00:00
Let's say everybody's selling banana, you can't say I'm a five x better banana. You instead, you should come out and say, I'm an apple.
00:08
And not everybody's gonna want your apple. But a hundred percent of the people who prefer apples are gonna want what you have.
00:16
Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to.
00:21
I put my all in it like the day's all on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
00:27
Alright.
00:28
Yeah. On this, I I was playing this pomp podcast. Pretty good.
00:33
How'd you feel?
00:35
It was good. It was, like, we showed up no no context. Like, what are we gonna talk about? Do I need to do I need to talk about Bitcoin? Do I need to have something smart to say about Bitcoin? Because I kinda just,
00:44
you know,
00:45
I believe. I buy. I hold. Right? I'm like a monkey in this space. I'm not, like, you know, one of these experts.
00:51
But,
00:52
But we talked about solo, biggest solo capital slash solopreneur
00:56
and, some of the different kinda, like, things around that. So I thought I thought it was actually a pretty good conversation. Ben was there, and he goes, like, I liked this one because I feel like everything you said in this was something new that I had never heard you say before. He's like, whereas, you know, once you listen to somebody for, like, hundreds of hours, You kinda hear the same greatest hits over and over again. He's like, this felt like new stuff.
01:15
Speaking of listening to us for hundred of hours or listening to you at least. We had a good episode. We just, interviewed this guy named Mike Maples. Mike was pretty cool. So Mike is a little under the radar,
01:26
but he started this thing called floodgate, which is a really big venture capital firm, but really fascinating guy. What what all have they done? They've done
01:35
Blift,
01:36
Twitch,
01:37
Twitter, cruise,
01:39
Octa, which is like a giant enterprise company that's public. So, yeah, bunch of bunch of big winners that he was an investor in pretty early. Consider,
01:48
one of the best venture capital firms there is. So real insightful guy He kinda had a hint of biology a little bit. I mean, he was, like, real high IQ. I've been using the word high functioning.
02:00
He's like a real high functioning. He was a high functioning southerner. He he had this disarming way of talking because he's got this, you know, kinda like, is this Southern or Midwestern accent Yeah. And,
02:09
you know, very, very relatable, likable guy. But then the things he was saying, each one was, like, you know, like, sort of a bullet into, you know, of of of an idea of an insight And I he definitely had, like, a few refined ideas of where he thinks the puck is going.
02:23
And I appreciate that. I like that. He gave us basically these four waves. He's like, You know, I believe these four inflections are happening right now, and that's gonna create a bunch of opportunity. And that's what I look for is, like, how is the world changing And then what's what's gonna be new because of these inflection points? Yeah. I was taking notes. The four things are blockchain,
02:42
cloud office, American Next, the cloud culture for a consumer. So those are, like, the four things. And we went into, like, we didn't actually go into each one entirely, but he talked a little bit about each one, and we delve we went deep into cloud office and he talked about the opportunities there. I thought it was great. What do you think? I loved it. I love the way he had some phrases for things. I thought at the beginning, he was, like, a little bit intellectual for me. I was like, okay. Wait. Where do I go with this? But,
03:07
it was interesting, but I didn't know how to attach it to, like,
03:11
a concrete idea. And then I thought about, you know, that was maybe the first twenty five percent. And then the next seventy five percent, I thought were fantastic
03:17
where,
03:19
Yeah. Came down to earth. And also he has these he has this kind of amazing way of talking. I'm kinda jealous.
03:24
Did you you are like that?
03:26
Know what I I because I because I try to be like that, when I see somebody who's really good at it, I'm like, oh, shit. You're good at this thing. Most people don't even care about this thing. He had these little phrases coined terms
03:37
for either himself or his fund or his philosophy or his mental models. And,
03:43
he he'd be like, you know, startup is like a jazz band, not a marching band. And then he was explaining the analogy, and then he'd be like, yeah. He was like, I I want people to choose, not compare, which is hard to understand, but once he explains it, then it's like, oh, that's actually a wonderful mental framework. It's like that Kanye song where it's like, what does it mean? It's like, I don't know what it means, but it sounds provocative. And that's all I felt with a lot of his things was, like, effort. I was, like, immediately interested. I leaned in when he would say one of those phrases even though my brain hadn't figured out exactly what it means yet, and then he would explain it. So anyways, I thought it was really good and super nice dude. I I really like, you know, he's so humble,
04:18
and and very likable. So I don't know. Great episode. I I liked him a lot. I agree. And he offered to come back. I, couldn't tell if
04:26
Like, when guys are being nice, I'm like, well, if you have time, let's just keep going. But I I could tell if he was being kind. We'll have to have him back on, he was awesome.
04:35
Right. How did you feel about, when you hit them up for some intros there?
04:39
Was that nerd?
04:41
I thought it was pretty smooth. Yeah. You gave him the opportunity to be a hero. And if not, it was totally okay.
04:47
Yeah. I asked him. I'm gonna start asking, I forgot that. The the question I'm gonna start asking is,
04:53
who do you think would be an awesome guest? Like, who would be good for those podcasts? And then, what do you think is the best way to get in touch with them? Right. And then they have that opportunity to be like, yeah, just reach out. He's a nice guy. Or,
05:04
yeah, let me just shoot him a note right now. I'll tell him, I'll insure you guys. Right. I thought that was a great angle. I know. I've I wanted to call it out because people are listening.
05:12
They get this sort of behind the scenes of of
05:15
as I heard you say it, I was like, oh,
05:18
smooth
05:19
smooth guy Sam going for the intro. Wow.
05:22
We we didn't get the kill on this time. But, we got I I I feel as though I we've built enough rapport with him. I can I'll email Mike and maybe he'll help he'll hook it up. But Yeah. You did a good job. There we go. So, Mike, do you, I was connected to you because my friend my good friend Noah Kagan was, like, Good holler at this guy. He's pretty interesting. And I had known about you as well because
05:43
Tim Ferris,
05:45
lived near me and was a friend of mine. And he told me that he's, like, there's, like, two people or three people whose advice I listen to when it comes to investing.
05:54
One is Naval, the founder of AngelList.
05:57
Two is Scott Belsky, who started behance and is now probably gonna be the CEO of Adobe, and three was
06:04
you.
06:05
And Okay. And I was like, that's kind of interesting. You know, I I have not really heard of my too much. You know, is you're kinda you kinda you kinda keep a a low profile. And I looked it up, and you start floodgate, which eventually
06:17
you guys have invested in, like, Twitter,
06:20
Twitch,
06:21
all types of amazing stuff. But
06:24
We so we have this podcast, Sean. It's pretty popular. You know, millions of people listen, and all we do is just brainstorm interesting ideas. And so we thought, we gotta get you on to come and talk about some stuff. And so here we are. Let's give it a shot. Why not? Thanks for having me. And by the way, I've listened to your podcast a bunch of times. I remember the the in the episode with the with Kenneth System from Instagram is is one of my favorite ones. So, I forgot what what's the exact name? Is starting starting greatness starting starting greatness. Yeah. Starting greatness. And it's it's kind of a labor of love. You know, I,
06:55
some of the people that work at floodgate. Occasionally, we'd have some hallway conversation or in a meeting. They're like, dude, I wish we could have recorded that. Right. And so so in many ways, the
07:05
the guests not only
07:06
help with the the the content, but but we're trying to help help the some of the key ideas starting greatness come alive through the voices of the guests because I think there are some some counter intuitive lessons of starting a great startup that are not obvious to people.
07:22
Right. And you have a you have a a good voice, and then b, your intros are are great on the pod. Do you, it it always has, like, I don't I don't know how much time you spend on that, but, the intros are great. Compared to us, we put we're we're sort of famous for we barely do an intro. Like, you'll be ten minutes in and be like, who the hell is this guest? And then, you know, sometimes the end, we do the sort of Irish goodbye where we're like, okay. That's it.
07:44
We just sort of like, we end it. We go about our day. And so people have, like, started making fun of us, making shirts about the the Irish goodbye because they're like, dude, I also hate saying goodbyes.
07:53
It's it's, you know, they hate the unwind of a conversation. I like how you guys just leave And and so that's that's kind of our thing.
08:00
But what we want I guess we wanna start with, we could talk about kinda like all the great stuff you've invested in.
08:06
But I guess
08:07
I'm more curious about what's get what's got you excited now? What spaces?
08:11
What trends are you seeing where you're like, I don't fully
08:15
I don't fully know what's there, but, there's enough there for me to be interested.
08:19
Yeah. And it it might be kind of a good segue into how I think about
08:24
what the next big thing will be because there's this there's this thing that I say to founders, which is very in count it's very counterintuitive. If I say If you wanna start a great startup,
08:34
don't try to think of a startup.
08:37
And,
08:38
the reason for that is that,
08:40
great startup founders are like time travelers,
08:44
and they they get out of the present, and they visualize different
08:49
futures that are, a breakthrough that break free from the present. And when you try to think of a startup right now, you tend to orient yourself in the world of the present. And so you tend to come up with incremental conventional ideas rather than breakthrough ideas that sort of change the ARCO present to a different future.
09:07
And so,
09:08
and that gets to the areas that I'm interested in. So what I what I encourage founders to think about are
09:14
What are the inflections?
09:16
What are the waves of change?
09:18
They're gonna be so massive
09:20
that, it's gonna allow an entrepreneur to change the subject. About the future. Because on some level, these waves are the gathering power. It's like all the power of the ocean when you surf.
09:32
You you gotta catch the right wave to have a chance to do great things.
09:37
And,
09:38
it's these waves or these inflections
09:41
they allow the entrepreneur
09:43
to wage asymmetric warfare on present.
09:47
Only with big inflections,
09:48
does an entrepreneur
09:50
go from being,
09:52
disadvantaged to incumbents to having a fundamental advantage vis a vis
09:56
incumbents
09:57
And so then in terms of the areas that I'm interested in, I tend to go with the inflections. And so,
10:04
one inflection I'm interested in obviously is, the block chains,
10:08
with crypto.
10:10
I think that that if I was starting a startup today, that's probably where I would spend most of my time.
10:15
Another another area of interest for me is,
10:19
the the transition from what I like to call office culture to cloud culture.
10:23
And so in the past, the cloud was sort of more of a delivery mechanism,
10:29
and a business model for application software.
10:32
But now what we see happening is that,
10:35
the the, you know, Microsoft Office literally is a metaphor of the office, and it's files and memos and file drawers, and that's what our desktop looks like. But now people,
10:46
you know, it's it's not the editor that matters as much anymore as the comment system and the versioning. It's kinda more like GitHub meets knowledge work. And so, you know, when you when you
10:57
have cloud culture rather than office culture,
10:59
you you can take advantage of a lot of arbitrage,
11:02
time arbitrage, talent arbitrage, geography arbitrage,
11:06
you know, very Tim Veris. You know, we talked about him a little bit earlier.
11:10
And then the the other thing that I'm interested in is,
11:14
what I loosely referred to as America next. And so on some level, I think that twenty twenty was the first real year of the twentieth century or twenty first century and
11:24
Why is that? I think that
11:26
there were a lot of, issues that, people were paying lip service to.
11:32
A lot of stagnation that people were paying lip service to. And I think that twenty twenty helped people understand
11:40
our military needs to become more agile and more tech forward that are,
11:45
research and drugs and drug discovery that our ability to get
11:49
life saving,
11:50
remedies to market faster. We need to take seriously.
11:54
There's just, you know, China as a geopolitical, challenger
11:58
And so as a result, I think that, there and, you know, now people talk about build back better, but I just believe, fundamentally,
12:06
the United States, the or world are gonna decide they need to invest for real in tech forward infrastructure.
12:13
And then on the flip side of that, they're gonna realize our structure is vulnerable to cyber hackers and ransomware and things like that, whether it's organized by rogue gangs or nation states So so those are, I'd say those three areas plus also,
12:27
I'd say, cloud culture applied to consumer, which some call the metaverse
12:32
But those are those are the main things that I'm chasing right now. And, you know, obviously, I have a lot of colleagues as well at floodgate. So we, you know, we go after cyber security and
12:40
cloud infrastructure and other things, but the areas that I described are the ones that I'm most accurate, most actively
12:47
after. That for that cloud office one, what what products are you looking at that excite you?
12:54
Yeah. So I'll I'll kinda give you an example. So,
12:57
one company I'm involved with is called Almanac.
13:00
And, it allows
13:01
teams of people to create documents
13:04
But, like, if you think about it,
13:06
this has already happened in, code and in design. So in code you had GitHub,
13:11
And in the past, you just had code snippets that you shipped around and had some version control, but GitHub made code social and you could branch and fork and, you know, collaborate as a team at the center rather than as an afterthought, and then Figma did the same thing with design. Right? So Figma And so so what what we believe is that in a world where
13:33
talent can live anywhere in the world,
13:35
it's gonna matter more that you write things down and get consensus.
13:40
And part of how you get consensus is you have a paradigm that's not office centric documentation, but it's cloud centric. And so, you know, why shouldn't you just like GitHub be able to branch and merge and for documents and be able to within that one document know
13:56
every version of that document that every ever existed in everybody's. And, you know, if somebody forks it and uses it, Let's say it's an employee handbook.
14:04
If somebody uses it for their next company, why not wanna know that as well? And so,
14:09
But but that's just one of many examples of where I believe that in the future, you're gonna have all these different products that,
14:17
presuppose
14:19
that people will collaborate. You know, what else do I think will happen? I think people will say,
14:24
if it can go in the cloud, it should. If it can be asynchronous, it should. Because if I put things in the cloud and make them asynchronous,
14:31
I can take advantage of all those different forms of arbitrage to run my company better. Whereas if I'm a meeting centric culture, I have to be in the room where it happened when a decision got made. And I just think that that's an outmoded way of thinking about things in today's world. What? So Sean and I are similar or almost the same age. We or we are the same age. We,
14:52
Like, when we started to work, I mean, we use Google Docs right away.
14:57
But you're, a little bit older than us, and like, that would that was a you probably didn't I mean, that was kind of kind of interesting to you, right, when that when that first came around. So when you say, like, needs to be in the cloud. In my head, I'm like, wait, are you kidding me? Isn't everything already like that?
15:12
What specifically are you referring? For for example, there there's there's startups that are doing, like, virtual office. So they're like, great. Everybody's remote. You have all these advantages remote. What do you miss out on? You miss out on being able to socialize and get to know each other and build trust.
15:25
Outside of the, you know, the water cooler, the the conversations that used to happen in the break room. So there's these crazy startups that are saying basically, like, like, online town and stuff like that that are like, here's a virtual office. You can literally walk around. You can bump into people.
15:39
I don't know if any of these work, right, but they're, like, taking stabs at trying to move the, like, physical office into the cloud too, Sam. So it's not just Docs are in the cloud, but hanging out as in the cloud. Right? But within the coworkers in the hallways and the cloud. Yeah. And the and the problem with most cloud offerings today is that they're basically rehosted office culture. Right? So, like, Zoom, Zoom is a meeting, but it's a meeting online. It's not like it's asynchronous in any way. It's not it it you're just rehosting the meeting. Rather than redefining how work happens. Now, with Zoom, you can take advantage of geography arbitrage, I suppose. So that is a good thing, but you're not able to take advantage of time and talent arbitrage as easily.
16:20
But like like what I what I believe ends up happening at the limit is in in office culture, Everybody has a job description.
16:28
And,
16:29
and what I think in cloud culture, you know, people have already talked about this, but this idea of, jobs to be done theory. And so, like, when you think about it, all of us don't just have one job. All of us do a whole bunch of jobs. Like, if you take even a very simple example. Let's say that I work at a a flower shop.
16:47
I might type things into the computer to manage customer records. I might take reservations and orders,
16:54
I might, some parts of the day, arrange the flowers.
16:57
Well, when you really think about it, the principle of comparative advantage would suggest
17:02
that any parts of that, any of those jobs to be done that can be done asynchronously
17:06
or in the cloud, you should try to do that if you can. Because then you could take advantage of labor arbitrage, time arbitrage, and geography arbitrage. And then if I'm a great flower arranger, that's what I should be spending my time on is the thing that I'm really good at. And so I think cloud culture lets people do it the limit is,
17:27
broadcast their comparative advantage to the world.
17:31
And,
17:32
get paid by the network for giving the network what it wants. So I think that it'll, you know, the reason I call it cloud culture as well is who says everybody has to work at a company. Right? Like, people said that robots are gonna eat the jobs, but I think that's precisely the opposite of what's true. I think that software is gonna
17:50
reduce the need for people to think they need to work at companies
17:54
because it's gonna all the things I would have had to possess
17:59
to to have a job, I'm not gonna need those things anymore,
18:02
by working at a company. I'm gonna be able to have all those things in software on my own. And so I think more and more people are gonna people are gonna realize that really there there is a,
18:13
aggregate of jobs that people do, and all of them could be thought of as, like, almost like a derivative that could be assembled in different ways, and then move to the cloud or you know, let you specialize. And I think that that'll over time
18:26
change the fundamental culture of how teams work.
18:30
Tell me, if I misunderstand this, but I think one thing that you just said in there is that this idea that one person belongs to one firm
18:38
is potentially now an outdated and, you know, some optimal
18:42
idea that instead,
18:44
you said, like, a user basically contributes the networking gets paid for that contribution to the network. And so one person might belong to multiple firms.
18:52
Right.
18:53
And, you know, a firm might change. So so what does that look like? You're the time traveler Yes. Let's say we fast forward ten years.
18:59
Smart guy like me. Well, how does my, like, today? You know, my company got acquired by Twitch. I got a day job at Twitch.
19:06
You know, great. That's that's, you know, something I do. And I, you know, before COVID, thanks. Thanks for your efforts there, by the way. I mean, we We monetize that a little while ago, but thanks for your efforts. Of course. Anything that I can do for you. By the way, VCSA,
19:20
we monetize that as a one or that that's a really cool flex. I'm gonna I'm gonna feel that way.
19:26
So, okay. So then ten years from now. So, like,
19:29
Maybe maybe I should
19:31
start from the beginning there. So what do I think is really happening, right, that that underlies all my investing? I basically believe that
19:39
starting around eighteen fifty,
19:41
we had centralized means of production, mass distribution, mass production,
19:46
And what that allowed us to do is to create the modern corporation. But in eighteen seventy, there was no accounting. There were no org charts. Another stuff that we take for granted as a company really existed,
19:58
but mass production and mass distribution
20:00
had a tendency to to centralize things.
20:03
Because you got supply side economies of scale and mass distribution allows you to get things out to people. I think what started to happen
20:12
probably in the late seventies early eighties with the microprocessor
20:16
is now the economy is animated by mass computation and mass connectivity.
20:21
And those two, those two attributes
20:24
tend to decentralize
20:26
the means of production. And so, you know, I think we've moved from
20:30
River Rouge plant for Ford model t's to personal three d printers in the future. And I think we've moved from peak centralization
20:37
of three TV networks
20:39
in the late fifties or early sixties to now anybody can be their own publisher or or media company that goes direct. And so
20:48
There's a lot of very basic assumptions we have about companies.
20:52
They're just hundred fifty year artifacts of time. Like, somebody in eighteen twenty wouldn't recognize a normal company of today. There weren't there weren't any companies more than twenty people in the US, you know, in in eighteen twenty, hardly. Maybe a few spinning looms with a hundred people. But so what I believe is now, the idea is
21:10
that the social contract between a person and a big company
21:14
people assume that it's not gonna that it's gonna persist. And I think it's gonna be radically different. So in the in the in the nineteen hundreds, you know, you had
21:24
people wanting to be at a company for very long time, and you have large country companies because,
21:30
the coordination advantages
21:32
of having a large organization at scale with supply side economics
21:37
was valid and created abundance, then the same happened with the military, then the same thing happened with the government,
21:43
media, all of our major institutions. But now I think the pendulum is,
21:47
swinging in the other direction
21:49
towards
21:51
a worldwide network where everybody on the network, every individual has a node on that network, and every individual,
21:58
has a node on that network,
22:00
has a comparative advantage. And they get they get paid by the network when they give the network what it wants.
22:06
And that's true for money. It's true for jobs. True for everything in my view. Are there examples of startups now that are that are executing this?
22:14
Yeah. So in the early days, our investments were in these pure play networks, Twitter, Twitch,
22:20
companies like that. What what does that mean? Pure play? A pure play network would be you're not really reimagining a part of the economy.
22:29
So like Twitch was a whole new thing that you could argue that Twitter's had a big impact on the media. But but that wasn't the thesis when we invested. But then we started to get interested in this idea of, well,
22:40
perhaps every sector of the economy is gonna be reimagined around,
22:45
sort of the
22:46
the the the micro means of production. And so rather than economies of scale, it's gonna be,
22:53
local economies of algorithmic
22:55
computation,
22:56
and networks that span the globe. And so why did we invest in Lyft?
23:01
Lyft was a more modern way to think about getting a ride than taxis. Taxis are a centralized
23:08
command and control tops down dispatch driven
23:11
technology.
23:12
Lyft says, hey,
23:14
Riders and drivers can advertise their presence in real time on a network, and algorithms will form an ad hoc connection. So it's kinda like this return of the invisible hand. And, now all of a sudden, the invisible hand is done by algorithms rather than, you know, kind of in the good old days of people trading fur for musket or something like that. But, like, it's it, you know, that's what we see happening time and again.
23:37
You know, Home Connect is another,
23:39
board I'm on. They're trying to
23:42
create,
23:44
incentives for people to use less electricity, but but they're basically
23:48
applying the ideas of software defined networks to
23:52
subtracting energy that homes use, during certain times of the day. And so I believe that every, you know, what is Tesla really
24:00
Tesla is a car company that's animated by network capitalism, not industrial capitalism.
24:06
Right? They they they it's a software defined car, It's updated over the air. It leverages machine learning. It leverages network effects with all the sensors in the network to help it self drive better.
24:16
Apple was a network capitalist centric phone compared to like Nokia, which thought we need to sell the best widget. And so in sector after sector of our economy,
24:26
the companies that are software defined at their core, I believe, software defined network centric companies at their core are gonna keep winning. And they're gonna keep displacing the companies that think of
24:37
computers as the thing that you did to make your industrial thing go faster.
24:43
So, you know, Burger King isn't a software defined network, even though it has computers,
24:47
it uses computers to say how many hamburgers did I sell today? But it doesn't use computers to reinvent food in any fundamental way. And the companies that we're investing in are companies that leverage network capitalism to reimagine, reinvent
25:00
markets from beginning.
25:02
Damn. It's a big idea. Oh, that wasn't. That may be a little bit out there, but, that's kind of I saw that. Yeah. It's such a big idea that it's hard to
25:11
how can I make this more practical
25:13
for myself and the listeners of someone interested in this field?
25:17
Yeah. And so the way I would say to make it more practical if you're a listener is
25:22
the tendency is to say,
25:24
what's my career
25:26
path going to be, but through the lens of the twentieth century. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna make a progressive set of steps and I'm gonna,
25:33
you know, I'm gonna get rewarded as I
25:35
do the things that I seem to need to do in society,
25:39
but I would argue that it's more important in today's world
25:42
to figure out
25:44
a, what am I awesome at? Or or maybe not even what am I the best in the world at, but what is my, what am I best at? Among all other things I'm good at, what am I best at? And then what does the world value?
25:56
And then what am I passionate about? And it's like the intersection of that set of things
26:01
is where you wanna develop your talents because over time, that's where your comparative advantage will be the highest.
26:08
And that is where the network will pay you the most for contributing to the network. But I think sometimes it's useful to not think of not just what company do I wanna join or what set of companies should I join my career? Instead, you should say, the entire world is a network. Everybody is a node in that network. How can I be the best version of myself? A note on that network. How can I create the most possible value for that network so that I'll get recognized
26:33
by it and paid paid for the value that I deliver?
26:36
So how do you do that? So let's say, let's take you, for example. So let's say you you look at the world this way as it's a giant network.
26:42
And,
26:43
you're trying to have your comparative competitive advantage. So what's your comparative advantage?
26:48
Yeah. I would say that my job is to be
26:52
the very best partner for a super ambitious founder in the zero to one phase.
26:57
So, right, like, if you look at my podcast, people say, hey, why don't you have guest. Why don't you have that guest? But starting greatness is all about zero to one, awesome startup, super ambitious. What was it like before they succeeded?
27:09
And there's power. There's addition and subtraction.
27:13
You know, like, sometimes,
27:15
by
27:15
saying what you're not for, but, like, nitching down
27:19
you're very powerful to the people who care about your niche because people say, where have you been on my life? And so what you're trying to do is find that set of like minded co conspirators
27:29
for the niche that you've really chosen to be great at and and not get preoccupied with the fact that you can't do it all, right, that you're you're way better off understanding
27:39
what you can just stick the landing at and and and develop your talents so you can do it even better and better. For time.
27:47
And today, floodgate is more like a traditional firm. Right? It's like a company kinda like, let's say, current world slash old world. Right? You have, You have a brand. You have multiple employees.
27:58
You have a central fund. You have your LP base. It's sort of static. And then you're investing in a specific, let's say, set a criteria of of companies.
28:07
Whereas
28:08
the way you're describing things, it sort of feels like correct me if I'm wrong, sort of sounded like in the future what might you twenty years from now, what what you might have done instead of set up floodgate is you would have set up, I don't know,
28:21
you know, a one person investing fund,
28:24
yourself, or like a Dow or something like that. Basically, a a trust that's gonna invest in a whole bunch of things on the network. And and you wouldn't need the structure of of a fund with employees and with all these different things. So would you if you didn't have this already set up and you're setting it up for the next twenty years, would you have set up you're investing differently than you did with a kind of traditional VC fund?
28:45
Well, I I like the way we're set up because I think that when you're when you're investing in these crazy risky startups, too early, way too early or legally, ambiguously too early,
28:56
it's good at friends. And it's good to have people to run ideas by it. But we have a very
29:02
I I I'm not say I'm not sure our point of view works for everybody. So I don't even think a startup is a company. Right? So I think a startup is
29:10
the the capabilities and talents of the founders and
29:14
their insight about the future. And what you're what you're betting is on two things. One is that their insights right. And two is they're good enough to navigate
29:23
the idea to a great product someday. But, like, Lyft started a Zimride and Twitter. They couldn't decide whether to call it voice mail two point o or TWTTR
29:33
Twitch started as justin dot tv.
29:35
Octa started as Sasha.
29:38
And so, like, what do you do with the fact that ninety percent of your profits come from things that started out different. And so my my theory on that is
29:47
the way to succeed is to realize startup isn't a company at all, and that it's it's the insights and the founders,
29:53
and you're you you
29:55
you make fun of your ability to predict what they're gonna come up and is false precision to even try. But instead where you should be precise is can these people do the job? And,
30:05
is this is this,
30:06
powerful enough breakthrough insight?
30:09
You,
30:10
you I I believe it's your partner. I looked up who the top
30:14
venture capitalists were. I think it was your partner. What's your what's her name? Anne Miriko. Yeah. Yes. Anne is,
30:21
I looked at, like, CB Insights,
30:23
two thousand twenty, two thousand nineteen, two thousand eighteen, two thousand seventeen. I think she was in the top ten, sometimes number two or three in many, many, many of the years,
30:32
consistently.
30:33
You just showed me a sign
30:36
or a a a a thing of dollar bills with Steve Blank, you know, who's, like, godfather of Silicon Valley saying everything Mike does turned into money. You, I wish.
30:45
What what makes you guys great? What makes you able to spot these interesting opportunities?
30:52
I think that, you you know, it's funny if you if you had, say,
30:57
Warren Buffett
30:58
on your show, or, you know, you've had Stan drunken Miller before on your show. Right? And,
31:04
when they talk about investments,
31:06
you'll probably notice they talk about a few things. What's the operating history of the organization? What is their competitive moat?
31:13
You know, they they have a set of factors, you know,
31:16
that cause them to think that a company is a good investment or not.
31:21
What's interesting is in our world, none of those mental models apply.
31:25
And so because a startup's not a company, there is no operating history. There there's no moat. They don't even have a product yet. They got no customers.
31:33
And so
31:35
What I think we're better at than most is, a, understanding that's true.
31:40
And, b,
31:41
then asking, okay, so what should the mental models be? Right? If if Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have ninety mental models, and they don't apply to startup investing, well, what are the mental models for startup investing then? And so we've spent
31:56
years, right, just being
31:58
students of that question.
31:59
And, you know, we probably got about thirty or so that we've developed
32:03
But we try to we try to evaluate the startup through the lens of those mental models rather than make the mistake of thinking that startup is re host company. And it's not one or two of those mental models that we wouldn't expect. Right? Like,
32:18
you know, I might expect somebody to say, you know, we wanna be in a,
32:22
a big market with customers really love your products. It's like, okay. Yeah. Great. You know,
32:26
we wanna be growing, you know, extremely fast exponential growth. Well, yeah. It's obvious at that point. I also enjoy checkmate.
32:32
So so what's a what's a mental model that's not so obvious where hundred people in a room would nod their heads and immediately say, yeah. I already do that. I already think that way. When when it comes to investing for me. Yeah. So I'll just give a few examples. You know, so I'd say
32:46
at a meta level, we have a sentimental models about founding teams.
32:50
And then we have a set of mental models about insights.
32:53
And,
32:54
founding team, a good example, would be,
32:58
jazz band and not a marching band. So in companies, you have org charts. You have people who want cheap music and dance steps.
33:05
And if you don't give that to them, the the organization's gonna be a chaotic mess and all screwed up and discombobulated.
33:11
In a startup, it's more like when you go to the French quarter, and you watch a jazz band there,
33:17
the the lead goes on a rift and everybody else just goes with it. And you'll never hear that tune the same way. Ever again, But everybody knows that that's what they're in it for. And nobody's saying, hey, that's not on my sheet music. You didn't say that was gonna happen. That's that's the way they like to
33:32
offer their art to the world. And so I like to say when a when a startup starts, it goes through this breakthrough sequence. It has to have a great insight
33:40
which is something about the future that's not obvious that most people don't know. And then after that, they have to create a product breakthrough where they get product market fit in zero to one. And then they have to have a growth breakthrough where they get escape velocity.
33:52
And then, and only then do they earn the right to someday be in the pantheon of companies?
33:57
But it's but it's wrong headed to give startup founders
34:01
big company advice at any of those stages. In fact, all of those stages are different. It'd be bad to give broke advice to an insight developer,
34:09
for example, because it would be precisely wrong.
34:12
So that would be an example on the team side
34:15
to me, the, on the insight
34:17
perspective, it would be,
34:21
don't be market first.
34:23
Because there is no market yet. And so rather than trying to think of a startup market,
34:28
we wanna arrive at startup markets by following inflections.
34:32
We wanna we wanna say, okay. Cost of an AI prediction
34:36
is going down exponentially.
34:38
How is power gonna shift in the industry because of that? And, like, what what new markets might arise that had never existed before?
34:46
These inflections, they they power your why now. So, like, with Lyft,
34:52
GPS has got included for free in smartphones,
34:56
and we believe that everybody's gonna have smartphones someday. Even though in two thousand ten, only ten percent did. So you could say, wow. Now I can see a world in the future where
35:05
drivers and riders will be able to locate each other on a network.
35:09
And ever and there'll be a network effect because there'll be all these people have these phones.
35:13
You could have been right about that before then, but you would have still failed. Because you wouldn't have had enough people with the phones, and they wouldn't have been able to find each other. And so I'd say that's the other counter intuitive thing is that
35:25
You can't you can't look at the company's tangible operating history because there is none.
35:30
What you have to do instead is imagine a world where
35:34
their inflections
35:36
change the future in a dramatic way. And that that, you know, change the rules and, like, all the stuff that people think is gonna happen something very radically different's gonna happen. And why do I believe this entrepreneur? What what is it that they've discovered about the world that could cause me to take that bet? What you're describing is is awesome. And it's like
35:56
but but it's it's a it's a narrow
35:59
it's a narrow but wonderful outlook. So what you're describing about inflections and looking at the world in twenty years, it's definitely about disruption. And and these are things that are
36:08
this is what allows an Uber or an area of DMV to go from not even an idea, to a small idea, to a fifty to a hundred billion dollar company. These are, like, truly disruptive and trans transformative things. But then on the other side,
36:22
There's,
36:23
like, on the podcast, actually, aired today, Sean interviewed this guy named Brian, who owns one hundred percent of one eight hundred got junk The revenue might be
36:32
four or five hundred million dollars, and he owns all of it. So he's who knows? He's probably worth two or three billion dollars. And has probably a pretty calm life. And he's not doing anything probably probably innovative at all. I mean, maybe there's like micro innovations, like, you know, our applied chain is a little bit interesting or the way that we dispatch people is a little bit interesting, or or it could just be operational excellence, meaning our website ranks number one or we know how to get Danielle. Right. When Eric Enek was it was it? Spell your name? That's cute for Anne. How do you
37:03
So, like, you're all you're what we just discussed was far on one end.
37:07
Do you ever look at the other side or
37:11
or for your job, you only care about one side, and maybe you just, like, the to for shoot the shit or talking to your friends who wanna get wealthy, you'd say, like, yeah, but this side's actually kind of interesting too. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because we alluded to this earlier.
37:24
I don't try to be for everybody.
37:27
I try to be the the very best at the thing I try to be good at. And so,
37:33
my view is that,
37:35
I wanna go
37:37
very focused on
37:39
breakthrough startups
37:41
and in that zero to one phase and how they So I like to say, I'm a rocket fuel salesman.
37:46
And I go I go to founders and I say, don't take my fuel If you don't wanna achieve escape velocity with that rocket that's on the launch pad, because if you're not sure it's a rocket, it's fuel. It ain't gonna be good for your vehicle. Right? I mean, just it's on your scooter. Right? And so, like, I probably don't deserve too much credit when it does escape,
38:04
but I probably don't deserve too much of the blame when it doesn't. Right? I I'm just like, just be clear about what I'm selling here. And and people say, well, you know, it's not realistic that,
38:15
that everybody should build, one of the twenty billion dollar plus exit startups of the year. And I'm like, and you're you're correct about that. Like, I'm not saying that my advice or my approach is mainstream or even normal. In fact, I would say it's hyper not normal.
38:30
But, like, but in that area, in that area of, I sell rocket fuel to people who wanna blast their rockets into outer space and get escape velocity,
38:38
I try to be the very best, period.
38:41
And so, like, that's that's what I'm in it for. So a lot of your listeners might be like, oh, that's interesting and kind of intellectually interesting, but I'm not I'm not one of those. But that's okay. There's lots of ways to get rich in this world, and there's lots of lots of ways to succeed in business. Every comes back to everybody should know what's my comparative advantage
39:00
and not and not be preoccupied by all the things you can't be staff. So you're not even close to the guy who sees, like, oh, wow. There's,
39:07
a ton of really poorly run,
39:09
laundry
39:10
stores or, laundry mats we should buy all of them and and put a back end software. I mean, that that doesn't even kinda closely,
39:17
or that doesn't even even get you excited.
39:20
Well, and not only that. Like, if somebody said, hey, can you give me some advice on how to grow this? I would say, you should not listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know how to do laundromats at scale.
39:30
Like, it's it's not even a question whether I'm interested. It's a question whether I'm competent
39:35
and and I'm not. I'm, like, I'm I'm not, and I don't try to be. And I I let go of the idea that I need to be.
39:42
I love I love your answer, by the way. I have something to say about that too, but I would say, like,
39:48
you know, you've made me realize that I think one of the things that we're we're trying to build fair advantages. It's like,
39:54
we could have this we get on this podcast twice a week and we shoot the shit either just me and Sam or bring a we're gonna create a guest like you on. And We talk about everything from, I think, one of the most popular episodes was,
40:04
you know, biology talking about, like, the future of startups are cities. It's like, wait a minute. And, you know, involves you will will bend your brain with the blockchain. And then,
40:13
the next episode, so he's probably the most listened to and the second most listened to is this side hustle, this entrepreneur has where he's we break down his business of vending machines. He's got twenty seven vending machines. He's making six figures of profit, and you know, he got started with very little capital and it's doesn't take rocket science or rocket fuel to do it. And our listeners like the
40:33
the breadth of that, of how we can hop from blue collar. We have a a segment called the the Hillbilly side hustle, which is like, you know, just a blue collar kinda like simple thing you can do. All the way to, okay, what is, you know, some disruptive idea, you know, how does AI impact the space?
40:48
And is it okay if we talk about biology for a minute? Because I think he's like amazing. Let's do it. And and it's crazy. Yeah. And so so, like, you know, earlier I mentioned this idea of cloud culture,
40:59
I think biology probably has the best handle on this of anybody I talk to. So, like, and and, you know, I've I've listened to much of what he said, but, like, what I think happens at the limit is that all of these different cloud cultures
41:12
are like their own societies.
41:14
Yep. And so right now, the main main organizing principle of society is the nation state, which is also an economies of scale
41:21
centric model. Right? But if you think about it, what is Bitcoin really?
41:26
Bitcoin is a society of people who care about sound money.
41:29
And the protocol is what enables governance. And so these cloud
41:34
societies at the limit, I think, look more and more like the future version of countries. Right. You know, what is a country, really? It's a bunch of people who decide what their boundaries are, who decide who gets in the club, then they have a constitution where they decide how to separate powers and how to protect the rights of individuals against the mob and the tyrant
41:53
That's exactly what Bitcoin does with its protocol. And and just to use some other examples. So Bitcoin is the people who have this, you know, cult like belief, religious belief around sound money, Ethereum is people who believe in programmable money. And then they have Wall Street bets, which is like, hey. Let's just middle finger to, you know,
42:09
to to the large, you know, to the incumbents. So how do how does, you know, David beat Goliath, and we're gonna we're basically gonna screw around with them and make profits while we do it. That's what we're here for.
42:19
And we will we will assign ourselves names, you know, they call themselves retards and things like that because in their culture, that's okay. Right?
42:26
Burning Man is a pop up culture that happens for a week in the desert where all these people will go behave totally differently than they will the other fifty one weeks out of the year. And so there's a whole bunch of these either pop up cultures, cloud cultures that all have different different virtues, different, admissions criteria, and and and all the different pieces you you just described. Yep. And and it's interesting because it there's historical parallels. Right? Like, in the in the reformation,
42:50
the pope used to declare all the and then all of a sudden, the printing press comes out in double entry accounting.
42:55
And now Martin Luther can distribute the Bible to lots of people,
43:00
with in a permissionless
43:01
way ironically.
43:03
And then not only that, the merchants of Venice can trade with each other without a central authority because they can have double entry records and keep track of IOUs.
43:11
And so to me, like, the internet and blockchain are just so amazingly parallel.
43:16
To that. And I and I think society ebbs and flows, it's like when you're too decentralized for too long, it's chaotic. And so then then you have innovations that centralized the means production, but then it gets to centralized. And so
43:30
what we're seeing now, I believe, as Wall Street Bet's perfect example,
43:34
the people at the edge are saying the network should decide not the center. And if you read books like revolt to the Republic and things like that, you see a world where the people at the edge are starting to say about the people at the center. You're illegitimate.
43:49
Just like people at the edge back in the reformation started to say that. About the the the pope and some of the things that were happening
43:57
with,
43:57
exclusionary,
43:58
you know, sort
44:00
of insider only activities. And so
44:03
And that in the last two years, you know, social media went from, you know, the edge to call it pointing at mainstream media, mainstream media now is, like, synonymous with the with fake news. Right? That wasn't even a thing five years ago. Right?
44:15
Mainstream media is now used as a derogatory
44:18
description of something. Which is kinda crazy. Right? That's a that's a big change. And and the important thing is, like, I try not to be too judgmental about it. I don't sit there and say, oh, those mainstream media people are no good. I'm just like, it's inevitable
44:33
that media is gonna decentral. It's inevitable that money will. It's inevitable that politics will. It's inevitable
44:39
that a lot of these things will. And it's like arguing for it or against it. It's kinda like arguing against the direction of the wind. It's it's just it's it's fruit. But but but then back to the your listeners,
44:50
To me, what that means writ large is
44:52
if the twentieth century was about being the quote, quote, organization
44:56
man
44:57
and following the rules and progressing up the hierarchy,
45:00
it doesn't exist anymore. Now you have to be
45:03
you have to take agency for your own life
45:06
and own your comparative advantage.
45:08
And
45:09
understand that that is your responsibility
45:12
as a free person in this world. And if you do that, you're gonna be incredibly rewarded in the twenty first century. But if you wish that it's like the twentieth, I got bad news for you. It's not gonna be. Floodgate invested into refinery twenty nine. Right?
45:27
Yeah.
45:29
For those, we, unfortunately,
45:31
are mean, it is what it is. A lot of our listeners are men, so they don't know. Refinery twenty nine is a is a huge media company geared for women. Refinery
45:38
twenty nine dot com. They were pretty big Right? They,
45:41
were, like, maybe two hundred million dollars or a hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue, and then they sold or merged or something like that with vice. Right?
45:49
Yes.
45:51
And vice is, like, probably a billion dollar a year entity at this point with the with everything they have going on. Do you think that media companies like that given what you're saying about
46:01
I mean, because Bices at this point, even though they weren't new, Vice and Refrator twenty nine are probably almost like old school at this point. Do you think that those style of media companies are still gonna be great companies given what you've just said?
46:13
Well, I think that there's gonna be a very rich ecosystem of all types of media companies, but but to me, the defining
46:20
new characteristic will be
46:22
that media is no longer a function of
46:25
the credential elites
46:27
telling you what to think.
46:29
And, that that was the real problem that we started to get in the media. In my opinion, is that,
46:35
you you had a set of credential deletes running these media companies of which there weren't very many. And,
46:43
these institutions are all inherited now rather than founded. And so the people running these institutions didn't really understand what made them great in the old days. And so they they started to get
46:54
worse over time in their effectiveness
46:57
and legitimacy.
46:58
And so to me, the real question about media is not so much. Is there one way it's gonna happen versus not? It I think that the winners will be those that,
47:08
niche down have a comparative advantage in the type of content that they cover
47:12
and attract,
47:14
the attention of the people who care about that type of content, and and the credentials
47:19
won't define it. Because,
47:22
the the the old media companies had
47:24
credential elites running them, but they also had a monopoly on distribution
47:27
with the newspaper and how they how they got print magazines out and things like that. So I think that all of that's gonna change. Is there any media companies or,
47:38
opportunities
47:39
that you're looking at, and you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting for us.
47:43
I would I would say that my colleague and your coach probably
47:47
smarter about that than I am. You know, I and it's funny even within floodgate, I tend to stick to my areas that I'm excited about. And I
47:55
So there's a lot of exciting things that I'll that I'll miss probably.
47:59
But I'm gonna ask you a question.
48:02
Yeah. Gonna ask you a question that might be hard to answer,
48:05
because it's one of those things, like, oh, you know, how how are you you? So that, you,
48:10
you've said a couple things that caught my attention. You you know, you have these nice phrases. So one is I didn't realize that I see this on your bio here. I didn't realize you coined the term Thunder Lissors. I've heard many investors
48:20
talk about Thunder lizards at something they wanna invest in, which is, like, sort of like, you know, the the godzilla type companies that emerge every decade or so. And, like, that's what you really chase because those are where all the returns are, and those are what changed the world.
48:33
But you also said the kind of the rock I'm a rocket fuel salesman.
48:37
Yep. You are catchier
48:39
than your average DC. You are,
48:42
more
48:43
I don't know. You have a you have a little sort of gift there of coining these little
48:47
mind viruses, these little little phrases that stick with people rather than just saying a bunch of jargon.
48:53
Is that a skill you learned consciously, or is that just, you know, growing up your parents talk like that? Where did that come from?
49:00
I don't know, but I guess the the way I look at things in this world is
49:05
you wanna force a choice and not a comparison.
49:09
And and so, like, what do I mean by that? Like, by the way, you you you just did it again. You did it again. Yeah. Exactly.
49:14
Right? And so so, like, like, if I say, hey, we're investing in particularly disruptive types of companies,
49:22
that's not the same as saying thunder lizards. Right? And so
49:25
Why is it so important? Well, if you're trying to create a breakthrough,
49:29
by definition, it breaks free from the present. So by definition, it can't be compared to something in the present.
49:35
Because if it's comparable to what's in the present, it's doing for metal. It's too conventional.
49:40
And so, like, when I say force of choice and not comparison, I say I say to founders,
49:45
if let's say everybody's selling banana, you can't say I'm a five x better banana. You instead, you should come out and say, I'm an apple.
49:53
And not everybody's gonna want your apple, but a hundred percent of the people who prefer apples are gonna want what you have. And, like, forget the guy who wants the bet best banana. There's a thousand of those people
50:05
you need to waste not an erg of energy on them. You need to spend your time on the people who potentially value your advantage and start a movement around that. You know, earlier we talked about markets,
50:14
companies have markets that could be segmented, sub segmented, and classified.
50:18
Startups don't. Startups, the they create movements.
50:22
They create they have a secret about the future. They get early believers
50:26
who co conspire with them to create a co create a different future.
50:30
And the market emerges as a consequence of the movement succeeding.
50:34
But in the early days, we just have to get people moving. We have to get people moving to somewhere different. Not better. And so as a result, we must force a choice and not a comparison.
50:44
And I as a seed investor, I have to do the same thing because there's two thousand seed funds now. And so it was innovative when they and I helped invent seed investing in two thousand six. But like now, there's two thousand firms, and so we have to come up with some way for people to say, okay, I can't reconcile the choice of working with floodgate versus
51:03
brand x.
51:05
Pretty sure it's a shot at Sam, writing writing checks with writing checks on the spot. That's how we differentiate. Well, I don't know. But I think there's a lot to be. It it it relates to niching down. I think a lot of people would benefit from the idea of how can I force a choice and not a comparison? It takes more courage And it it forces you to say no to more than you say yes to,
51:25
but if you if you do it the right way, the stuff you say yes to,
51:29
I like to say it's less, but better
51:31
is the way to think about it.
51:33
You've, you've had some amazing people in your podcast. You've invested in a ton of amazing companies. And I bet you know just about everyone in this world, of all these people that you've invested in or or or did business with, if you guys were put on a on a stranded island. Who do you think would come out on top? Who who's the most formidable person that you've, you've, you've worked with?
51:53
Oh, there there've been so many great people.
51:56
I think a lot of it would be a function of just, who had the right idea at the right time. You know, so much of this just,
52:03
I call it,
52:04
founder future fit. It's just like, you know, like when an when Andresen did, Mozilla,
52:10
it was just he was the perfect person in the world at the perfect time to do that idea.
52:15
And so, you know, it's not just how formidable is the person, but it's also just
52:20
was it was the timing right and were they just the right person, the right time? But I'm I'm obsessed with I'm obsessed with stories, and I love interesting personality type Is there anyone that fits that bill of of being incredibly formidable, like, to the point of, like, you you think how can you be more like that person? Or or I wish everyone thought a little bit more like this person. Yeah. Yeah. So I I try to learn from everybody, but I not never try to imitate or be like somebody else. Because then that that that defeats the purpose. I'm that now I'm comparing myself to somebody else. And so I never do that. I don't believe that people should compare themselves with anybody. I think they should learn from people, but I don't think they should compare themselves to others. I don't think they should have heroes. And I think that, yeah, you mentioned a couple of people that you've learned from, you know, biology being one.
53:06
You know, Tim Ferris, that he learned from you, are some other names, you know, if if people listen to this and they're like, you know, or or me. Right? I I've really enjoyed hearing you talk during this hour. I think you got a bunch of smart ideas. I wanna know you know, what's he eating? Basically, what's your information diet? What are what are your sort of some of your favorite people
53:23
to follow and learn from that you're getting a bunch of interesting information that's not just like the rest.
53:29
Yeah. So,
53:31
well, I like the the foreign street blog a lot,
53:34
with Shane Parish and and, and and the way, just because I don't invest like Buffet and Munger doesn't mean I don't study him like crazy. Right? Because I think that when I when I read how they look at the world. I'll understand what's different about how they look at the world, but I'll also connect dots that will make the difference of my world more clear.
53:54
I I read a ton. I probably read about one or two books a week just in general.
54:00
What what are some of the ones that I've
54:02
read recently that I liked. One, I like a lot. It's called the courage to be disliked,
54:07
by a couple of Japanese authors. I think it's it's amazing. And so then I went down this rabbit hole of the the psychiatrist,
54:15
Alfred Adler, who who kinda came of age at the same time as Froid and Young, but, wasn't as famous. But I think he's I think that Alfred Hadler's ideas
54:25
about individual agency are perfectly time for the twenty first century.
54:30
So I've been liking
54:32
everything that I can get my hands on about him.
54:35
And it's and it's weird because although I read a lot of books,
54:39
there's there's always a subset that I come back to over and over again where I try to take notes and because I try to I try to make sure I really understand it so that I could explain it to somebody else in a really clear way.
54:50
So I so I like the courage to be disliked quite a bit.
54:54
I've been reading a lot of stuff on stoicism lately.
54:58
Which I find to be very misunderstood.
55:02
But, you know What's the misunderstanding?
55:04
I think that most people think of stoics as,
55:07
you know,
55:09
emotionless,
55:11
turn the other cheek when things go bad.
55:13
And I actually find that when you read about the stoics and that there are actual philosophies in this world, they're actually quite optimistic and quite inspiring.
55:23
And I find that, it's helpful for me to,
55:26
internalize.
55:27
So, like, things like some of the the lessons of stoicism and some of the lessons of Alfred Adler. I'll find myself reading those books over and over again and and trying to make the list of things to learn and ask myself every day. Am I am I exercising those muscles? And then there'll be other things where I'm like, a friend of mine will say this is a really good book. I'm like, gosh, just read that. So Right. You know, that's just fun. It's great. Alright. We're coming up on the hours. We can we can wrap it.
55:53
Mike, thanks for joining. This is great. Where where do people find you if they wanna get more? So, obviously, the podcast
55:58
So starting greatness, where where else should they, follow to get more? Yeah. I'm on Twitter at m two j r.
56:06
Let's see where that's probably the best place. Yeah. Or floodgate dot com. You're you're a tweet machine. I've been following you since, I talked to Tim years ago about you.
56:15
Okay. Yeah. And and if you guys wanna cover any other topics, happy to. I know that we kind of bounced around. So, I want the the American Next, I feel like would have been a interesting one that I think we should we we if you're up for, we could do around two around
56:29
American X. I think it's a bunch that's there that that people aren't talking about.
56:33
Yeah. And all these themes. Right? Like, I think that the idea also of, you know, blockchains and sort of thinking about,
56:40
the the future of money and how we're going to a currency governed by Commons rather than Fiat government is interesting. I think that, you know,
56:50
the evolution of
56:51
You know, I I like to say that computing,
56:54
phases, you had mainframes and you had PCs and you had internet,
56:57
and they always
56:59
start with an enabling technology and they commoditize the prior. So mainframes, computers are expensive,
57:05
and then PCs
57:07
computers were basically free,
57:09
proprietary software becomes valuable. Okay. Next thing, the internet,
57:13
software becomes open source.
57:16
Amassing lots of proprietary data becomes valuable.
57:19
And so one way I look at blockchains are they're the next wave of computing and that they're gonna probably democratize
57:25
data
57:26
and control,
57:28
of things back to networks
57:30
And then what becomes a valuable thing? My my instinct is it's about governments. And so there's there's like a lot of conversation we could have about that that might be interesting. And then I totally agree, America next.
57:41
All the stuff that I think is gonna have to happen for the military to be more agile and,
57:46
for us to kind of
57:48
upgrade our thinking about stuff. You know, when when you're talking, I'm like, this is what I could be like. If I could just focus on three things that I really believed in, and I just stop thinking about other shit for, like, two years. I could have this level of clarity
58:02
and, an insight. And you're making me wanna focus, which Sam and many others in my life, I've ever have tried to get me to focus before, and, this may be the the most effective way.
58:12
Well, there's no one way. Right? Like, I like to be I compare people who are like t. Right? It's like, you wanna be a mile wide and inch deep so that you just can appropriate creative ideas from the world, but then I think you wanna be a mile deep somewhere. Right. So it's like a t. Right? And it's like that's why you read several books at a time, but then you also go deep on a small number. They're truly great.
58:35
Do you,
58:36
who who should we invite next on this podcast? Who do you think is some of the is some is some of the are some of the best storytellers and prolific idea folks. You had Reed Hoffman. We're we're trying to get in touch with him. Is there anyone else that you think is is We shouldn't buy it. Read Reed Hoffman and I, Nival ravacant.
58:56
You know, Chris Sacca is always a a good storyteller
59:01
I can think about that. You know, the Instagrammers
59:03
are fun.
59:05
Andy Radcliffe, probably not as famous as some some of your guests and stuff that boy, is he a clear thinker?
59:11
A great communicator.
59:13
What's the best way to get in touch with Reed just to call the moment, you think?
59:17
Probably,
59:18
let's see.
59:20
Or you just say that I've mentioned to you guys and that it is a good show, and then I enjoyed it. The people that you just mentioned,
59:28
I'll email the people you just mentioned.
59:30
And I'll say Mike said you're the
59:32
Mike said you're the guy.
59:34
Yeah. I was still you know, I haven't seen as much of Chris Saca lately, so I don't know if if that would be as effective with him, but,
59:41
But I think that, some of the other guys would would,
59:44
would recognize me pretty well. I showed up for Chris one morning. He texted and he said, hey, I I gotta film a shark tank intro. We need some bodies in the background,
59:53
to for my my intro. And I I left my job. I went to where he was at. Nine in the morning, and I filmed a, I was a body double. I was, I was an extra in the background for his, shark tank intro. So I'll pull that favor card and be like, hey, Chris. Okay. Now's the time to pay it back. Yeah. If you haven't had Mark Cuban, I think he's really good.
01:00:14
And and by the way, on this, so it's funny because you guys are using Zendcaster,
01:00:20
so does Shane Harris. So I was on his Oh, sorry, Shane Parish.
01:00:24
And on his,
01:00:26
after he listened to the to the talk, he's like, There's so many upfront questions. I wish I'd asked you.
01:00:33
Can we do this again? And so I was like, sure. So we ended up having a lot of content that he kind of cut down. But, like, if if if you find yourself in that position here, let me know. I'm happy to,
01:00:43
help you make it as bet, you know, less but better. Right? So if we can Right? You know, if we're gonna if we're gonna ship a product, it might as well be fucking awesome. Right?
01:00:52
So I love you.
01:00:55
Where are you from?
01:00:57
I was born in Oklahoma, but moved all around because Teddab was an IBMer, yeah, and then worked at Microsoft. Yeah. I feel like, how how old are you?
01:01:07
Early fifty three.
01:01:09
Yeah. So you're I'm I'm thirty one. So you would have had to have me when you were quite young. But, I feel like you could you could you I could you could be my uncle, I think.
01:01:20
That's funny. That's what the founders call me. Their nickname for me is a crazy uncle.
01:01:24
So, yeah, that's great. I think we we kinda looked the same. I could tell you. I I thought you would have been from the Midwest or maybe the South. I'm from Missouri.
01:01:32
Yep. Show me state. Yeah. And, my cousins,
01:01:36
live in Oklahoma in, in Owens, Oklahoma where they buck bulls,
01:01:40
I I I had a I have a feeling you and I, we we could be distance cut distant cousins, so we don't even know it. Yep. Yeah. You never know.
01:01:48
Coming from Missouri in Oklahoma. You'd never know. Yeah.
01:01:51
Well, I appreciate this, man. This is awesome. Shawn, anything to say? No. My camera died. I'm at the overheating mark, but
01:01:58
Mike, this is great. Thank you for coming on. I I enjoyed that. That was good. And you're in Austin?
01:02:03
And now I live in Marin County, so I'm in Northern California.
01:02:07
Oh, I think he lived in Austin for some reason.
01:02:10
No. I I helped him though find his place. So when he decided to move, I, you know, I used to live in Austin about up until about fifteen years ago, and my families from there, all my relatives and stuff. And so, you know, I'm just the opposite of what everyone else did. It it seems so. And everybody keeps asking me, when are we gonna move back to Austin? I, you know, I don't know. I'm pretty happy with where we live, but, you know, it's pretty crazy times. So you never know. We'll see. Well, well, thanks for being here. We'll talk soon.
01:02:41
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
01:02:46
I put my all in it like days. I was on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
00:00 01:02:53