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Author: Alex LaBossiere

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The New Narrative
58 Episodes
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#58 - Miles Grimshaw

#58 - Miles Grimshaw

2025-09-0401:08:28

Miles Grimshaw is a Partner at Thrive Capital, an investment firm that builds and invests in internet, software, and technology-enabled companies. Thrive recently closed on $5BN in new funds and also announced Thrive Holdings, a permanent capital vehicle to invest in, acquire, and operate businesses for the long term with the strategic application of technology.During his time at Thrive, Miles has led investments in companies like Airtable, Monzo, Benchling, Lattice, and more recently Cursor, a code editor built for programming with AI, which you’ll hear us chat about. That team raised a $900 million round at a $9.9B valuation in June.Prior to Thrive, Miles was a General Partner at Benchmark, where he led seed investments, most notably in LangChain.We spoke about trillion dollar companies, silicon valley as an idea, business genetics, practicing scales, and Swedish House Mafia.0:00 - Intro2:14 – “The Era of Doing”6:15 – Startup Capital Intensity in the Age of AI9:14 – The Rise of Trillion Dollar Outcomes15:11 – Silicon Valley as an Idea21:04 – Physics vs Biology-Style Investing25:41 – Business Genetics and Compounding33:04 – Dying of Indigestion and Going Multi-Product35:55 – Co-Pilots, Command Centers, and Defensibility40:07 – Investing Stage Agnostically44:29 – When is VC a Good Capital Instrument?49:18 – Thrive’s Core Beliefs53:57 – A Bet vs a Commitment57:49 – The Few Ideas Miles Takes Seriously59:47 – Doing a Few Big Things vs a Million Little Things1:03:54 – Practicing Scales1:06:22 – What Should More People Be Thinking About?🎙️More Episodes🎙️YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFtApple: https://apple.co/478Be6MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE📲Socials📲Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiereLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#57 - Kevin Hartz

#57 - Kevin Hartz

2025-04-1045:11

Kevin Hartz is Co-Founder and General Partner at A*, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments. Before establishing A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite and guided the company as CEO for its first 11 years before it went public. His entrepreneurial journey also includes co-founding Xoom, a digital money transfer service that PayPal acquired in 2015 for over $1 billion. Kevin has established himself as a successful angel investor with seed investments in companies like PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril. His investment portfolio also includes early stakes in prominent companies such as Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto, and numerous others.00:00 - Intro04:25 - Kevin's North Star06:27 - The Bottleneck to Entrepreneurship09:20 - The Explosion of Capital in Private Technology Markets11:52 - Monopolies and the Shift in Private Enterprise Value Distribution15:18 - Do Public Markets Price Themselves In?16:37 - When Is VC a Suitable Capital Instrument?19:09 - Agglomeration and The Future of Venture Capital20:56 - Cost of Capital and Competing in Venture23:09 - Is Value-Add Real?25:33 - On IPOing27:14 - Picking and Magnitude of Outcomes28:41 - Founders and Investors as Personality Types29:56 - Seed and Growth Investing as Distinct Skillsets32:02 - Incubations33:56 - Symptoms of Excess Capital35:55 - Can You Kingmake With Capital?37:17 - When Does It Make Sense to Raise a Huge Round?38:17 - Capital Efficiency39:39 - The Expansion of Technology Markets41:51 - Capital Innovation in Venture43:47 - The Endgame of Evaluation44:33 - What Should More People Be Thinking About?🎙️More Episodes🎙️YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFtApple: https://apple.co/478Be6MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE📲Socials📲Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiereLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#56 - Amjad Masad

#56 - Amjad Masad

2025-03-2053:51

Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, a programming environment for everyone that allows anyone to write and deploy code, regardless of experience. Replit has 34 million users globally and is one of the fastest-growing developer communities in the world.Before Replit, Amjad was a tech lead on the JavaScript infrastructure team (which he helped start) at Facebook, where he contributed to popular open-source developer tools. Additionally, he played a key role as a founding engineer at the online coding school Codecademy.0:00 - Intro4:31 - Utopia, Dystopia, and Life in a Post-AI World11:28 - Replit and Expressiveness in Computing17:01 - Balancing Accessibility and Control in Products19:53 - Is AI a Sustaining or Disruptive Technology?25:04 - Building With AI and the Future of Company Structure29:32 - The Shape and Defensibility of Software in a World of AI33:37 - The Nation State and Stagnation in the Physical World38:28 - Technology and Resilience41:54 - What Shouldn't Get Automated?43:54 - What Becomes Valuable in a Post-AI World?47:10 - AI Augmenting vs Competing with Humans51:51 - What Should More People Be Thinking About?🎙️More Episodes🎙️YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFtApple: https://apple.co/478Be6MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE📲Socials📲Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiereLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#55 - Katherine Boyle

#55 - Katherine Boyle

2025-03-0651:22

Katherine Boyle is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and cofounder of the firm’s American Dynamism practice, which invests in companies supporting the national interest across aerospace, defense, manufacturing, energy, logistics, and critical infrastructure. She sits on the boards of Apex Space and Hadrian Automation and is a board observer for Saronic Technologies and Castelion.She was previously a partner at General Catalyst, where she co-led the firm’s seed practice and invested in the inception rounds of defense technology companies including Anduril Industries and Vannevar Labs. Prior to General Catalyst, she was a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post. Katherine holds a BA in Government from Georgetown University, an MBA from Stanford and a Masters of Public Advocacy from the National University of Ireland, Galway.Katherine believes that free speech is essential to promoting American Dynamism. She is a proud champion of new media companies and academic centers that promote free speech and free thought. She serves on the boards of The Free Press and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.0:00 - Intro4:48 - The Decline in Public Service7:47 - Making Government Cool Again10:07 - Silicon Valley’s Aversion to National Security13:15 - Positive Sum vs Zero Sum Cultures16:27 - China, Authoritarianism, and Doing Hard Things19:27 - What Makes America Special?23:03 - Silicon Valley and the “Real Economy”26:28 - Investing in Mature Markets29:08 - Vanna White and The Wheel of Fortune30:27 - Journalism and Loneliness32:52 - Time and Suffering38:10 - Seriousness and Purpose41:11 - Is Culture Downstream of Technology?42:48 - Propaganda and Coolness as a Strategic Asset44:40 - Florida, Texas, and Regulatory Arbitrage47:51 - DC, Silicon Valley, and Florida50:20 - What Should More People Be Thinking About?🎙️More Episodes🎙️YouTube: ⁠https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt⁠Apple: ⁠https://apple.co/478Be6M⁠Spotify: ⁠https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE⁠📲Socials📲Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/adlabossiere⁠Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#54 - Keith Rabois

#54 - Keith Rabois

2025-02-2001:06:37

Keith Rabois is a Managing Partner at Khosla Ventures and the CEO of OpenStore, which acquires small direct-to-consumer businesses. Keith co-founded Opendoor and led the first institutional investments in DoorDash and Affirm. He has early stakes in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, and Wish, and also led investments in Faire, Ramp, Trade Republic, and Stripe. He’s regarded as one of the greatest early stage investors.Keith began his career in the industry as a senior executive at PayPal and subsequently served in influential roles at LinkedIn and as chief operating officer of Square. As a board member, Keith guided Yelp and Xoom from inception to IPO, and served on the board of Reddit from 2012-2018.0:00 - Intro1:56 - Great Founders and the Bottleneck to Innovation4:35 - Vertical Integration6:24 - The Hollywood Model of Startups7:41 - The “Why Now?” in Company-Building9:50 - Multi-Product Companies10:58 - Iteration and Pivots12:52 - Picking Co-Founders14:51 - Identifying Mispriced Talent17:20 - Attracting Talent20:57 - Assessing Talent24:02 - Doing References25:56 - Closing Hires28:28 - Thinking 6 Months Ahead31:36 - How Long Should You Interview For?33:28 - Creating a Monopoly on Talent35:44 - Raising Capital37:40 - Screening Investors41:21 - Building a Board44:11 - Triaging and Identifying Problems47:59 - Writing vs Editing and Consistent Voice49:34 - Creating Transparency50:50 - Barrels and Ammunition54:55 - Task-Relevant Maturity56:40 - On Delegating59:21 - Measuring Inputs vs Outputs1:02:58 - Underrated Metrics1:05:22 - What Should More People Be Thinking About?🎙️More Episodes🎙️YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFtApple: https://apple.co/478Be6MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE📲Socials📲Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiereLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#53 - Elad Gil

#53 - Elad Gil

2024-08-0801:16:53

Elad Gil is a serial entrepreneur, executive, and one of the greatest tech investors of all time, with early stakes in something like 40 billion-plus dollar companies: AirBnB, Anduril, Coinbase, Figma, Flexport, Instacart, Notion, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe… I could really go on. He’s now managing a new billion dollar venture fund, for which he’s the sole investor. Elad is also the co-founder of 2 companies: Color Genomics, a company providing genetic testing, software and clinical services for large-scale health programs – and before that, Mixer Labs, a company building location infrastructure for mobile devices that was acquired by Twitter. He worked as a VP at Twitter and also started the mobile team at Google. 0:00 - Intro 6:11 - Blank Slates and Decaying Institutions 8:16 - Western Pessimism and Agendas of Abundance vs Scarcity 12:30 - The Long Boom: Is Innovation Speeding Up? 16:26 - Are Startups Founder Limited or Market Limited? 19:26 - EIR Syndrome and Choosing the Right Market 21:41 - What Makes for a Good Investor, Operator and Entrepreneur? 24:05 - Positives and Negatives of Investing and Operating 26:17 - The Brand Value of Individuals vs Institutions 28:05 - Competing with Massive Firms 30:33 - Market-Driven Investing 33:23 - Starting Companies as Surfing Waves 36:09 - Age of Accomplishment and The Deferral of Adulthood 42:15 - What to Say Yes To 44:21 - Defense Tech and Complacency 49:25 - Private Markets and The Future of Venture 52:11 - Discontinuities in AI 53:49 - On Google 55:16 - LLM Oligopoly and Long-Term Scenarios for AI 1:00:41 - AGI and Sleeping 3 Hours a Night 1:03:19 - AI Doomerism 1:06:05 - The Deterioration of Speed 1:09:27 - Bureaucracy and the State of Nuclear 1:12:52 - Generosity and the Culture of Silicon Valley 1:15:19 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://x.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#52 - Erik Torenberg

#52 - Erik Torenberg

2024-05-0301:18:31

Erik Torenberg is a technology entrepreneur and investor. Presently, he’s the founder of Turpentine. Previously, he was the chairman of On Deck, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, and first employee at Product Hunt. 0:00 - Intro 5:08 - On Investing vs Operating and Being a Player 7:34 - Trust and Direct Distribution 10:45 - Legacy Media and the Techlash 17:24 - What is Turpentine 18:41 - Lessons From 1000 Interviews 20:59 - The Printing Press, Barbells, and the Future of Media 25:22 - Pre-Internet Journalism and Survival of the Fittest Ideas 28:44 - Creator Monetization and Price Discrimination 34:55 - Does Media Have a Direction? 41:44 - Tailwinds and Turpentine at Scale 49:37 - Creating More Startups and Understanding Risk 54:24 - Is Entrepreneurship Founder or Market Limited? 59:04 - What Do Most People Get Wrong About Community Building? 1:01:34 - Probabilistic vs Deterministic Mindsets 1:04:29 - On Faith over Logic 1:08:06 - Modernity and God Shaped Holes 1:10:44 - The Hypocrisy of Elites 1:13:30 - Asking Erik Questions He Asks People 1:15:40 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#51 - Bryan Johnson

#51 - Bryan Johnson

2024-03-2151:38

Bryan Johnson is the world's most measured human. Johnson sold his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800m in 2013. Through his Project Blueprint, Johnson has achieved metabolic health equal to the top 1.5% of 18 year olds, inflammation 66% lower than the average 10 year old, and reduced his speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years. Johnson freely shares his protocols and data publicly for everyone to use. Project Blueprint, is an endeavor to achieve humanity and earth scale cooperation starting within Self. In 2023, Johnson launched Rejuvenation Olympics, a leaderboard assessing one's speed of aging using DNA methylation. Of the 1,750 people who have been using this state-of-the-art aging algorithm to track their progress longitudinally, Johnson ranks #1 in speed of age reduction. Johnson is also the founder & CEO of Kernel, creator of the world’s first mainstream non-invasive neuroimaging system; and OS Fund, where he invested $100M in the predictable engineering of atoms, molecules, and organisms into companies now collectively valued over $6B. He is an outdoor adventure enthusiast, pilot, and author of children’s books, Code 7 and The Proto Project. 00:00 - Intro 3:45 - Biographies 5:03 - Zeroth Principles Thinking and Genius 6:24 - Vision for Blueprint: A 25th Century Perspective 7:50 - Blueprint, Entropy Reduction and Planet Earth 9:23 - Impact of Blueprint 10:47 - Gene Therapy and Breaking Through the Longevity Ceiling 12:06 - Living Longer and Compounding Gains 13:31 - Bryan’s Relationship With Time 14:07 - Measuring Biological vs Chronological Age 15:05 - Encouraging Adoption, Dashboards for Society and Learning How to Swim 17:49 - Enriching vs Degrading Life and the Inevitability of Computational Intelligence 21:03 - Living Forever 22:19 - Knee-Jerk Reactions 26:03 - Free Will 28:12 - Social Drivers and Early Adopters of Blueprint 30:08 - Future of Engineering Atoms, Molecules and Organisms 32:43 - Critical Questions from Longer Lifespans 33:58 - Kernel and the Future of Brain-Computer Interfaces 36:28 - Ketamine 37:47 - Storytelling, Quantifying Reality and the Extent of the Algorithm 40:03 - OS Fund, Foundational Technologies and Architecting Reality 43:38 - Trust and God Shaped Holes 46:55 - Wealth, Effectuating Change and Competing for Legacy 48:23 - What Else Would Bryan Work On? 49:25 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#50 - Anthony Pompliano

#50 - Anthony Pompliano

2024-01-3001:59:29

Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano is an entrepreneur and technology investor. He runs his family office which makes private investments, along with owning majority stakes in a number of operating businesses. Additionally, Pomp hosts popular conversations on “The Pomp Podcast,” which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. Pomp also writes a letter that is read by more than 250,000 investors each morning. Pomp’s interests lie at the intersection of finance, technology, entrepreneurship, and economics, which he tweets about extensively to his more than 1.6 million followers. 0:00 - Intro 3:11 - Incumbents and Competition in the Age of AI 5:12 - Media’s Relationship with Technology 9:48 - Individuals vs Institutions and the Future of Content 11:46 - Consensus, Truth, and Misinformation 15:47 - How to Cut Through the Noise 18:47 - The Decline of Trust in Institutions 24:10 - Balancing Optimism and Cynicism 26:46 - National Debt 33:22 - Bad Legislation, Bad Politicians, and Bad Incentives 37:54 - Growing Our Way Out of the Problem 42:19 - Autonomous Cars, Pig Heart Transplants, and How Innovation Propagates Itself 49:22 - Legislating Technology 55:04 - Increasing the Number of Entrepreneurs in Society 1:03:08 - When Better Technology Doesn’t Mean Better Outcomes 1:05:24 - Talent Allocation 1:10:56 - What Does Pomp Do Every Day? 1:19:52 - Lessons From 1300 Interviews 1:21:56 - On Fame, Audience, and Parasocial Relationships 1:29:23 - The State of Crypto 1:34:14 - Institutional Adoption of Crypto 1:37:20 - Is Slow-Moving Bureaucracy a Bug or a Feature? 1:42:02 - Remote Work and Regulatory Arbitrage 1:46:22 - Promising Cities and the Internet as an Equalizer 1:50:03 - Lessons From War 1:58:07 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#49 - Bryan Caplan

#49 - Bryan Caplan

2024-01-0901:38:36

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. He’s the author of 8 books, including The Myth of the Rational Voter, The Case Against Education, and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. His next book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing, will be published by the Cato Institute in 2024. He’s the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He’s published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. 0:00 - Intro 2:23 - The Most Irrational Beliefs in Society 3:43 - Why Do People Vote? 5:57 - The Most Net Positive Delusions in Society 7:30 - Bottlenecks in Democracy 9:13 - Idea Traps 13:13 - The Ideological Turing Test 15:16 - Caricatures of Political Parties 17:49 - The Case for Open Borders 21:48 - Tribalism and Social Cohesion 25:33 - Privatization and The Confluence of Cultures 26:56 - What’s the Point of Countries? 28:26 - What Values Are (Mostly) Non-negotiable? 30:27 - The Net Present Value of Immigration 33:43 - The Competition of Cultures 38:15 - Is Globalism Inevitable? 39:30 - Resources and Culture 42:49 - How to Fix Immigration 45:07 - The Case Against Education 48:48 - What is a Degree Actually Worth? 52:05 - Why is Bryan a Professor? 53:13 - The Value of Conformity in Society 55:25 - Is Learning How to Learn Real? 57:51 - Is There Value in the Liberal Arts? 29:27 - Bryan’s Approach to Learning 1:01:49 - Who Does Education Well? 1:02:49 - The Biggest Problems in Academia 1:05:47 - Should we Abolish Tenure? 1:09:32 - Why Parenting is Overrated 1:11:51 - What Kind of Parenting Has an Effect? 1:14:23 - Positive Effects of Having Kids 1:16:03 - The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation 1:18:50 - Intangible Costs of Deregulation 1:21:39 - How does Ideology Propagate Itself? 1:24:09 - If Everything’s Mimetic are Free Markets Overrated? 1:25:54 - How to Get Ideas Into the Mainstream 1:28:19 - Are Politicians Evil? 1:31:35 - The Future of Labor Markets Under Remote Work 1:34:21 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#48 - Delian Asparouhov

#48 - Delian Asparouhov

2023-12-1201:16:19

Delian Asparouhov is the co-founder, President and Chairman of Varda Space Industries, a company building spacecraft to manufacture materials in microgravity that are difficult or impossible to produce on Earth— starting with pharmaceuticals. He’s also a Partner at Founders Fund. Previously, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer. 0:00 - Intro 3:14 - How Does Innovation Happen? 6:23 - Varda and the No Science Allowed Rule 7:52 - A Primer on Solid State Microgravity Manufacturing 18:25 - Space Industrialization, Trading Posts, and the Chinese and Portuguese Navies 21:13 - Economic Incentives and Future Business Models in Space 24:24 - SpaceX and The Costs of Mass to Orbit 27:45 - Demand for Space Manufacturing and Varda at Scale 33:44 - Manufacturing, Servicing, Machining, and Future Markets for Space 36:42 - Incubating Companies 40:33 - When Would Varda Have Been Started Otherwise? 42:19 - The Hollywood Model of Startups 45:20 - Future of Incubations 47:47 - Media’s Role in Technology 50:39 - What Media Inspired Varda’s Founding? 52:38 - Talent, Culture, and Cementing Company Trajectory 53:57 - Narratives and Talent Recruitment 55:28 - Traits Delian Looks for in Founders 57:38 - The ‘Why Now’ When Investing 1:00:08 - Bring Non-Consensus and Right 1:02:53 - Is Varda Consensus Yet? 1:03:24 - Identifying Non-Consensus Opportunities 1:05:12 - Lessons from Founding and Investing 1:07:40 - What Skill Do You Wish You’d Developed Earlier? 1:10:11 - Immigrant Mentality 1:11:24 - Less Obvious Reasons for Success 1:12:55 - On Speed 1:14:23 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#47 - Robin Hanson

#47 - Robin Hanson

2023-11-3002:02:06

Robin Hanson is a professor at George Mason University and researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. 0:00 - Intro 2:42 - Intelligent Life in the Universe 7:30 - Grabby Aliens: A Primer 15:29 - Elites and the End of Global Coordination 18:59 - 6 Hard Steps for the Emergence of Life 22:11 - The Probability of Aliens 33:05 - Domesticating Humans 38:08 - Signaling and the Elephant in the Brain 42:31 - Conscious and Subconscious Behavior 46:53 - Collective Signaling 49:54 - The Contrarian Economics of Medicine and Lifespan 57:00 - Taste 1:01:18 - Hyper-Rationality and Social Cohesion 1:07:03 - How to Predict the Future 1:12:11 - Brain Emulations 1:21:15 - Artificial General Intelligence 1:27:52 - The Descendants of Humans 1:32:49 - Changing Attitudes Toward Life and Death 1:37:33 - The Future of Inequality 1:42:10 - God and The Sacred 1:57:42 - The Most Surprising Thing Robin’s Learned Recently 1:59:57 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#46 - Chris Mason

#46 - Chris Mason

2023-11-2201:13:01

Chris Mason is a professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also one of the founding Directors of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He is the author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, and the co-author of The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk. 0:00 - Intro 2:29 - How Long Will Humanity Last? 9:01 - On Societal Pessimism and Long-Term Thinking 13:02 - Aliens! 17:36 - The NASA Twins Study 23:17 - Nature vs Nurture 25:56 - Chris’ Dream Experiments 27:45 - Genomics: Ethics, Opportunities, and the Future 37:38 - Space Race 2.0: Colonization, Regulation and Planetary Liberty 40:36 - Colonizing Mars and Achieving Planetary Liberty 45:46 - The Extreme Microbiome Project 47:14 - The Earth Similarity Index, Generation Ships and Leaving the Solar System 53:10 - Why Do Any of This in The First Place? 56:19 - The Age of Prediction 1:01:19 - On Chris, Science, Academia, and Big Questions 1:08:47 - Synthetic Biology, Cyborgs and the Future of Human Life 1:10:10 - Chris’ Biggest Goal 1:11:06 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/
#45 - Keith Rabois

#45 - Keith Rabois

2023-11-1501:16:57

Keith Rabois is a General Partner at Founders Fund and the CEO of OpenStore, which acquires small direct-to-consumer businesses. Keith co-founded Opendoor and led the first institutional investments in DoorDash and Affirm. He has early stakes in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, and Wish, and also led investments in Faire, Ramp, Trade Republic, and Stripe. He’s regarded as one of the greatest early stage investors. Keith began his career in the industry as a senior executive at PayPal and subsequently served in influential roles at LinkedIn and as chief operating officer of Square. As a board member, Keith guided Yelp and Xoom from inception to IPO, and served on the board of Reddit from 2012-2018. 0:00 - Intro 2:35 - Bomb-Building and the PayPal Mafia 5:10 - Spotting Talent 11:32 - Where Keith is 1000:1 16:14 - PayPal, Regulation, and Law 22:00 - Regulatory Arbitrage 25:03 - AI 27:46 - Keith’s 5 Bosses 31:04 - How to Operate 34:16 - OpenStore 39:33 - Founding vs Investing 42:48 - Requests for Startups 47:39 - Early-Stage Investing 53:46 - Companies as Cults 56:42 - The Future of Venture 1:00:56 - Not Stretching, Engineering Serendipity, and How to Ask Better Questions 1:06:40 - On Keith 1:08:45 - Time Allocation, Self-Grading, Values, Reading and Legacy 1:16:11 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE
#44 - Bradley Tusk

#44 - Bradley Tusk

2023-11-0801:30:44

Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist and writer. He is the CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund that invests solely in early stage startups in highly regulated industries, and the founder of political consulting firm Tusk Strategies. Bradley’s family foundation is funding and leading the national campaign to bring mobile voting to all U.S. elections. Tusk Philanthropies also runs and funds anti-hunger campaigns that have led to the creation of anti-hunger policies and programs (including universal school breakfast programs) in 22 different states, helping to feed over 12.5 million people. Bradley is the author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death by Politics and Obvious in Hindsight (coming out this November), writes a column for Fast Company, hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics, and is the co-founder of the Gotham Book Prize. He recently opened a bookstore, podcast studio, event space and cafe called P&T Knitwear on Manhattan's lower east side. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. 0:00 - Intro 2:03 - The Incentives of Politics 10:57 - Bradley’s Philosophy 18:33 - More Political Parties and Fixing Political Polarization 25:13 - Big Tech Antitrust 29:09 - What Bradley Would Change 32:23 - The Decline of Trust in Institutions  36:12 - Tusk Ventures 37:53 - Requests for Startups 39:50 - Debt, Inflation, and COVID 46:31 - The Story of Uber  49:29 - How Uber Beats Lyft 52:59 - Weaponizing a Constituency  54:53 - Regulated Industries Bradley’s Excited About  57:54 - Crypto 1:01:40 - Psychedelics and Doing Ketamine  1:07:21 - What Keeps Bradley Up at Night? 1:10:48 - Mobile Voting  1:15:41 - Doing Lots of Things at Once 1:18:25 - Why Credentials Are Overrated 1:23:42 - On Happiness 1:28:31 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt⁠⁠ Apple: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/478Be6M⁠⁠ Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE
#43 - Jeff Morris Jr.

#43 - Jeff Morris Jr.

2023-10-3101:20:32

Jeff Morris Jr is the Managing Partner at Chapter One, an early stage venture capital fund. He’s formerly the VP of Product and Revenue at Tinder, which he helped scale to become the #1 grossing app in the world. 0:00 - Intro 1:57 - Growing up in Silicon Valley 5:01 - Writing, Hollywood, and Tech 13:15 - AI and the Future of Content 21:20 - Dating Apps Today and Time at Tinder 29:26 - Future of Product and Strategy 36:30 - Crypto 40:38 - On Venture Capital 53:19 - Building Chapter One 59:36 - Goals, Mentors, and Personal Philosophy 1:07:56 - $10,000 for Michael Jordan’s Cigar and Other Fun Stories 1:16:52 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE
#42 - Sari Azout

#42 - Sari Azout

2022-11-0841:58

On founding versus Investing, parenting, indexing knowledge, collective intelligence, and good questions.
#41 - Jason Crawford

#41 - Jason Crawford

2022-10-2539:52

On optimism, progress in technology, drivers of stagnation, and how to think about innovation.
#40 - Samo Burja

#40 - Samo Burja

2022-10-1147:14

On Immortal societies, civilizational decline, the longevity of information, and academia.
#39 - John List

#39 - John List

2022-08-0253:57

On apologies, academia, quitting, critical thinking, and scaling great ideas.
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