 Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler today. I'm chatting with Mark Andreessen known to many as P. Marca Mark Welcome Hey Tyler great to be here Simple question. Have you always been like this? Yes, I believe that my friends would say that I have so let's go back to the junior high school Mark Andreessen at that time What was your favorite book and why? That's a really good question I know I read a lot, you know probably like a lot of a lot of people like me. It was a lot of science fiction I'm one of the few people I know who thinks that late Robert Heinlein was better than early Robert Heinlein So that that had a really big effect on me You know What else just you know, I was I'm never a student early age and why is late Robert Heinlein better? So he has to me at least to young me see if older me would agree with this But it is a sense of exploration and discovery and wonder and open-endedness It was it for me for me. It was if he got more open-minded as he got older And so I just I remember those I remember those books in particular being kind of very very inspiring, you know That the universe is a place of possibilities And what's the seminal television show for your intellectual development in say junior high school? No, junior high school. I mean, it's hard to it's hard to it's hard to beat Knight Rider Why Knight Rider? So it that was so there was a Really there was there were a wave of sort of these sort of near science fiction shows in the in the late 70s early 80s They kind of coincided with you know, some of it was the aftermath of Star Wars But it was sort of the arrival of the personal computer and the arrival of sort of computer technology in the lives of ordinary people for the first time And so, you know, there was a massive wave of anxiety, but there's also a tremendous sense of Possibility and so there were a set of these shows that basically propelled you think the the line They would always use this 20 minutes into the future And so, you know, it's it's our you know, Knight Riders like this air wolf was like this a whole bunch of shows like this Where it was our world except advanced technology had just arrived and you know, really like what that meant How it would fit in how it would change things You know, it was just these very you know compelling fictional portrayals I still get a little fired up whenever I get into a You know a modern car today you get in and it actually looks like the Knight Rider car on the inside And I still get a little I still get a little you know a little a little a little jolten excitement that that actually happened And you know and in fact the car if you want it to it will talk to you So we fast forward to high school I mean what is that in high school? You hated the most and did also did the worst at What was the biggest tax of high school classes, but which? chemistry lab Writing no, I went I went to a very small. I went to a very small high school So, uh, you know, I have friends that went to all these, you know, very fancy, you know Magnet whatever schools and science schools and you know all these things I read all it's actually really funny I read all these debates about you know lowl high school or whatever what is the Sturvescent and all these places And I don't know I went my high school was like the opposite of all that so You know no AP classes no advanced, you know kind of work of any kind so so basically just basically just an endurance It was an endurance competition to see who would you know who could outlast two of me or them And was there a teacher who understood what you were about or just no one? You know there you know there were a couple there was a computer teacher in particular We actually we actually got a computer lab where they think I don't know two or three computers Towards the very end and then there was a teacher a young teacher who came in And and so and yeah, you know we you know we dialed in a little bit But it was it was mostly just in a holding career until I got off college So no slide intended to University of Illinois, which is a good school, but why didn't you go to a better school? So for where I grew up in rural, Wisconsin, and so it's like everybody everybody just assumed if you went to college It just meant you just went to college in Wisconsin. You just went to you know, you know probably the University of Wisconsin They had actually rolled I actually found it later They had rolled up all these little tiny like teacher colleges into what they call the University of Wisconsin system Um, you know, but it was really a bunch of little colleges and then it was it was Madison And so that that was sort of the default path And so from where I grew up at that time crossing state lines to go University of Illinois was a gigantic move A a a very big change. You didn't have a passport Very uncommon yet people don't um, you know people don't you know you when you're It's amazing how fine people can subdivide groups. Um, and there there there was there's a Wisconsin Illinois rivalry That's like a very big thing. Um, and uh, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say East Germany West Germany But you know, maybe Maybe a little bit And so it was a big deal to jump the fence In what sense are you still a thinker of the rural Midwest? Yeah, so I thought I was a fluke, right? So I thought I was a fluke. I thought I was strange It's like, okay, you know, you leave the Midwest you go to the coast you get involved in you know tack You don't you know, basically, you know You kind of very very kind of different path than the people I knew And so I just I just assumed that I was sort of weird and different and then I read this I got out here to Silicon Valley and then I I started to kind of get oriented and then I read this Profile that I recommend everybody which is uh, tom wolf the great novel externalist wrote a profile of Bob Noyce who was the original founder of intel and basically the father of the chip industry Um, and I read this profile and basically and I don't mean to compare myself to Bob Noyce But basically tom wolf describes an archetype Um, and the archetype is the midwestern tinker right who basically comes out of a sort of, you know, so very practical kind of farming oriented mechanical You know kind of dirt under the fingernails working with machines with your hands, you know kind of culture and background You know literally for farming You know for for for like mechanical work and and then basically ends up in in advanced technology Um, and so I I went I went in one shot of three in that profile from thinking of myself as a fluke to thinking of myself as a cliche Um, and I think the cliche definitely applies And as a moralist are you still rural midwest? So I I really struggle with that. I would say I've I've lived my life on the two polar extremes I guess of what I would consider to be at least like Whatever you might call it it's the morality scale or the personality scale or the cultural scale, which is, you know I've lived in a sort of extremely conservative repressive, um, you know, right wing And uh, very, um, you know, let's say how to say traditionalist, you know Probably the most traditionalist environment, you know in the country or at least one of them, uh in kind of the The rural midwest and then and then I've lived the other part of my life in the sort of extremely Open-minded, libertine Progressive, uh, you know far left, you know sort of milieu of uh, I don't live in San Francisco proper But I live close enough where I feel the I feel the gravity well of sort of, uh, you know The most extreme form of progressivism in the country Um, and so I've sort of experienced both extremes. I think I'm I'm probably I'm probably you know I'm sort of I don't know. Maybe it's again that the tinker in me or the practical person I sort of inclined more towards the middle on that stuff um, so I I see I I see the issues with both sides over time I see the advantages of both sides and I think I think probably the extremes are both probably bad ideas So let's say you had done a very rural midwest kind of thing and had a bunch of kids in your 20s How would your life has been different if at all other than having the kids? Yeah, so I you know, I my my answer for a long, you know, I waited a long time I have we have we have one kid now, um the seven year old and I you know I waited a long time, you know to do that into my 40s And so my my my answer for a very long time would have been you prioritize you either have, you know Basically worker kids, you know the cut for the kind of career that I do. It's like you have a choice And it's like really hard For people to be able to do both I will for a long time I would have said, you know that that was the case and so the answer to the question would have been You know, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did Um, I will say I was really struck my business partner and friend Ben Horowitz You know who's had a you know, very kind of similar career to mine He had three kids when he was very young in his early 20s And when he had no money And was under a lot of stress And he had kind of the polar opposite life life trajectory in that in that dimension that I did You know, his kids are now, you know, I've got a seven year old His kids are like fully grown. They're off in college. They're they're beyond college They're graduated and they're off in their careers And what he told me was, you know having three kids at that age He said he wouldn't necessarily wish anybody, you know In terms of like the the stress that results But however, he said that it was a very focusing Motivating thing and it caused him to be like laser focused hyper focused at work You know the the cliche in tech right as the workers are like, you know It's foosball and then it's time for the yoga class and it's time for the moustache And it's time for volleyball and it's time for the beer bus And Ben and I knew this because I knew it. I knew him when the kids were little I've known him for 25 years now and I worked with them starting in the early 90s And he was it was just always very clear He was he was hyper focused every minute work really really counted And so in retrospect, I don't know whether I could have pulled that off But there there is a different way of working Um that that that level of pressure puts you under that at least in his case worked very well If you had grown up in Renaissance Florence, what would you have been doing? So, um, well, let's see. Do I get to be a Medici or or not? If you want to be But they're just plain bankers, right? Well, yeah, so yeah, sort of yeah, yeah Yeah, so people don't know the Medici rule in Florence. They were they were they were plain bankers The line goes to Cosimo to Medici That's sort of the line when he sort of had to take over the state In order to preserve the banking business And then the family became, you know, very very politically important And then of course, you know, was the sponsor for, you know, the arts and basically sciences The Vici and all these amazing people Michelangelo for, you know, for for decades and then centuries had followed And so yeah, I aspirationally would have been a Medici I Had I not been a Medici, I want to try to get as close to the Medici as I possibly could You know, I would like to think I had I would have been some form of either kind of proto scientists, proto engineer You know, Da Vinci, you know, Da Vinci's notebooks are full of engineer, you know, he was engineer They were full of engineering diagrams and plans, you know, including things that have to this day never been built Um, he actually built military machines at one point. Um, and so, you know, maybe there was like a proto engineer going on there And then as you said, like finance, you know, that they they created an entire world of Finance and trade and really sort of helped develop the economy as we know it today from You know from from a very early stage and so, you know, being part of that kind of banking system I think would have been very exciting at that time. So I hopefully would have been able to talk myself into one of those Um sculpting I I think I lack the talent. So so so maybe banking instead Say we put you back in the neolithic period. What are you doing? That's Hopefully hopefully finding a niche, um, you know aspirationally, you know, you know, I probably want to be a hunter We see we would see very quickly whether I had the aptitude for that Uh, probably which doctor would have been a bit of a stretch. Um, although maybe I can I can play cult leader when I have to And um, you know, and then, you know, at some point they started writing things down Like at some point, you know, they started writing things down. They started having poetry They, uh, you know, they started to have kind of, you know, not really science per se But they started to kind of explore nature. They started to build, you know, they started to build cities You know kind of come together and so, um, you know You know, I don't know maybe maybe I could have I could have done the irrigation system That that would have been a good way to get the rest of the tribe to put up with me Moving ahead to the current you which books have you reread the most? Um, that is like Let's see, um I am rereading That's a good question. I've read a lot of business history. I've let I've read a lot of technology history Um, I've sort of I've read a lot of finance history. I've covered that that stuff I don't tend to read more than once it's almost entirely I guess I would say broadly speaking it's sort of political theory. It's history It's economic theory a little bit although it's probably more economic history Um, and so I think I probably keep circling around the same small set of topics Around basic basically how do people organize and then what happens when they do and then how do they behave? Um, and so I keep circling around that. Um, I've been reading lately. Um, I've been reading a rereading uh, James Burnham's books. Um, uh, I've had a particular fascination for the last few years So I'm actually I'm actually finishing a reread of those books right now. Um, some new books like that How are those different on the reread? um So I guess the way I would describe it is I spent the first 25 years of my life trying to understand how machines work And then I spent the second 25 years so far of my life trying to figure out how people work Um, it turns out people are a lot more complicated It turns out, uh, there's a lot more moving parts. Um, and there's a lot more history Um, and so I find for the really good books now that I read I don't understand and then I don't have any formal training like I don't have any formal training in history You know, I took one history class University of Illinois. Very good engineering school. They let us take one humanities elective. I took a history class one class Um, so I don't have any formal foundation in history or philosophy or economics. Um, so um, or you know, political science sociology Um, and so a lot of the times like I don't it actually reminds me of learning technology I don't understand a lot of what they're talking about the first time Um, and then I will read like six other books. Um, and the pieces will start to fall into place I'll read the history the pieces will start to fall into place and then I go back and I read it again and I'm like, okay, this is what they're actually talking about And so it's kind of reconstructing this sort of you know, what for me is sort of a 500 year tradition Um, you know kind of piecemeal. Um, and so those books tend to get reread a lot What is the scenario like where you end up as a deeply committed advocate for the humanities or are we already there? Yeah, so I I think I'm I think I'm getting there There's so tell me what you tell me what you think of this or we can maybe we can have a different conversation a different interview I can interview you in this sometime which is it's There was the humanities pre the 1960s and maybe even the humanities sort of pre the 1930s And what they thought about and talked about and worked on and then there's sort of the humanities as we know and understand it today And I think they're pretty different And I think they're they might go so far stay very different and they might go so far as to say they really have no resemblance to each other Um, and so there's an there's an older tradition in the humanities and aquarium. Yeah, I'm not discovering anything here It's like, you know, the sort of you know, the sort of you know, history of philosophy, you know Sort of philosophy pre the 1960s That she turns out I've gotten quite fascinated through through Burnham I've gotten quite fascinated with the like sociology in the 1910s 1920s Was it was a very different kind of thing? I'm sure you it's much closer to economics, right Well, this is this is the other thing is economics economics pre. What was it like the 1950s 1960s? It wasn't all these formulas, right? It wasn't all these formulas. It wasn't a branch of physics. Like it seems like it is today Um, it was it was descriptive. It was it was verbal. I mean, you know, kane, you know, you agree kane's You know, it's like this and even the people that preceded him. I found I found a book I was like I'm fascinated by the second industrial revolution a while ago and I found this book on google books about This is the David Wells was like an economist in like the 1880s or something And he basically just like describes how the second industrial revolution kind of rolled out at that time And he just like he just like tells a story He just like goes through like here's what's happening and that was like an economics book, right with like no formulas And so yeah, it was like The former humanities that resonates me is just like that. It's like it's like history economics philosophy politics merged You know, and then there's sort of, you know, you're trying to at least in my case You're trying to find the people who are sort of analytical and descriptive as opposed to prescriptive But it was a different kind of thing and you know, you could argue that they were not rigorous I mean, you could argue that they were storytelling and not, you know, being scientific But I think they were being scientific kind of in their way at that time And then they what they didn't have I mean, they had their issues But but they didn't they had their issues but they didn't have our issues and so it right it's it's it's It's like everything today is filtered through our politics And so it's it's it's really hard to understand in my view how people thought Especially before the 1960s and again, I think even before the 1930s Through our political lens, you have to kind of go back and kind of reconstruct like what what they actually talked about at that time And it turns out to be more more interesting than I would have thought And we learned from twitter that today's supposedly rigorous thinkers are often not very rigorous at all They often use rigor against themselves in a sense, right? Yeah, so the great the great miracle of twitter So so everybody kind of says, you know, everybody looks at twitter as like this mass like basically it's as an engine There's this whole question is something in it Are these different machines engines or cameras? Like is the stock market an engine or a camera is like something that that like economists will debate And I think about twitter is a twitter an engineer camera and this prevailing view is that you know Say twitter social media broadly but twitter specifically because it's kind of where the elites are The you know, sort of the intellectual elites the social elites And so the the prevailing wisdom on twitter is that it's primarily an engine, which is you know, it's sort of a it's changing behavior You know for for better or for worse I actually tend to think it's it's at least as much a camera. It's like a it's like a giant x-ray machine And you've got this phenomenon, which is just fascinating where you have all of these public figures All of these people in positions of authority like in a lot of cases great authority You know, we the leading legal theorists of our time, you know leading politicians like all these people business people And all of a sudden like and they tweet and all of a sudden it's like oh, that's who you actually are These are the things you actually think like to your point. This is your actual level of thought You know, oh, these are the delusions. You're operating under And so it's our friend martin gurry has this you know pieces of the sort of a collapse of authority In the modern world and I think a lot of it is the authority figures Just basically showing up and exposing that like, you know the emperor the emperor quite literally in a lot of cases has no clothes Um, and so that that the fact that that phenomenon is so widespread and not more recognized and then that it continues I just think it's absolutely fascinating So all this extensive reading of history of earlier social science How does it affect your your daily practical investing decisions? at the conceptual level Yeah, so what i'm trying to get to when i'm trying to get to is yeah sort of the the broad patterns of human behavior And so you get to get very practical on this, right? So What we actually do what we actually do in both entrepreneurship both starting and running these companies Building products designing products building products that don't exist Bringing them into being and then also in venture capital and actually funding these efforts Um, you know, it it's actually there was a guy I wrote a book referring to uh, sort of this this kind of investing It says the last liberal art which is to say it You might think it's basically an application of business or finance and it is to a certain extent You might think it's an application of technology and it is to a certain extent But really what you're dealing with is a large amount of human behavior Um, and you're dealing with human behavior on the part of all the people in the industry and all the things that we're doing And our own behavior and our own biases and our own ability to think clearly and all the people we coach and work with Um, but then you know look, you know these products launch and like they have to take in the market And to take in the market they have to get you know the sort of a large number of people You know who are kind of busy already in their daily lives You know out in the world to basically take something new seriously and to want to use it and to want to buy it and pay for it And you know, I haven't really effect effect effect how they live And so I think I think I think what I'm sort of figuring out over time is sort of the The psychology sociology Um kind of elements are you know as important or more important as than the business finance elements or the or the technology elements Um, and you know, it's not like I said like it's not something that comes natural Like you know those of us like me a lot of us came up through the engineering background Like we were quite literally never trained in human behavior We never trained in sociology or psychology or any of these things And so we kind of back into this through kind of harsh experience over time Um, but but I'm always curious like if people act a certain way It's like okay Is that new behavior or is that actually a very kind of old form of behavior? You know, is this is this something new people are only doing today Or have they been doing this kind of thing for a long time? And if they've been doing this kind of thing for a long time Then there's something deep about it And then you know for me it said okay read backward and try to figure out like okay What what actually is this form of behavior? Is is it actually that deep? Right because if it's you know, it's it's kind of the lindy thing if people have been acting a certain way for thousands of years They're highly likely to continue acting a certain way for thousands of years And so then you you know, I don't you can't predict people per se But at least you can start to predict the patterns of behavior And at least I I feel a lot more comfortable when I have that kind of grounding As opposed to just trying to deal with people in the moment So let's say we take curious mark put him in the backwards time machine Give him all the languages he needs and immunities against all disease Where in history do you wish to spend a month? Yeah, the you know, the the it was a couple big obvious tempting ones, you know Athens, you know, the trial of Socrates would have been exciting to see Socrates had it coming It would have been fascinating to see that play out, you know, the first modern cancellation I think the the era the Medici you know a month in the court of Lorenzo Would have been fascinating Or I think that you know the early yeah the second industrial revolution Edison's lab Yeah, maybe right around the point So j.p. Morgan jp pure pot Morgan the original jp Morgan You know was a bit was a banker and he operated primarily with that You know, he financed large-scale industrial enterprise like the railroads, but he actually was also a venture capitalist Kind of in his spare time and he financed he was financed of Edison's efforts in a significant way and in fact was the first customer of Edison's light bulb system for the house and and Edison came and installed The first in indoor lighting in the world in in jp Morgan's library And then it caught on fire for the library down and then jp Morgan to his enormous credit Rebuilt the library and hired Edison to do it all over again um And so sort of that moment like that was the you know Sort of that moment extending through like the 1920s You know we're in a lot of ways in my view like the most relevant origin of what we're living through today And so to kind of be in that sort of 1880 to 1925 period. I think what it would have been would have been really great What's your favorite tech product that no longer exists? Ah That is I love that little I love the little blackberry That had the four line led display and the keyboard and ran on double a batteries. I love that little guy. I still miss him I could type like crazy on that guy. Um, I took notes on a four line led display for for years Um, so it was better for typing than the current products It was better for me for typing. Um, uh, so yeah, I've missed it ever since Um What else no longer exists? I mean, it's really fun to drive old cars. Um, it's it's very very fun to drive old cars It's like the 60s muscle cars are super fun to drive. It does very quickly educate you as to why modern cars Are what they are Um, because it turns out old cars were more like pickup trucks, uh, even if they look like sports cars But those are a lot of fun Do you still use an rss reader? Hmm I do so I use so I use actually this this this is actually an exciting moment on that topic for those of us who Love these things. Um, so I use feely, uh, which I like a great deal And it's a it's a guy the guy who does it as a guy used to use to work for us And a wonderful guy that I think it's a great product It's sort of the inheritor of the of the of the now lost google google reader The the um, the ruthlessly executed google reader Um, and then um, you know substack, you know, this is talking my book But substack one, you know, one of our companies has a new reader And and it's primarily for reading reading substack But it basically is recreating in my view the best of a google reader had And so that that's the other one that i'm is getting a lot of use right now So and I use both of those and why is rss at least seemed to be so much less important than before Yeah, so rss is one of those things and there's this big I would say this gets into a broader overarching kind of huge debate fight happening in the tech industry right now, which is sort of The sort of internet got built on two models, which are kind of diametrically opposed one model Was sort of open source open protocols And networks and and this was originally tcpip And then there was you know, http for the web and there was smtp for email and there was nntp for usenet once upon a time You know discussion groups and so forth And and sort of I you know in college and then coming up and a lot of the work we did at Netscape was around those Those protocols ssl we you know, we created an escape another one of these And so these sort of protocols you know computer languages if you will and then You know sort of open like not tied to a company anybody can implement You know kind of against them You know they say anybody can be on the internet anybody can can can exchange email anybody can be on the web that the reason That those statements are true is because those were open protocols And then there's this other kind of diametrically opposed kind of world Which i'm also very involved in and very excited about which is this world of the internet companies Right and sort of the you know the sort of you know the actual you know Google and facebook and all these companies over the years you know many you know with us today and long gone that Didn't you know built all these incredible services that we live in and get get get huge amounts of value out of You know the internet companies build internet services They don't tend as much to build internet protocols. They tend to build kind of these walled gardens these you know These kinds of contained environments You know they exercise a lot of control. There's huge debates over that control You know we have longer discussion about that there there are big britches to that level of control in terms of their You know their ability to kind of maintain a very consistent kind of user experience And so I think basically I go through that to say I think rss was from that first world of networks It was a protocol It got supported by a lot of people It didn't quite get to the level of critical mass that was required Before basically the the social networks took off and the social networks right were on the other side They were from companies like you know facebook and twitter and in myspace and others at the time And so I think basically in in essence the the social networks sort of stole their lunch money Stole rss's lunch money. The social networks just they got so good so fast They just absorbed a lot of the energy that was going into blogging and going into rss By the way podcast is the other area right podcast never there was never really a podcast There were podcast companies, but nobody ever really got to critical mass Podcasts, you know actually have done quite well as as a network. They're they're doing pretty well It's still not quite what you want it to be like you're still like the podcast search is still like a big problem You know, maybe that's a good thing though Maybe that's a good thing it segments the market a bit. You have to know what you're doing to find your way to a podcast People are less willing to court stupid listeners But we're also back to that same tension again, which is okay Now we have youtube and spotify Right, and so you've got these major players in the form of youtube google and then spotify youtube doing you know videos And then spotify doing podcasts Um, you know and a lot of people cross cross posts between those and and both youtube and spotify have very highly prioritized You know this kind of you know spoken word content interviews Podcasts and so forth and so like you know There's the potential that we're sitting here five years from now And the sort of open podcast world has kind of really diminished the same way that the blogging rss world diminished And then youtube and spotify have taken over podcasts in the same way that you know facebook and twitter took over You know kind of you know text content or whatever Um, and maybe you know to your point like maybe maybe that would be a you know There'd be good direction in some ways. Maybe there'd be a bad direction otherwise This this this whole thing. I wanted to go through it because this is why we're so excited about this new I you know this new kind of web 3 idea Let's go to these this elaborations of these technologies You know so called crypto and blockchain is like that there is this new way of envisioning this kind of thing Um, which basically is as a network but with money right a network but with trust right So these these sort of open protocols open networks But built on this new kind of web 3 infrastructure It gives you a a very different way to kind of realize both a high trust environment and also to realize that You know actual actual economic incentives And so what i'm hoping and what we're actually seeking at the firm what we're trying very hard to fund Um, I'm hoping for example for podcasts. I'm hoping five years from now There will be these thriving, you know call it web 3 podcast environments that will be open and will be you know We'll have the sort of anarchic uncontrolled kind of element that I think that I think you and I both like However, we'll have a higher level of trust and we'll have a higher level of monetary incentive and economic incentive Then the open networks of the past usually did and so there there's this there's this third Way and you know, this is still early but like we're we're we're quite optimistic that there might be a new way to build these systems And I'm excited to see what happens But what's the concrete advantage of web 3.0 for podcasts? So right now you and I may not feel like it but we are anarchic and uncontrolled right like we can say something Some external force isn't going to censor us Why is this a better podcast if it's done through web 3.0? Why can't we just put it out there? Yeah, well the most obvious thing is just money. Um, you just you don't get paid, right? And so like youtube youtube has built-in monetization Spotify has built-in monetization You know a big way that they're able to sort of entice creators over Is is is by paying them and I mean, you know famously Joe Rogan, you know, they're paying him But you know only see the published reports But I you know a very large amount of money to take his content out of the open ecosystem and put it into Put it into a closed ecosystem and you know, and I'm like again, like I'm you know good for Spotify Like I think that's tremendous. It seems to be great for their business You know, that's all good and I'm glad that Joe Rogan's making money But like he in my view like he Joe Rogan should not have to choose He should not have to choose between being part of an open internet And basically not having a way to make money And then kind of going into a silo and then and then having that be the way that he makes money like that That that's the binary choice that we've had with all of these internet architecture decisions now for 30 years 40 years Um, and it shouldn't have to be a choice. Um, you know people should be able to get paid You know Be quit we'll strike you as an obvious statement. A lot of people are still contributing to a statement incentives matter Economics matter It is better You know in general when there is a way for you know, there to be monetary value assigned to you know, productive work You know more interesting things happen. I mean sub stack is a great case study of this I mean there the quality and the level of writing on sub stack You know is is just absolutely extraordinary and it just it turns out it's the kind of this great Kind of amazing thing, which is if you let people like rate for money, it turns out they write a lot of really good stuff Um, and so that's that's the most obvious and immediate thing How does someone like rogan? It doesn't have to be him, but a well-known podcast host How does that person get paid in a better way through web 3.0 make that more concrete for us? Yeah, yeah, I mean they pick they can pick their business. I mean they can pick their business model They can decide the subscription based business model, you know micro micro transactions They can pick, you know, they can pick whatever model they want Um, you know, they can also have indirect, you know, there's this whole those whole new rise of this kind of the the Non-fungible token, you know, kind of this idea of unique digital assets. There's, you know, completely different monetization methods that are opening up for media Um, you know, it's entirely possible in the future. For example, you'll have entire, you know forms of media like video games and sporting events And music and so forth that will monetize in completely different ways through the creation of, you know, unique digital property You know, they get sold and and and and trades Um, and so you it's you know, it's it's yeah, it's look. It's injecting it's injecting economics It's injecting at a very fundamental level kind of internet native money internet native economics and incentives Into a system that simply hasn't had that and of course this isn't to say that everything needs to cost money This isn't to say that lots of people won't choose to have things be free Um, but the ability to put it this way the hard decision between free the hard decision between let's say total independence and no money Um, and then having a traditional contractual relationship with one company like that That shouldn't be the trade-off. There should be lots of room in the middle for experimentation And that's that's the zone we're heading into now But it's the key difference easier micropayments Is the key difference sort of being able to sell collectibles more readily say with the nft model rather than signed t-shirts No, it's they don't sound very big to me. They both sound like possible advantages But as a percentage of gdp, they sound like really tiny advantages Well, it depends on your percentage of gdp. I mean it's a percentage of gdp like everything is tiny compared to like healthcare So I mean the media industry is quite small, right? Like if you just if you look at slice of slice of percentage of gdp, like it's actually turns out It's actually really interesting like video games. It turns out it's actually quite large But like television print, you know newspapers newspapers, you know I have always been a tiny slice of gdp like magazines have always been a tiny slice book publishing has always been a tiny slice You know, but they're tiny slices that really matter You know, so I don't yeah, I don't really look at it I don't really look at it top down I don't really look at it as like, okay This this therefore has to lead to like an expansion of 100x seeing the media business like that's not the Like maybe I think it grows the media business But it doesn't have to like it cause it to explode like that But having it be having it be a better proposition for creators having to be a better proposition for consumers Having content come into existence that didn't exist before And then also just as you think about scale Scale on these things is really hard to forecast as it turns out and the reason is just We live in a world now very different than prior worlds We live in a world where we now have 5 billion directly addressable consumers online at any moment for any new thing And so one of the things that we're finding in our in our day job is it's getting really hard to forecast market size For any of these new things because you know if if they don't take if they don't take if they don't You know it goes back to if they don't kind of have kind of uptake in the in sort of consumer psychology Then of course they're going to be small But when these things run they can really run right? I know you just look at like just you know the most recent example is tick tock You know tick tock is just you know Who knew that short-form videos were going to be that big and it just turns out the 5 billion people as a significant percentage of the Like short-term video short-form videos all of a sudden It's this huge business and so the I think these things are Unpredictable in the scope that make this the scale that they can reach and I think we might be surprised to the upside About what happens when you start to make some of these things possible What prevents a lot of intermediaries from re-emerging in web 3.0 and making it in some ways a lot like web 2.0 Which could be okay, but actually re-centralized There are gatekeepers again. There are censorship issues again And it's not actually that different but with marginal improvements. Why isn't that the scenario? Yeah, so there will be some of that and let me let me give you an example of how that did happen with In the old in the old world So email was email was was fully open in many ways by the way is at least in theory still fully open emails There's an smtp protocol an email that lets basically any Uri or anybody could write an email client email server and exchange email with all the other email servers on the internet Um, you know, and then they're basically a webmail emerge and then you got yahoo mail and now you have gmail Um, and so gmail right gmail is an example of what you're talking about Which is gmail is a sort of a call it a semi walled garden Like it's an environment that you can live in it's a complete ui. It's got all these features Um, it it does give you the ability to send email You can still send and receive email with gmail with with other email clients Using smtp. It's still in there But what users experience to your point is they experience kind of this new intermediary and then gmail has its own anti-spam algorithm and You know, I did so give me some gmail is not censoring content yet But I know of but like I think it's like basically any day now like they could start at any moment Um, and the people, you know living and working inside gmail are going to start to have the same experience That they have in sort of any intermediate gatekeeper that starts, uh, you know that starts censoring content Actually like online retailers deal with this already like online retailers are always fighting Basically all of their email, you know to their customers getting classified as spam and it's the gmail spam engine that does that It's not it's not smtp So so this case gatekeeping function emerges and so the argument basically is gmail Basically email is no longer open. It's now closed. It's been moved from that first category of network to this kind of second category of company Um, and we've lost the sort of anarchic and freewheeling aspect of it And I and look there there is some truth to that notwithstanding that you can still build your own email system And in fact google built their you know at one point everybody was on yahoo mail and everybody's on gmail Um, and so I would describe it as it's it's a little bit the sort of loyalty voice exit You know kind of herdsman framework Which is if you're just in a walled garden like you have uh loyalty or voice Right, you but you really don't have exit and and again, it's people blame it So I think people blame this on policies and companies whatever and that has something to do with it But it's also it's an architectural observation Which is it's the difference between something getting built just by a company versus something getting built by a network If there is an underlying network, then there is exit And all of the web 3, you know technologies start, you know In a lot of cases the web 3 things that we're back in they're not even companies They're their projects their their web 3 projects out of the gate. We're not even buying equity We're buying tokens, you know, they're decentralized from the very beginning And they're open protocols from the very beginning and so it's this Yeah, it's it's this alternate way of Of looking at the world alternate way of designing systems and then it kind of opens up this exit kind of option Um, and I think that you know as as usual with with any human system that turns out that that matters a lot What's the main problem that needs to be solved by tech for hybrid meetings or hybrid workplaces to really succeed over the longer run Yeah, so I'm not convinced. I mean look in the long long run. Um, so uh, I'll pick on In science fiction. So the the the movie the kingsman Which is kind of a funny spine movie spoof But they have a the the conference room scenes in there that all the all the British agents are meeting around the conference table And it turns out they're they're all virtual. They're all wearing their augmented reality glasses And so they're all kind of seeing holograms of each other Um, you know, there are going to be technological approaches virtual reality augmented reality in the future You know that that give you basically the recreation of a of a physical meeting environment I mean they already exist. I mean these these things already exist Our friend our friend biology is teaching courses right now in VR in a virtual classroom So like the you know the these technologies do already exist, you know, that that will happen And you know, I think that will be a big deal Um, having said that I don't think That's necessarily the goal or that I don't think that's necessary I don't think that a hybrid meeting is necessarily an equilibrium Or at least a primary equilibrium. I'm not sure if it's I'm not sure if it's something we need to center in on and the reason I say that is because It's when is this sort of reductive or it's kind of looking backwards Which is to say we used to have in-person meetings and now we have some people remote. So now we need hybrid meetings You know, it's kind of working working back working backwards from that that Well, there's another way to think about that which is well, actually, maybe we maybe we shouldn't try to have hybrid meetings Maybe in fact hybrid meetings are the exact wrong idea Right and maybe they're the wrong idea because maybe instead of combining the best elements of being local and being remote Maybe they combine the worst elements of being local and being remote And maybe instead what we want to do is shift more to the edges and we want to have number one We want to have communication systems and management systems that are really built for remote work first and primarily And and and we have some of those and some of those now work really well Um, and then maybe when we get people together, we don't want to have meetings Maybe we want to have like very immersive, um, you know, very social, you know, very human bonding You know, but very much more intense level of of actual like, you know, actual human interaction In relationship building than you have in a meeting um and Take a step back on this like The office is an artifact of the technology of a time and place I mentioned the the second industrial revolution like the office is sort of a derivation of the factory Right, the sort of there was there was sort of the the factory and the idea of sort of mass production And then there was the idea of like all the time in motion studies And all these guys who did that and then out of that out of that you you got the go back look at the history You've got schools You got jails As they're known as as you see them today and then and then you got you got offices And it's it's and it's this idea that you have to bring people together in this kind of highly orchestrated Mechanistic, you know, kind of mass, you know, kind of way, you know empires, you know Fun historical fact like the the roman empire was not run out of offices Like they didn't they ran the world and yet there was no office. There was no office building They the roman aristocrats they worked out of their homes And then they went to the senate and they went to their country house There was no office building for administering the roman empire. I don't know about the british empire I'm guessing they probably didn't have a lot of offices. Maybe a couple offices in in London But they didn't probably have a lot of offices either Like this office construct is a time and place kind of thing that you need, you know, it's a punch card You need to get people in at eight o'clock. You need to leave at five o'clock, you know The calendar is regimented by half hour hour long meetings, you know in in a in a school or prison The bell goes off, you know at 8 a.m. In the office environment It's the iPhone alarm goes off that it's time for me to go to my meeting Like that's an artifact of a time and place. We now have All of these new tech we have now all these new technologies. They didn't have a hundred years ago We've got video. We've got slack. We've got text. We've got what's that? We've got, you know, this endless array of of all of these new new technologies making it possible to go more portable The cell phone was obviously a huge breakthrough. This was actually Craig McCauze vision for the cell phone Which is that, you know, it's just crazy. You should the desk phone like why are you at your desk? Why are you at your desk? Well, big part is because that's where your phone is and well It's like that doesn't make any sense like your phone should be in your pocket So anyway, so we've been on this technological trends to liberate ourselves from this sort of artificial construct But you know again human nature being what it is You know the artificial construct makes sense at a moment in time 100 years later It doesn't but somebody actually has to step up and reinvent it I suspect the best run companies over the next 10 years are not going to be the companies that are the best at hybrid I suspect they're going to be the best that are either They're going to be the best companies that are great at remote Or they're going to make they're going to be companies that have the choice Take the choice of having people have actually a much deeper level of human interaction much more frequently And and and they're going to kind of push it on those extremes as compared to kind of half-hour hour-long meetings in the office Putting aside healthcare innovations for say the upper middle class What is likely to be the biggest change in the personal home over the next 20 years? I mean the big one the big, you know the big one now it he goes build right up what we said In a lot of ways, this is like the biggest topic in the world or at least in the developed world right now And probably the developing world also that kind of it's hard to kind of overemphasize which is Like if everything I just said is correct and if kind of in the post-covid world this basically this this presumption that remote work is now viable You know, which is a new presumption. You know if this sticks Then you know it represents the first decoupling of economic opportunity from geographic locality, right in in you know Thousands of years like it, you know, it's potentially a civilization level change. I'm getting quite excited about this And so, you know You start to kind of go through the history on this right for for thousands of years If you were a sharp ambitious young person and this you know This is true of the midi cheese and it's true that you've great Like you had to go to the city like you had to go to the city to get actually to get you know to basically get opportunity Um, if you don't have to do that And in particular if you don't have to all go to the same city And if you don't have to go all of the same city that hates you And if all of a sudden Of economic opportunity has decoupled from that then people are going to be able to choose how to live At different stages of their life in a fundamentally different way Much less dependent on the sort of physical requirement of co-location With economic opportunity than they have in the past I think that's just potentially it's like potentially earthquake Like it's potentially one of those things in a hundred years People could look back and say can say like that was a real turning point for how society developed In that case like the definition of the home changes, right? It's like because you know well the first thing is like number one You're working out of your home right and so a lot of people did not plan their home or did not plan whatever their You know apartment buildings or whatever never got built with the assumption that you're working out of them And so one is just all of a sudden it's this live work thing Which again Is it back to the future thing because that's how the roman aristocrats lived and they ran the world and so apparently You can do that And actually the the romans actually had a whole system on this that we could talk about they they thought this Through quick carefully what it meant to work out to work out of their houses And so it's a place that you work, you know second is like you know This whole idea of the nuclear family being detached from the extended family Again because of the need for young people to move for economic opportunity You know should should should the home really be you know two parents and a couple kids or should the home really be Again a back to the future thing should it be three or four generations of people? You know and a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles and then a lot of kids running around And if everybody could still have access to great knowledge work jobs You know online like maybe that's like a fundamentally better way to live Or you know, maybe young people I just met with uh, I've talked to a founder today He's got you know, he's got eight people in his in his eight young people in his company And they they literally go city to city every six months and they get a group house together Um, and they they're just you know, they're exploring the world while they're while they're building their startup And so it may be that we're in this time of being able to sort of recreate a lot of the assumptions around how we can live And a lot of that we'll we'll show up right back in the house How much do you worry about ai and alignment issues? So this is the a the skynet um Skynet, but it could be intermediate right just master criminals who use crypto to hire hitmen to achieve nefarious ends Yeah, the master criminals they're master ai criminals to be clear Yeah, yeah, the problem that yeah At least historically the problem with criminals is they're not that smart So they they they don't do um, they don't they don't tend to do the big elaborate You know, they're they're not a lot of real life priorities running around but um So I guess I would say what I what I don't worry what I don't worry at all about and maybe I'm just short-sighted But I just don't get it I what I'm not worried about is kind of the sort of macro ai like ai comes alive and you know Skynet or the paperclip optimizer or the gray goo or whatever the different formulations these problems Where all of a sudden like the machines turn on us like they get they get conscious and they turn on us And I just I like I don't know for me. This is probably I'm too much of an engineer or something It's like, you know, what is ai it's math, right? It's like it's it's basically elaborations on linear algebra And I just I I have a hard time getting worked up about linear algebra Like it's it's you know, it's math. Um, we'll we'll we'll we'll be able to keep the math under control So I'm not as worried about that I think it's more and I wouldn't say it's a specific worry, but I think it's more what you just alluded to Which is look like And we see this today a world of ubiquitous, you know information communications computation Um a world of everybody, you know being connected. I mean, you know, there's sort of whatever hive mind global brain Kind of concept where everybody's plugged in all the time Um a world in which, you know, people have the ability to marshal, you know enormous economic resources potentially very quickly in a collaborative way Um, you know, the yeah these dystopian views this, um, you know, this these old uh, this The old idea I think you're alluding to the old idea of a I think the essay was called assassination politics Which is sort of yeah crowdfunding uh assassinations and then the what the concern with uh What is it the concern with uh futures markets, uh the concern with robin hansen's idea that always gets gets uh What if him as if if you can bet on, you know, public figure getting assassinated You're creating an incentive for public figure to get assassinated. So yes, like all of those things are real They're going to be all kinds of issues, um, you know, they sort of emerge, um You know from basically connecting the world and wiring everybody up with computers and information systems But it's like, okay, we've been doing that for a long time now. I mean, we you know We gave everybody spoken language that you know, maybe it was a mistake We gave everybody written language. They did a lot of bad things with that. We gave everybody, you know Machines they did a lot of horrible things with machines Um, you know, we figured it out like, you know, we gave we gave people We gave people kind of like history We gave people automobiles and what's one of the first things that happened was, you know, there was a rash of nationwide rash of You know bank robbers, you know, the dillinger gang went out You know, they they they took the automatic weapons from world war one and they took the car from the 1920s And they started knocking over the banks and it was a huge crisis and led to the creation of the fbi Um, and so it's like, yeah, it's like, okay, you know, these are the new tools these are the new systems For me it goes back to the the human dimension, which is yeah People are going to use these things for all kinds of good purposes all kinds of bad purposes We're going to figure this out as we go. We're going to figure out how to deal with it I just I what I just what I just don't see is I just again, maybe I like vision I I don't see the discontinuous jump. Uh, we're all of a sudden we're in some world in which this stuff is just out of control And there's just no way to cope with it. Um What has made Peter teal such an amazing judge of talent? So I think that The thing that is so fascinating about his method and if I could rerun my career I think one of the things I think about is if I rerun my career and I used his method instead of my method Whatever my method is, uh, what I've been more successful and I'm not positive. I think maybe Um, the thing about his method, there's a talent picking aspect to it But I would actually put in front of that and maybe even more importantly, there's a talent attraction aspect to it Um, so my mental model what Peter does is I use the metaphor the bat signal Peter puts out the bat signal Um, and then he basically sees who's who shows up Right and his method and he's basically been doing this since college. That's very interesting Like this is kind of what he did in stanford with the stanford review, you know, it's a stanford review He's like, okay, we're gonna have a new newspaper Let's see who shows up and wants to work on in that case, you know The right wing newspaper on a very left-wing campus and it turned out it was a lot of very smart very You know idiosyncratic and very contrarian people who many of whom he continues to work with today You know, let's put out this clarion call with founders fund with 140, you know, we're from a flying cars tagline And you know, basically see who shows up with flying car startups And he's founders funds been a very successful firm based on attracting, you know, some very, you know, some very very unusual and very You know compelling founders And then he has, you know, it's interesting like Peter doesn't really use social media But he gives talks and he writes and I and again, I think that's part of it Which is he's looking for who reads his stuff or who shows up at his talks And then he basically, you know, it's like which he's one of the most public I don't know what you're like. It's a public speaker when I give public talks I'm like I give the talk and then I'm out the back door And then I'll like go online and see what people think but like no, you've got to stick around You've got to stay. Yeah, that's the whole point the talk is irrelevant Just show up for the for the end of your own talk, right? Here I am Exactly. So, um, I think it's the I don't know. I think it's like 90% It's one of these things where it's one of these things you learn in venture capital It's like 90% of the battle is over by the time it starts Uh, 90% of the talent picking process is over if you're attracting the right people up front Um, and then the filtration just becomes a lot easier Um, and he he has that down to an art form. That's just like absolutely amazing to see and it continues to run He he does it every day So putting aside product market fit. What's the question you're most trying to figure out about who makes a good founder? Yeah, so the biggest question You know and again, this is sort of the macro human behavior kind of question of all time, right? But the biggest question is I think and continues to be and will probably always be it's a little bit the nature and nurture question or let's say it's inherent capability of whatever form for whatever reason And then training Right and that that training is less formal training for entrepreneurship But it's you know, it's on the job training and hopefully it's coaching and you know, hopefully, you know, we can help people with that um I guess I start by saying the presumption is my presumption is there are not enough great founders in the world And I you know and and and I think I think that's obvious We could have a big discussion as to whether that's the case or not I think there is a I think it's pretty clear there isn't if there isn't How do we get more of them? Right? Where do they come from? And can you You know, should you be starting with? You know 100 million people and trying to train as many as you can or 10 million or a million or 100,000 or 10,000 Or a thousand like what what's the What's the upfront criteria? Like what what do they have to show up with by the time they become engaged in the activity and open to the training? Um, and then how much can we train like how many people could we you know? How many people you know, maybe there's just maybe it's much more Um, maybe it's much more nurture than we think maybe it's actually not nature Maybe it's much more nurture. Maybe we just need like much more comprehensive and rigorous training You know much more freely available to you know to a lot more people and I think that's I can that remains I would say a surprisingly open question So let's say you speak with five people tomorrow. They're founders or potential founders What is it you would like data on that you don't have data on now? Waving your magic wand I mean, it would be great. It would be great to it would be great to have like the psychometric tests Um, it would be but you can do that. I don't seem that useful, right? I don't know. Yeah, they're not exactly in fashion They you I would like to have I would like to have uh, I would like to have videotape Of what they were like under adversity Of what they were like under pressure Um, I would like to know how many great people they've worked with in the past are willing to follow them I come to work with them today Um, I would like to know how many people they've worked for who are willing to come to work for them today That's one of the interesting things you see with the really best founders If you'll find as often people who have people who they have worked for will come to work for them It's like, okay. Yeah, this person is so good that I should actually be working for them Like that's an extraordinarily powerful statement. You do see that occasionally Um, I would like to see that more often You know, we learn these things once they're up and running we learn all these things It would be great to have the I don't know whatever the um, you're great to have the scrying device That let us see all that stuff up front Why has venture capital been so concentrated in tech to some extent biomedical and in the old days whaling voyages But not so much in many other things like private equity is much bigger So why is venture capital limited and conceptually? How do you think about those limits? Yeah, so private equity so private equity is able to be private equity And this is not a value statement. It's just a very different way of operating Private equity comes into industries and businesses that already exist Um, and then you know it attempts to optimize them or turn them around or do you know Do consolidate them or whatever it does, but these are there's always the businesses already there that that exists You know, what we do is I like to say we do value investing, but it's value that doesn't exist yet Hasn't been created yet. Um, you know, it's it's it's it's blank. It's blank sheet of paper. Um, stuff The history with some exceptions the history as you said The history basically is that um computer science-based venture capital has done very well biomedical biotechnology based Excuse me. Uh venture capital has done about you might say half as well or a quarter as well Um, and then everything else is kind of a rounding error It hasn't really worked. No having said that we'll come back to this. It's like Tesla nobody in venture out of there were a few vcs, but like most people in venture capital land didn't think there was like A right opportunity to build a new car company. I can tell you that Um, nor did most vcs think there was an opportunity to build a new rocket company I can also tell you that and so you do have these very striking counter examples Which let's come back to but the pattern has been as you said it's computer tech or it's biotech I think it's the bill janeway bill janeway's thesis that he wrote about in his book I think the book is called doing capitalism and it's his history He's a legendary vc in his own right and a kind of trained economist and he he basically says it was the it was the foundational science and advanced technology Basically developed in the computer world For 50 years by DARPA and at succeeding technological, you know agencies and then by big industrial research labs Like IBM research and others that sort of created the preconditions for sort of computer-based startups There was like a 50 year backstory to that by the time silicon valley really got going and then he said also biotech He said the reason biotech is like half the successful It's because there was like 25 years of biotech, you know, nih and all these kind of very aggressive You know kind of you know biotech biological science investing programs And so his claim and this is why like I think he's always been leering for example of clean tech Environmental tech for example He's like look, you know, maybe there should have been a DARPA of clean tech and started in 1950 and ran for 50 years That we were all drawing new technologies off of but it didn't exist And so therefore it's just going to be much harder in all these other fields I think that's probably right and the reason I think that that's probably right It's because at least my history in the valley is if we have a sharp young You know whatever sharp entrepreneur with the ability to attract a team An ability to tell a story and have a vision and then they've got insight into a technological dislocation Right an actual change to the technology kind of foundation of the field that they're working in Then you have a shot for a successful startup if you don't have a technological dislocation It's really hard to just do a cold start now again Having said that ilan did this in both cars and rockets and actually developed many Technical breakthroughs subsequently of both of those companies But at least I didn't see that going in and and I would say the the case studies of tesla and spacex This is something we're spending a lot of time on in our firm Really leads me to wonder if the jane way thesis is actually wrong And and if actually we should be much more open-minded about this and I have a set of ideas as to why that might be the case But that that's one of the things that we're going to try to explore This issue aside, what have you been most wrong about in the last 10 years? Oh, so my mistakes So the the prior decade But from 20 years ago to 10 years ago my errors were almost all mis-evaluations of ideas and in particular negative, you know false negatives So, you know, oh, this won't work and then it turns out it worked and and and basically You know in my line of work after you do that a while you learn that to stop like to stop basically They say subtracting value By opposing your own opinion on whether something will work And and I have a whole different different theory on that. I think I've worked. I don't have that problem anymore And you know necessarily kind of disclaimer on that in in in my line of work a false negative, right saying something doesn't Saying that something is not going to work And then it works is a much bigger mistake Then the the false positive of saying something's going to work and then it doesn't work and it goes to the the asymmetry of returns So the big mistakes are always missing missing the big winners like almost a hundred percent of the time So anyway, I've cured myself of that The last 10 years my biggest mistakes have all been in the dimension of okay, this might work But if it does it just won't get that big and this goes to the conversation we had earlier, which is Things have changed. Here's something where things have changed 5 billion people connected being able to click and use something new The for the things that work they're getting to be much much larger than I would have ever thought possible Just just much bigger by orders and orders of magnitude And so and again this goes back to in the day job. It's like, okay Is it responsible to do what's called market sizing? Are we supposed to estimate market size which is what all the textbooks tell you to do? Or should we just kind of say, you know what? Maybe it's not actually so easy to forecast market size anymore Maybe we should just basically say look if something's gonna work at all in this new world of 5 billion connected people Maybe it's maybe just everything. It's really big or all the all the important things. You're really big Um, so that's the one we're trying to work out right now. Who do you admire the most? um Yeah, the people I admire the most um say like And I got two parts answer this in the in the abstract. It's it's it's basically It's the Again, this goes to the patterns of sort of human behavior social conformity social conformity is so strong People are so motivated to conform with the environment around them and to get the agreement of their friends and to be part of the group It's so incredibly strong. Um that the number of people who are willing to go out on a limb and actually take a controlling position Anything is just a very Small number of people and this is an example of like that's just never going to change like And if anything that's that's my backwards like that might This might be an area where social media has caused, you know Conformity to rise or at least among a lot of populations cost conformity to rise You could argue it's probably also leading to more contrarianism as well But it certainly is is a lot of conformity effects that you can see in plain sight And so people who are willing and it's like everybody wants to be you know It's like the old apple thing different thing like everybody kind of wants to be gondy or you know Martin Luther King or you know bob dillon or miles davis You know, it's great to be those guys once their thing worked and everybody thought they were geniuses and heroes It's a lot harder up front when everybody thinks you're an idiot and everybody's laughing at you And so it's the people willing to withstand the scorn That's in the one hand and then the more practical answer And this may be a artifact of getting older but the more practical answer is you know There's another big dimension to what we do and what I do which is it has to you know Working with these kind of very special people And working with kind of you know the people around them and their families Um, yeah, and so I you know the inside is like people who take care of other people and people who really take care of other people Um, and people who really care about other people and really try to help them succeed And try to support them. Um, and you know these these crazy efforts Um, or you know or sign up to be part of these crazy efforts. Um, and so I'm I'm gaining a lot more I'm enjoying more and more spending time with people who care deeply about other people Which was not how I started If it were safe, would you go to mars? No, definitely not. Why not? I get 100 percent of my travel and 100 percent of my adventure needs are satisfied online Um, and and uh being able to meet being able to meet people and talk to people here on earth So I am I am not a unless it's after one of your talks, right? Yes, exactly. Um, uh I yeah, no, I do not heliski. Um, I do not parasail and I will not be going to mars Have you ever wanted to write a book? Yeah, I have and some yeah Yeah, uh, yeah, yes someday. I will someday. I will not not anytime soon If you opened an independent bookstore, how would you organize it? Uh, does it have to be solvent? No Can I Can I simply subsidize it for 50 years? Um, and if nobody ever comes and that's fine The token will have some value. So let's figure it breaks even and you can do with it what you want Well, first of all, look, it would have to have a coffee shop on the one side and a bar and lounge on the other side Um, and so it would have to be a physical gathering place Um for people, um, and that or maybe I need maybe I need to think more broadly than this Maybe it also needs to be in VR or something these reversal gathering place Um, you know, but look it should be a place for the exploration of ideas Um, and then, you know, it should be extremely comprehensive You know, I would I would want it to be, you know, very focused on it sort of yeah Sort of history politics philosophy Um economics so kind of the you know the the history of kind of human the evolution of human society how we got here Why we're not all still living in mud huts? Um, you know, the the the really big questions, um, you know, a lot of it probably organized by era Um, and then uh, and then of course I would want to just like ruthlessly in in this case I would want to ruthlessly censor Um, and so it would it would take a it would be an arduous, uh gauntlet to actually get a book into the bookstore Last question. What is your favorite movie and why? Favorite movie can I answer it with a tv show? Well movie and tv show give me both then Movies are hard movies are hard Because they're so short. Um it's I don't even know if I have I enjoy, you know, I love movies. I watch a lot of movies I don't even know if there are particular. Oh, okay. All right. I'll give you one. I'll give you one. Um real genius Um, have you seen real genius? I'm not sure I have. What's it about? This is actually a movie. It's actually a good movie for you So it's a movie it was it was it was sort of it was a comedy It was a sort of mid 80s comedy, but it was actually it's like the MIT movie So it's basically this kid, you know, um, basically ends up testing off the charts on its aptitude test It ends up essentially an MIT Um, it was felcomers first big starring role. Um, it's a very funny movie Um, but also very very sweet. Um, and so, uh, it's about kids actually, you know, kind of discovering their full potential Um, and it takes place at a recreation of of of MIT at that kind of that time with that with that kind of level You know the sort of level of experimentation Um, and then, you know, the you know, the sort of pranks and the humor and kind of the uncontrolled anarchic Kind of aster tuffet, which I think does not really exist anymore, but was you know, was very special while lasted Um, so that's a great movie, but um, yeah And tv show tv show favorite So that one's easy. So that that's the easiest. So deadwood deadwood by far Um, by a mile. Um, and so I I'm I'm uh, Deadwood's a product of an auteur named by david milch. He's a legend Um, who I've had the pleasure meeting meeting one time and really enjoyed. Um, he um, it's deadwood is the In my opinion is the closest thing that we're going to get to shakespeare Uh, out of our era. Um, it's an absolutely extraordinary creative accomplishment The language is unbelievable. Um, and um, but the content it really sticks with me. In fact, I'm due to rewatch it I need to rewatch it. It's It it is as far as I'm concerned It is the actual telling of the creation of america and and through the through the vantage point of the front here Uh through the development of the front here and you know for good bad and ugly like it's all in there Um, you know, it's the entire process. It's the story of carving out basically the mining the mining colony of Of deadwood and then you know, the ultimately the creation of the state and you know, essentially the the creation of the modern america that we live in um, but it's it's a Like it's the best I mean, I wasn't there so I can't attest to how accurate it is and of course it's it's dramatized and so forth but um, it's a very visceral recreation of what it must have been like to be in a place like that at a time like that And really not being able to rely, you know, it's sort of the emergence of in a lot of ways This has started to emerge to human civilization not being able to rely on, you know law enforcement It's not necessarily there the military is not necessarily there Um, you know, if you have a contract dispute like it might get solved with a fist fight or a gunfight like, you know Like what it what it takes to basically carve what we would consider civilization out of the wilderness Um, and by the way again the complexity of it with all the complications and all the controversy and everything else that You know revolves around the the creation of the country and the in the sort of uh, the creation of the front here Um, you know, I I I think a lot about the frontier idea I you know, I think I think I work in the frontier. I think the you know, basically I think I think basically the american frontier went west as far as it could it reached the pacific coast It stopped People weren't quite sure what to do next and then eventually we figured out that we should just keep going But at the virtual frontier Um, and then I think that's why I think that's why california has the tech industry in the north and has the media industry in the south Um, it's because those are the two kind of parts of the virtual frontier Um, you know the the networks and then and then the content the imaginary worlds Um, and so that would you know, I I live kind of post the exploitation of the physical frontier That show puts me right in the center of what that that must have been like kind of halfway through that Mark andreason. Thank you very much Tyler a pleasure. Thank you so much