Hello, friends and listeners. Today's episode as one of the greatest technology investors of all time and one of my favorite people, Mike Maples, junior on it. He's known for being the first investor in Twitter, along with investments in game changing companies like Cruz Lift, Octa, Jag Twitch number of them. And within Silicon Valley, he's known as one of the rare individuals that is as humble as he is bright, and I really, I really mean that it's just one of my favorites. He's also one of the rare Texans out here, which is obviously my favorite quality of his today. You're gonna get to hear about everything from why he he thinks about his parents so much. What's really causing the growth in inequality in the US,

how the tech sector needs to change in a major way and about a phrase called scissor statements that I never heard before. But now I cannot stop thinking about, so I think you're gonna enjoy this one. This is below the line. Mike Maples. Hey, great Thio. Cheers. Cheers. Great to get a chance to do this

with you. Let's rock

and roll. That is gonna be there's gonna be a lot of fun. I ah, when I first had the idea for the podcast, I was already really excited for when we get a chance to have just a long block of time talking about all kinds of things big and small, Yeah, Always love. Our conversations were and were right Now we're having a little in this. This week's crazy drink that we're enjoying his recess. Um, which ginger peach Gender? That's right. Um and this is I've had it once before. But, Mike, is this your first time to have Yeah, strength?

So this is, um And I guess this might become a theme of the podcast of just having crazy We're drinks each upset. This is a peach ginger CBD sparkling water drink. And, um, it is meant to be kind of like a alcohol alternative that you drink to relax. And I think it's working. Yeah. So far, so good. Yeah, not too bad. Um, so informally brought to you by recess for for this episode. So it is. Ah,

it's my great pleasure toe. Get to chat with you. Um, for however long we we get, um, because, well, let's just start with a little bit of, you know, the rap sheet. One of the best. The Ogi is one of the yogis and legendary seed investor, Um, one of the first investors in companies like Twitter crews. Um, I think you just Octa was that last year?

Just went public. Yeah, year before last year before last. Massive, um and you know, just the unicorns all over the place. Ah, Meaning you know, for the listeners, not in tech $1,000,000,000 companies all over the place that you're investing in when it's two people, three people on idea.

Yeah, we say too early or way too early or maybe even legally ambiguous. Too

early. Yeah, exactly as it is. A great uh, that's a great way putting because that is Ah, that is about as in b. I mean, it's it's crazy and biggest when you're picking these companies that early, So I really want to chat with you about that. But also I think in the same way that you're such an original thinker for being one of the first to do seat investing, especially as well as you've done it, but also original thinker. On a number of different, different things I can't wait to touch on with you. But, uh, first up, first question, a little bit of a softball. What are your favorite things about being a seat investor?

Um, well, when you get it right, you just get to see these companies just come out of nowhere and make a huge difference. And startup, massive outcomes really are a rare event. And so if you get to work with one of them, you're really fortunate. You know, there's kind of 0.1% chance that you go the distance the way some of these have. But, you know, we've had a chance to work with the folks at Twitter and Doctor some of the ones you mentioned him and my partners on the board of Lift, which has had a pretty good run. And we knew Twitch. What? It was Justin TV,

and we knew Twitter when they couldn't decide what to call it, whether it was voicemail to point over TV TT are left with Zim ride octo a sash er check. The textbook rail company was it was like craigslist for college is totally different business. And so it's just it's fun to be more of a co conspirator than an investor. I guess I'd liketo get involved with these before there's a parade to jump in front of. And, um, you know, give these people as much unconditional love as I can early. And then it's just fun to seem. Do well and to see people that you knew before they were famous on the cover of these magazines. That but it's not even just about that. It's about just the way their products make a difference. And that you got you got to see it before the rest the world did.

Well, it is, Ah, I want to touch on on so much about the investing side of things and it is amazing. Podcast interview You and Tim Ferriss where you know, he just flat out, I think, titled Podcast episode. The Man Who told me everything about investing, and I've learned so much from you as well when I touch on that. But before jumping into to that and what you're known for, I actually want to ask a little bit about I'd say you bring up one topic about as much as you bring up any any company, and you talk about your parents a lot. Talk about, um, where you grew up. You I It's,

um we're both We moved out here from Austin, and so we have that connection, but, uh, yeah, we'd love to know a little bit just directly about about your parents and, uh, and why they I love that they come up almost feel like every other story when I'm

with you. Yes, I I grew up in Oklahoma in my early years, and so all of my family had been there and my dad was a systems engineer at IBM in the late sixties, early seventies there. And, um, that's just kind of where our roots were. So I grew up learning how to go fishing and water skiing and rooting for the Oklahoma Sooners and, you know, knowing who Billy Sims was, You know, before it really made sense for person my age to know those kinds of things. It s so Phil assumes that Heisman Trophy winning running back for the Oklahoma Sooners. And so, you know, that was just that was what life was like,

a one growing up, even even as a kid after we moved, because my dad being with IBM. We moved all the time. We'd go back to Oklahoma, never summer and just, you know, go to Catfish Acres to go fishing. Or we would go water skiing on Lake Eufaula. It's just, Ah, you know, just I still have really good memories of it. And my parents were both just super supportive people. My dad taught me so much about just how not to think about business. But how to think about life and toe.

Understand why it's important to be honest and hardworking and stand for certain things. And my mom was just like if I'd read a book about dinosaurs and we lived in New Jersey, she'd find out where the Museum of Natural History was and take me there to see the terrain, a source. Rex skeletons, you know. And then I'd say, Well, actually, the bigger one is in the one D. C. She take me down to Washington, D. C with my brother, and we'd go look at the dinosaur bones on the way to seeing Gettysburg and sitting on cannons and stuff. And so, yes, my parents were both just very encouraging and supportive and just kind of had this ethos of you can pretty much do whatever you want, as long as you're willing to work for it. And be honest

about it. Yeah. Is there, um, are there certain things that you you copied directly from them with with your own kids? I think you have yet to daughters and a son, right?

Yeah, Well, I am. I don't know. I I hope that I did a reasonably good job. The the thing that helped me and and my parents never told me this, but I came to realize it is that Ah, and I think I haven't said this on Tim's podcast one time that when you have kids, they owe you nothing. Ah, they didn't decide to have you. You chose to have them. And so there's kind of this trap that parents get into wine, have gratitude from their kids. And if if that happens, great. But expecting it from them is a form of manipulation.

And so, um, you know, I think that that's the wrong reasons for thinking about what parenting is all about. And so So I always said that was really important. Is that that you know, they owe you nothing and that if you put that burden on the relationship, you'll you will not be the best parent

that you could be. Yeah. Does it carry? Do any of those things carry over to to investing a source of fun a

little bit? You know, it would sound paternalistic to suggests that I start ups like your kid gives so much. Not like that, in many ways, when your investor you're way more along for the ride than anything else. But, you know, I like to say probably for the most part, that if your kids end up not so great, you probably don't deserve as much of the blame is, you might give yourself. And if they turn out great, you probably deserve as much the credit either. And start ups are a little bit that way. You know where they work. You probably shouldn't pat yourself on the back too much. And when they don't work, you probably shouldn't be blamed. Is the VC either?

You know, it's interesting. Yes, is Certainly the dynamics are wildly different. I think from the outside looking in, you could you can feel like the investor and entrepreneurs. It is ah familiar Oh, and it is familial in terms of congenial, but you can feel like maybe there is a paternalistic or paternalistic aspect. But yet it's It is as much of, ah, paternal maternal in aspect as you know, I don't know, adopting an 18 year. Yeah, there's so much That's just the start you can't control. You're along for the ride,

but, um, within parenting. Um, it's I feel like I hate you when I think about my parents and how supportive they were. Well, and I was I was thinking about this maybe two or three weeks ago that that it's a concept of inheriting potential and I don't know. It's not a fully formed thought, but but we inherit the virtues or devices of our parents, and we're all filled with both. But we inherit both of them and and you look at, ah, not an individual in 2019 and they really are just It's multiple generations of of support or multiple generations of potentially. Maybe it's maybe the person is completely self made, but in a lot of ways, you know,

a lot of great people look at the parents and commend their parents for everything that they did for me. I feel like there's got to be something transgenerational around that support where it's never someone just individually accomplishing anything, always not just the team that started, but maybe it started. Yeah, decisions 10 years before they

were born. And I guess the other thing I look about look at with parenting is a lot of people miss it, you know? So some parents, they have a lot and they give their kids a lot. But when I think my parents didn't get financially successful till later in life, you know, I was already halfway through college. But what? What my parents really gave me was a way of thinking about stuff. And so, for example, my parents used to tell me, You have what you have. There's gonna be some people who have more than you in life. And some people have less than you in life, and they're gonna have more than you and less than you in lots of different ways.

So, you know, you could if you wanted to, you could go look at Billy Sims and say he runs faster than you. Give me your legs, Billy Sims. But you know, that's just not a very productive way to look at the world. And so one of the things I got from them was this idea that every day's a gift and that just having the gift of being alive is a privilege. And the question is, just what do you want to do with your time and how do you want to make the most of your time? And there will always be people who got a head start visa vee you and there'll be people that you've got a head start compared to. But don't fall into the trap of this learned helplessness of saying, Oh, the world isn't fair. What was me?

Because it is the fact that you get to live. It all is just such a great gift. And, um, you don't even know how much time you're gonna have. And so, ah, lot of people I know seem to be doing great and they don't get as much time. His people who don't seem to be doing is well, And so it's just every day's a gift, make the most of it can and sort of honor the gift in what you do with it each day at a time.

Yeah, well, what is, uh what are some life Moments that come to mind where you had that fork in the road where it could have been early in your development, It could have been learned helplessness, or it could have been okay, I'm not I don't have the legs of so and so. But, uh, but here's something else that I that I do have, whether I can't Father

Yeah, or it's funny, um, one of my earliest childhood memories. I was in this fishing contest. It was this under 16 fishing contest, and I was five years old, so I was the youngest you could be. And I went out there and, you know, I just barely even hold a fishing pole. And I'm out there with my dad and he says, You know, there's gonna be all these people, and they're gonna be running around the ponds in the lake. And, um,

I think we'd be better off if we thought about the type of spot that we want to be at and just stay there the whole time. And you may not win. Somebody may may beat you. They may get luckier than you, but I think your best chance at winning is toe. Let's pick our spot and let's talk about what? What a good spot would be, you know? Is it Do we want a spot that is under the sun or that its shade? Or do we want a spot that's deep or shallow? And how would we know? It's so hot in your five. I'm like, five years old and he's asking me these questions in reason and being patient, right? Well,

while we try to reason through it. So we finally pick a spot and we just sit there. And sure enough, everybody's running around all over the place, especially the older kids and loan. Behold on catching this carp and I I still have the trophy. In fact, it's a good thing I do, because most time when I tell people the story, they don't believe it. They think it's got to be some made up Polly Anna story. But I caught this fish and it was, you know, I probably remember it is being bigger than it was, but it was big enough to win, and so I have this green trophy that says,

you know Mike Maples, Junior carp catch. You know, I think it was, I think was 1973 maybe 1972. And it's such a good lesson about life is just the value of focusing, but also being confident in your decision when you put the work in making the decision. And so it was Ah, it was one of those good early life experiences where you sort of got rewarded for

doing it the right way. And so, um, that's a great as a great story, actually, it brings to mind a question that I want to ask you, which is is, uh, three stores in your life that helped shape who you are that that sounds like a perfect 1st 1 But on that, on that note, it's, um, my background before Tech was in development, economics and the nonprofit realm, and one of the things that that I saw there that I see in tech pretty often I see in startups pretty often that totally maps to just picking a spot and just just going hard at that one spot instead of looking at all the potential things that you know places, he could be fishing and trying to fish them all. Um,

you're you're almost three spots in your already Think about the next spot before your your Your Highness that the water in that third spot before you've even. It's like, you know, as you're chewing, you think about the next bite and no one can enjoy a meal that way. It's yeah, it in the in the Development Romoeren, the nonprofit room. There is so many people that would join the organization that I work with in and want to just go in 10 different directions all at once, and it's you know, it and start ups. You hear the lessons about focus, focus, focus so much that you still obviously have that human tendency. You see it going in too many directions. But from the nonprofit realm,

one of the things that I was always like starkly contrasts startups versus a nonprofit Roma's and nonprofit realm. It was just it felt like 10 different battles all the same time. Let's do them all. And what was weirdly perverse about it was the more of a problem that you can create or the more problems that you can elucidate. Then then, Actually, you the more money you can come in, you can get come in the door because you've made the problems seem even bigger. And it's this this strange thing that's almost like program ties your lesson. That is a great lesson learned five years old,

you know, even think about helping folks get ahead who are behind in this world. You'd almost be better off picking one person that you could have a real impact on it. So, like, I like to say, if you would like to see more of something in this world, whether it's minorities getting ahead or whether people living in tough parts of town being exposed to a better life for gender diversity, whatever it is, name your thing that you wish you'd see more of the best way to have an impact on it, for real, I find is almost always to do less but better. And, uh, you know, the temptation is to want too often we want to talk in the abstract and be inside of our heads and do things that scale. I remember when there were the fires in Napa.

My wife, Julie, while everybody was sending likes and tweets to Napa from Silicon Valley. She sets up a depot in our garage, and it's like stuff's coming in and out and we're routing it to the shelters and stuff and there's there's a you know that's not super scalable. But sometimes it works better to just get riel and to get focused and to do last bit better,

too. And, yeah, I find that one thing on that one person at some. No, Voll Ravic. Anna's is a close friend of yours. He I I've heard him say before. He just doesn't believe in macro solutions that it's like, You know, when you think there's a solution for 300 million people and you're going to design it from the top down. Um, it's just I don't I don't know his age now, but he just said he hee thinking phrases like a few years ago, I just stopped, stopped leaving in this idea of macro solutions that there are micro solutions in search of micro solutions.

Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, think big, act small and increment your way there and sort of that's almost always the better way to get

there, right, right um, is it well, that is Ah, er mei. I've actually been fishing handful times in Oklahoma and frog hunting.

My credit's not hard to find lakes in Oklahoma,

that's for sure. It's not that we would, uh, yeah. Go fishing with with Our grandfather lived in Tolson and Tulsa, Haskell and and Moscow be guys different. Ah, different parts of life. The, uh So on that question of three stories, that would be a great 1st 1 that helped shaped shape here. What would two other stories be? That shell? Yeah,

that's pretty good. Jumping off point. And then I guess another one would be more about my mom. So, uh, my mom is really

good to see you're getting it there. You're You're seeing proof of the pudding that Mike thanks so much about his parents that is so refreshing and and awesome to hear someone talk about their

families. Yes. Oh, so my mom is really good at art and painting and ink drawing and just just illustration in general. And I picked up some of that skill when I was really young, but in particular, I really got interested in lettering. So at first it was I looked at these Japanese characters, and I would. I asked her for one of those brushes that those artisans would use to paint these Japanese conjure characters. And she said, You know, I think maybe you could be good at calligraphy. And she knew of this guy named Ken Brown, who was at the time one of the world's most famous calligraphers. And, you know,

if you go into Michael's story even today, I think they sell the elegant writer pens that sponsored by Ken Brown. And, um, she introduced me to him. She and my aunt and and I went and visited with him and he gave me a kit and I started writing letters, and next thing I know he was publishing these letters. And so I thought, OK, I'm gonna try to turn this into a business. So my first ever job. But we had finished attic at the house and I set up a calligraphy workshop and, ah, whenever my mom would go into town, I'd follow her with my samples that I would go to the fanciest restaurants in town, or the jewelry stores or anything that sold high margin products and show my samples and say,

Hey, I can hand hand letter these for you for your store, and it'll give you an extra, you know, give you that extra zip factor. It's so that was that was a way, a better way to make money than weeding flower beds in the sixth grade. So But, you know, she always. Whenever I got interested in something where there was a dinosaur bones or whatever it was, she always wanted to make sure that that my introduction to that topic was world class, that it was, ah, that she would do everything she could to encourage it. And,

you know, you realize Maurin hindsight what she was doing that you did at the time, was she Oh, she was just trying to get me toe anything I was interested in for its own sake. She want to meet a She wanted me to follow the threat of it, but she never pressured me. She never said, Hey, why don't you do more calligraphy? Or why don't you write a book on calligraphy wearing that stuff? It was always just, um it was if I was interested in something, she would double down until I got tired

of it. Yeah, that's a CZ awesome. Wait out of curiosity, what are some of the other things that through your life up into this point or just kind of these side project copies or things that you loved dabbling in you've got dinosaurs? Got calligraphy?

Yeah, unfortunately, too many. So I really like a photography a lot. So I've got into cameras and, um, manual focus lenses. And then it now the software so go that you couldn't bring it in tow photo shop and do a lot of really interesting stuff. And then that the really unfortunate one is ah, cinematography. So, um, you know, I win like a discontinued the our camera. I went onto eBay and bought all these, like, are primes and found these guys who could convert it into cinema glass. And so I have ah, incredibly cinematic images of my puppy Stella rolling around in the backyard with super shallow depth of field and colored like fuji

film stock. When was this wood?

I started really getting interested in about 2012. And and, um, when the when the digital with a digital cinema camera started to get close to good enough. When the Canon five de mark two came out, it became clear that there was gonna be a breakthrough in terms of what? The images that you could get even as as an amateur.

Interesting. Yeah. Uh, sounds like you've always been pretty visual. Yeah,

And I'd say that making movies is about the biggest challenge. Because you've got you've got to not only have the skills of photography, but just the the filtering of the light comes in. You have to be more exact. You have toe master manual focus. You have toe master lighting and you have to master sound and wants to get it into your editing system. You've got to get it all synchronized and figure out how to edit it. So And if you wanna have graphics or you know anything over laid or you know c g i of any kind, you gotta figure out how to use different rendering packages and different, you know, compositing packages all this stuff, and so it just you've got to know how to do about 20 things. Really Well, if you're to make movies completely on your own

When you were young, did you entertain the idea of becoming a moviemaker

a little bit, but not too much. I was more into being an architect, and then computers happen. And that's that's where I went in. He was obvious to me when the personal computers started to happen. It was completely obvious to me that that's what I'd be doing. But it was It wasn't at all about the money at the time PCs. Nobody thought that was gonna be a big deal. More time. What was their junior high? And so bye bye, Junior high. It was pretty obvious to me that I was gonna do something with computers and software.

So your junior high So round 1930 e. I used to be the guy. Now you are the guy who are the young guy. Just revenue. The the S O. Is this about early

late 19 early eighties, the house in junior high and the the apple to was already out on the IBM PC came out, and because my dad was an IBM, we got one of the early ones, and that's when it really started toe become a major thing for me.

Yeah. And, um And what did you what was So the hook of seeing that becoming potentially a game changer. What? What about what

about it? Well, I literally game. Just speaking of game changing, you may get a kick out of this. So the other day, my younger brother Betton, found this thing online that had So we wrote a game when I was a freshman in high school called PC Fund, and it had three games. It had, ah, game called killer bees, where you're shooting killer bees. Outer space had cosmic crisis Where your it's kind of like defender, but not really. And then ah, and then another one that was like,

uh, what if they call it? Ah, some something about these balls fallen from outer space and you catch him in your yard in a bucket. And we ended up winning the Conn PC User Group Disc of the Month award. Yeah, I hadn't thought about this since I probably last time I thought about was when applying to college, right? You say I won the disc of the month award or whatever, and somehow somebody had uploaded these games. I don't even know how they could possibly work as these Games were prior written in 1982. And, um, but they have all the screen shots, and so I don't have you have podcast. Oh,

So I got all the screenshots from these games, and my brother's like, Can you believe we found this? Really? Yes. Pretty bloody tweeted out, and I'll retweet s So it's pretty funny and that Ah, so that was Ah. So speaking of game changers, right, as you said earlier, So I got I got interested in it riding video games. And then, um, you know, all through college, I'd be selling them from time to time. And, you know, I just be copying floppies in my spare time and shipping them off

people I love. How that there seems to be a common threat of seeing something in the commercial. Yeah, I guess so. Believe he or video games. Yeah, um, computer games. That's and so from where were you in high school? In Connecticut?

Yeah, I knew Kate in high school.

And then, um and then where'd you go to school and what What did you think you were going to study in school? And it sounds like technology was a big part of

Yes, I went toe went to Stanford undergrad, and it was It was the place I wanted to go. It was in Silicon Valley, and, um, you know, the weather was really nice, and I just that that's really what I wanted to do. And so I was lucky enough to get in there, and then, ah, just had a great time and I didn't anticipate all the things I'd learned there, but it was Ah, it was a great time to be. There was a great place to be. I have no regrets.

Yeah. And, uh, And then, uh, between Stanford and floodgate becoming an investor

path. Yes. I worked at Silicon Graphics for a couple of years, and, ah, one of my jobs is a product manager of digital media. And so we needed to at the time. So the rafters soldier like military narrow space, and we were trying to convince the special effects houses to use us for a computer graphics. So ah, Terminator to the liquid man, the abyss. And then eventually the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. And so every time they would do one of those movies, Industrial Light Magic would buy about 10 to $15 million worth of S G I gear, because at that time it was improving incredibly rapidly, not just the processing but the graphics and networking.

And so, um, you know, that was a really fun job because we got toe work with software vendors and work with people cobbling things together to make these special effects. And every Silicon graphics was across the road from the cinema complex and Mountain View. Every time one of these movies would come out, all of us on the digital media team would go across the street and watch these movies and just being off what they could do with our computers. And at the time nobody's computers were being used other than ours to make these effects. So it was pretty cool. That

was a fun job. So he did get into movie making. And on some,

yeah, that. So that was a fun job. And, you know, you got to see the very beginnings of it all. This is when Avid was a new company that did the Media Composer and helped do the film editing, and it was just a great time to see it all. And, um, and then And then after that, I went to Harvard Business School for a couple of years. And then when I graduated, that's why I moved out of Austin and was involved to start ups that ended up working out when was called Tivoli Systems. Which Republican was acquired by IBM and then motive, which I started with four other buddies. And we went public in 2004

in in, um, kind of the adage of looking back and connecting dots. What are some of the dots or some of the moments you look back on your career that you might not have appreciated? Ah, whole lot at the time. But you look back you like, But that was a that was a major, major moment, if any company

one. Yeah, there there's a bunch of them, I suppose, um, the main. The main thing, I guess that helped me in those situations of they were all really uncertain situations. And, um, there was one piece of advice that I got from my dad when I was young about decision making, that I wish more people knew. So he used to tell me that most decisions, um, are one of two types. It's 70 30 or 51 49. And if it's 70 30 now,

let's assume you've done the work to find fax to figure out what type it ISS. If it's 70 30 you know what you need to do. You You're just, for whatever reason, not courageous enough to just declare it for what it is and follow through on it. But the other thing that's kind of insightful is, if it's 51 49 it almost doesn't matter which one you pick. So the closer the options are, the less it matters. Which one you pick, and the farther apart the options are. Just pick one because you know the answer already. And so what I learned from him was that decisions, actually, or more like a product. Um,

a product should have a ship date and a quality level, but there is a time value decisions and that what what happens with a lot of people is they don't make the wrong decision because they don't have the facts or they don't have a framework to decide. It's because they let their emotions get attached to the decision in a way that interfere with their judgment or their timing of the decision. And so, if you think about decisions of product with a time value, uh, I've always found it to be useful. And not all decisions were that simple. Now are yes, no up, down, right or left. But quite often they're more simple than you realize. And it's like it's the the framing of the decision and the willingness to follow through that really matter more than anything else.

Yeah, the right, the the So there's a Marine Corps quote. I believe it's Marine Corps Corps. That's the only wrong decision is no decision, right? There's You could sit there trying to gather information all day long. You could quite literally get if you're walking across a field, you could sit there gathering information, literally your infant. You could just sit there for all but the person's gonna get to the other side. Fast is the one that says, All right is the path Yeah,

and life is kind of more like a dance than it is a riddle, right? And so people tend to look a decision as there's an absolute right answer, and I need to divine what that right answer is. But the fact of the matter is, it's more like a dance in that sometimes you can lead the dance, and it's so life is really more of a combination of asserting and listening and, you know, emergent strategy and deliberate strategy. And you can't you know, the emergent answer won't reveal itself. If you wait too long, you have to be engaged with the topic or engaged with the decision. And so you know this this idea that, um, there should be a deadline to decisions, and it should be about gathering the facts before that deadline, but then commit yourself to decide unless there's a strong reason not to. Is kind of I've always found to be really helpful.

That's a super helpful. I I remember someone really smart told me one time something similar of, um, and I like your framework of basically two types of decisions. And yes, they're exceptions. Everything. But I think I like your breakdown of basically 70 32 where you know the right decision already. Yeah, so you don't need more time to deliberate. And it's even in those courageous moments, like whether it's skydiving or whether it's a really hard decision and in your career life. Just make you know the decision. And actually, more time. You know, courage doesn't grow in time. And and the other thing that sounds really fascinating is is the 51 49 where you can't tell if it's if it's not 70 30 you don't know the right decision counterintuitively. Maybe it doesn't

matter. And when it does, it doesn't matter. And the closer it is to 51 49 the more often my heuristic is to flip a coin. And if it comes up heads and I'm like I knew it would be heads, that's the I knew that was right. Then I go with heads or whatever comes up. But if I say maybe I should do two out of three, I do the opposite. And so like, but kind of this idea that usually you kind of know what the answer ought to be. If you've done the work up front and that it's it's not knowing, the right answer isn't really the issue. It's it's it's the will to decide, rather than the skill to know the right answer.

That's end and the, uh and the timing of just making the decision, because the only wrong the one you know isn't right in every one of these seven as scenarios is to not make a decision. And yet you confine yourself just waffling and waffling, right? Yeah, that's that's a great decision. Decision making framework. Um, that is and it's amazing you dad gave that to you. I I learned that, um, investor out here told me one time that it's if you're deliberating constantly between a on a really hard decision. It's actually probably because it doesn't matter what you guys write, rather than in matters so much that you have to To your right. You have to divine the right answer. And there's only one right answer. It's just either 70 30 and you know the right one. Make the call or 51 49. Yeah, yeah,

the other. The other thing I learned throughout my career was, um I think that you want have a mix of deliberate and emergent strategies, and I I observe this watching Al Gore. It's so like. First of all, I have nothing against Al Gore. But you realize that that his goal in life was to be president of the United States and not being president. The United States was gonna be a disappointment to him if it didn't happen. And whereas you look at George W. Bush, any kind of bops around, next thing you know, he's imagine the Texas Rangers and he runs for governor, Beats and Richards. How did that happen? Next thing you know,

he's running for president, he wins this thing. And what I sort of learned from that is that life, it's it's good to have a plan. But life has a way of not conforming to your master plan, and you want to have a strategy, and you wanna have sort of an agenda that you're pursuing. But secrets kind of emerge and bubble up all around you that you don't expect. And sometimes the secret that emerges is better than the secret you were pursuing. And you gotta have the presence of mind to know that life just gave you the gift of a bigger secret. And you've got to be willing to say, Hey, this thing I was pursuing, maybe not as big or a cz. Much of an opportunity is this other thing. I could go after.

Because if I hadn't thought that way, there's no way Floodgate ever would have happened. You know, I would have just kept looking for a job. Big VC firms, and I would have never seen that 500 thousands of new five million. And, hey, wait a second. Maybe maybe that's the real opportunities. Go start up a new type of fun that does

that right? Well, in end before we touch on, that would love to hear that 3rd 3rd story that shaped

you are. Yeah, I guess. Um, okay, I'll try this one on for size. So when I was in first grade, I asked my parents for an H P pocket calculator and, um, you know, in president terms, an HB pocket calculator probably cost about as much as a Mac pro would. You know, not not the Mac book Pro, but like the big one, you know, the expensive one.

And so my parents were really early in their career. They couldn't afford it. And so they said, Well, we can get you a calculator someday, but you're you're not really old enough for a calculator yet. You need to know how to do all your time stables, at least. So I taught myself times tables. It came back. It's okay. Brave for calculated. They said, Well, now you need to do division. I talked myself division and came back.

Okay, I want my calculator. Then they said no long division. And then I taught myself long division and they said, No, not with remainder is with decimals. It kept going, moving the goal posts on. Yeah, it's so eventually I got I got a calculator. Well, we got to. So they were cheap by the Times in the third grade. And so we went to Radio Shack and bought two. We took one of them apart, So I spent time with my dad,

learned how it worked, But it's funny way later in life. Um, when I was at Stanford, I ran into David Packard, interested or union. And I was nervous about approaching him because I thought, Well, you know, what if he's curmudgeonly or it doesn't want any company. So I just walked up and said, Hi, Mr Packard, and I really admire what you've done with HP and, uh, just want to say hi,

and he's like, Well, you know, what's your name and what what year are you at? Stanford and tell me Maura and stuff like that. Would you like to have lunch? And so I was having lunch with him, and I think it really made him happy that some first grader who at the time lived in Princeton, New Jersey, was inspired by that product. You know, the It was designed. It was really Bill Huell. It's pet project, but the But the idea was that calculators used to take a desktop, and what he wanted was one that would fit in a short pocket.

And so, um, it's funny because after that experience, ah, a few years later, ah, new site called eBay came out, and finally I was able to get on HP calculus. So I have. I have the HP calculator I wanted in first grade in perfect condition. Perfect new condition that I bought on eBay. What soon as I could get one?

It's one of the great things. Well, and for our listeners, um, would you describe yourself as an introvert or extra

Burt? I'd say that Ah, more of an introvert, actually. Um but ah, but But I like

people if if that makes sense. Eso its I heard you describe yourself as an introverted nips, and I've seen it's not It's not this, Um, in fact, we were just at

an event. You're ready. Bolt? Yes, like there's way too many people here. I can't

breath itself fake. It's It takes a lot of courage Thio to go up and just say maybe not even know what you're going to say, But But, uh, I think a great thing. You can always look back on its telling something, telling someone that you admire something that they poured themselves into. Yeah, he's always well received, but it's also a testament to the Bay Area. You can run into people like that.

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing, you know, like when I was a junior, I've heard really good things about Bill Campbell, and this was when he was running Claris. And so I'm like, I'm I'm gonna meet Bill Campbell, so I'm telling listeners a little bit about it. Also Bill Campbell. There's a book that's recently come out about him called Trillion Dollar Coach, and so he was simultaneously on the boards of Apple and Google. But he was once the CEO of into It and before that failed company. But that spawned a bunch of really interesting people in companies called Go Handwriting Tablet Company. And then before that, he was at a company called Claris,

which made software for the Mac. And before that, he was actually add. Apple is a VP working under John Sculley at the time. And so I was a junior in college and and, um, I wanted to get to know this guy because he was in John Scully's book Odyssey and everybody said all these amazing things about him. And so so one day I just reach out. I call up and I get I get his administrator, and I say, Hey, I'm a Stanford student and I'm putting together a field study and I would like to do a field study on Claris is objectives and whether Claris is meeting its objectives and she says, Okay, let me let me see if I can put you through to avenge, insulting and, uh,

she puts me through to him and some next thing I know. I'm talking Bill Campbell, and so he invites me to do this field study well, that the time Izzy staff had yoga. No, Lol, who ended up being a managing partner? It Mayfield. Donna Dubinsky. Who was it? Palm CEO Palm, Um, Jill, a B shot who ended up being one of the great marketing folks in the Valley. And, ah,

you know, he introduced me to all of them and had me interview him and wrote, I wrote up a I went back to one of my professors and said, Hey, Clarence wants to do a field study. Um, you know, can I get some course credit for this? So, um and so I did. And then I wrote this report and then he invited me to a beer bust, but I couldn't go until the till I turned 21. So my birthday was March 15th and this field study was going on in the spring quarter, so I couldn't sorry, Winter quarter Stanford terms. So it wasn't really until the last two weeks of winter quarter that I could go to one of their beer bus on Friday. Sounds pretty fun.

He's, uh, he's a legend. Yeah, anyone that that it is, name recognition is not especially outside the valley does not. Is It's not indicative of how influential e he was. Um and yeah, anyone that's out there feel free to Google. Bill Campbell. You'll see out raising hell,

you know, and I don't know how many of your listeners are in college or grad school or whatever, but one thing I learned when I was in school was that you have a bunch of free moves. I called him, And so, you know, if you want to meet, say at the time Ah, the person I really want to meet and venture capitalist John Doar client Perkins and, um, you realize that it's easier to meet John Door client Perkins when your student than when you're just another guy in Silicon Valley product manager, whoever. And so, um so when I was in business school, I just made a list of all the people I wanted to meet, and I learned that is an extension, my undergrad at Stanford.

And so, um, free moves are perishable. And so you know, if if those two years passed you by and you don't make your free moves, you don't get him back. And I think that that's another thing that I have learned through time is that they're just certain windows of opportunity where you have free moves. If you don't take him, they pass you by and you don't ever get another one, right? Or at least not of that type.

Yeah, it's Ah, that's a really good point as well on, ah, courage being in a place like the Bay Area. But, uh, but the I I look back it when we would when When I was a CEO in building, um, one of my first cos just the fund raising. I loved fundraising because I got to just It wasn't about whether the person on the other side of the table investor or not, I just got to meet these amazingly smart people for free for an hour and get Thio, maybe build a relationship with him, or just get a piece of free advice from these brilliant people that it was like, Okay, I'm getting to go to ah, dinner with Mark injuries and it's it's house money.

I'm just glad that I get And it's, uh and so I had that. I think that graciousness, um also you're extremely gracious person. I think it comes. Comes across not only just telling, um, someone that you admire what they poured themselves in to put also meaning it as well as just being really feeling that gratitude for the chance to meet these people. It's it comes across so so genuinely, and it's it's not You're not meeting them for this other thing that you're working on.

Oh, yeah, it's funny you say that I never I never thought of it as, Oh, wow, Bill Campbell would be a valuable person for me to know. It was more like, Okay, if he's nice enough to take time with me, I'm gonna be really careful that consider what questions I'm gonna ask him because, like if you could learn any secret from Bill Campbell, what would it be? And so I never really And I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make is they think, Oh, this person has connections or whatever, and it's not the connections that that I find to be as important as is the the frameworks that they used to look at the world and the way that they, ah problem solve and helped lead other people or get consensus around what they're doing you know those air. The those are the types of things that are valuable secrets that not everybody has. There's

and we become friends and you're a mentor and advisor for me. One thing I tell younger, younger folks and peers friends that that, um, even one of my older brothers that that is asked about how out of find mentors Um, it's you it's not. It needs to be to a street. And to be honest, you have to bring the majority of the value of the first few meetings because the people that you actually want mentorship from they're not giving away free internships for four people that air 10 years younger just for you know, their health. And it's ah you with Claris and Bill Campbell saying, OK, I'll basically give you free consulting all Yeah,

and also, you know, you take two people and you put them in front of the same mentor type of person. One person will get something valuable out of that and the other person, just because they approach it with the wrong question. Mine wrong mindset won't get something valuable out of that. And that's what I wish more people understood It's like if you have a chance to talk to somebody like Bill Campbell or when I was lucky enough when I was young, too. Averages Dog John Door. You don't just go up there and say, Hey, what's up? What's it like to be a choir? Perkins. What's it like to be CEO of Claris? You know, uh,

tell me what your job is like every day, right? E. I mean, you you don't have many chances to be in front of that person and get the most out of that opportunity to learn something. And so what you ask, in a situation like that is it's almost Maur important than what? The insight they have to offer you. Because, like, they're just certain questions that you could ask little tease out way more insight than just standard run of the mill stuff There, everybody

asked him, Right, Who do you learn from now? Who are some of the people that that are those people for you now that you can't wait to get a lunch with for the inside or drinks with?

Yeah, The people I really like spending time with now are the people that I call the seers. And so, um, a lot of the great investments that I've made It really wasn't that I saw the company for what it was in some market map. It was more of that. There was somebody brilliant, usually very technical, who had trusted, trusted their judgment. And they just said, Hey, Mike, you should look at this. I think that this is gonna mean something and so and a good example. And this was really and ended up leading the investment. But Leah introduced both of us.

So Leah Bus Key from Taskrabbit introduced us tow Logan and John what became lift. And Leah was likely to have good taste in sharing economy kind of deals because she was like one of the early sharing economy gurus. And so I really enjoy trying to find the set of people out there in Silicon Valley who have just It's almost like Jet I skills of knowing what's gonna happen and what's interesting. Very often, they're able to reduce a complex idea in first principles the way of physicists like Fineman would. And when you have an opportunity to meet with one of those people, you should be asking a set of questions that tease out secrets rather than just Hey, how's it going? What start ups do you like? That kind of stuff. And so you're tryingto you're trying to come up with questions that will lead you. I say lead you down some roads to get hit by the lucky truck, and and so you're tryingto you're trying to create strategic luck. And so I really like those conversations. I really

enjoy that. Who are some of those I gotta ask you or some of those people? Leah.

Leah, back in the day. Um, Jeff Huber a time was at Google in the early days when I got here. Arial Polar helped me understand a lot of things. Um, who else? You know, Michael. Sybil has, um I don't know if if I think of him as much of visionary, iss is some of them, But but he has good. He really has a good understanding of which founders have this stuff and which ones don't say introduced me, Brian Chesky, Airbnb. And at the time,

air bed and breakfast. You know, if I if I look back on the intros he's made, they've been consistently very high quality. Um And so, yeah, it's funny. Like I've learned in my business, it's it's less important to be the best expert. It's more important to know the best expert and to be to have good taste and who that is, who's for real and

who's a pretender, right? Right now. Well, it's, um, yeah, if your eyes are open and the others in sight all around and it's not, it's not. Ah, a stage of the career. And it's not, um, it's It's usually people that are undervalued. Um, most people are missing

very often. And that's the other thing I've learned is that you have to be continuously updating your idea of who the seers are. Because, um, some of the people who were Sears once well, now they've gotten rich or they have a different job or they're not Founders are there. For whatever reason, they're not, um, super close to the front lines of the next new thing that's happening. And so you're always looking for people who were there and who just have, um, some type of an unconventional insight by virtue of their domain knowledge and just their focus and just what they're working on at the time?

No. Is, um you You actually, once you once told me, and I think if I if I'm remembering that the wording itches, but, um so in in investing the term deal flow where it's just the flow, like a river flows deals coming across your desk or coming across, Um, you as as an investor. And he said the in And I said, You know what? What can hurt your deal flow over time? Um, let's say you're you're in AA right place, right time. You have a great deal flow and you're seeing great cos what could hurt that over time Or what Can you inadvertently do that cause it to potentially waiting?

I think it made I might have been building on some of these things that you're talking about. If maybe you were a seer once, but certain things blinded by too much think too much stuff coming your way, or you just he was out on that network that that sear was connected to. I think you said the enemy of good deal foe is good. Deal flow.

Yeah. Yeah,

I think that's right. What

did you mean by that? S o E. I mean, I like to say that ultimately deal flow becomes your enemy because, like, Okay, so use the metaphor of a river here. It's like, Let's say you're in the Amazon and this river flowing it super fast. Um, the metaphor I like for spying. Good. Start up. Mike Moritz from Sequoia Capital expressed this to me back in 2004 when I first met him. It's more like bird spotting, and so you've got this river of flow coming in at you. But what you really should be doing is not looking so much at the river and reacting to its currents.

But you should be looking up in the trees to try to spot that bird that nobody's ever seen before. And so, you know, it's more like, um, it's like spotting a peculiar finch in the Galapagos Islands area that you're trying to find these capitalist mutations and accepting the inbound flow for what it ISS usually is not the path to that. Usually it it comes down to. I find talking to the Sears and having an idea of what you're trying to look for before it. Before

it came in to pitch you Do you feel like the bet? And you're perennially Lis is one of the best investors. Well, as you as you've advancing your career and you've just been known as this great investor has that do you feel effects of of that negatively hurting your ability to see through it. It just becomes harder and harder to find those rare birds

yet. Well, I worry all the time that the odds are now against me. And so I think that once you turn 50 the odds are are against you. And the reason is that your peer group is no longer at the edge. And so, um, and some people may interpret this as aged discrimination. I'm talking about myself here, right? So but I I believe that when you're on investor, you have to always be talking to the people who are closest to the new things happening. And what what can happen if you're not careful is you say stuff like, Well, l these millennials, they don't get it or, oh,

you know, these young people, they get coddled too much, you know, when they start companies or, you know, there's no governance on boards anymore, what's what's up with that? Or all these false unicorns? You know, you get into this, get off my lawn. Sort of old guy thinking, and I've I've kind decided as soon as I start to think that way, I need to hang it up. And so because I still like I like millennials,

and I like, uh, I like it when founders have a lot of power. And so, like what? I see the changes. I I enjoy him and think a let's have more of it. So I figure as long as, like, a sort of young at heart and have a youthful kid energy, I could still do this business, but But I I also feel the need to just overreact to not assuming that my filters good anymore.

Well, you're you got that in spades, the amazing energy in spades. And And I remember you were, uh, you're an investor in competitive ours, and and, uh so I couldn't reach out to you. It really bummed me out because I knew you from just They're very few Texans out here. Very few Texas V C. Actually, John Doors is maybe one of us, right? Yeah, but the very few, and but I always wanted to work with you and just didn't, uh it didn't line up because of because your investor,

another company. But it is. I've always loved our conversations, and it's always, um, I think, one of the things that it's not just youthful energy, but it's this energetic curiosity to hear from you to ask me questions. And it just always told me this before. It just blows me away that you come to a meeting. You wanna ask me questions? And you have this energetic curiosity to ask me questions. And it's, um, and there are many people at your stage of the career. That's just it's so easy for you to think you have the answers.

Yeah, and therefore you're the person at the at the coffee with the answers. Not only is that it's like a doom Luke, because then not that many people want to get a coffee. Person has all the answers, but to, um, it is such a dangerous. I mean, the world is completely different every five years, So thinking have the answers is and blocking off.

Yeah, and it's, you know, it's like Gates says that, um, success. The poison of success is when you get the idea that you can't lose that, it's that the success is because of how good you are And this this mindset that you can't lose. And that's when you lose the biggest. You know what? You have the most confidence in things that you know that just aren't so And so, um and, you know, you get you get all kinds of inputs. You know, you, the inputs you get are different because if you say,

hey, I think maybe X is true people. Oh, yeah, sure. Of course, that X is true. And so you know when, um, when a couple things go your way early people, people give you more credit for being smart than you deserve.

And then what are some of the things that they keep you humble? What are some of those inputs? Keep

losing money on more than my share deal. So, yeah, keep Schauble. Um, it

is I want to ask about getting into floodgate. So what was the and then a lot of questions about the investing side of things? What was the going from building two companies in Austin and and doing well in the operating side to switching over to investing. Um, you told me one time that it it You basically approach the VC and in Austin, Austin Ventures and and almost created your own deal like you. It wasn't like I want to come work with you. Was ok, here's

something. Well, yes. So it was a lot of it. John Thornton. So, um, you know, I thought about Venture, but then I realized if I was gonna do it, I wanted to California. And then I was out here in the Bay area and I started seeing all these companies that Then what year is this? This would have been 2005. And so I started seeing companies that wanted to raise only quarter 1/2 $1,000,000. And when I'd been a founder, you just couldn't even start with less than five million because you had to buy Solaris servers and Oracle databases and host amid Exodus data centers. And you had these waterfall development schedules.

It would take a year release Death March kind of stuff. And so, um, I kept seeing these companies that didn't need very much money and so then I got I got interested in this idea of creating. Ah, you know what I call it the time of VC Micro Fund. And, um, I don't I don't think it would have had I not been inside of some VC firms. I spent some time foundation capital in August, Capital I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have seen enough to know that that was an opportunity. And when I described it to John Thornton, Austin Ventures, he said, Well,

why don't we? Why don't we put you in business with $15 million see what you do? And, um, you know, I just had a pretty good run of beginner's luck and

off we went. What created that beginner's luck. And I know that you and I chatted. Luck is, is certainly a factor.

Over here

are some of the things that create the beginner's luck and

lack of competition. Uh, you know, back then, if if there was something interesting, well, there was me, and there was Josh Compliment and Steve Anderson and there wasn't many other people. And so I I doubt there was $50 million of organized capital of the world to chase these things. And so, you know, now billions get raised a year and seed funding, right? I think there's last time I checked is like 850 seed funds. And so, um, in fact, probably by the time his podcasts over there be another five

on what? What are some of the, um, hidden opportunities or beneath the kind of the obvious layers that exists now that are non obvious to most but that you're intrigued by, um, fewer toe start from scratch today, go in any direction. What are some of the intriguing directions?

If I could start from scratch, the problem, I think, would be fun to chase would be, How do you fund an entrepreneur like Elon Musk to go from 0 to 1? So you think about Tesla. The amount of time that Ellen has had to spend funding this thing on top of everything else he's had to do. It just blows my mind. And, you know, he made hundreds of millions of dollars from PayPal and basically had to bet 100% of it to keep Tesla alive. And, um, you know, it's just absurd that Tesla's still alive. I mean, just what it takes to build a car company.

The complexity of it, it just just the sheer impossibility of it. To begin with, it just blows with mind. And so I would love to find a way to fund 0 to 1 projects where it seems impossible. But if you pull it off, it has just this transformative effect on the world. You know, the Tesla's space exit of the world, and it's, you know, in a world where we have artificially low interest rates, we don't have a lack of capital. It's so, ironically, we're using capital.

The $800 billion was used last year by the Fortune 500 by back its own stock. I'd much rather see that type of money be invested in big ideas that are still in the pre scale phase. But if they work, that would have a massive impact on humanity. You know, building a new city. You know that those kinds of things, things that seem just like a ah, an impossible dream, but that if you if you had the right money and the right funding mechanism, maybe you could do it. Yeah, let's pry what I'd work on

it feels like where there's a chance we're inching towards that and same kind of logic of one guy runs a four minute mile. And then there's 50 50 people the next year as Tesla, As you see, someone like Ellen must go from, uh, software building that in a way that doesn't necessarily I don't think people realize the scale of company when it's software driven, But, um, from PayPal or companies like Facebook that unlocked I know for me this this, uh, ability of how I could be 20 something years old and go change the world to a mosque in Tesla's saying, OK, we're gonna push the world forward and very, um, different way than most. We don't know if we're going to succeed, but we're gonna push the world forward by getting everyone to begin producing electric cars. It's it's almost guaranteed. They've succeeded in that.

Yeah, And it's the thing that I'd like to. I'd like to see us do more things like that because, you know, we used to decide we were gonna build a transcontinental railroad, or we decided we were gonna land on the moon, and, um, those types of things bring people together throughout humanity. And, um ah, that tends to bring together people Maur than Fortune 500 companies borrowing money to buy back their own stock at lower than market interest rates. And so, uh, I just I think we need more projects like that so that we could show ourselves what we're capable

of, right? Well, and I think that is going to get This is the meat of of this podcast I'm really excited about, Um, some things were about to touch on, and and I think that there's just there's so much great content that people confined beyond on investing how to invest, but kind of the whole point of the little lines. You know, that stuff is certainly things that you think a lot about. But what else is going on, Like what created Mike Maples Junior, the the one of the Ogi Seed investors. Was this original thinking? I'd love to go over some of these things that you think a lot about right now in 2019 you rarely get a chance to talk about professionally socially. Just what are some things that you think a lot about? And in one of them that I'd like to touch on the weak that you mentioned me before its monetary policy And what you just said 800 Bill. What was the number that

you gave? Yeah, well, so, um yeah, maybe I should sit back. So if you look at it since the financial crisis, but it's really been longer than that. We've we've progressively moved away from sound money. We started to move away from sound money. Um, about 10 years before the Great Depression, when the feds started to set interest rates. And the rationale was we wanted to reduce the effects of the business cycle. We wanted to smooth out the business cycle. And if the government could manipulate interest rates, you could you could impact how much money gets borrowed versus not borrowed.

And then that would because the economy heat up or slow down. And you could kind of press the brakes and the gas. Um, I think that that ended up being the primary cause of the Great Depression, actually, because what it would it encourage banks to do was to loan money to not creditworthy buyers. And when that when that happens, why did it do that? well, when when interest rates are lower. So so most things in this world, the price is set by supply and demand, and money should be no different, in my opinion. And so when when an interest rate is set, it should be what the bank believes is the valid price for money based on supply and demand for people who want to borrow that

money. So kind of in layman's terms, take out a $1,000,000 we're gonna charge you a small feet to take that up. The nurses take out a $1,000,000 will charge you 10% or surgery. We're gonna charge you a very small fee and encourage people

take it out. Right. So, like, um, let's take this. Ah, let's take this can of, ah, recess that you gave me here. Let's say that the government says, But what does this cost? Per can

roughly, Um, maybe three bucks. Three bucks. Okay, It's a

little bit more expensive, but I would say that the government says Okay, um, we're gonna set an arbitrary price of $15 for recess. Okay, Now, let's say that you're the CEO of recess. We're gonna make more of it or less of it. Lesson. Well, you make Maur right cause you get paid

if they guarantee. Oh, that's right. If there if there And if there's everyone has to drink Recess

Well, but here's the Here's so then what? What happens on the other side is how many people want pay 15 bucks for recess? Maybe not

so many, not so many. But if they're, if it's a monopolistic, yeah, we'll have to drink recess you like you have him by the US Well,

you know what happens in practices you produce? Ah, vast surplus of it, Right, Because the markets, if the market set the price with supply and demand, you'd keep producing until the market doesn't want more And the price would be the market clearing price between supply of the recess

drink and demand for that which is probably happening right now for them. They launch, they put in $3 they might learn. Actually, we need to charge $2 or wow. Actually, there's a lot of man we could charge $4 they kind of get to that point naturally,

right? And so what? What most people don't understand is that a price is not just about what you pay for something. A price is a signal. A price is a signal about an input to the economy and what it's worth. And it tells producers whether to make Maur or stop making Maur, and it induces consumers to either consume or stop consuming more. And so the reason that free markets work is that free markets allocate capital of resource is dynamically correctly that way, without there being any central authority to set that. Now let's say that you say OK. In a free market, interest rates would be 6% but and that is if the market clearance price based on supply demand. But let's say the Fed sets interest rates at 2%. Um, more people are gonna borrow money. She is artificially cheap, right? And so what ends up happening is, um, in an economy where you have artificially low interest rates, you create some pretty perverse incentives you create.

And just to be clear for our listeners, that is how it's it's not at his house price. We have these interest rates that anyone can can look up and and see what they are, but they are decided by the freedom of people.

Yeah, and it's

and it's, like a 2% instead of.

And we would say it's crazy for the government to set an arbitrary price for this recess drink because it would cause an incorrect amount of the Drake to be bait. Right? Um, but, um, what is the most important thing to price in the entire economy? I would argue that it's money and we do have price controls for money. And so we've got that. But then we've also got the Fed just printing money like crazy. And so, you know, we have over $20 trillion of debt. Um, So what? What? What kind

of and I think I just I just learned that we had about $5 trillion in circulation before the financial crisis, and I think we have over 20 trillion now in circulation mean we've we've increased the amount of U. S. Dollars fourfold could be ruined by a little bit here. Four fold in the last basically 10 years.

So I'm not sure about that. I don't have those fax, but, um, but if you think about it, let's say interest rates are artificially low and now your Fortune 500 company. Um, you usedto have different kinds of choices used to. If you have a profit dollar, you could decide to invest in a breakthrough new product. You could decide to invest it in version two of your product. You could decide to invest in machines that make things more efficient. Take out jobs you could decide purchase ah, stock dividend. The dollars by company, um, lobby the government for handouts or sue people right?

Like the music industry us. The problem with artificially low interest rates is that cos conclude it's mawr in their interest to engage in what I call fake growth. So you know, like IBM now has borrowed over $100 billion just to buy back its own stock. And when interest rates artificially low, the penalty or the price of doing that makes complete sense

to them, because the hurdle we have to clear if you won't pay back

is very low, right? And essentially, exactly you could you could borrow money it below what a normal market rate would be and use it to buy back your own stock. That's a lot easier way to have your stock go up than to actually build whole new products that create whole new lines of business and and, um, kind of growth the old fashioned way. So we see a world now where the Fortune 500 has borrowed, not not borrowed. Spent $800 billion last year, 2018 to buy back its own stock. Uh, and you look at that and then you say, Let's think about normal people who play by the rules. Let's let's take, um, our grandparent's Well,

they're they're getting interest rates that are artificially low on what they safe. And so while people who are, um, you know, playing casino capitalism on Wall Street with money that they're just zapping around all over the place, or Fortune 500 companies borrowing money to buy back their own stock or Fortune 500 companies use their profit dollars, you know, when you buy back their own stock, your don't do anything for the workers of the company unless they're big stockholders. What you're really doing is you're jacking up the share price, and very often managers get uneven accelerated bonus on that because they get, they get rewarded based on the share price And so So you get you get this. Um, so it zero sum mindset of

growth as a ah, and I might want to, uh, dumb to follow. Exactly. But let me try. Toe kind of recast it. So you're saying company X Fortune 500 company Comedy X could just borrow 100 billion by their own stock pump up their own stock price and most people in Company X. Because it's not like Silicon Valley technology, where a lot of employees unstuck most people in Company X. Let's say it's company acts out of Champaign, Illinois. No one really owns the stock. Except for the 5% of upper management. They're all compensated or at least rewarded for stock going up. So they're able to get $100 billion by their own stock pump up the stock by you know, this massive influx of demand for that limited around stock right, and and generate pretty pretty great rewards on the compensation for the stock price going up. But what you're calling fake?

Yeah, And then if I'm a hedge fund and I went along that stock, I make money too. And in fact I can leverage. I could use leverage to borrow money to buy that stock because money's price below the market rate and

so like these companies will say, Well, try to say, like, company Axel trying to say, Well, we think our stocks undervalued. We're gonna show you that we're gonna go. We believe in it. You believe in it more than the public. So there's a sign of confidence. But really, what their understanding is just you move that that interest rate up. Okay, we don't believe

in it. Yeah, it's like I call it grow theater. Fake growth. And so, I mean, this is kind of what happened to G e. G. E got way more concerned about manipulating the optics of their share price than creating real growth and eventually it all on wines on itself. But in the meantime, what did any of this stuff do for the workers? The company? Nothing. They didn't. It doesn't help him build new products. It doesn't help him. You know their profit dollars,

rather than being spent on buying back stock, would have been. If your goal is to create new products that have breakthroughs in the standard of living and employment, you would want Fortune 500 companies to create more product, like the iPhone or the Tessler breakthroughs. But all the incentives for upper management of these companies, unfortunately, are around freeing up capital through process improvement. That then goes back to buying back your own stock or things like that rather than, ah, breakthrough ideas that are, you know, truly disruptive or, you know, to put a better word on it. Um, you know, job creating innovations. So like most of the innovations and Fortune 500 companies were doing today are at best sustaining innovations or maybe even efficiency innovations where there try to take labor out of processes

of preservation initiatives that are just trying to stop out header. That would do it better.

Yeah, And so, um, I believe that, um, the lack of soundness of our money has done way. Maur Thio create wealth inequality than most people realize. And so I think that the average person who just worked their career and played by the rules and was honest is seeing their money appreciate at a lower rate than they would see it. Appreciate if if interest rates were set by supply and demand, if I'm buying bonds today. They're indexed off the Fed in the Fed's assessment of what interest rates are to be rather than the market interest rates by supplying the man, which would be higher. And so, um, ironically, the people who are winning or it's like the government has a big hose that just sprays money out and the people who are close to the hose or people like on Wall Street or people like in hedge funds or people who are borrowing money to buy back stock. Ah, and those that the people closest to the hose are getting richer than they should. And the people who are just doing their jobs and trying to do it the old fashioned way are following farther and farther behind. And the saddest thing about it all is that then the politicians turn around and blame the failure of the quote unquote free market for all this,

They say, you know, or they blame innovators that create something from their garage. Thio Yeah, to a $1,000,000,000. And they're saying that that's

ah, they say every billionaire is a policy failure, and I'm just like, What are you talking about? Right? Like like Jeff Bezos can deliver, um, razor blades to me faster than I could get a blood test. And for

a life of thousands of people from something that he started, you know, with the out of a garage. Yeah, it's

Yeah, people say, Well, you shouldn't lobby for tax breaks and stuff like that, But I bet I bet people like Bezos. If everybody played by the rules consistently and there was no there was no upside of lobbying governments, there's no upside lobbying for tax breaks. He would still wins, would still

win. Well, I mean, the market is everything that it takes to build something like Amazon to what it is. Yeah, it's working through lobbyists or playing the other rules that everybody else that's much easier. That is super

easy. Yes, so I think that that that the lack of sound money in our society has played a much bigger role in wealth inequality. Then

people see how do so. One of things that it brings to mind is this concept of mug shot targets like you need a face, and that's why someone like Jeff Bezos is is the is potentially the becoming the icon of inequality, even though in your story it's it's the people right next to the hose. And I'm not someone that creates 600,000 jobs or whatever Amazon employees. But who are these people hottie? And the reason it just it's society just kind of fasting. That we need these mug shot targets is like we can't you can't ah, villainize An idea for the American public, as it seems, it's like you need faces. Who are these people are their faces? Or is that the reason that no one's complaining about monetary policy? Because it's like, Well, who are those

people? Yeah, well, I guess the I think they're a couple of things. So, um, I think we're shifting to a new kind of capitalism. So ah, lot of people when they think about cos they think that they were just always the way they are. But really, cos as we know him started really happening about 18 50. So you had the railroad in the steam engine and, um, the railroad, the steam engine created the context of the modern corporation. Nobody had enough money to build a transcontinental railroad. So J.

P. Morgan helped create a market of stock ownership units. Toe own a piece of a railroad. But you could imagine going to some blacksmith in 18 50 asked him, Do you want share in a railroad? Well, you can't buy groceries with it You can't buy. See? Don't train with it. What good is this? A share of stock. It sounds like a confidence man scheme. Right? And so? So J. P.

Morgan had to convince a lot of people to buy stock in a railroad. We fund the railroad, And then from that, a whole bunch of breakthroughs happened, driven mostly by mass production and mass distribution. And, um, you know, you look at the year 18 70. Um, the Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in America. He didn't have flushing toilets. He didn't have the light bulb. He didn't have running water. It didn't have electricity of any kind. Most people,

if you ask him today, even poor people. Um, would you like to have as much money as Cornelius Vanderbilt had would say yes, because he had hundreds of millions of dollars. Okay, you have to go back to 18. 70 tohave it. Would you trade most even poor people would not make that trade today and you know that is the best, the best argument I can think of for the abundance created by these breakthroughs and capitalism. But I think what's happened is, um, the corporate capitalism characterized by mass production mass distribution is now being supplanted by network capitalism and network. Apple is, um, leverages mass computation and mass connectivity.

And, um, is that where is that term network capitalism come from? I'm just just calm made it up. I don't know what to call it yet, right, But it's amazing the parallel. So, like if you look at corporations in the 18 fifties through the 18 eighties, you had William Jennings Bryan and the populist movement. You had Luddite CE coming in, breaking the machines. You had child labor laws. You had the trustbusters later on, like Teddy Roosevelt, and not everything about industrial capitalism was good,

right? There's a lot of pushback that was valid, but the standard of living of humanity went up 14 fold in real terms from 18 52,000 right? So we've literally had to shift the definition of what it means to be poor because, like rich people didn't have back then what poor people have now. And I'm not saying Let's shuffle that under the rug or whatever. But I'm just saying we should recognize facts for what they are, you know, 14 fold increase in human standard of living in real terms in 150 years is a freaking miracle, right? Like that's like That's That's amore Abundance has ever been created in all the history combined leading up to it. We had a whole centuries or whole, you know, periods of several 100 years where we couldn't detect a measurable change in GDP per capita. And then all of a sudden it was like a light switch turned on,

and you're and you're saying it's it's partially due to this increasingly networked capitalism.

Well, now, now it is, yes. Oh, so, like, I believe that the next thing that will bring abundance forward will be network capitalism, So mass production and mass distribution brought material abundance to the world. And now, for the most part, that's very good. The bad part is the toll it exacts on environment.

Just had the impulse to want to write all this down. And remember, recording is really Okay, keep

going. So now what's happening is I believe the animating forces of capitalism are mass computation, mass connectivity. And, um, the reason that that's profound is that computation and connectivity have exponentially increasing properties, right? The more you know, Metcalfe's law says the value The network is a function of the square of the number of nodes, and I know that there's more than one network law. There's Sarnoff Law, and there's all kinds of different ones. But and then then processing power, the ability to sequence a genome. The ability to store data increases exponentially because that's true. Both of those Kenbrell abundance the entire world. And so the the reason it's problematic to vilify guys like Jeff Bezos is that we should be celebrating people like that.

Those are the people who have the ideas that are bringing forward abundance, and we need. We need a united society around creating abundance for everybody in the world, and, um when we when we allow some of these silent things running in the background, that drive us apart to falsely vilify the people who bring about its Ford, that's bad. We need to be We need to be excited about network capitalism the way we've got excited when we build a transcontinental railroad or when the light bulb came out with Edison, you know, we need to celebrate

those people and people like Elon Musk are. I mean, we get to exploit this innovation from this individual that you can clearly see in the last few years is pouring themselves every ounce of themselves. I mean, yeah, he does not 2018. Looked like it was a brutal, brutal year for for him in every dimension. And we can sit back and kind of eat popcorn and and watch while this individual who had made hundreds of millions I could have been on the beach decided with PayPal decided. All right, I'm gonna do do this again and actually much bigger or getting us to Mars. And in the in, doing so has now pushed, I think every major carmaker to start producing electric vehicles because yep, putting is putting online. And yet in that mug shot target, you can just take these,

like, pixel thin versions of the story and say, Yeah, but they're billionaires. And here's their face. I want what they have, and that's and that's wealth when really the wealth is the 66 cent razors delivered to your house. The wealth is electricity that allows you to travel 300 miles for for $3 like that's that. That is the wealth that we're getting in return,

right? Right, And it's it's Ah, it's a shame, because the this is one of the things that really disappoints me about some of the leaders we have in the political sphere today on both sides of the aisle is, um we should be We should be trying to come together for shared purpose. You know, I've I've said before that, you know, we we can destroy each other out of our cynicism, or we can lift each other up out of shared purpose. And right now, all of us can't seem to get out of our own way, right? Us in the tech industry, you know, we use terms like artificial intelligence and robots,

eating the jobs and automation and, um, you know, very non empathetic, um, language to describe things. Um, the narrative about technology has all become about big tech has become about three or four companies. And you know what? The mistakes that they're making. And, um, right now, a lot of these start ups that are just doing amazing work, people don't understand the potential that they have to bring things forward. S o I find that disappointing,

you know, on one hand, in the vernacular of pitting group against group and trying to make people afraid and asking who's to blame for something. But then tech industry can't get out of its own way. And you know if if, um if I'm If I'm, let's say I'm the Austin City Council and the taxi lobby comes to me and says, You know, we've been following the laws for 70 years and you know this uber and lift and they come in and they talk about disruption and all this other stuff. You know, you're gonna be pretty sympathetic to that argument. Um, and so you know, the tech industry. Timmy's make a way better case for the prosperity that could bring forward to people and not just in terms of products, but in terms of jobs and opportunities for everybody.

Not just techies, right? Right? Yeah, I heard

the term and it's not widely used, but I heard our saw friend Right term. Uh, thankfully, it's not widely used months ago, uh, calling Norm ease people that that weren't intact. Norma's and really, it's just so a leaning that's, like, barely intact. But it's so alienating, and it's inviting a rebound. It's inviting a counteraction to act like better, or act like it's above. Act like you're living in the future, act like,

you know, truth that others don't. Instead of realizing one. When you when you feel like you got these secrets that no one else has, you're gonna attract a lot of attention of people prying it out your hands. But two, you're just you're gonna alienate the people that the best technology is built for everyone, almost from the beginning, something like Apple Computer just designed. And it's ethos for everyone to give. You know the mind, a bicycle to make us all more productive, and and yet you can hear narratives that suddenly But when you lift, when you just peel it back, you realize, God, that couldn't be further than what some of these narratives were. Where it's like fastest company to a $1,000,000,000 valuation. Yeah, that is nothing to do with providing you're provisioned for

Yeah, and it's interesting because people talk about robots eating the jobs. And if I were going to say, you know, Peter Thiel poses a question. A lot of people believe X is true. What is a not X that you believe that a lot of people don't believe. So. I don't believe robots are gonna eat the jobs as much as they're gonna eat the need for people to join companies. And so I think we've got, say, five million gig workers right now. But we have 50 to 70 potential soul Oprah, nurse and ah, I like the idea of technology putting an Iron Man suit on all those people and giving them what normally took the infrastructure of a company. You had to work for Thio to do a job. And so why can't technology help talented people find customers and have a billing system and all the stuff that a company has Front office,

back office demand, Jen, lead funnel all that stuff. It's almost like Shopify for people and s. So I'm excited about ideas like that because I think that is way more likely to happen than everybody's out of work and it's It comes from this same conceit. You know, there's too many people in tech who, because they just don't get out there enough. Their worldview is I'm making a product. And all the rest of these quote unquote norm, ease hate that word as well. Yes, and please, for that doesn't know. I know I'm turning

into a thing that people adopted it. Yes, to it. Really? Villainize even that That alienation?

Yeah. Cute. Yeah, it's like and these people get modeled as if they're just passive consumers. And so, like, I'm a tech overlord. I build this product that a bunch of passive consumers are alike, and they should be happy that I'm bringing this kind of abundance to him. Uh, and and like, I just think that that very framing of the issue is not only wrong, but it can cause people to not even deliver the right types of products to people. So I'm Maur interested in startups that say no. That's not true. People out there aren't passive consumers. People are out. There are they believe in the American dream. They want to take control their destiny. Let's give them the tools to force multiply you know tens of millions of people at a time and not need to have a job working for the man or not need tohave a job where they're dependent on somebody else or too dependent on following somebody else's

rules, right? Yeah, maybe it's Ah ah, Robot Sony. The jobs were about tea companies. The companies. Yeah, that's that's

really interesting. And that would be my contrarian belief. I believe that robots are more likely to eat the companies or the need for lots of big companies than they are

to eat the jobs. Well, you can see just the phones in our in our pockets. You. 100 years ago, you could have imagined many of the things that these phones do. You could have imagined this anthropomorphic, uh, you know, robot delivering that. But it's it comes about in a way that's not this two legged, two armed robot, But it is technology pushing company forward and and pushing individuals. I know that it's it is. I think there's there's going to be this bear market. Are this bull market inside hustles? Because you could just from your iPad, you can start recording a podcast. You obviously the last few years logging in. Publish the written word to anyone around the world instantaneously. It's just it is mind blowing when you zoom out and realize what we've done the last 20 years for the individual.

Yep, I love this book. I forget. The author's name is called The $100 Startup that it talks about how people people construct things way more easily than they realize. You know a lot of startups if you have 1000 customers like Coyote. If you ever heard of this Article 1000 true fans, but it's a great I've always liked it. And if you have 1000 true fans, you can almost always make more money servicing your fans and working for somebody else. And you know, we're heading towards a world where that's gonna be more and more probable for people.

My, my wife's and orders were actually in her art studio right now, um, and and she's you learning from people that are just making you two videos on ah you know, acrylic paint or or digital art and and gaining following gaining revenue by being just independent content creator essentially a teacher. But she gets to take those classes for free on YouTube, then put her art up on a site that she has another individual that's just a freelance developer that helps her build the site. And she's like a perfect example of a networked capitalists that you would have like Robot. It looks nothing like a capitalist. Yeah, 50 years ago. But she is not only entrepreneur, but she's networked this entire ecosystem of her supply chain. Her business. It's and it is so fascinating. Just she starts messaging someone she's never met. She likely will never meet and emojis left and right because they love working together to build out her her sight. Yeah,

it's amazing when you think about it.

Shadow to Jesse up in Portland, who's who is a great developer. I've seen some of the condo sees he's wicked fast. So tell me about I want to ask you about this phrase scissor statements.

Yeah, so this is a little bit related to not destroying each other out of our citizens. Um, so there's a There's a block post that I read in the last week. I don't know how current it is, but it's Have you ever heard of this thing. Slight

star Codex. It sounds somebody, but I don't know what

it s so there was a There was an article right before the election that I really liked called. Um, I couldn't tolerate anybody except for someone in the out group. And ah, it talked about how If you think about it, the real definition of tolerance ought to be my ability to tolerate somebody who's in a tribe different from mine. That's in some ways probably purest definition. Um, in recently,

Because if if they're in your tribe, that's yeah, yeah, it

s so, um, there's there's a recent post called Sort By Controversial, and it's really pretty terrifying in some way. So the story is that this anonymous guy worked at an ad tech firm and they were trying to create an AI AI engine that would create ads, statements that would elicit a really strong response. And so they learned that from the Aye Aye, that they would go on these ah reddit boards. And there's already a MME controversial sort on reddit. They could test they could test with controversial sort on

reddit. And that's just how many up votes down, boats up votes And so it has 5000 up votes and zero down votes. Maybe it's in the heart of a few sort. By controversial exactly 252,500 down. They just know it might be at zero. That's right. That's the most controversial because they nick 80 Gentlemen,

it's the most. So now you train in a I engine about howto like create statements that are likely to be highly controversial. And in the story, what happens is the woman who creates the algorithm gives this guy an example, and he's like, Well, that's not really controversial because obviously that's like, just wrong what it spit out. And she's like, What do you mean it's wrong? It's like I kind of agree with it, and they start arguing about why they disagree. And they get to a point where a couple of hours go by and they're still arguing. And now they're really pissed at each other because they think, How could you argue this and be so obtuse and be acting in such bad faith and just not honor the truth at all? So they go and or

the backdrop of now I'm seeing this person's in the out group.

Yeah, or it's like this person who I thought they were right and then and I thought this was that. I thought this was a good guy. He's not a good guy. I thought she was a good person, but I'm not quite so sure anymore. They go to this other developer and the second developer agrees with the woman and says, Well, clearly she's right and and he's like, What the hell are you two people talking about like her? Is there a hidden camera in here? Do you like, Did you know? Are you doing this just to mess with me? Like, what's up with this? So they go to the CEO of the company of CEO of the company,

agrees of the first guy, and they get into like this. Three are our argument, and they get so pissed that he ends up fire in the two people that the woman and the person agree with him first and then on Lee later does it occur to them Holy shit like we were in the middle of the frenzy of this argument and we didn't have the presence of mind to step back and realize this was a scissor phrase, right? Are, um I think that's what The scissor statement. And so, um, you know what? What would be some examples of scissor statements? Um, I think someone in the high school years was, um, assaulted by kavanaugh more. You know,

another one might be, um I think call and Kaepernick was named your term right or wrong day kneel during the national anthem. And, um, there there's enough. This article suggested that enough scissor statements had emerged from this train day I machine and who was training it. It's just this ad tech company. And that enough scissor statements had emerged from the say I machine to cause you to believe that other people have created scissor statements the same way and are injecting those scissors statements into our daily discourse to create a drive ballistic. They came across

it. They're like, What do we have here? Okay, we have this ability to create conflict or controversy and in training and, you know, manifest it. And then they realized OK, other people must have, like,

their allies. Yeah, enough with this as well. That's right. And like because some of the statements that would generate, they'd be like, Oh my God, we've seen that. We've seen that this is just like Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court and somebody coming forward. And the point isn't whether you can agree with that statement or you could disagree with it. But like the point is that people who normally think of themselves as having a line, objectives and beliefs it taps into something inside them that makes them incapable of accepting the point of view of the other. And it causes them to say that person is thinking in bad faith and

what a cable. But also it sounds like also like in cable of also not not responding that right. They need to have some type of

That's right, because controversy gets engagement, right? And so So, you know, um, if you choose to take the scary interpretation of it, you you might think that there are people out there you could, regardless who it is, whether it's the Russians, our own government, our own politicians, whoever like it terrifies me. The thought that in the 2020 election scissor statements may be generated the way social media marketing was used to help Obama get elected because, like, you know, Obama was just using social media to get his point out there and get people energized. Excited? But some of the center scissor statements are intentionally, cynically manipulative, designed to pit people against each

other. Well, there's there's there's psychological studies that have shown when someone feels unsafe, they, um, they choose more conservative options. Yeah, and so it is you can remember with the cities, but it's it is a growling dog and choice. I think it's ground like dog and choices of that that these researchers put before someone growling dog 15 feet away. And just how drastically it affected choices from from people versus the control of the no dog being there and the I can remember. That's the exact specifics, but but people feeling less safe become more concerts. So you could. And also, by the way, there's a great podcast with Look it up because it's It was recent with Joe Rogan and,

um, and his guest was Renee. Renee, Renee, Do arrest A. She's a director, research at new knowledge Ah and the Mozilla Fellow and media Misinformation and Trust and and she studied this for three years not this, but something similar for three years. Realizing that what we heard about what the Russians did in the 2016 election of, you know, 200,000 fan pages with 200,000 people, it was like, no way worse that it was tens of millions of dollars spent hundreds of employees, full time people creating this content that was splitting us and reaching again. It could get the specific numbers wrong, but listen to the podcast because she,

her research claims that they're reaching audience of 75 250 million Americans, basically the voting American public were all reached through these efforts. I don't know if she called him scissor statements or not, but that's on the Russian side of things. But then yet to an even scarier point, you could see our own politicians realized well, we can sway one way or the other by creating these.

Yeah, Or you could you could create divisions that bring your core constituency closer to you and bring people farther apart from you. But they were never gonna vote for you anyway. And so So, um e I get really nervous about that. It it reminds me a little bit of this whole silent thing about our money supply in our monetary system not being very sound. Both of these things are kind of silent killers when you think about it right there because people are angry at each other about disagreeing about some identity based topic or angry about things like wealth inequality or angry at certain individuals who've been successful. And they don't realize that they're all being played. Like all of us were being played at the same time and all this kind needed. We have this saying it floodgate. We wrote down our five values, and one of them is, um, seek truth over tribalism. And the idea behind that is that whenever an emotionally charged topic comes up, the natural place to go is your tribe, and it's like But as an investor,

facts have a way of being stubborn, you know, cos win or they lose or they succeed or fail, and it kind doesn't matter how we feel about it. It's like the fax will assert themselves

right or or kind of a commitment to truth of her commitment to consistency is so easy just to go back to what you said overnight in. Same with investing. Just goto. What? What turned you that returned five years ago Rather than realizing what earned that return with

pre after tearing things said, Yeah, So, like, how do you take ego out of decision making? And how do you How do you sort of come up with mechanisms that create a culture where you honor the truth over who got their way in the discussion?

What is really as I'm thinking about it on this This is, uh, really fasting scissor statements in the articles called

Sort By It was called Sort by controversial in Slate star Codex. Well, the when you read it, you would be like, Oh, my God, this is, like 10 times more terrifying

than what? Maples of Sandy. Er Well, well, what's what is interesting about it is you could say monetary policy. Or you could say you could drop these terms like monetary policy or, uh or, um, manufactured controversy. Those art scissor statements, right? You're not gonna have people be like, What are you talking about? Interest rates, Maples. What do you What do you But you drop in? I think we need more basis is,

and you're gonna have people that that come to the conversation saying We don't want more billionaires, that's what's wrong with us That could be a ever know. That's a great sister statement. Um, I don't know if there's that much animosity,

but but but But I do think the animosity towards the people been successful. You know, some of these people who talk about wealth inequality. It's a little bit of a scam. Like, should you care more about wealth inequality? Or should you care about having there be no poor people like I care way more about having their beam? Um, no more poor people, right? And what people like Bernie Sanders really want, and this is where I might get myself in trouble. What he really wants is some of Jeff Bezos is money, so he can do whatever programs he wants to do. And, um, but to me, the objective function ought to be How do we How do we help the poor people come out of poverty? And taking money from Jeff Bezos is not the way to do that, right? Like there's a whole lot of other things that caused people to be poor contribute to people being poor that I have nothing to do with soaking it

to basis well into the network. Capitalism point, um, is a great website. I love this. This sight, our world and data. It started by another development economist and, uh, Max roast a great Twitter account to follow as well. And I love that, um I love that website because it's just so data driven. And but and so you can look this this fact up there if you like, but yeah, inequalities dropped around the world. You ask the average person is inequality rising or dropping? Um, around the world, they all say nine out of 10 will say it's it's rising. But no inequality of especially over the last 30 years has dropped precipitously around the world, and

poverty has really dropped,

really dropped its it is hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of abject poverty every decade. Based on this globalized network to capitalism, it has its certainly has its flaws. But to just every statistical point, every single one globally, um, from education to prosperity thio, abject poverty. It's the very positive trends, and we have some really messed up trends as well. Like domestically, inequalities is rising, and that is not a recipe for a harmonious society. But there are certain there are things that that if you just go by the headlines and these sounds like, says her statements, you get just charged, Um, and you're not actually able to follow the truth that maybe certain parts of capitalism are creating, or this system that Bernie Sanders wants to rearrange our creating inequality in the U. S. But many of those same factors have created great equality of the last 30 years in

a Yeah, And I guess And I guess I would assert that if you really want to attack wealth inequality, you would start by reasserting the primacy of sound money. Like if you really wanted to solve it and honestly, for really not just give speeches and say this. These are the bad guys. These are the good guys. You would you would. You would have a rational sound money policy that would cause people have an incentive to invest things invest money and things that produce things rather than shuffling money around skimming off the top.

I don't know, man pulls You can't be we need. We need bad guys who need people with the mug shot target. You can't really? Yeah, you gotta have, uh, it's I think you I'm I'm incredibly intrigued by what you're saying, but it's ah, it's it's I just in those scissors statements or or in just the people that I know, it's people really want just one fall person just to be. That's the person that's causing this or that's who has what I want. I want to take it from them. Um, and you mentioned monetary policy in people's eyes will glaze over. Yeah, I know, but I think it's but you give someone enough volume as well, and people wake up to it.

But it's interesting, too. I think that for all of us, I do think there's a lot of value in knowing that thesis statements are out there, and it's even if all it does is cause us to have hesitated 1/2 step and say, Wait a second here. Like I think that headline like right there, I think that's been planted by somebody to divide us, right? And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be so quick, toe. Let my lizard brain. Activate my anger at the other right? Like maybe I'm getting played here. And maybe maybe that would be just exactly what they want me to do in this situation. Like if anybody listening to this says, Holy crap,

that's a good point. I'm a slow down 1/2 step That would be good, that would that would cause us to have fewer things like this. Covington kids nonsense or the you know, the Jesse Small it thing or the You know all these things where people immediately take sides and start, you know, engaging in divisive rhetoric before they really know what's happened.

Well, when it's is just so scary, how that once it's in the water can permeate all these different layers toe where then the newspapers know these are the Arctic, these air, the topics that seem to be driving most of our traffic, or that that spike that spike in traffic and November Well, is these two articles That's right, Maur on this topic and then you have journalists that air exclusively looking for feeding that those beasts, and then you have our public discourse dominated by these things that were. It sounds like potentially injected or manufactured from the water cooler than into the water than into the the dialogue. And now it's now for some reason, these are the topics that were

yet, but it's like a fire that spreads really fast on social media. Our goal ability is the oxygen that lets it spread, right? Like like if we if we take our gullibility away, we we deprive the scissor statement people of their power,

right? That's right. You have to listen to this. This Renee de arrested because yeah. Is she She Her research puts like hundreds of full time people in Russia working on it. Like puts maybe not a monk shot or face, but, uh but at least give some specifics toe. What? What you're talking about? Well, uh, I feel we've been talking about No. Are you kidding? I've loved every minute, and I can't wait to have you back. Um,

but Thea, there's a handful of things I had here that we didn't get to, but, um, but that's Ah. Well, uh, hook listeners for part two of our conversation, um, from says of statements to learning a lot about monetary policy to network capitalism too. to learn about you, your parents, your background and learning about just some of the things small things that made big differences in your career. Like going up and chatting with people like John Doar Campbell. Thank you for sharing your time with all of us.

Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. It's fun.

This was a blast. Thanks so much. Can't wait. Report to friends and listeners. Thank you all for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy below the line in general, go ahead and subscribe in the iTunes podcast app or leave a quick review. We love those basically, because we just we love hearing from people that find value from these kinds of conversations. And leaving a review, good or bad, is a great way to encourage more of this dialogue and lets us know that people are enjoying so we appreciate those. You can also

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