Balaji Srinivasan
Founder, The Network School · 1 appearance on the record.
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founderinvestorauthorexecutiveengineer@balajis ↗balajis.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Balaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur, investor, and author who previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase and a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Counsyl and Earn.com and currently leads The Network School.
60statements → 14claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.85/5average certainty → 2.7/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 73said about them ↓
3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 10 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
10 predictions · 4 assertions · 10 opinions · 27 insights · 9 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 10 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Balaji argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Balaji Srinivasan on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Balaji Srinivasan said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Srinivasan: Crypto will replace Yale Law, Columbia Journalism, and Kennedy School
“Crypto is not just, you know, the next wall street. It's also the next Silicon Valley because decentralized social networks and so on are built there, but even less, obviously it's the next Yale law and Columbia school of journalism and Kennedy school of gover…”
Balaji: The woke movement and CCP are driving a counterattack for conformity
“What I think we have now is a strong counterattack in favor of conformity by both, you know, kind of like the woke contingent and like, you know, CCP.”
Srinivasan: Very few pre-internet institutions will survive the internet
“I think very few institutions that predated the internet will survive the internet in the fullness of time.”
Balaji: On-chain skill badges will destroy the college diploma
“Now, why that kind of thing is important is it totally destroys the concept of a college diploma. The reason being college diploma is a very, very coarse grained you know, kind of illustration of somebody's skills.”
Balaji: Craig Newmark neutralized hostile media coverage with journalism grants
“Craig Newmark effectively bought them off with the Newmark foundation stuff with a lot of grants for journalism”
Balaji: Cryptography will displace corporate media as the font of truth
“And that is actually a very powerful thing where we start to actually displace a corporate media corporation as the font of truth with cryptography instead.”
Balaji: Founding a startup in San Francisco is like choosing Java
“Somebody who's choosing San Francisco for a startup, I crinkle my eyebrows as, you know, I mentioned it before, before the pandemic, I said it was like choosing Java, you know, proven, but kind of sucks. And it's like, okay, you don't know new languages and, y…”
Balaji: Effective altruism misses that people feel guilt if they haven't built
“The effective altruism people miss one very important thing, which is that it is the production by people of goods that actually makes them feel that they deserve things.
Like if you haven't built, you feel guilt.”
Balaji: All finance will become crypto
“With CS and stats, by the way, you can understand finance, because it's crypto, or it'll all become crypto.”
Balaji: The FDA is the primary global bottleneck for medical innovation
“Basically the FDA is like the primary blocker of like medical innovation, not just in the US, but in the world.”
Balaji: The FDA cannot be abolished, but it can be exited via parallel systems
“I don't believe that one can abolish the FDA any more than one can abolish the Fed, but I do think you can exit the FDA like we exited the Fed.”
Balaji: Early social networks became zero-sum status games without crypto value transfer
“Social networks were invented and scaled 10 years, seven years ish before cryptocurrency. And so because of that you could only transfer status online And not value. And what that means is that everything basically boiled down to status games, leaderboard, wha…”
Balaji: Media scripts humans just as code scripts machines
“Media scripts humans just as code scripts machines, right?”
Balaji: Crypto and ENS names will be third top communication channel in 5-10 years
“I do think that within five to 10 years, in addition to email and text message, your ENS name will become probably the, ENS name, or let's say crypto name, will become the third most popular communication channel.”
Balaji: Tech is roughly 30 points more diverse than media outlets
“And I put up a prize and he actually went and did this analysis and it shows that actually tech is like 30 points more diverse than the media outlets that constantly give tech shit about this.”
Balaji: Most value will be created online and printed via robotics this decade
“What I think is going to happen is most of the value will be created online
and you'll print it out by essentially invoking robotics. And I think that's the next, you know, this decade, we're going to see more and more of that.”
Balaji: 2020s will bring startup cities and 2030s network states
“I think it's a 20 year project, and you know, basically my one liner on this is, 2000 were the tech companies, 20 tens, crypto protocols, 20 twenties, startup cities, 20 thirties, network states. Okay. So, company, protocol, city, state. I think that's where w…”
Balaji: Startup Cities in 2021 Are the Analog of 2010 Bitcoin
“Obviously when I said 2000, tech companies, 20 tens, crypto protocols, 20, 20 startup cities, 20 thirties, network states, that's sort of when that exponential starts, right? What is the analog of Bitcoin in 2010? It's startup cities in 2021.”
Balaji: Interviewed for Senior FDA Role and Turned Down No. 2 Position
“I mean, or rather I was interviewed for a very senior role. And I probably could have been At least number two that was on the table. But I chose not to, I mean, it's now a few years later.”
Balaji: Regulators focus on PR risk over the unseen harm of delayed treatments
“If you are rejecting good drugs or good vaccines or good tests, you are potentially doing as much or even more damage than bad one, than approving bad ones, and people are only focused on the PR downside of approving a bad thing and not on the unseen of not ap…”
Balaji: Bitcoin and mathematical economics defeated traditional Nobel laureate economists
“Scientific economics has been defeated by mathematical economics that say all these Nobel laureates, winners of the Nobel prize in economic sciences, all went and denounced Bitcoin in different ways. It can't work. It won't work. It shouldn't work. It should b…”
Balaji: Major social networks offer almost zero creator monetization
“There's zero creator monetization for the most part in these major social networks. I'm not saying, okay, not totally zero. You can put link in bio at Instagram and there's some stuff, but it has lagged, right?”
Balaji: Media prioritizes writers over engineers, while tech does the opposite
“On the East coast, for example, media, media businesses have sort of software engineers as a second class citizen, right? They're just guys who build the app and the writers are kind of the first class, right? Traditionally in tech, it's been the opposite. You…”
The other half of the tape: Balaji Srinivasan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 67 times in 28 episodes on My First Million. 6 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shaan Puri 37Sam Parr 16Codie Sanchez 5George Mack 3Dharmesh Shah 2Saagar Enjeti 1Mike Maples 1Anthony Pompliano 1
Statements about Balaji Srinivasan, by other people (6)
Puri: Taylor Lorenz builds brand by picking Twitter fights with tech founders
“Her brand of self-promoting herself as a journalist is confrontation. She gets in confrontations with Keith Raboi, with Balaji, with Naval, with whoever, right? She just goes and picks fights on Twitter with Marc Andreessen. And so she goes to the biggest name…”
Shah: The odds of Balaji's $1M Bitcoin bet hitting are very low
“If I were a betting person, I would not bet that the odds are what do you think they are? Could happen, but nowhere near the probability that that he's suggesting.”
Parr: Being Slightly Above Average IQ Is Optimal for Execution
“You know, for the longest time, I actually thought that the lower your IQ, like you want your IQ to be just above average, but not really high, because the really smart people I meet other than him, they typically talk themselves out of anything. And so anyway…”
Shah: Balaji Srinivasan has top-five raw intellectual horsepower
“He's like quite nearly one of the top five people I've ever encountered, like even on the internet in terms of raw, you know, what I call wattage, just raw horsepower. And he, he's like an AI unto himself, right? Like just the knowledge that he has.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2025 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2023 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
2022 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- How I Sold My Company To PayPal For $800 Million | Bryan Johnson (#388)
- Kevin Rose: His $100M/Year Watch Blog, Money From Digg.com, & Web3 Business (#382)
- From Flipping iPhones To Selling Oculus For $2 Billion To Facebook | Palmer Luckey (#378)
- How To Get Started With Building An Audience in 2022 (#373)
- This Guy Went From $0 to Billionaire By Starting A Toy Factory In China (#372)
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 43 mentions in 15 episodes 3 per episode
- How to Buy Distressed Assets, How to Network with Codie Sanchez | My First Million Ep. #176
- 4 Big Trends and $0 to $1 Billion Startup Idea Frameworks | My First Million #191
- How to Make Millions With a Modern Day Infomercial | My First Million #221
- The Next Big Social Media Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us Why.
- How Virtual Horses are Making Millions & A Potential 9-Figure Company | My First Million #181
- MFM #169: How One Man Has Built 5, Billion Dollar Companies
- Frameworks to Become a Billionaire with HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah | My First Million #197
- A Discussion on Sam & Shaan's Recent Investments | My First Million #195
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2021 →
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Communities & Crypto | MFM #178 | May 5, 2021 | 1h 47m |