How Silicon Valley’s Most Prolific Investor Picks Unicorns | Elad Gil Interview
00:00Today we were sitting down with one of the smartest people that's ever been on this podcast.His name is Elad Gill, and he is a prolific angel investor.He's a guy who is invested in something like 40-plus billion-dollar companies all at very early stages,like Airbnb, Airtable, Andrewill, Retool, Rippling, companies that we've all heard of down in the tech space.He was an entrepreneur.He got acquired by Twitter.He was on the first 100 employees at Twitter.He was early at Google, and he's been very early to waves.
00:28He was doing longevity before longevity was cool.He was doing AI investing before GPT came out.So we love talking to people who are like this that are both very brilliant, very accomplished,and seem to be skating where the puck is going.They sort of know what's coming around the corner and they've proven that in their career.So we talked to him about how he's been such a good investor,what he's looked for in his approach and how it's pretty different than most investors.We talked about his ideas, so things he wants to see built and projects he's working on right now.
00:55And then a little bit of life advice at the end where he left uswith kind of an amazing tidbit or a nugget about what's made him such an interesting person.So, enjoy this episode with Gilag Gil.I feel like I can rule the world.I know I could be what I want to.I put my all in it like no days off.On the road,let's travel never looking back.
01:14The intro for you is basically you're a super angel investor.You've invested in a bunch of companies.I think you have something like 40 plus unicorns of the portfolio.And impressively, at least 20 or 30,them were very early stage. So seed stayed, series A, pre-seed, somewhere there. That's wild.As somebody who's invested in, I don't know, 100 companies myself, I look at what you've done there,and that is prolific. And so, first question, it's like, you know, there's a block of wood and I don'treally know how to hack, how to chop into this. I'm just going to swing one blunt swing here.
01:48How the heck are you doing this? Why, how have you had this success in angel investing?Yeah, I mean, I guess it's probably two or three things. Number one, I think I was just lucky,So I think I started investing in a good time when there was a lot to still be done in SaaS and consumer in a variety of areas.Now, obviously, it's also true in AI.I think secondly, I tend to take more of a market-first approach than most early-stage people.I focus on the market and product market more than the founders.And obviously, founders are incredibly important.I started two companies myself.
02:17So I hope that founders are incredibly important.But I also think that what you're actually building and which market for who matters a lot.and I've seen great people crushed by terrible marketsand I've seen reasonably mediocre people do really well.And then lastly, I think I really try to follow the technologyand the changes that are happening in technology.And so I got involved with a lot of generative AI companies quite early,you know, perplexity and Harvey and things like that,
02:41simply because I was really keen on generative AI and sort of ML-related stuffas I started investing in all those things three years agobefore ChatGAPT was out and before mid-juryand before these things really became a trend.And so I think sometimes you end up earlyin some really important areas simply becauseyou're kind of technology firstor market change first.
03:00Were you just doing your own money at first,or did you have a fun from the get-go?Now, initially I was just investing my own moneyand then I ran out pretty fast.I hadn't made that much money at Google,and I invested almost all of it.I invested like over 50% of it.And so I just started running out.
03:16What does that mean running out?Like, I guess you initially had a wealthfrom selling your business, I guess.And then you just put allit into private companies? How much do you have left?I put a huge amount of my own money into private companies, yeah.So, you know, one of my big regrets is somebody ping me on the SpaceX round when it waslike a $500 million company and I really was excited about it. I thought it was such a interesting game.
03:41And I didn't have enough money for the minimum that they had as check sizes.And so what did you do? Because, you know, I had that point early in Silicon Valley where I initiallyhad no money. So I was like, I was helping friends. I was like, man, I can't believe people aren'tinvesting in this. But I myself didn't even look at myself like an investor because I just didn't havea bankroll. Then I realized, wait, that's stupid. I got to think like a founder here and getresourceful and figure out how to get money to invest in these companies. So where did you go onceyou deployed your own capital? Where'd you go to get the money right away? Yeah, you know,I started effectively raising small sort of what are known as SPVs and then that morphed into funds.
04:21And now I kind of have a tiramisu cake of different things where there's like different layersthat I can do in terms of personal investments, fund investments, you know, very, verylarge things would be fun plus SPV. So for example, I led Anderil Series D or I co-led the lasttwo rounds for applied intuition or I've led rounds for all sorts of companies at this point.How many other, are there any other partners at your like shop basically or are you the guy?You know, I've recently hired a few people to kind of help me in different ways. I think fundamentallywhat I want to do is continue to build things, work on things, think about technology.like just take, I would call it almost like the anti-BC approach and be builder first.
05:02And so there's a lot of side projects that I or me and my team are now working on.You know, we're working, for example, Shrain's helping me with,we're trying to take the thousand most important books that are off of copyrightand translate them into dozens of languages using AIand then create audiobooks off of all of them so people can download the great works.of history from anywhere in the world in any language.We're doing stuff like that.And so that also forces us to really use different AI tools.
05:35And let's look at 11 versus Cartesian versus, you know, open AI.And how do you actually translate a long-form book with high consistency and how do you chew that?Are you doing that because you're like, this could be a business?Or are you doing that because you're thinking to yourself, just this is an interesting project.And in doing this, I will discover interesting things.I'm just doing because I think it's like cool and societally useful.I mean, like, there's multiple aspects of why to work on something like this.And I think it's a little bit less short term and more like this seems useful and interesting.
06:09But were you always that way?Because like I just recent, I'm, I guess I'm, I can say I'm financially secure.And it took a few years before I just recently started feeling like I want to do blank because it's cool.I don't really care necessarily if it's good for the world.But it seems like you have.a little bit of that mindset of like, this is good for the world. Are you wealthy and successful becauseyou always had that attitude? Or do you have that attitude now because you have security? Do you know what I mean?I've always been that way. And so, you know, I started off, you know, I did degrees in math and biology
06:43and I did a PhD in biology because I thought it was societally useful. Like, you're not going to make moneyas a PhD in biology, you know, unless something magic happens. And so my driver has always beenwhat is useful societally. I think the one other thing I'd say about it is,It forces you to go deeper than people tend to go on some of these things that they're justkind of, oh, this is an interesting investment or whatever. I think you actually go to that nextextra level of depth and using things hands-on and all the rest of it that I think also mattersjust in terms of gaining real intuition for certain things. And I don't think you need to be apractitioner of everything to understand the thing that you're a practitioner of. But I just think
07:18it, in some cases, it can help a lot or it really allows you to hone in on what's important.and that's true of many businesses.Usually most businesses have one or two thingsthat are the fundamental aspect of that business that mattersand everything else is just noise or check the box or whatever.And I think that where people tend to sometimeseither start their wrong things as foundersor invest in the wrong things as investors
07:40as they get too wrapped upand what are the five things that matter for this businessand usually there's one, maybe two.What's an example of like,I'm not sure which industry you care about most,but what's an example of one of these things?things where people care about five things, but you're like, no, this is the only thing thatmatters. Well, I mean, I guess early on with Stripe, their one insight was how do we just get
08:03every developer using this product? We're not going to worry about mid-market and enterprise. We'renot going to worry about and other things. How do we get every early-stage technology company thatmatters on us? That sounds great. When you tell that story, I'm like, yeah, I'm on board with that,but I own a business now. And it's really hard to come up with that insight. I think it's hard,but I think the flip of it is that's usually the key question.And again, different types of businesses may have that characteristic or not, right?And so sometimes it's two things or, you know, some complex businesses that may have more.You know, an invested in Anderall, there was a very clear, there was kind of like five things I thought.
08:39A next-gen defense tech company had to do in order to become a prime, which is, you know,one of the really big companies in the market.And I thought without it, you're just not going to make it.And so sometimes it's more complicated.But I think I think 90% of the time plus it boils down to, you know,one era of belief or maybe one thing that you just need to see happen in the business to believe thateverything else will fall into place. It's also like it's also hard now but easy later, right?If it's hard to figure out what the one thing is, okay, you take some upfront difficulty to
09:05sort of make a bet or to figure that out. But then from there on out, your operating philosophy canbe a lot simpler because you're now Stripe, you know who you're focused on, you know who you'recatering to it. You don't have to have these like devout, the decision tree becomes very,very simple later if you did the hard thing. And it evolves over time, right? The complexity ofthese businesses often comes later as it become multi-product and international and, you know,all the rest of it. And that's normal. It's just early on, usually there's a key insight that drives it.You said you invest in markets. And Andrel, when it was first started, most people still don't haveany idea about that industry. When you're trying to, like, master a topic like that, what is your
09:44process? Yeah, with Anderall, you know, the main reason I got interested in defense tech was becausethe big tech companies were running away from it, right? Google had shut down Maven.And I was like, well, of course we're going to need national defense.Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, like, of course, you know, like, you want to protect Western values.There's conflict in the world.There's bad actors.But to push back on that, I'd be like, yeah, but there's like, I'm ignorant to the industry,which is why it's easy for me to push back.
10:07I would say, yeah, but there's like 10 other companies in that space.You know, they got it covered.Like, how do you learn enough to know that there's like an interesting opportunity?Yeah.I mean, I guess it's a bunch of stuff.One is obviously you just read what you can, right?Two is, in some cases, you look at market structure and growth rates and that kind of stuff.Third is, you look at technology shifts.
10:28I want to break down on that.What's your resource for the second one?We just go and do the work.I mean, you look at what are the companies?Obviously, there's like analyst reports and market research and all that stuff.But you can also just ask, okay, how many players are in the market?Is it consolidating or not?What's the growth rate on it?
10:44What is the margin structure and the approach that they're taking as a business, right?So for example, the traditional defense tech companies are what are known as cost plus,which means if you have a million dollar drone, they charge 5%.So they can't make more than 5% margins.They make 50 can a drone.You can sell 10 better drones for a million dollars.You make 50% margin, which is traditional hardware margin.You make 10 times the margin dollars.
11:08And so one of the things that people don't appreciate about andrail as a business is it'sa market cap expansion in the defense world because you have a higher margin,and hire-leverage business, right?And so you need a different business model,which they've come up with.There's just a bunch of stuff like that, right?How early did you invest in Andrew?I think you were like the first round.
11:28It was just the founders, yeah.And so was it, do you hear Palmer talking about this?Then you go research the market?Or had you just independently been curious about this market?No, it's back to what I was saying earlier,which is Google shut down Maven.And I was like, oh my God,the big tech companies are running away from this.
11:43What a wonderful opportunity for a startup.And so I actually called one of the people at Google that I knew who was working on Google Cloud,which the Maven team was part of at the time.And I said, hey, did all the people who wanted to do Maven quit in protests?And he was like, no, no, no.It was all the people who were against Maven who quit.The rest of the people are still here.It was like, okay, where do I find somebody who wants to work on this?
12:05And so I just started poking around.And I met, I ran into Tray at something.And we started talking, and he mentioned he was working on it.I got super excited about it.So I invested in their first round.are they kind enough to let me invest in their first round, I should say.That's way more impressive than meeting Palmer.The fact that you came to that a similar,
12:22you guys were sniffing around the same stuff independently.That's pretty impressive.Well, yeah, but I'm also,the best people I get to interact with,they sort of have the same laid back approach as you,which is just like, I don't know,I just kind of do the work.I think I was fortunate, blah, blah, blah.
12:37Then you start to peel back layers and you're like,oh, so this thing you called luck was actually,I read that Maven story too.I didn't think to myself,wow, what a wonderful opportunity.I just moved on with my life, right?So, you know,I don't know if you've read the four levels of luck thing,
12:52but I think number two or three is luck favors the prepared mind,meaning because you know what you're looking for,you can actually spot luck when it presents itself,whereas the average person might see that same thingand not understand what they're looking at.And so when you saw that Maven story,you saw the opportunity that, wow,if the big technology players are running away from defense, this huge category,
13:14that means there's an opportunity for a new technology company in defense.And so what I find fascinating is peeling that back and actually understanding,like, wow, that was incredibly intentional.And I get what you're saying that not every one of those rabbit holes you go downleads to an antural seed round.But the fact that it ever did is remarkable because that's like a career making,you know, single investment even, let alone the other 40 that you did like that.I also want to go back to like, you said something about, you know, market first.
13:42And there's that great quote, like when a great entrepreneur meets a bad market,only one of them keeps their reputation.Okay, the bad market.And so how, what's another example from your portfolio that you can think of that drives homethis kind of like market first, where the market first approach led you to do somethingthat worked out?You know, I did a lot of crypto investing in like 2017-ish, 2016 through 2018.And that was because there was such an obvious C-Change from an adoption and sort of technology basis there.
14:15You know, the AI stuff is another one.You know, all the AI companies I invested in was a little bit like, hey, the market's shifting, the technology is shifting.The flip side of it is there's lots of things that I invested in that only in hindsight could I come up with a theme, right?I invested in Notion, Airtable, and Retool within, I don't know, two years of each other, whatever the time frame was.But at the time, there was no low-code, no-code kind of thesis.it was just these are really interesting founders working in interesting areas.And so in hindsight, there was a market, or at least there was a trend.But at the time, it was just like, these are smart people working on good stuff.
14:46And so it's a little bit of that.How do you balance both of those perspectives?And sometimes your thesis-driven and sometimes you're just like, you know what?The thousands of great founders out there working on ideas are going to come up with better ones than I am.And so, you know, let's have an open mind on everything.I think it was on the information or something like that.they talked about how you had just raised like a billion dollarsand that you famously didn't have any employees.
15:13And Sam Altman has this, or I don't know who said it.I thought it was Sam Altman where he said something likea one or two person billion dollar companyis going to be a thing now because of AI.But that's kind of what you've already done.You know, it already existed before that.Minecraft was like, I don't know what, three people when Microsoft bought it.But that's sort of like what you're doing.
15:32Like you've got a pretty huge business.with two or three or however many people you haveor up until recently, I think,according to these articles, you had like two people.I mean, I think there's a long history of this kind of stuff.And if you look at the world's biggest hedge fundsor you look at a lot of later stage firms,they tend to have that structure, right?
15:52And so if you look at a traditional investment firm,there's usually one or two peoplewho do most of the good investments.I think in general,there's this odd collapsing down to a handful of peoplein many types of endeavors.but the reality is there have been multiple businesses that have hit enormous scale that have been quite small.And I think Minecraft is really a canonical example of that.
16:13But again, there's also the need to go big sometimes, right?Sometimes you want to win the market and you should hire a ton of people.And so I think the future of two-person companies, at least in the medium term, is very overstated.I think AI is largely going to be business as usual and certain types of teams are going to shrink a lot.I'm an investor in a company called Decagon, for example, that's working on the customer success.side. And that's an area where I think there'll be enormous leverage to existing customersuccess reps. But probably there's an overall shrinkage in that industry if you look at things likewhat Klarna announced around their use of AI and customer success, right? So I think certain teams
16:48will get impacted first versus others through AI. I think the two-person AI company is largely in thefuture, but there are historical precedents of this happening before AI, right?do you measureI mean obviously you measurebut I guess likewhat is the metricthat you keep track offor your own investing
17:08so like you knowat the top of thiswe talked aboutyou knowa number of unicornsbut you knowyou can look at IRRyou can look at your DPI
17:15you canyou know I did a deep diveon YC the other dayand there's like someinsane numberI'm going to butcher itbecause I don't have itright in front of me
17:22but like SamI don't know if you knowthis but likethe first 10 yearsof YCthey basically turnedlike something like$12 million
17:29intolike $10 billion of value from themselvesbecause they were writing super small checks early onand getting basically like...Was 7%?7%, but even diluted down like Airbnb's, the drop boxes,even just the top five companies,let's say they net own like 2% of these when they go public.
17:49I mean, they basically had a 320x on their moneyin that first decade.And then a lot of people now think that they're, you know,maybe have they've sort of lost their touchor the batch size are too big or the valuation is too highand actually their hit rate has gone up,even as the batch has gone up. It's pretty wild.Eli, do you have a metric that you look at
18:08that you're proud of that that's the main metric for you,how you've done in terms of the actual money and money out?You know, the most important thing to me,and obviously, you know, I want to be a fiduciary for other people's money.A lot of my own money is in the funds I invest, etc.So obviously there's a financial return aspect of it,but to me the most important things are probably twofold.one is making sure that founders view me
18:34as a useful and positive resourceand two is being involved with the most important technologiesand technology companies in the worldbecause I think that's how you drive societal impact.So I view technology as a lever on the world, right?I'm not an angel investor, but you're such a hard person to compete againstbecause you're like, you just,it's very strange that you're an investor because you don't seem like your money motivated.
19:08You know what I mean?And that's a really challenging person to compete against because that's the type of personwho wins in a lot of stuff.It's the one who's not actually caring about the money,but who's caring about missionary versus mercenary type of vibe.Do you know what I mean?Yeah, I know what you mean.I think Naval has a great framework on this because, you know, John Dorr used to ask,
19:25you know, are you a missionary or mercenary to founders in the 90s?And of course, you have to say I'm a missionary, right?Like, how could you possibly say you're a mercenary?And Naval's dream work is like, well, of course early in your career,you're at least partially a mercenary.Otherwise, you're never going to find the opportunity and go in it.And then later in your life, you're a missionary, right?You're not zero sum.
19:44You're trying to do things for the greater good.And then once you've made it in your career, you should become an artist.You should be doing it for the love of the craft.And now for each person, there's a different mix of that over time.And I think, you know, for me, the motivator is very much,technology is a lever on the world. That's why I was trying to do biology. That's why I detect.It's like, how do you do the important things in the world? Now, if you're working on themost important problems in the world with the best people, then probably you end up with a good
20:13financial return because you're in the middle of the stuff that matters, right? But that doesn'thave to be the motivating goal. And that's why sometimes, I don't know if you've ever sat at a dinner,which is all BCs, it's like really boring because you're surrounded by at least asubset of people who are very money-driven.And the conversation, I'll give you an example.One time I was sitting at a friend's wedding dinner, and I just happened to get seatedat a table where a lot of the other people were his board, which meant a lot of investors.And I sat next to somebody from a well-loan firm, and I said, hey, what are you interested in
20:52these days?And you said, crypto.And I said, oh, great, we can talk about distributed consensus and trustless systems andcensorship resilient products.and all the stuff.And I said, that's great.Like, what are you excited about in crypto?And he looks me in the eyes and he says,
21:06you can make a fucking lot of money at it.I was like, ha, I thought he was joking, right?I started laughing.I'm like, oh, that's so funny.No, seriously.He's like, no, that's it.That's not a really interesting conversation.Well, one of the things I liked is that on your website,
21:22you publish some ideas that you're interested in or you're working on right nowor you want people to come help you pull off.I'd love if we could rip through a couple of these.Let's start with one that caught my eye.He said, I want to do a new chain of K through 12 schools inspired by ancient Greece.What's that all about?Yeah, I mean, I think fundamentally, anybody who has kids realizes that, you know,there may be certain aspects of the education system that are emphasized and deemphasized.
21:51And it feels like there's four or five things that are really useful for kids to learn.and I think it would be great to try and help establish something that could be used broadly across, you know, cities or regions across the country that would really focus on some of those basic aspects of learning.What do the ancient Greeks do? What do the ancient Greeks have to do with this?I just use as an example. Really, what you need to find is what is the framework that you're going to use to apply so that you have some compass and consistency.and there's a certain emphasis on reasoning and logic and thinking and discourse and debate that I think was resident in that time.There's an emphasis on mathematics.There's an emphasis on writing.There's an emphasis on trying basic forms of understanding.
22:35You know, that's when you had Archimedes and lovers, and that's when you had really interesting mathematics emerge.And that's when you had great philosophical treaties written.So, you know, I think there's a lot of...That's also when you focus a lot on beauty and art.There's a lot of emphasis on the physical and being physically fit and resilient.So there's a lot of stuff there now.I remember when I lived in SF from 12 to 20,and I think there was a handful of schools that were started for elementary kids.
23:12It was alt school, one of them?And was there a wonder school?Does that ring a bell?Those were more kind of like, hey, we're going to use technology, etc.I don't think there's any need for technology.I think you just need a couple of good teachers in like a reasonable curriculum.And so, again, I think it's not that I'm not trying to reinvent the school system.I just think you could go back to certain types of basics.
23:36It's interesting.There's a school in San Francisco called Proof School, which I think is fascinating.I think their line or motto is like for kids who love math.And I have a very strong emphasis on mathematics in their curriculum.And, you know, kids are doing machine learning and like,10th or 11th grade.And, you know, I find things like that kind of inspiring where they're like, okay,we're going to take a different lens on it.
23:56And our lens is just kids who love math and let's find out what's the right curriculumfor those kids.And maybe some of the early literature classes emphasize sci-fi because there's the typesof books they like.And maybe the history we focus on is XYZ versus something else.And so I just think that's a good example of like a really smart approach to schooling.There's a variety of people who've done these differentiated.approaches. What's your plan with this school thing? You're looking for kind of an entrepreneur
24:24to spearhead it? What are you looking for? Yeah, I need somebody to spearhead it. I thinktraditionally there's this directly responsible individual or DRI problem, right? It's really easyto come up with ideas. And then usually you need help executing them. And so, you know,it's something that'd be happy to sponsor. But I really would need to find somebody who can drivethat sort of thing day to day. You know, my kids are very happy in the schools that they're currentlyin, so it's more just something that I think would besocietally useful to do more broadly.And then, especially if you can do it as a chain,
24:55then you end up with some sort of consistencyand the ability to bring it to differentpopulations that may not have access to this sort of schoolingand other things. And so I think there's a really interestingproject to be had there.Well, other ideas, Sean, did you have listed there?There's one cool one. You said youI think got a PhD in biology and you
25:11talked about longevity. You've looked into a lot oflongevity. You funded clinical trials.And you said something that I wascurious about. You said there's some exciting things that are going on in longevity. You've mentioned acompany called BioAge and how they have a new drug for muscle. Okay, you have my attention. What isthe new drug for muscle? And generally, what's exciting to you about that space? Yeah, I mean,BioAge is a company that just went public and is in their quiet period. So there probablyisn't a town, I should say about them. I was an early investor there and a board observer.
25:38And I think I was the first investor in that company, actually. The CEO is this really exceptional.PhD and postdoc. I think she did her postdoc at Stanford and bioc computation.aging. And, you know, they now have different drugs and different phases of clinical trialsor preclinical work and all that should be in their S-1 and in their public financial materialsthat I'd encourage people to go look at. But in general, I think that aging is an area that's beendramatically under-invested in. And part of that is because of the structure of Big Pharma. And, you know,that industry tends to have very old companies, right, sort of driving the agenda, which has itsown implications and then obviously it's highly regulated. But also if you just look at it,
26:20for example, the National Institutes for Aging, which is a very small budget relative to the NCI forcancer or other parts of the NIH. And most of that budget just goes to Alzheimer's. And so actualfundamental research into aging is quite sparse. We know that aging is a developmental program thatcan be perturbed. I actually worked on that from my PhD. I worked at the intersection of aging,longevity, cancer, and insulin. There's certain evolutionarily can serve pathways.that if you tweak them, you end up with organisms that will live a lot longer, right?You can knock out a gene in C. elegance. It lives two, three times longer, for example, as a healthyadult. And we know that there's drugs that do that in mice, etc. or genes that do that in mice,
26:58which means you can do drugs. I like how you're saying we know, as if me or Sam know anything.We don't know this. You, you smart PhD people know this. And can you explain it layman from what youjust said? You said there's like, we know that every time he talks. He'll say like a sentenceand there's like five things,and I'm like, wait, what?Yeah, five tabs need to open in my browser.Yeah.It's okay, C. elegans, they're living two X longer.
27:20You said that aging is a something-driven thing.I was just a developmental program.So basically, there's a few different theories of aging.One of the theories of aging is you justaccumulate a bunch of damage over time and systems break because of that damage.Mechanical damage type of thing.It's just mechanical damage.You get hit by sunlight and UV and whatever.
27:41And then there's another view.of aging, which is this more almost like a developmental program that's regulated by signals in your body,just as, you know, when you go from a baby to a child to an adult or whatever, that's just a developmentalprogram. And if you look at different organisms, different organisms will have different clocks for aging,right? And so why can turtles live so long or why do certain animals die so young? Right. And you're like,it's just a developmental program. They have a set lifespan that's genetically defined. And why would that be thecase? Like, why would we have an off button?You know, there's all these theories, and who knows?
28:16I mean, I don't, I'm, you know, I don't know.There's theories, but I don't know which theory is right.And the other piece of information that we have is that we know that there's certaindrugs that will extend lifespan and multiple organisms.You take a drug and, or you give a drug to something and that lives longer.Rapa mice are to be an example where in mice will live 10 to 30% longer based onand actually they're sex, right?So female mice, I think, will live longer than male mice on rapamycin.
28:46And then there's knockouts that you can do in genes.And if you knock out a gene or certain organisms will live a lot longer.And that means that you can develop a drug for it, right?That's how the drug industry works.You can do a drug that mimics a gene knockout or a gene upregulation and you end up with the same effect.And so we know that you can make things live much longer.And there is very little being done in people around that.And so the question is why, right?
29:12And imagine if you had another 30 or 40 or 50 healthy years.And when you say the question is why, what's the answer?Is it that it's not funded enough?It's not safe enough.There's some other commercial disincentive for it.Yeah, three things.It's not funded enough for all sorts of reasons.Second is from a regulatory framework perspective, until very recently, the FDA did not have a good definition of what it means to build an aging drug, right?
29:40Because in general, this sort of point three in the broader medical world, aging is not considered a disease.It's considered a natural state.And so why would you develop a drug against a natural state?And so there's a company called Loyal, which is doing aging and dogs.And they actually defined a series of endpoints.Is that Kevin Rose, invested in?I think he talked to us about it.That's like my favorite longevity company.
30:07It's like, yeah, forget the humans.Let's say, like, I'm all about it.Let's save the dogs.I think it's both going to have an easier regulatory pathway,but also good for society.Sure.My dog living longer, I support nothing more than that.What have they found?
30:24Is that working?I haven't kept up with the actual science of the company.Yeah, I don't know.I'm not an investor, though.I think the founder is quite good.I just haven't been involved there.As I mentioned, one of the main things I've been involved with in that there is a companycalled BioAge, which, again, just went public.
30:39and there's all sorts of information there in the public domainknow about them that is worth looking up.You know, what was that crazy quote?It was like, what Silicon Valley nerdy people are doing for fun?That's like what everyone else is going to do in the next 10 or 15 years or something like that.What the nerds do on the weekends?I hope not because there's going to be a lot of veganism, which sounds awful.Well, that's what I was going to ask you, which is like, you kind of fit that stereotype.
31:05You have a lot of resources and you're in the know with a lot of like interesting new things.Are you taking any interesting pharmaceuticals?Are you doing metformin?What do you think is interesting right nowthat you think will be a little bit more popularin two, three, four, five years?Yeah, the honest answer is, I don't know.I've tried to stay away from taking anything chronically
31:23unless I think it would have a huge impact.And so far, there isn't anything in the marketthat would really map to that.You know, a lot of it honestly is like,do you exercise, do you sleep, do you eat well?You know, there's reasonably good dataaround rapamycin that people should worktheir doctor on and sort of figure out of it.
31:41But you're not.Now, yeah, I haven't done anything there.So again, I've tried to ask, let me wait until there's something that I feel is bigenough impact.Some people, for example, in the aging community, will take a certain subclass of statinsfor heart disease and neuro, and then they'll take, I think a subset was taking some babyaspirin similarly for heart disease.So there's some people who've done some things that, again, you should talk to your doctor
32:08about if you want to consider stuff like that.I haven't done anything like that because I just don't want to take things every day.When Sam says that quote about what the nerds are doing on the weekendsand what they're tinkering within their spare time is what we'll all be doing 10 years from now.Yeah, I'm just going to come straight to hardcore gene therapy.So I'm just going to, I'm just kidding.I'm going to CRISPR my genome.But are you kidding?
32:33I mean, it sounds pretty cool.I am kidding, yeah.Yeah, I think a lot of that stuff feels very premature to me.There are some people doing self-expermentation like that in the public domain.I just don't know that some of those things will work.It's kind of interesting because I feel like when people talk about gene delivery,there's like three or four aspects of it that matter.And everybody focuses now as sort of the CRISPR side of it,
32:53which is can you modify a gene in a cell versus can you target it to the right cells?Well, your immune system target those cells and turn it off.Like there's all this other stuff that can you hit enough cells for it to matter.There's all this other stuff that traditionally have been the real issues of gene therapythat aren't being addressed as effectively as sort of,Chris Burkesto.You've been interested in longevity earlier than I would say, like, this current kind of waveof interest.
33:21You know, I think you, not only did you study it in school, you saw on your site, yousaid you personally identified a gene that's involved in a lifespan.You funded your own clinical trial at Stanford.It didn't work, but you're like, it's okay.I'm happy to try again.I'm curious, what do you think of Brian Johnson and what he's doing?You know, I've never met him.I haven't looked deeply into what he's doing.
33:42so I think it's great that people are raising awareness for this kind of stuff,but I don't have any specific insider opinion.I just haven't looked into it.I'm surprised.How come you haven't looked into it?That seems like it's right up your alley.I've been busy in terms of just focusing on like hardcore biopharma for this stuff, right?Like drug development that can benefit society at large.
34:03That's what I vote.So it's just a different area of focus, right?What I want to know is, are there any ideas on there that are just,they're just cool, but not necessarily like a world-changing serious thing.Like, do you ever think?His monuments think.Can you talk about the monuments thing?I think that's dope.
34:21Oh.So one thing, again, I need somebody to come work with me on this and I'd happily fund it isif you look at every society, it's sort of its peak.They would build large-scale monuments towards progress.And so it's like the seven wonders of the ancient world.Honestly, I don't know if you know the origins of the Eiffel Tower.but it was built in the late 1800s for a world fair in Paristo show off French steelmaking prowess.
34:47It was an ode to technology and an ode to steelmakingbecause steel was like modern tech.And it was very controversial at the time.People thought it was ugly and all this stuff, right?A lot of bridges were built in America at that period,you know, with Andrew Carnegie.They were built with that idea of like, let's prove.So like the Eads Bridge in St. Louis.
35:03It was the same thing where they would do these,they would build these amazing bridges.And then they would do like all these funny things.Like they would get an elephant to walk across.cross it to prove. Yeah, yeah, to prove that it works. It's strong, you know what I mean?But yeah, but so like these like flexes exist. There's a flex side of it and there's an inspirationalside of it. Like, where are the large-scale inspiring pieces of beauty and art in society anymore?Like, where have they gone? Why aren't we doing those anymore?
35:29The Vegas sphere. That's the last one. Yeah, seriously. The sphere, actually, I think, I think that'sa real example of large-scale societal beauty, right? Well, you know what another example that sounds silly isthe Blue Angels. And I was having this debate with someone the other day about how much moneythe American government funds air shows. And I was like, that's totally worth it. Becausewhenever you go to one of these things, you definitely feel a sense of patriotism. And you're like,this is awesome. Like, this is like, I'm in awe of this. And same way with going to the moon.You know, in the 60s and 70s, we spent a significant amount of money on this. A lot more than youyou could argue that we've spent on longevity, which is actually a shame. But we,
36:11you know, there is a history in America of doing things just because, you know, just to likeflex or just to like celebrate. But what was the last thing like that that we did? It's beendecades, right? It's been decades. And I actually find it to be quite saddening. And that's actuallysort of what you said is once you get to a point where you're financially secure on a human basis,on a human level, you do things for our, for artistic reasons, because it makes your soul feel good.I do wish we did that a little bit more as a country.But there was a period between like 1870 post-Civil war up to like 1960s or so,right around when JFK passed, like where there was this like series in America where we did
36:50a bunch of like interesting experiments where you could just say it was just because,you know what I mean?And I really appreciate that.Yeah.And part of that is going to be regulation.And then part of that is this odd postmodern cynical thinking, right?There's a very strong anti-progress movement in the, you know,U.S.
37:06You know, basically the idea is you buy land and you construct giant monuments that are inspiring.I don't know.I mean, it's pretty simple-minded, but imagine if you walked out in San Francisco and youlooked across, you know, to the view with the Golden Gate Bridge in Alcatraz,and there was a giant statue that's kind of an ode to the future.Dude, why don't we have that?How much of these things even cost?You know, the land, it depends on where you do it, and it depends on the regulatory framework.
37:34The land in major metrostends to be the more expensive part of itactually versus the constructionon a ratio basis.Let's walk through an example.What's one that you fantasized about?You're like, okay, what if we did this?That would be cool.
37:49There was actually an island for sale in the baythat ended up selling a camera for how muchbetween $29 or something.Was that up by Stockton?No, it was in the bay.It was actually in the water.there was like a little island.And, you know, it was on the market for a while.
38:08I actually looked at it a couple times in terms of thinking,huh, maybe this is the thing.Maybe this is an anchor thing.But I just think it's going to be so hard to do anything in the Bay Area, right?I mean, it's hard enough to construct a public toilet.Like, are they really going to let you build a beautiful monument, right,on any reasonable time frame?But there's lots of other metro areas that are much more amenable to this.
38:29And there's a global version of this, and there's a U.S. version.but often in major metros is the land and then the construction actually isn't that bad becausereally what you're building is a big statue and in some cases you're building out a base or foundationunder it that may be part of a building maybe you want to build an elevator up if you have a bigview or vista but you're not building a large commercial property with all the plumbing and electricaland you know all that extra stuff that goes into it right often these things are kind of like hollowshells with and what would it be of like you know what's our equivalent of the statute of libertyor the Eiffel Tower that's like
39:03to demonstrate their steel prowess?What do you think would be the modern equivalentthat would have some meaning?I think there's lots of stuff you can do.I actually think one of the thingsthat the intention around monumental,which is what we're calling the project,is to also solicit ideas from people who live in locales
39:21and what do they want?What do they view is inspiring?And what do they want to drive their children,their children's optimism forward?This is in some sense an ode to progress.but more importantly, it's a way to encourage the future.How do you encourage inspiration and young people, right?How do you get people jazzed about the future and technology and optimism and doing things and building things and moving society forward?
39:46And I think part of this lack of ongoing societal beauty and ongoing great works is a reflection of cynicism that to your point came in in the 60s and 70s and has really kind of spoiled the well.Well, yeah, I mean, that's one of my favorite errors to read about.Basically, like, in the mid-60s, Malcolm X, JFK, RFK, there's a series of assassinations.And, like, one can argue that that was, like, the death of innocence in America.And so it's, like, kind of like an interesting period to read about.Maybe.I mean, you look at all the stuff that happened in history before that.And some pretty awful stuff happened roughly every couple decades, right?
40:22I mean, World War II was not a happy time.World War I was not a happy time.The Civil War was not.there's a lot of shit that's gone down.No doubt about that.Maybe the boomer self-internalized things in a different waybecause they were self-absorbed as a generation.And so maybe for them it was a big moment.
40:40It just seems like there was just a shift.There was some mindset shift.And maybe that is what it was attributed to.I don't know what it's attributed to.Have you ever, I don't know if you guys, Sean, you definitely have.Well, maybe you have actually.Sean, driving a do.Do you guys ever remember seeing all these crosses on the side of the highway
40:57in the south. I bet R.A. has, but, like, you know, there was this guy who was when he,he was old and he had saved up roughly three or four million dollars, and he spent all of thatmoney building crosses on the side of the highway. Now, regardless if you really dig Christianityor not, it doesn't matter. But I always thought it was so interesting that, like, this guydedicated that money to that. You guys don't remember seeing this. It was like a big deal in the south.It would, like, you'd be driving to the south and every 50 or 100 miles, you would just see this hugecross and that's all you saw. Or you would see these billboards that says Jesus saves.Do you remember those? Yeah. I never understood what that is.
41:36Dude, and it has a phone number that you could call. And I would call that phone number everyonce in a while just to see what would happen. And at this point, a lot of it goes up a dead phonenumber. But it was basically a lot of it came down to this one man who had saved roughly $3 millionand he spent it on that. And then other churches started following it and started doing it.And I always thought it was really interesting the idea of just spending money just for this cause.and your logical brain is like, that's silly.But then your heart is like, oh, that's actually kind of an interesting idea.How much of your own money would you spend on doing this monument project?
42:07I don't know.I mean, I think it'd be good to try and get the first thing up and running and then, you know,do it as a joint effort with lots of people.Because, again, the hope is you actually feed the needs of local places.You know, another example where I think there's this sort of craftsmanship applied.There's a park in Oslo where,somebody spent, I don't know,it was a decade, two decades,
42:30building statues in this one park.It was an artist who went in and you go inand it's all this consistentseries of statues from one person,one artist who spent a big chunk of his lifemaking them.I think he made something like 200 sculpturesover a few decades, right?
42:46And so there's other forms of thisin terms of people trying to contribute works.And the question is, again, why aren't we doing it?Like, what happened?What happened to us societally to stop doingall this really inspiring, amazing stuff.Yeah, well, I think the good news is it only takes one, right?I think Elon showed that when he started doing projects
43:06that none of the other entrepreneurs really wanted to doand no investors really wanted to fund.And then it created this wave and it just kind of sparked inspirationwhere now a bunch of people do that, right?I think the closest thing we have to that is like Tesla and SpaceX, to be honest,that's our moon mission, right?It's like, wow, this guy just poured his entire talent and net worthinto these super high risk, low probability,
43:29useful for society, hard but awesome projects,and he pulled it off.And that changed the wiring in every founder's brain.It doesn't even matter what you're doing.You might be doing some boring insurance company,but that example still lives in your brain, right?And I think that's pretty powerful.You're a pretty serious person.
43:48You take life serious.You see problems and you're like, I want to solve them.What do you do just for shits and giggles?like just to unwind.Before you have kids,there's all sorts of the things you dothat the time goes away for once we have them.But, you know, I used to do,
44:04I don't know what to call it, like intensive travel,you know, so I'd go to India for two monthsand do yoga for two months therewith a guy who learned from a guy in a cave kind of thingor, you know, just different forms of very immersive travelwas one thing I used to do a lot of.If somebody today had the freedom to do that,what would be your, what's Gil's guide to that?
44:25Intensive travel. What was really transformative for you? What was your approach to that?Yeah, I think it's basically spend at least a month in one city and adopt, decide to learn something there.And so, you know, maybe you want to go learn how to draw or maybe you want to go to France and learn to make pastries.Or maybe you want to, you know, in my case, it was go to India and do this very intensive yoga experience.or maybe, you know, and especially if it's part of a community that you join, you get reallyimmersed in interesting ways and not just the topic, but also the people around it and the localpeople, right? Because then you're really forced to be part of something. There's actually a personI know who was about to start a company, and I convinced him to go do this because he had an extra
45:12month or two. And he said it was like the best month he'd spent. He went down to Brazil andenrolled in some classes down there. And he was, you know, he was.just spent a month doing it.And so I personally think it's super interesting.And how often in your life can you actually get a chance to do things like that?But also it is a different form of travel than, hey, I'm going to, you know, I went on a Chinese tour group of Italy once.And on these Chinese tour groups, they try to see as many cities as possible and as short a time as possible.That's check the box, right?
45:40Oh, okay, there's the leaning tower.Pisa check.It's like you stop for 10 minutes and then you run to the next thing.You know, that's very different from, hey, I'm just going to sit in one place for a month or two.That's awesome.Yeah, I've had great experiences doing that.We used to go to Buenos Aires for basically four to five weeks, live in one city, live like a local.And everywhere I would go, I would do two things.
46:02I would play basketball because that was like something I grew up doing.So it was like a native fluency I had, even if I couldn't speak the language, I could always kind of make my way in there.But also, I would go if I ever travel with my brother-in-law, he loves jiu-jitsu.And I'll never go with him to a jihitsu class here in the States.But Jiu-Jitsu has this like really intense camaraderie and openness and inclusiveness.So we went to Jiu-Jitsu gyms in Spain.And you immediately feel like you're one of the people and you're learning from them.And they have actually different techniques.
46:32And again, we don't even speak to language.But man, it's like an incredible fast way to bond or get more out of experience.I actually feel like the jihitsu community is one of the most vibrant ones right now along those lines.And to your point is basically you go and you're in the world and you plug in.That's how this type of yoga I used to do was.It was the same thing.You just show up and you knew how it worked and everybody was kind of in the same,they had the same vibe and they were part of the same kind of crew.
46:59Like you were instantly adopted.And my sense is that Jiu-Tzu Community Today is a good example of that where you just,you show up, you're instantly part of it.They pull you in.Everybody has a common thing to talk about.Everybody has common interests in a really positive way,even though it's a very diverse group around the world.Right.
47:14And there aren't that many communities like that.that. And I think there's almost these interestingquestions of like, how did these form and why didthey persist and all the rest.But this is back to my point on doingquote-unquote a hobby or learning something thatit's actually plugging into a community like that, I thinkis important. I love that. I think
47:30of all the things we talked about today, that was the mostuseful. Surprisingly, right? I wantedto learn about investing from you, but I got a totallydifferent golden nugget out of this.Where should people find you if they want more?I guess they could find me on Twitter.You know, I'm at a lot, Gil.and then, you know, just hope more people go and build interesting things.
47:50I think, you know, there's a lot to do.We appreciate you.Great.Yeah, thanks so much of the time.All right, well, take care.I feel like I can rule the world.I know I could be what I want to.I put my all in it like no days off.
48:03On a road, let's travel, never looking back.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.