The Exchanges

Q we're going to have a lot of fun. I want to start there with, with, with, with, yeah, be nervous, but with one which is like, I don't really know how to say this, but you are one of the most fascinating people in tech. Now, I wanted to start with children and what you were like as a child. How would your parents or your teachers have described you?

A Listen, I was always probably an overconfident, Child. I, I, I was lucky to be born gifted. I got, you know, 99 on everything and skipped some grades in math with my friends. And, you know, my friends and I were chess champions and math champions. And I, I always had a lot of opinions. Um, you know, I generally, you know, I generally felt like I was probably smarter than my teachers. So very obnoxious kid, right? Lots of, lots of confidence there. My, you know, unfortunately my grandma finally passed last year at 103. And she would always tell, I called her my bubby because that's a word in Yiddish for grandma. And she would always tell stories of me and me wowing her and impressing people at age two, three, four, five. So I guess I kind of grew up with like a lot of confidence. I was the oldest of my generation, the oldest of 20 cousins on one side and nine cousins on the other side. And, uh, and so I, so I guess I've always been lucky to be a leader, been talented and have lots of opinions, which we got to hear today.

AI assessment note: “I was always probably an overconfident, Child... very obnoxious kid”

Q My big concern is when you have someone have a massive outcome, and they're like, now I'm gonna fix health. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you sold an enterprise data company. Like, let's stay in that world. You, you said sorry, and I interrupted you. You said wish, and I was intrigued. What were you gonna say on wish?

A Yeah. And, and, and I will just say, as an aside, I do think it's important for people to try to fix healthcare. They just need to realize they have a lot to learn before, you know, it's, it's pretty complicated. We're doing a lot there. We could talk about, but you know, wish, wish was an exception on the consumer stuff. I thought, because I identified it was a really, really top data culture. So I invested in wish at six million dollars post in 2010 out of my angel fund. And I led around with Jerry Yang and others at about Grow very, very quickly. It's basically like, like, you know, going after Walmart online is basically going after very cheap goods. There's about. 600,000 merchants in China that were like very cheap, very hard to work with constantly trying to defraud you. And, and so the idea was, of course, this stuff is, is like not the best quality, but it's also the cheapest. And you can kind of iterate to make it better quality. And listen, the company raised billions of dollars from lots of really smart investors. Goldman Sachs took a public. Uh, twenty five billion dollar valuation. Obviously we got something right. And now, unfortunately, as of, you know, recently the company's crashed and it's gone. And so obviously you got something wrong too. It's a pretty complicated story. I think that there's, there's, there's a few things that happened. Uh, there's definite…

AI assessment note: “wish was an exception on the consumer stuff. I thought, because I identified it was”

Q Not at all, but I do want to kick off today with a little bit on you. So Venture is a wonderful world, but it's also a unique one to get into. How did you make your way into the world of Venture and come to FoundAVC?

A I started off both as an investor and as an entrepreneur early in my career, but I was more an investor and Kind of supporting somebody. I was at PayPal, and then I was at Peter Thiel's family office, and at the age of 19 or 20, was driving around to meet some of the companies he'd invested in. Got to know the Facebook founders at that time, obviously, and he backed me in starting Palantir. And Palantir was somewhat similar to PayPal in the sense that we had some of the very top engineers in the valley. We were ranked number one for a while with the top talent we were getting. And similar to PayPal, a lot of the people there were very entrepreneurial. So what you saw is after being there for five, six, seven years, Some of the best ones would leave and build companies, and so I found myself, 10 years into my career, having built a couple companies, having done some investing with Peter, I found myself surrounded by lots of friends building companies. I was advising them, I was angel investing in them. I had about 14 companies that I was helping in some way, and I talked to my mentors, and they said, Joe, you're basically already running a fund, but you don't have money, you don't have very many people helping you, you should go raise a fund.

AI assessment note: “I talked to my mentors, and they said, Joe, you're basically already running a fund”

Q Can I ask, one of the things that's preventing that is lack of accountability. Why is America's core sick and lacking accountability?

A Well, I think this is what happens, frankly, to every civilization over time. One of my favorite authors on this, there's something called Evolution of Civilizations by Carol Quigley. I think Quigley was one of Bill Clinton's mentors, but real, real great thinker, and he maps out the different stages Of civilizations. You kind of mapped institutions as well, but you know, you know, one of the kind of ideas is that as these things become dominant, the same things that led you to kind of grow and win, and that you had to support to grow, become special interests. And the special interests, uh, start to like worry less about what they're doing for civilization or for the company and more about what they're doing for themselves. And so you start having lots of special interests fighting for themselves. Uh, and not for the common good. And that, and that, that, that really breaks things over time. And you know, what, what you see in the U S government, which you see in every other government is you have hundreds of thousands, millions of rules, and the rules tend to be put in place by the big companies, by the unions, by the, you know, by the, by the groups that are running things, for example, with prisons, let's go to a specific prisons in America are very badly run. People can blame for profit prisons, but 90% of them are nonprofit. And, and they're, they're run by government uni…

AI assessment note: “these people still get paid the same amount. There's no accountability.”

Q I don't say 90% of what I think because of the backlash that would come from the one percent woke. I think every CEO that I speak to have on the show is the same. Do you say what you think? And are you nervous of the woke crowd coming after you?

A I say the vast majority of what I think, as you could tell when you go and look at things that I've gotten in trouble for now, it hasn't stopped me from building many, many billion dollar companies. It hasn't stopped me from raising a lot of great funds because I'm very good at what I do at my fund and I'm very good at what I do with my companies. You know, that said, I don't think all of us need to always say everything we think in a, in a polite modern civilized society. You may have thoughts that it's good to dwell on yourself or to explore in private with other people first. You, you may have thoughts that are Very offensive, and you turn out to be wrong, you know, and I think that's actually, that's partly how we learn, is we have things that we think, and we say, wow, I think this, and you actually talk about it with people you trust close to you, because you realize it's controversial, and you say, actually, I see why I was, I was too extreme there. I see why that wasn't right, and it's probably, it's probably healthy not to always expose every last thought in public right away, is, uh, you know, something I've learned over time.

AI assessment note: “I say the vast majority of what I think, as you could tell”

Q Listen, I want, I want to start today on something that you've said before, which I think is really important, which you've said America's a frontier nation. If we start here, what did you mean when you said frontier?

A So America is best as a frontier nation. So, you know, human nature is such that you have these places that are the core. They're like the cities. It's where the committees are in charge. People are playing status games. There's lots of NIMBYs around saying no to everyone. Uh, it's really hard to change things to get things done, but things are safer in general. You know, maybe not today in the city, but in general, in the core, things are safer. Things are protected. There's rules. We're on the frontier. It's a place where it's dangerous, where you're constantly able to try new things. It's you can have one bold man go out and actually start something and prove it. And there's accountability on the frontier. On the frontier, if something doesn't work, Uh, it feels that you, you know, if something doesn't work with a new settlement, people could die. If you go to Jamestown, you know, and have a settlement and it's not working and the Indians can get you, the weather can get you, you know, all sorts of things can go wrong. And so, you know, the spirit of the frontier, Harry is a spirit of entrepreneurship. It's a spirit of innovation and, but really fundamentally it's a spirit of accountability. Like it's actually a place where you don't have time to spend time arguing about status games and virtue signaling. You have to make things work on the frontier.

AI assessment note: “the spirit of the frontier, Harry is a spirit of entrepreneurship. It's a spirit of innovation”

Q There's no frontiers left in Europe. But when you get sick, you are looked after. When you need medical care, you are looked after. You need education that is a good enough standard. It is there. It is a better standard of living, is it not, in a core nation for the whole?

A I think that this is why most people are not crazy enough to go leave to the frontier, because it is more dangerous. It is rougher, and what you really want is a dialectic, right? Let's be honest. I'm raising four young daughters. You don't want to raise four young daughters purely on the frontier. You want to raise your family somewhere where there is some aspects of the core, and, and so, but for a nation to Advance, uh, to have to, for a nation to solve problems, for a nation to not become decadent and broken and insular. It needs places that are the frontier. And so what a dialectic is, is it's, it's a reality. I think it's an important reality for all of us is that there's truth on both extremes. You clearly need some things to be more like the core, but you also need some things to be more like the frontier. You need to take the properties of the frontier. You need to find ways of injecting them into parts of your society. To allow it to be dynamic, to allow it to advance and innovate.

AI assessment note: “I think that this is why most people are not crazy enough to go leave”

Q Can I ask, one of the things that's preventing that is lack of accountability. Why is America's core sick and lacking accountability?

A Well, I think this is what happens, frankly, to every civilization over time. One of my favorite authors on this, there's something called Evolution of Civilizations by Carol Quigley. I think Quigley was one of Bill Clinton's mentors, but real, real great thinker, and he maps out the different stages Of civilizations. You kind of mapped institutions as well, but you know, you know, one of the kind of ideas is that as these things become dominant, the same things that led you to kind of grow and win, and that you had to support to grow, become special interests. And the special interests, uh, start to like worry less about what they're doing for civilization or for the company and more about what they're doing for themselves. And so you start having lots of special interests fighting for themselves. Uh, and not for the common good. And that, and that, that, that really breaks things over time. And you know, what, what you see in the U S government, which you see in every other government is you have hundreds of thousands, millions of rules, and the rules tend to be put in place by the big companies, by the unions, by the, you know, by the, by the groups that are running things, for example, with prisons, let's go to a specific prisons in America are very badly run. People can blame for profit prisons, but 90% of them are nonprofit. And, and they're, they're run by government uni…

AI assessment note: “the same things that led you to kind of grow... become special interests.”

Q I totally get here and agree. You mentioned the virtue signaling earlier. It made me think of bluntly woke mind virus. Why do you believe woke mind virus is real? Others suggest or denigrate it as not being actually as prevalent as people think. And why is it such a problem?

A I mean, I think all of us look around and you see this is something that, that it's, it's, uh, It's probably some sort of postmodern religion, right? I think, I think there's, it seems as best I could tell human nature is that we all, or at least most of us, have some kind of innate bias or desire, uh, for, for transcendence and for something that's more important than us and for, in front to understand our, our place and what meaning in the world and higher power. And, you know, I think there's a lot of wisdom in the ancient religions that have evolved over, you know, thousands of years. And, and I think a lot of people when, when they're, when they completely reject all of those, they need to find meaning in something else. I think a lot of them have grasped onto this kind of system, uh, which, which, you know, I think Elon and Richard Dawkins originally most famously called the woke mind virus. And it's a problem, Harry, because it's basically focusing on virtue signaling and focusing on things that, that don't matter as much at the sake of, of competence or the sake of a functional society. You know, I think a lot of the woke mind virus is reflecting progressive values that come from a good place. I think a lot of people, they feel like they're being a good person by going along with it. Of course you want everyone treated fairly of, you know, of course you want to take peo…

AI assessment note: “it's a problem, Harry, because it's basically focusing on virtue signaling”

Q I don't say 90% of what I think because of the backlash that would come from the one percent woke. I think every CEO that I speak to have on the show is the same. Do you say what you think? And are you nervous of the woke crowd coming after you?

A I say the vast majority of what I think, as you could tell when you go and look at things that I've gotten in trouble for now, it hasn't stopped me from building many, many billion dollar companies. It hasn't stopped me from raising a lot of great funds because I'm very good at what I do at my fund and I'm very good at what I do with my companies. You know, that said, I don't think all of us need to always say everything we think in a, in a polite modern civilized society. You may have thoughts that it's good to dwell on yourself or to explore in private with other people first. You, you may have thoughts that are Very offensive, and you turn out to be wrong, you know, and I think that's actually, that's partly how we learn, is we have things that we think, and we say, wow, I think this, and you actually talk about it with people you trust close to you, because you realize it's controversial, and you say, actually, I see why I was, I was too extreme there. I see why that wasn't right, and it's probably, it's probably healthy not to always expose every last thought in public right away, is, uh, you know, something I've learned over time.

AI assessment note: “I say the vast majority of what I think, as you could tell”

Q Do you not think we do that in our, do you not think we do that today in universities?

A I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful what you say. And, and you learn like that there's something wrong with you. I think it's even worse than the UK, frankly, but in the U S it's, It's pretty bad too. There's something wrong with you if you want to speak out, something wrong with you if you have your own opinions that are different than the status quo. You know, so Harry, what's happened is that there's now more administrators at Yale than there are students, and almost as many at Harvard, and you know, the professoriate's always been a little to the left. That's no big deal. It's kind of like a normal, natural consequence of the culture of these places, but it's moved a lot, lot more that way to the point where you can't even get to be a PhD postdoc or get into these programs at all. There's no chance you're getting tenure if you're not basically a Marxist, and most of these like Departments at this point on the humanity side and the, the administrator, and then, and then that's a problem with the administrators then, which, which of which there are 1010 of thousands are to the like radical left of the professors. The professors themselves are afraid to speak out. Even the ones that are moderate left, uh, the students, you know, two thirds report self-censorship to not just not say what they think because they're afraid to get in trouble at t…

AI assessment note: “I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful”

Q Do you do that? I mean, I mean it nicely. I've seen quite a few businesses where like they've reached like very, very big outcomes, billion dollar plus, and the people are, yeah, like seven. Great markets.

A There are always exceptions. Now, listen, there's always, if you pick like the best market ever, there, for some reason, no one's going after and the people, even if they're not the most talented, have some special ability, maybe to do that area. Sure. It's possible, but we always used to give the example of Twitter back in the day was like, you know, these, the, I think, I think Mark Zuckerberg very put it very well. He said it was a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Right? So, I mean, There, there are, there are cold mines you can fall into if you're, if you're not the most talented people necessarily, but I think it's very rare. I think that's the exception that proves the rule. And, and, and, you know, a lot of times I'll start with the best people and we'll go towards a gap and we'll realize the way we were approaching it was wrong and it's not working, but because you have the people, you figure it out, you iterate, you make it work. So, so, I mean, you get a lot more shots on goal, uh, when you may have the right teams and the right culture.

AI assessment note: “There are always exceptions... but I think it's very rare.”

Q dominance? You know, I've had like Elad Gill on the show before who does absolutely at will the tribal knowledge and the tight networks will remain here. And so we will continue to See the dominance, and others say remote work, democratization of tools and financing. Hell no, it's going to democratize entirely. Do you think that it will sustain, or do you think that it will democratize and decentralize?

A I think this is one of those dialectics where there's extreme truth on both sides. If you actually look at my best sense of the numbers is that we were kind of completely dominant 20 years ago, like almost completely dominant 10 years ago, and it's been trending down just from our investing, which is probably a reflection of my best judgment, and obviously we're biased towards the value, but we spend a lot of time looking elsewhere. I think when I first started the firm almost a decade ago, we were like 90% investing around here. I think the number is somewhere around 60% now around here, maybe, maybe kind of mid, maybe 60 to mid-sixties, and I could very easily see it going down to 40 or 50% five years from now. So I do think probably just slightly more than half of the multi-billion dollar companies being built in America are probably being started in Silicon Valley, but I think that number was closer to 80 or 90% a decade ago. It is slowly trending away. I think Silicon Valley, by making the right moves, could actually trend back up, but I don't think they're going to make the right moves. I think the political leadership here is a joke, and so I think it's going to keep slowly trending down as a portion of the whole, but still doing very, very important things here. And then the one other thing I'll say, Harry, is the renaissance in biology, probably the most important tren…

AI assessment note: “It is slowly trending away.”

Q Not at all, but I do want to kick off today with a little bit on you. So Venture is a wonderful world, but it's also a unique one to get into. How did you make your way into the world of Venture and come to FoundAVC?

A I started off both as an investor and as an entrepreneur early in my career, but I was more an investor and Kind of supporting somebody. I was at PayPal, and then I was at Peter Thiel's family office, and at the age of 19 or 20, was driving around to meet some of the companies he'd invested in. Got to know the Facebook founders at that time, obviously, and he backed me in starting Palantir. And Palantir was somewhat similar to PayPal in the sense that we had some of the very top engineers in the valley. We were ranked number one for a while with the top talent we were getting. And similar to PayPal, a lot of the people there were very entrepreneurial. So what you saw is after being there for five, six, seven years, Some of the best ones would leave and build companies, and so I found myself, 10 years into my career, having built a couple companies, having done some investing with Peter, I found myself surrounded by lots of friends building companies. I was advising them, I was angel investing in them. I had about 14 companies that I was helping in some way, and I talked to my mentors, and they said, Joe, you're basically already running a fund, but you don't have money, you don't have very many people helping you, you should go raise a fund.

AI assessment note: “my mentors, and they said, Joe... you should go raise a fund.”

Q Yeah, absolutely. And I love that kind of analogy of everyone has their little kid inside of them. Final one. Tell me, what's the most recent publicly announced investment and why did you get so excited?

A We've done a few lately. Actually, just because you're sitting over there in the UK, I can say we're quite excited about Beacon. You saw that was announced. We did that with Jeff Bezos and then a few other really smart friends and people in the ecosystem. And frankly, it was very simple. It was, I guess, three things. One, it was just really top talent. Obviously, people involved helped run Uber in Europe and just really talented people I really enjoyed meeting and attracted really great people. Two, it's a giant market, and there's a really clever approach to a giant market and freight forwarding. There's clearly better things to be done there. There's clearly gaps. And then three, our advisors who have run a lot of things in logistics, who met them and who learned about it and went really deep on it, were very, very excited and thought it was very logical what they were doing. So you get the very top talent, really good approach in a good market. All the people I know and respect in this space love it, and we're able to lead around. That sounds great to me.

AI assessment note: “we're quite excited about Beacon. You saw that was announced.”

Q Who's your biggest mentor and what's been the biggest takeaway from that relationship?

A I guess my father has probably been the biggest influence on me overall, and I'd say obviously a lot of takeaways from one's father, but one of the most important things that he taught me, I was the oldest of three boys, and he taught me to really take pleasure and honest pleasure as what I care about, and the success and the happiness of my brothers and my friends, and there's no way you could fake that. If you honestly are someone who lives and enjoys the success of those around you, and you have that with your teams and with your friends, I think it's just such a powerful thing, and if it's real, it's going to attract the best people to you, and it's going to have these really strong relationships that are loyal and that are actual. So I think, I think that was a really great lesson from my father.

AI assessment note: “my father has probably been the biggest influence on me overall”

Q Do you not think we do that in our, do you not think we do that today in universities?

A I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful what you say. And, and you learn like that there's something wrong with you. I think it's even worse than the UK, frankly, but in the U S it's, It's pretty bad too. There's something wrong with you if you want to speak out, something wrong with you if you have your own opinions that are different than the status quo. You know, so Harry, what's happened is that there's now more administrators at Yale than there are students, and almost as many at Harvard, and you know, the professoriate's always been a little to the left. That's no big deal. It's kind of like a normal, natural consequence of the culture of these places, but it's moved a lot, lot more that way to the point where you can't even get to be a PhD postdoc or get into these programs at all. There's no chance you're getting tenure if you're not basically a Marxist, and most of these like Departments at this point on the humanity side and the, the administrator, and then, and then that's a problem with the administrators then, which, which of which there are 1010 of thousands are to the like radical left of the professors. The professors themselves are afraid to speak out. Even the ones that are moderate left, uh, the students, you know, two thirds report self-censorship to not just not say what they think because they're afraid to get in trouble at t…

AI assessment note: “I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful”

Q What did you, just on that, what did you learn from that? If you were to reflect on that.

A Um, I learned a few things. One is I learned, you know, a lot of people who do really well in different enterprise software areas, their next thing they want to do is to try consumer because consumer is just so different and so interesting. And it turns out that A, I probably didn't have myself like the magic touch when it came to like consumer online product stuff. That just wasn't necessarily a thing. I was, I'm very good at product For lots of their enterprise context is like what I really enjoy doing. Lots of different strategy there in defense. I've created some cool defense things. I think, I think I probably wasn't as good on the consumer side. And then also like a lot, like the framework I use is like a gap in the world where like I'm solving something that should exist in healthcare, should exist in defense. Like either there wasn't a gap in the world in that part of consumer or else I wasn't the one to identify it. So, so, so, so, so, so I learned that, you know, I'm going to focus on the things I'm good at and I'm good at a lot of other things. So, so I don't need to do like more stuff with celebrities online. Um, Although, and also, I think things that are too much fun, there's probably like a warning flag, you know. It's like, not that you shouldn't be having fun, but the whole celebrity too much fun thing is a little, you know, who knows.

AI assessment note: “I learned that, you know, I'm going to focus on the things I'm good at”

Q My big concern is when you have someone have a massive outcome, and they're like, now I'm gonna fix health. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you sold an enterprise data company. Like, let's stay in that world. You, you said sorry, and I interrupted you. You said wish, and I was intrigued. What were you gonna say on wish?

A Yeah. And, and, and I will just say, as an aside, I do think it's important for people to try to fix healthcare. They just need to realize they have a lot to learn before, you know, it's, it's pretty complicated. We're doing a lot there. We could talk about, but you know, wish, wish was an exception on the consumer stuff. I thought, because I identified it was a really, really top data culture. So I invested in wish at six million dollars post in 2010 out of my angel fund. And I led around with Jerry Yang and others at about Grow very, very quickly. It's basically like, like, you know, going after Walmart online is basically going after very cheap goods. There's about. 600,000 merchants in China that were like very cheap, very hard to work with constantly trying to defraud you. And, and so the idea was, of course, this stuff is, is like not the best quality, but it's also the cheapest. And you can kind of iterate to make it better quality. And listen, the company raised billions of dollars from lots of really smart investors. Goldman Sachs took a public. Uh, twenty five billion dollar valuation. Obviously we got something right. And now, unfortunately, as of, you know, recently the company's crashed and it's gone. And so obviously you got something wrong too. It's a pretty complicated story. I think that there's, there's, there's a few things that happened. Uh, there's definite…

AI assessment note: “wish was an exception on the consumer stuff. I thought, because I identified it”

Q Question for you. What was the biggest needle moving moment in your career? I do think careers take step functions. What was the step function for you that was the most significant?

A You know, being allowed in at PayPal was a really big deal. I think Max rejected me the first time as a freshman. We had an argument on a whiteboard and I thought he was going to bring me in anyway. I don't think he remembers this. Uh, this is, you know, Peter's co-founder of, of, of Confinity, uh, at the time. Um, you know, so being at PayPal and learning from people there was really important. Peter, uh, taking me to work for him directly afterwards in, you know, I got exposed of course at that point to like the Facebook people and to the, you know, Kevin Hart's at zoom and all these guys I was getting to work with, uh, in the macro fund. And then, you know, convincing him to fund Palantir and keep it going when a lot of people were trying to fight against it. You know, at the, at the time you, you probably know there were all sorts of crazy projects that, uh, were going on in kind of Peter Thiel world. I think there was one thing that was giving people Nightmares and other things that, you know, brain stimulation. There was like a spam company. There was a restaurant that I think ended up losing seven million dollars because the chef got into arguments with people. This is by the way, very typical. Peter's a genius. I've learned a lot from his. When you've had success, you have a lot of stuff. You try, uh, people around you try things, but, but imagine Palantir was like thes…

AI assessment note: “being allowed in at PayPal was a really big deal.”

Q If you were to show that, is the core not so sick that they would not still reject you despite the data to prove that you are more effective?

A My theory of change on policy in the U.S., we have a group called the Cicero Institute. It's one of the top state policy groups in the U.S. It's nonpartisan. We're in 19 states right now, Harry, and it's very hard to get something done in D.C. It just takes forever with the arguments, but it turns out it's not that hard to get things done in certain types of states. It tends to be the purple or the red states where they're able to take More risk on accountability right now, which, which even my friends on the, on the, on the left tend to agree with me. That's where you do it. And you can go in and you can actually pass laws that tie things to metrics, tie things to goals. I don't think it is that sick. I think it actually is possible. We've shown we get it. We get dozens of laws passed per year, you know, for things like vocational schools, tie the funding to the results. You get a much better results for huge numbers of people.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it is that sick. I think it actually is possible.”

Q What did you, just on that, what did you learn from that? If you were to reflect on that.

A Um, I learned a few things. One is I learned, you know, a lot of people who do really well in different enterprise software areas, their next thing they want to do is to try consumer because consumer is just so different and so interesting. And it turns out that A, I probably didn't have myself like the magic touch when it came to like consumer online product stuff. That just wasn't necessarily a thing. I was, I'm very good at product For lots of their enterprise context is like what I really enjoy doing. Lots of different strategy there in defense. I've created some cool defense things. I think, I think I probably wasn't as good on the consumer side. And then also like a lot, like the framework I use is like a gap in the world where like I'm solving something that should exist in healthcare, should exist in defense. Like either there wasn't a gap in the world in that part of consumer or else I wasn't the one to identify it. So, so, so, so, so, so I learned that, you know, I'm going to focus on the things I'm good at and I'm good at a lot of other things. So, so I don't need to do like more stuff with celebrities online. Um, Although, and also, I think things that are too much fun, there's probably like a warning flag, you know. It's like, not that you shouldn't be having fun, but the whole celebrity too much fun thing is a little, you know, who knows.

AI assessment note: “I learned that, you know, I'm going to focus on the things I'm good at”

Q I totally get here and agree. You mentioned the virtue signaling earlier. It made me think of bluntly woke mind virus. Why do you believe woke mind virus is real? Others suggest or denigrate it as not being actually as prevalent as people think. And why is it such a problem?

A I mean, I think all of us look around and you see this is something that, that it's, it's, uh, It's probably some sort of postmodern religion, right? I think, I think there's, it seems as best I could tell human nature is that we all, or at least most of us, have some kind of innate bias or desire, uh, for, for transcendence and for something that's more important than us and for, in front to understand our, our place and what meaning in the world and higher power. And, you know, I think there's a lot of wisdom in the ancient religions that have evolved over, you know, thousands of years. And, and I think a lot of people when, when they're, when they completely reject all of those, they need to find meaning in something else. I think a lot of them have grasped onto this kind of system, uh, which, which, you know, I think Elon and Richard Dawkins originally most famously called the woke mind virus. And it's a problem, Harry, because it's basically focusing on virtue signaling and focusing on things that, that don't matter as much at the sake of, of competence or the sake of a functional society. You know, I think a lot of the woke mind virus is reflecting progressive values that come from a good place. I think a lot of people, they feel like they're being a good person by going along with it. Of course you want everyone treated fairly of, you know, of course you want to take peo…

AI assessment note: “It's a problem, Harry, because it's basically focusing on virtue signaling”

Q One thing he was very vocal about was his concerns around China, and China's obviously never had such penetration into consumer audiences in America, from TikTok to Shine to Timu. Are you concerned by China's influence, and how would you approach it with its increasing strength?

A Yeah, I, I would force them to divest of Tik Tok. I think that, I think that's fine for Americans own Tik Tok. I think right now, China controls the Tik Tok algorithms. I don't care if the guy's based in Singapore, some of the data's here. It's very clear China controls algorithms that are able to brainwash tens of millions of our people. That's totally unacceptable. Listen, uh, Xi Jinping is a very problematic guy. You talk about Trump and Biden and all their issues. This Xi Jinping was like, basically like turned in by his mother. In his youth to, you know, to, to a, to this terrible government. I think he's saying poems with other Maoists, you know, as they were killing tens of millions of people, he was saying poems about hearting your heart to the destruction of America. Like this guy is a problem. He's, he's, he's a, he's, he's a wacky guy. He's very scary. Uh, China is by far our biggest threat to have that kind of dictatorship. A lot of people like to pretend that it's just like, oh, Americans are just being like nativist or hawkish or whatever. No, this, This guy was hiring a lot of his best and brightest to build military technology and is obsessed with, obsessed with us. And so, so I think China's a huge threat. Now that said, Harry, the Chinese people are amazing, right? And then this is, this is a really, again, this is a dialectic. On one hand, you have a crazy go…

AI assessment note: “I would force them to divest of Tik Tok.”

Q Um, I mean, if you were to have done less and concentrated efforts, would the ones you concentrated efforts into have been four times bigger?

A Or not? I think, I think at a par could have been bigger, faster if we'd gotten some things right earlier on. Now I might've still made the same mistakes spending more time on it, but I might've not, I might've figured some things out. And unfortunately we have an amazing CEO there. Who's really figured things out and made things work in a great way. I probably cost us a couple of years with some of the missing things where we had certain types of leadership, certain types of talent early on could have helped us say, you know, save some trouble. That's for sure. Probably same thing with OpenGov. OpenGov's in a really strong spot. I also had a record quarter recently. It's a, it's an amazing company. Uh, but yeah, I think, I, I think, I think in all these cases, I mean, Epris as well, amazing defense company, but there were some leadership choices we made in, in, in, in DC where we probably could have done things faster and better. And, and really Andrew really got some of those things right. And, and, and Epris is some of the most important technology in this space and now has a great business side as well, but it, But, but I think, I think, again, there's probably like, if you're not doing something full time, there's going to be things you miss. And I, I go back and forth on this because I'm able to get a lot of things going really well that are important that might not have …

AI assessment note: “could have been bigger, faster if we'd gotten some things right earlier on”

Q Can we turn back the clock on the severity and penetration of woke minds though? Is it not too far to turn back now?

A No, I think this is exactly, listen, I am, my podcast is called American Optimist. And, and I really am an optimist, but I'm also a realist. So we have to say, like, here is the mess we're facing, and now here is what we do. It turns out that these crazy radical ideologues are only a small percentage of our society. That small percent has managed to burrow itself in to a lot of departments at our universities, to the administrations at our universities. It's managed to burrow itself into, to a lot of, you know, parts of like marketing and HR at a lot of our big companies. Uh, but a lot of cases, it's not really the true believers. It's just that they're kind of scared everyone around them to going along with them because they aren't the majority. And so partly what we need to do here is we need to convince people to stand up, to be confident, to, to, to, to not let these people cancel us. And it's really up to institutions like our institutions going to let these people cancel people. And I think most of them don't want to, but it takes courage. It takes one person saying, no, this is ridiculous and being willing to stand up and be that leader. And others can say, yeah, I agree with him. That's ridiculous. Or I agree with her. That's ridiculous. So, I mean, the question is, do we have enough courageous people to lead us out of this? And I, and I, I think we can, by modeling thi…

AI assessment note: “these crazy radical ideologues are only a small percentage of our society”

Q One thing he was very vocal about was his concerns around China, and China's obviously never had such penetration into consumer audiences in America, from TikTok to Shine to Timu. Are you concerned by China's influence, and how would you approach it with its increasing strength?

A Yeah, I, I would force them to divest of Tik Tok. I think that, I think that's fine for Americans own Tik Tok. I think right now, China controls the Tik Tok algorithms. I don't care if the guy's based in Singapore, some of the data's here. It's very clear China controls algorithms that are able to brainwash tens of millions of our people. That's totally unacceptable. Listen, uh, Xi Jinping is a very problematic guy. You talk about Trump and Biden and all their issues. This Xi Jinping was like, basically like turned in by his mother. In his youth to, you know, to, to a, to this terrible government. I think he's saying poems with other Maoists, you know, as they were killing tens of millions of people, he was saying poems about hearting your heart to the destruction of America. Like this guy is a problem. He's, he's, he's a, he's, he's a wacky guy. He's very scary. Uh, China is by far our biggest threat to have that kind of dictatorship. A lot of people like to pretend that it's just like, oh, Americans are just being like nativist or hawkish or whatever. No, this, This guy was hiring a lot of his best and brightest to build military technology and is obsessed with, obsessed with us. And so, so I think China's a huge threat. Now that said, Harry, the Chinese people are amazing, right? And then this is, this is a really, again, this is a dialectic. On one hand, you have a crazy go…

AI assessment note: “I would force them to divest of Tik Tok.”

Q I'm so naive. And so forgive me for this. Does that not just create another generation of Of civilians who continue to hate Israel?

A Uh, I think basically what creates a generation of civilians that hate Israel is you have the schools in that area have been run by people who teach people that Jews are pigs and Jews are wrong and our religion hates Jews. And these are terrible people. And you have kindergartens where people are going in and practicing, showing how they're fighting and killing Jews. You have kids literally after the cross on October seventh, calling their mom and dad saying, I've killed 10 Jews, mom and dad, and celebrating it. So you have basically Effectively a death cult. And there's been a lot of death cults in history. There's been the Nazis. Uh, there's been some of the, what the Comanches did here. There's just been all sorts of these horrible death cults throughout history. We can go back and name a bunch more of them. And, and when you have these things, uh, it's very, very terrible and you can let them attack you and destroy you, or you can attack them and, and make sure to take out the bad guys amongst them. Now, are there going to be people there who are angry at Israel? Yes. The whole generation has been brainwashed. Like the whole generation has been brainwashed. There are some good ones, by the way, despite being brainwashed, people are people and they're smart. And you know, despite being brainwashed, they still deserve human dignity as much as possible. We do everything, we sh…

AI assessment note: “what creates a generation of civilians that hate Israel is you have the schools”

Q Can we turn back the clock on the severity and penetration of woke minds though? Is it not too far to turn back now?

A No, I think this is exactly, listen, I am, my podcast is called American Optimist. And, and I really am an optimist, but I'm also a realist. So we have to say, like, here is the mess we're facing, and now here is what we do. It turns out that these crazy radical ideologues are only a small percentage of our society. That small percent has managed to burrow itself in to a lot of departments at our universities, to the administrations at our universities. It's managed to burrow itself into, to a lot of, you know, parts of like marketing and HR at a lot of our big companies. Uh, but a lot of cases, it's not really the true believers. It's just that they're kind of scared everyone around them to going along with them because they aren't the majority. And so partly what we need to do here is we need to convince people to stand up, to be confident, to, to, to, to not let these people cancel us. And it's really up to institutions like our institutions going to let these people cancel people. And I think most of them don't want to, but it takes courage. It takes one person saying, no, this is ridiculous and being willing to stand up and be that leader. And others can say, yeah, I agree with him. That's ridiculous. Or I agree with her. That's ridiculous. So, I mean, the question is, do we have enough courageous people to lead us out of this? And I, and I, I think we can, by modeling thi…

AI assessment note: “No, I think this is exactly, listen, I am, my podcast is called American Optimist.”

Q How do you bring children up with hunger, ambition, hustle in a world where there is financial abundance? It's one of the hardest things is that Plenty wealthy parent.

A Yeah. You know, you got exposed to them, the challenges and the problems in the world. And listen, I wish we could do this. And here's like, I guess I'm kind of lucky in a sense that I have so many areas where I see gaps. Like, I think what makes a strong entrepreneur and a strong venture investor is you, is you see the gaps in the world and you, when you want to fix them, you see like, this is broken here, this is broken here. So there's just so many gaps in the world that we should be fixing and we're not. And if I had more resources, if I had more wealth, if I had more time, if I had more competent people, we could be fixing this. We'd be helping so many people. So I think for me, trying to expose them to these gaps, trying to expose them to the fact that if we do have resources, if we are gifted where we're gifted with, with a great mind or a great ability, it's our job to go run towards these gaps and try to fix them and hopefully share some of that passion. And I hope that I'll rub off and they'll want to do the same.

AI assessment note: “trying to expose them to these gaps, trying to expose them to the fact”