The Exchanges

Q Went to Harvard Business School, graduated debt free, got involved in the tech world, and you started your own fund in 2008 with three million dollars from friends and family, is that right?

A Correct. So, the journey really began in 99, 1999. I was hell-bent to get to Silicon Valley, like a lot of other students at, at that point in time. I had come out and met with some startup companies at the time. One that sticks in my mind is tell me. Another one was a little search engine called Google. Um, my classmate who became my wife decided we were going to stay in Boston. I'd met David Fialco and Joel Cutler. They were thinking about starting their own venture capital firm. Um, and I partnered up with them to help them launch their first business, which was a company called NLG. An early, uh, online travel company that we had sold to Barry Diller in 2001. I became the co-CEO of that business. Um, and so it was really helping them start GC starting that first company. We had two more companies. I started open list. We sold to a public company in Seattle room. 77 sold to Google, um, got back to the investing side of the business, knew I wanted to start my own business. And the idea really Um, was to build a crossover fund that was venture first based in Silicon Valley by a founder. Um, you know, that invested in kind of early venture all the way through the public markets. Um, and so that's what, you know, that's what drove me down that path.

AI assessment note: “Correct. So, the journey really began in 99, 1999.”

Q actually make it like two or three or four times as productive. That means you have businesses that are worth billions of dollars, where if you fix them, the margins go from 15% to 50, 60, 70%. Some of this stuff looks pretty interesting to us that could actually happen in the next few years. Are you, are you guys thinking about services businesses with AI or all that stuff?

A Absolutely. I mean, and by the way, I remember talking to you early in your, in your journey at Palantir. And you guys were way ahead of your time. Um, and Palantir is in many ways just coming into its own, right, in terms of the significant, um, you know, transformations that it can have on businesses leveraging AI. And so, I think that, you know, I was in Omaha recently having dinner, and you look at the Berkshire portfolio. Its entire portfolio is already being transformed with AI. This is not something that's going to be You know, discreetly preserved in the tech community, right? This is going to remake how United Airlines interacts with customers. It's going to remake how, you know, furniture manufacturers, uh, finish their goods in the US. So I think this is probably the single most important, um, step function we've seen in productivity in this country since the internet. So, and I can give you a couple examples on that.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. I mean, and by the way, I remember talking to you”

Q And just on the day trading for a second, because I think probably the average person shouldn't be day trading is my guess. Like, how do you figure out how to do that? Like, what was the, what was the theory at the time?

A Well, I, you know, I had a fascination in, in high school. I was already, you know, going in before school, pulling open the newspaper, plotting stocks. So, you know, mathematically inclined and had a orientation in this regard. And frankly, it was just my hack. It was my way of trying to figure out a way to make money. I can't say that intellectually I had done a lot of studying that this was a refined way, uh, to make money, but It seemed to me that I could study a company, I could study stock patterns, and I could figure out mispricings, and I have to say the first time I bought a stock, right, it was not the best reason for buying it, but I bought IBM, and they had just, ah, they had just, um, put a new CEO in charge, and the CEO's name was Lou Gerstner, and, um, And I, you know, no relation, but I was immediately, like, attracted to the fact that, okay, there's somebody whose name I recognize, and he was, um, you know, would eventually write the book Elephants Can Dance. Um, you know, and he really remade IBM, and at that point in time, um, they were kind of having their second, uh, second wave, and so made some money on that first stock. Um, and then I remember sitting in business school in 1999, I would sit in the back of the classroom because we had Bloomberg terminals outside of our classrooms, and so I could sneak out, pretend I was going to the restroom, and I could …

AI assessment note: “I could study a company, I could study stock patterns, and I could figure out mispricings”

Q We're on the exact same page. Well, I think this is a really compelling idea, Brad, and obviously you're eager to be helpful on this one. Hopefully we can get some of our listeners just to step up on it as well. Where can they find out more, by the way, about it?

A So, Twitter handle, Invest America 24, um, and, uh, we'll be launching more, I, you know, I, uh, follow my Twitter handle, add alt cap, um, you know, we, we've pushed out a few 15, 22nd spots that give you a sense of, kind of, where we're going to go in the campaigns, um, but we're gonna be pretty aggressive. We have lots of people who've indicated a willingness and a desire to get behind this financially. We've got greats, right, the greats of, of finance and investing who wanna spend their time and energy helping us build the, the, the financial literacy that's gonna go into middle schools and high schools, right, that are built, that's built around Invest America. This is, this is something that really can unite us as a country, unite Democrats and Republicans around a cause that we all believe in, which is American democracy supported by free market capitalism.

AI assessment note: “Twitter handle, Invest America 24, um, and, uh, we'll be launching more”