If you have sort of passed the master of the quality Process that that we see it at CDL Which is just basically nine months of Intense performance come a cut as you go. Yeah um You are and you come out of that with Solos, you know, it looks like a stable business model. The idea seems to be proven etc You can you can raise those funds. It used to be the case in Canada was like really hard now Now with that, yeah, it's getting totally So you can do that the ones that don't raise it's usually a signal that they shouldn't be raising They can't get that once so I I can't I don't see the constraint to the retail thing is the as the problem Uh, I think the the problem is getting the companies up to speed Uh, so they are vestibule Investible, um, and I think that's a you know, that's a huge challenge And certainly a challenge with the companies we have that are very science-based that sometimes it's like a Four-year time horizon was time you get regulatory approval for something or whatever it is Uh, but you know, there seems to be There seems to be a bit more patience for that now So I don't I don't know if we need to unlock more funds necessarily Um, you know for for that something maybe I'm you know, I'm not wrong, but that's the impression I get Yeah, like I I'm going perspective as um There's a lot of really good small SMBs and lifestyle businesses in Canada globally not just can these aren't the unicorns. Yeah, they're really good casual businesses right, we will and A lot of people use the products on a day-to-day basis. Yes um This is just behind closed doors talking with these people using the products If the opportunity did arise they would take a position for the upside it would help the incentives align So you think oh, no, okay. So I mean that that may be true. I I haven't seen I haven't I don't get to see that So so so that might be true. There may be this sort of unlocked things that could scale But we haven't you know that just the opportunity isn't there the match isn't there Or you know, people are happy doing what they're doing and no one's taking it to the next level that could well Yeah, because you know, whenever everyone talks about startup to talk about unicorns, right? I'll put that aside in that basket Um does but let me let me just say yeah the what retail retail investors aren't going to get you the answer to that the reason is because The other thing you get from the right sort of investors Is it comes with that boatload of advice? Yeah, it comes with the network knowledge. Yeah, I mean, you know Retail of it. I don't know do that. You know, do they it doesn't have that no like The reason why I bring this up is there is a massive long tail of amazing businesses They'll do like a couple of million dollars to ten million massive long tail Um, and you have you have entrepreneurs where the premiums aren't that sexy of these businesses, right? Maybe 2x. Yeah, so They ponder wait, shoot. I sell my business for 2x But then where am I going to get cash flow of this business anywhere else? I'm not going to sell it for 2x the premiums too low. Yeah, it's not in a sexy industry No one's going to give me my 10x whatever. Right. So it's like I'm not really getting a payday as an entrepreneur I might be taking like 150k dividend for us in my life But that's what we get from moving all this out of Silicon Valley. Yeah, the things that are the unsexy businesses Pretty darn interesting And that's that's another thing that we like to see I like to see these ones You know that look like they are Well, you know Used to be said to have come up and said oh, well, that's a loser category and that used to be it But now people are getting more open to that Yes, because it was a loser category because everybody's saying there's a loser category. So I've never got going But people are working out how to make the case Now if you can if you can prove where the money is There's that and so I think moving out of the mindset of geographies and across different countries would hopefully do that Yeah, is there any last final things that we should kind of talk about to Get across to people. Um, I don't know You know, like that we've been pretty far away. Yeah, so it's been pretty good Uh, I I uh, I'd love people to read the book. Please do. It's a fantastic book It's like policymakers to read the book as well. It's a light read which is great It's organized beautifully like I had I went through it last night. It's fantastic. It's excellent. Yeah Yeah, uh, you know, no, I think I I think we've covered it all You know cover stuff. There's there's other things we can You there's each Bit of there could be drilled down for some period of time We didn't even talk about you know the downside of technology and all of that sort of stuff Also sitting there in the book and how to think about that. So that'll be part two Another future time we do worry about that quite a bit. So yeah, cool. Well, josh. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show Guys, please go check out the book buy it. I'll leave a link below in the show notes. Joshua once again Thanks for coming on the show. 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