The a16z Show - a16z Podcast: Breaking the Barriers of Human Potential

Episode Date: February 6, 2016

During his “Stratos” jump Felix Baumgartner fell faster than the speed of sound, reaching an estimated speed of 833.9 mph plummeting from the edge of space. Baumgartner’s return trip to earth lasted just over nine minutes, but there was seven years of preparation that came before the record-setting mission. Equipment had to be tested and pushed beyond its limit, and so did Baumgartner. It was the task of Red Bull’s director of high performance Andy Walshe to help train Baumgartner physically and psychologically to do what had never been done before. That’s Walshe’s job -- to work with Red Bull’s athletes and artists to get them to places they’ve never been before. Walshe joins the pod, along with a16z’s Jordan Stankowski, to discuss the methods, technologies, and tools he uses to help get people past seemingly unbreakable barriers. The good news is it isn’t just world-class athletes or your favorite pop-star that can benefit from Walshe’s research and work -- it’s all of us. Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. During his leap from the stratosphere, Felix Baumgartner fell faster than the speed of sound, reaching an estimated speed of 833.9 miles per hour, plummeting from the edge of space. Baumgartner's return trip to Earth lasted just over nine minutes, but there was seven years of preparation that came before that. Equipment had to be tested and pushed beyond its limit, and so did Baumgartner. was the task of Red Bulls director of high-performance Andy Walsh to help train Baumgartner physically and psychologically to do what had never been done before. That's Walsh's job, to work with Red Bulls,

athletes, and artists to get them to places they've never been before. Walsh joins the pod, along with A16Z's Jordan Stankowski to discuss the methods, technologies, and tools he uses to help get people past seemingly unbreakable barriers. It's not all hitting the gym, spirituality and mindfulness are part of Walsh's approach. And the really good news is it isn't just world-class athletes or your favorite pop star that can benefit from Walsh's research and work. It's all of us. Andy, so when you say high-performance, you direct the high-performance program,

I think of immediately I think of some secret lab on an island someplace or within the Austrian. An underground layer. I mean, is that what we're talking about? You do have a sort of mad scientist look about you. Yeah, I kind of get that now. again, but we do have a lab. We do have a place where we can actually sort of prototype new technologies, new components

of performance, and that encompasses everything from the specific fitness all the way through to the psychology, to the cognitive social development, even up to the spiritual development. So we have a space we call our sort of workshop or our lab. And, you know, essentially for us, it's a playground because the goal of the program is to enable that individual, whoever they may be from whatever field, to come in and have a vision, and have a dream about what that next step it is they want to take and for us to provide the supporting infrastructural mechanisms to make that happen. Let's talk about performance under pressure,

because I think given that the Super Bowl is this weekend, and when it comes to most mainstream athletes, that's probably the most interesting question is, you know, when you think of unlocking human potential, it seems like this unbounded, wonderful, nice to have. But we're talking also about, like, people in the hard stadium, the arena of, I sound ridiculous, I'm just listening to myself speak

because I actually don't play any sports or watch enough sports, But I do think it's interesting to talk about some of the challenges of performing under pressure. I mean, paint a picture for us of what it's like for athletes to have to make decisions under those conditions and what are some of the things that they have to do and why performance science matters to all this. Here I'd focus on athletes who physically are performing at high levels most every day of the year. And the prep worked for the big game. A lot of it's in your head. It's the cognitive development.

It's how you bringing to light, you know, all the learnings that you picked up and be able to deliver at the highest level, at the highest stage. So no matter how much you practice, you're like saying half of it's a mental game. Absolutely. More than half it's going to be a mental game. You know, your body's already been trained to go through the motions. But when you get on that stage, you know, you've got 100 million viewers. What then, right? How are you going to perform? Well, what actions are you going to take and how is that going to impact the game?

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a great comment. It's a great space. I think it's a sexy space because everyone is engaged at that moment where, you're, and they're in the 18th at Augusta and the Masters, the crowds watching, they've got to drop that 12-foot putt to win, and everyone kind of gets a sense of that, you know? For Sunnel, that's golf, I just want to talk about.

Thank you. I was actually looking blankly, like, what is he talking about? Yeah, yeah, right. So I think those moments are the ones that appeal to us for that mystery of it as well. And the mystery is well deserved, because, yeah, I think we do know a lot about all the aspects of human development and the physical side we've focused for many years on. So you get into this space,

get into the sort of head-up conversation. And there's not a great deal of pure understanding about that particular moment, about that very precise moment where you have to perform the world's watching. It's a big stage. And everyone gets it because everyone can relate to it, because it transcends sport. It may be the stress you feel at work. You may have had to take a free throw in your high school basketball competition at some point. You may have had to put. I mean, even public speaking, like getting up on a podium and whether you you like fail or have a panic attack or do an amazing job. I would imagine it's the same kind of thing, no, how much you prepare and rehearse. Like in that moment, you actually don't know

what's going to happen sometimes. I know. And that's the mystery which I think creates his awe about it. And because there's less known about it, when everything else goes wrong on the playing field, people default, hey, they didn't have their head in the game that day. So it's a great space. It's where technology is allowing us to peel back very quickly and get greater and greater insight. So it's a very exciting space. And what we've learned, and over the years as we sort of approach these moments, and if we can recreate moments that create high pressure and high stress, we can use those as training tools, and we just finished a project that sort of focused purely on that, just various days, various elements of stress

imposed by us on the talent, and there was business and athletes mixed together, and the results were astounding because they just got to practice over and over and over in these high stress situations. Can you give us some examples of what those situations were and then, you know, how people fell apart or didn't? Well, it's always a combination. So we, one of our powerful tools is what we call our surf survival camp, which is teaching you hold your breath. But we put you in sort of stressful situations where we're forcing you to work under that stress and hold your breath.

And you have to relax and you have to have a conversation with yourself because you're underwater. So no one else is listening to you. So you have to get your, basically, you have to get your head in the right space. We had an example where we had some friends from the military set up some sort of what we call a James Bond disposal program, a big ticking bomb that you had to diffuse under time print constraints. And that really created an energy because the team breaks down, the confusion. Well, it's not a real bomb, though, is it? It goes off.

It makes a big noise. It kind of gives you a bit of a shock, but it doesn't actually go and it doesn't do any damage. Well, because that's one of the questions I have is how much does simulation really work? Because when I think of things like the famous stratus jump that you guys did years ago, I just think the matter how much you simulate or prepare for that, and it sounds like, I mean, I'm curious to hear what kind of preparation actually did go into that, because I don't think people talk enough about that. We see the outcome on TV, but we don't know what happened, what went into that. One thing that also comes to mind is you can't actually replicate the feeling of what it's like to be in space and truly feel that moment.

In that moment, that is the first time Felix is ever going to feel that way, and hopefully the only time I'll ever feel that way. I mean, how do you sort of balance that sort of training, the simulation with the actual what happens? And also what went into the stratus jump? Well, I think you're spot on. You can't. No matter how close it is, you know, the person who's involved or the individual always knows it's a replica or you're trying to create a scenario to practice for it. So you can't create the feeling of what it's going to be like this Sunday to be at the starting

line up on the Super Bowl. So what we do is we use these other scenarios. We pull you out of what you're good at. We pull you into other spaces. It may be stand-up comedy. It may be holding your breath. And it doesn't really matter because you, for the first part, you detach from what you're good at, so you kind of relax a little bit more. There's hopefully no ego involved. And you also are

in a situation we have to learn from the beginning. So it sort of accelerates whatever the real you under pressure would look like. We get to see what you really like, not what you sort of hope to look like under stress. And then we train you with tools. We give you tools and techniques to get through that. And then the transfer is very powerful. And we see over and over again, if we try and fake a real scenario, they know it's fake, it doesn't work. If we create a stressful scenario where like stand up comedy, where they have probably never done it before, they have to stand up in a room, make everyone laugh, they've got to really dig deep and use all that talent to relax, keep control, keep composure. And that has powerful effect because when they go back to

what they do know, it's actually pretty easy at that point. Bringing it back to football here, it's where there's a lot of waiting right now for veterans of folks who've been there before. So if a quarterback, it's their second Super Bowl, you say, hey, I assume they're going to perform better because they've been here before. They're not going to have the same amount of nerves. And that's what Andy and Red Bull are looking to unlock. And if you can really understand that, you know, you don't have to put them through a full Super Bowl experience. You can put them through, you know, a bomb diffusal.

You can have them go and hold their breath underwater for three minutes. Put them through these other exercises, which will give them a similar sort of experience that they can then take on the field on their first time through the tunnel. Yeah, and it's fun. They've never done it before. They're engaged or enjoying themselves. The pressure, and quote-unquote, is off in some respects because it's not their craft. So they throw themselves in, and then when they're all talking about it, and it happens,

they kind of have something to connect back to. Which I love to kind of drill in a little bit. I think that's super interesting because they know their sport incredibly well, and within the realms of normal, they're super comfortable. But where they haven't been is to say, hey, I need to unlock this creative side of you. Tell me more about the spiritual. What are you developing from a psychological standpoint? So how do you broach that conversations with these athletes and, you know, is their willingness there for it?

Absolutely. I think the willingness to go right there is they all want to improve. They're all top of their game and they've got there because they have this passion to be great at what they do. So as soon as you open up any opportunity and you present it in the right way, they dive right in. Now, you have to deliver too. So we're very cautious to say, hey, manage the expectations. This program is going to take a little time. You've got to engage.

So creativity is a great example. through that hacking creativity project we ran and it's still running. We unlocked a few key little tools that we know straight away we can apply. And one of the first and most powerful things we learned was everyone does it differently. Everyone has their own process and there's not this one way to do it. So as we're exploring this idea that if you're more creative on the field, you create new plays, new space, you surprise your opposition with something that's never been seen before. That's powerful.

And don't ignore that. And if we really want to get into it, we're probably bringing in a high-level musician or artist to explore their track alongside of them. And you watch that conversation unfold in front of you, you're kind of like, okay, let these guys and girls go. So it sounds like the tools that develop from this are kind of individual to each person, right? But can you describe, for all that, even if my tools for dealing with a stressful situation are a somewhat different than sonals, are there overlaps, are there common themes that we start to see where people can lean on these things to help them perform at their best? Yeah, absolutely. So the individualization is at the very

top tier because that's what it takes and that's that's the way we approach it for but the general lessons from that apply broadly because the fundamental mechanisms in play so the stress response we all undergo it's just different you may get stressed uh you know driving to work in traffic i may not but i may get really stressed standing up doing a public speech and and you will and it's at the kind of conversation there is um how do we bring that mechanism to play and one of the simplest techniques is learning how to breathe, learning how to relax, you see a lot of the mindfulness and meditation work. I actually just went through a workshop a couple of weekends ago for breathing exercises, and

it was mind-opening, actually. Like, it's kind of connecting, it sounds so hokey when you just say it out loud, but it's connecting body, mind, and breath as a way of sort of being like present in that moment and fully there. It was just such a weird foreign thing for me, because I'm not really into that sort of thing typically. And that's an ancient spiritual technique. So that's where you, that's your angle to bring spirituality in.

the conversation without the rhetoric of the religious sort of overtones. And you sort of say, okay, breathing's a powerful tool and it's actually been proven to reduce the stress. And if you learn it's very simple, four seconds in, four seconds out, four times a day, four minutes at a time, that will have an impact over a couple of weeks. And then you may, if you, again, another really simple trick, we call it the five senses trick. As you're going into a stressful situation to reground yourself, pay attention to what you're

feeling. What's the smell in the room? What are you hearing? What are you looking at? yourself to the moment. And that'll bring you down. Exactly. It's being present. To say just be present, people like, uh, uh, you say, that's like a cliche, like sort of thing, but that's a way of operationalizing what you're saying. So you're walking out on the field this weekend and the crowds go on nuts and the cameras

are flashing and, you know, the guys will have their own techniques. And one of them, I guarantee will be to just make sure they feel the ground under their feet, take a deep breath. Many of them will know maybe this is the first and last time, all the last time they'll ever be here. I mean, take it in. As you note, these are ancient techniques. And I really, and I really really hate the phrase life hacking. I think I hate, first of all, the use, overuse of the word hacking in general. But is there a way to sort of connect it then to technology? Like, how does tech play a role? And of course, there's all kinds of tech. I mean, tech is ancient. Like, people, you know, molding things with stone is technology. So I understand that in the broadest sense. But, like, how is this sort of playing out with tech coming into this? So Andy had said, you're able to prove now that these things are having impact. You know, people for hundreds and thousands of years have meditated and practice mindfulness. But only today, do you actually have the data to actually explore? Yeah, the data is the key here. And today, whether you're measuring what's going on inside your brain or with your body, that information is what's going to allow you to build a program around it,

allow you to democratize these learnings and take it from the quarterback on the Super Bowl field, bring that down to the average boy who has a trouble going out there for his recital. And what have you learned and what have you unlocked here that now you can share? all the way on down to the average jail. Is there a trend here where you can also make what you guys described earlier as individualized things that are highly customized to each individual because it's a very one-on-one type of sport and sort of mass personalize it? Because that's always been the Holy Grail for education, for example, to be able to reach mass

personalization of things. Is that something that's on the car? Yeah, we talk about it all the time because as John pointed out, this democratization of the talent, sharing these lessons in a broader platform so that everyone has access to it. And that's the one way. We also see it happening the other way. At the end of the day, the individual approach to top performers is what's going to be open up to everybody in the next few years. And you see these trends in individualized health and medicine.

Back to the point Jordan made, the data is going to be personalized to you. So what was once the only, you know, in the realm of elite talent because of the cost and the sort of access to the people who could do it, is going to become part of the everyday person's experience. And it's the trend which is happening. So that's why I think it's a two-way platform. So describe that for us because, like you say, we all have images in our head of elite athletes covered in sensors and with, you know, oxygen masks on and blah, blah, blah.

And of course, it's worth it for them and the people who are spending the money to do that. But for me, if I just want my tennis game to be better or my surfing to be better, and I have a smartphone and maybe a couple of sensors, Is that what we're talking about? And all of a sudden we get to bring to bear all this stuff? You're going to see that happen more and more in the next few years. You're going to see the sort of complex mechanisms we have in play at the top of the pyramid just become simpler, easy to use, and that'll be something we both use and also translated down to the consumer.

So you'll start to see those prototypes become very much more fashionable, much easy to use, much simpler information. And at some point, you know, we're already seeing it. those consumer-driven needs are actually helping us create simple systems that we can then employ back up the chain. So it's always this two-way funnel. And sitting at the intersection of these sports and technology and sort of having that conversation with all these companies as they're coming through is really enlightening because we see the opportunities both ways. That's fascinating. How do you, data is clearly the differentiator here, as you guys, everyone noted, and that's true in many software businesses in general, by the way.

But what happens with the data that's coming out of, like, research institutions and scientific organizations? Are they sharing their data as well? Is there a way to kind of interconnect all these sort of silos of data? Because it sounds like if data is a real differentiator, and then you have all these different pockets of data being collected in these different, you know, silos, is there a way to sort of open source some of that or to share it in other ways? Or the flip side is to use it to competitive advantage. I'm a team and I know more than you do about X, Y, or Z. and boy, I'm not going to share that data with you.

Yeah, and we take the opposite approach because the traditional model was, hey, I've got a secret. I think everyone understands now that the world's the landscape and some world somewhere has thought this up faster and smarter than you have. So we have a much more open policy. We share pretty much everything we're collecting, and we have examples of that through our different platforms.

And the idea being that, you know, the human entity and understanding what it takes to sort of help that performance increase is such a complex problem that we need as many eyes and ears on that information as possible. And the other thing that's missing is the culture of which you employ that information. So each team, each organisation has a different culture. So it's very easy for you to come in and see what we're doing. But we've come to this place through the people we work with and the types of challenges we've been faced.

And that has formed a culture, which means even if you copied everything we're doing, you're, one, you're copying us, which means you're behind us, which is a great thing. And two, but our culture has figured these things out this way. You're going to have to figure out how it applies in your culture, and that's why we're so sort of easy going with what we have in the shop. I wanted to bring it back on the data story, too, where it's not just capturing the data because at some point you're going to have all these numbers floating around you. The key is what does it mean?

Right, exactly. What do you do with it? Correct, and make it into actionable insights. And with that, you can really understand what the impact of, you know, practicing mindfulness is going to be. And one of the first conversations that Andy and I first connected over was around some of that research. And he's got a naturally strong background in neuroscience. And he was telling me about, you know, how it's actually making changes to your brain that certain parts are growing in the dark matter, I believe, is increasing. And other ones that are your anxiety, your stress, that's actually decreasing with that.

We can measure it now. We understand it. And with that, we're building plans and actionable insights around. that. Yeah, absolutely. I think again, that's where the exciting moment in this sort of journey is for us right now, is for years, especially with respect to the brain, it's kind of a mystery. And it's still a lot to crack. Don't get me wrong, but we're peeling back those layers and getting a better understanding. And we've shown demonstrated shifts in brain function as a consequence of certain types of training and there to the positive side. And so with all this, it's now, wow,

what can we do? And how far can we push it? And we. And really, if we crack this code, what are we going to do with that? Are we going to give it to those athletes, of course. But we also want to start putting it in the hands of, say, a research scientist or treat that top young, you know, potential, you know, person who's maybe going to crack the code to some of our world's greatest challenges. Treat them like we're treating an elite athlete. Now we're starting to get to some space where we can have the best of both world.

That is interesting. And it brings to mind this notion of in the way we talked about doping in sports before. drugs as sort of a way of having an unfair advantage. It's almost like data is like the new unfair advantage. And what does that mean? I mean, what you're describing is actually more democratizing that, which is a great vision to move towards. But what does that mean when certain people have access to the data and can do things that others don't? How will that play out in sports? I mean, I can see like certain teams, like, you know, not like doping in sports, but like having data in sports. Like, how is that going to, how do you see that scenario playing out?

Well, it has played out, I think. We all, you know, we're all right. Oh, I guess I don't know about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think we all know the Moneyball story, which was just a great insight into the use of data to help frame up an organization. Also, what's a big part of that story is the culture of that organization was ready to act on that data. That was actually really, it's actually really interesting you bring up that they had the culture that was ready to act on it. But I think the most salient point of the Moneyball story and the whole origin of Sabre metrics as a field in that context is something that could actually make a difference.

is that they were desperate. They didn't have any other choice. And that's not necessarily two of the top performing teams. Just like big companies, they're incented to keep the status quo and do what's working. They don't actually want to try out new things. So how do you say this is playing out with people who are trying to, quote, disrupt themselves and try out new different things? How are they incented to actually embrace it?

Well, you know, speaking broadly, I think people now have a sense that you've got to keep, you know, innovating. You've got to keep pushing this edge now. and you can't be sitting back on, you know, what has worked as much as we have in the past. I think it's just the natural pace of many of the industries we work in. And, you know, I think we're seeing it. And I think, again, Jordan made that point on contextualizing it, putting it into the right context. And I may use the word culture interchangeably, but understanding what it really means and how it can be applied and used. And that's a big frontier for us to still crack.

I mean, everyone's collecting a lot of stuff right now, especially in these fields. And we're collecting it in some cases, even ourselves, with the hope that in a couple of years we get good enough to understand it. So retroactively accessing it. So it's an interesting time. Do you think that the gap between the sort of highest performing athletes increases or decreases as this gets out there? Which another way to ask that question, are folks who are far and away the best in their sport for whatever reasons? Are they just better at this stuff kind of naturally or intuitively than others? And can others catch up? And then finally, does that mean we all get to be world class athletes or at least be much, much, much

better than we are. We're much, much better at what we want to be good at. There's no way you're going to be dunking any time. That's really neat. And this is, I'm very careful with my language here, not to sound like it's, it's, it's, it's no hope. But, you know, at the, at the, that's what's your tongue. Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. At the end of the day, there might be hope in surfing, okay. Yeah, at the end of the day, um, there are certain tasks or certain, you know, careers that we embark upon because, and naturally because we had an affinity for it or we had a natural talent. People like to do what they're good at.

And in some sports, obviously, you just selected because of the engine. You picked the right parents and you're in the right place at the right time. So let's not take away the art from all this science, but at the same time, and that may allow you to become world champion in that particular field per se. But what we do know is that understanding a lot more about you and through this process of data and the greater technologies that are coming to our hands to sort of, unpick this sort of puzzle is that you can definitely move up and become and sort of realize more of your potential. The conversation is, is your potential best in the world or is it just better

of what you're currently doing? And, you know, that's the reality check at some point. You're like, I'm like you. I'm not going to be dunk in print any time. I actually want to bring up a sport that I actually do know something about, which is e-sports. And it's one of my biggest pet peeves, by the way, is a little sidebar commentary here that the U.S. media did not cover it until very recently. Anyway, just want to put that out there for a moment. Because it is a fast-growing phenomenon around the world, and it's only become of notice in the last couple years here in the U.S.

Except it's got to be a sport. Right, and that's exactly right. People always argue about whether or not it's a sport. And I ran an out-bed a few years ago from Kevin Morris arguing that it is, in fact, a sport because it has all the attributes of any other sport. It just happens to be people playing computer games. how does the rules of what you've learned in physical performance science, how does it sort of apply to something like e-sports? Are you noticing an interesting trends there, changes or differences?

It's the classic model, like I said before, we learn from every talent we work with, kind of talent we work with, and again, when you watch these young performers in the e-sports community do what they do at the very top of the game, it's staggering. You know, you just have to stand behind them and watch the number of moves they're making. The number of moves they're making. number of decisions they're making. And a lot of similarities to traditional sports. You know, you make a mistake. You've got to recover. You can't hang on to that. And if you do, you're going to get beaten. You've got to deal with a lot of differentiation and stimuli. You've got to bring a lot of information in and make quick decisions. So in many cases, the skill sets are

very similar. And what's actually true, as I said before, is the idea that they're best in class, they've spent many years doing this. What can we learn? Why? Why are they so good? And many cases in the work we've been looking at, what we're having to do to understand why they're so good, the tools, the technologies, the systems we're having to put in place, we're learning things that try and apply directly back to the athlete population and vice versa. We've also done work with the hacking community and what we call the cyber athlete. Again, it's all cognitive performance. So it's not just us interested from gaming and entertainment.

There's a lot of interest in the athlete of the future who's going to be cognitively to the dominant and how to optimize them. And that's a big area of interest. Why is it called a cyber athlete? Well, I think there's the performers at the hacking competitions, things like DefCon and Black Hat. Oh, it's like e-sports, but for hackers. Well, it's a competition.

They come in. They have three days as a team to, you know, break through whatever security system that's been set up. And the winning team gets paid fairly handsomely. For obvious reason. The team that wins may have shown you a new hack for the phone. And so if Apple sponsors it, they can pull that straight out and fix it. On the other area, there's prize money because you're creating a name for yourself as someone who's very innovative,

someone who can solve problems under pressure, and you obviously have a value proposition in the broader cyber defense community, either publicly or at the government level. So there's a team out of Carnegie Mellon. I think that's the number one ranked in the year after year. And it's not by coincidence. They sort of have this approach, and it seems to work. it seems to work over and over. David Brumley,

and the professor there leads it up, and we did a prototype training camp for that community about four months ago. Very fascinating. What did you have to adapt about your training camp to get it to work for a cyber athlete audience versus a typical athlete audience? Obviously there's an emphasis on sort of

some of the more psychometric evaluations and cognitive evaluations that just makes sense. But we also do physical evaluations, medical evaluations. I mean, you'd be amazed how just getting a diet right for an individual help their basic cognitive performance. And so, again, the crossover is broader and more pronounced than most people expect. And then, of course, to put them in front of a computer and challenge them, they're kind of

used to that. Again, drag them out and put them in our surf survival program, which they did. They're like, what? And so we see very quickly who they show up as. Right. And they show up very quickly in that space. So the unfamiliar toolkit is a really strong one for you guys. It's ultimately the very top of the guys.

game, I think it's one of the only tools that you can employ to really bring about significant change. I mean, because otherwise you just, if you've been practicing for the Super Bowl for 10,000 hours or whatever number you think that may be, another hour on that football pitch is incrementally and just volume, such a small fraction. And what profoundly different thing are you going to do on the pitch this week that you didn't do it for the last 10 years? Drag them out of that space and put them into something that they've never been into before. don't remember it, they'll connect with it because if you make it enjoyable and a bit challenging,

they always seem to have a good time. And again, those sort of flaws or failures in the system per se to use a very unfriendly term will be very pronounced very quickly. You can talk about them, address them. And again, when they go back to what they're good at, it's, I've seen this in another environment. They have the tools to deal with it. So it's always something to learn from these talents and if you pay attention you'll pick out the powerful things in many cases what's transferable and of course they're not going to be the fittest people in the world per se if that's not a core competency of their sport but improving fitness the way we improve fitness and athletes will definitely translate cognitive excellence which they're obviously at the top of the game of

how do they get there how they train it we bring back to the resilience and recovery i mean right there's all kinds of traits so so question for you andy here you had naturally you're going to have so much insight, 25 years working with athletes across 100 sports all at the top of their games. And so there's a ton there you can learn to share with others outside of sport. But in some of your recent camps, I was reading, you know, you've actually brought together folks from the Navy and startup CEOs. And that's the one that I found very interesting. So you're bringing in these founders and putting them together with athletes.

What have you learned from the founder story, from the startup world that you think athletes are taking back with them? Or the other way around. Well, both ways. Always both ways, I say. So, you know, the founders we were in this last camp, the performing under pressure camp, it was really powerful because you have these athletes and you have obviously used to going into training camps.

You have these founders who probably haven't gone into training camp, either unless they were an athlete at some point in their career or last time they're in that situation, I might have been at college. So straight away, you see that they're bringing a different mindset to the approach. But very quickly, you see the founders who are obviously intelligent people looking across and see how these guys getting this done. And they go over and ask, they start sharing stories. Tactically, what are we learning from both sides?

I think the founders really brought this idea of adventure and courage. Like, they were willing to back themselves. And to a level, which is even surprising to some of the athletes. That's great. And their ability and willingness to take on risk. The fact that they even turned up to Cam, a few of the athletes are like, well, whoa, all right. These people are willing to push the edge of what they're capable of to learn. And then, interestingly, a couple of the founders shared stories of how they,

prepare for their big moments, how they get themselves ready for that big board room pitch, how they got that first round of money. And when they shared those stories, the athletes were like, oh, of course, that's what, that's what we do. And then they start sharing and we get out of the way. We sit back and watch them translate. Of course, then they're the founders, are fascinated by exactly the same conversation for the athletes, and it's a two-way street.

And, again, at the very top of their game, I think where talent is sort of expressing itself in its most sort of beautiful form, there's far more in common across these performers than there is differences because fundamentally the skill set itself is different. The rest is very similar. What vehicles is going to manifest itself in? So, you know, you've got these super select camps

and great athletes and, you know, young founders are going there. But two things I'd want to, you know, you to put a forecast around. You know, what vehicle is going to look like that we're going to be able to adopt that technology and when is that going to be? We were earlier talking about, you know, now's the time to really embrace this. We're at an inflection point in society and with technology where you're just seen an acceleration of adoption of all these new technologies.

So in this case, when you're really breaking down more than just the physical side of it, how is that going to be delivered to the masses and when is that going to be? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think, well, I think that inflection point is already happening up here in this part of the world. you see a lot of these young entrepreneurs looking for all these other competitive advantages in developing themselves. I think you're going to see more and more of that. I think the idea of the executive athlete, you know, someone who's worth a lot of money to you as an organization, you've invested a lot of time and energy into, if they're an athlete, we're putting a lot of

resources into making sure they're at the top of their game. So I think that's a wide open space to directly when it's going to happen. I think you'll start to see in the next four to five years some of these technologies that sort of harness the best aspects of what we've done, whether it be the physical sort of development and optimizing that. I think we're already fairly well down that path. You'll see a lot more of this technology relating to understanding the sort of mind-body connection. I think you'll see those tools, you know, the next generations of these headsets and things that are going to start to give you direct feedback.

They'll start to become more consumer-facing and public-facing. And then I think as we get into the creativity and those other less sort of measurable instances, that's going to be the long run. That's where I think the humans are still going to be part of this conversation for much longer. But again, for me, that's the white space. That's where we should be focusing on. It's a fascinating time in that regard. With all the data, training camps and tools that you have access to, seeing founders or athletes or any other talent as you describe it, can you predict who's going to be successful and who's not? And what characteristics sort of help you predict that?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, I think Ben today Horowitz was talking about the sort of having that interview with those startups and sort of looking the individual in the eye across the table. That's a big part of still of what we do. Getting a sense of the person and who they are, what we layer on top of those interviews, obviously, is metrics. And if it's a physical endeavor thereafter, we have all sorts of assessments and tools to sort of give us a sense of what kind of engine lies under that hood. What's really interesting to me, there's a lot of work in recent years and continuing to sort of grow exponentially in the idea of talent ID and talent recruitment, especially for

spaces and performances where physicality is important, but the sort of the head-up is sort of really, really important. And there's also powerful tools there. We can put you through a different sense of measures and batteries and get a pretty good sense. And, you know, it's not a deselection. We're not there yet, but if there's a couple of areas that pop up for us in those sort of interviews and psychometric analysis, we can start to dig a little bit deeper and kind of maybe bring that out earlier than it may manifest itself naturally. I bet we'd want to know that too, because you can never tell, I'm guessing you can

never tell who is actually going to be the one who's going to be able to really weather the hard times of building a company or doing something or as an athlete or any other arena. But like, what qualities or traits, even in general, sort of tell you like this person is more likely to succeed than someone else. Do we have a sense of that? Yeah, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of indicators for us that come out and sort of the assessments, but I think there's also, the sort of things you hear thrown about a lot. You know, what you see written up in the boardrooms and locker rooms of integrity, honesty. We have a program to invest in humility and how to encourage that and assess that. Because why does humility matter? I would think that being on the field, you have to be competitive and aggressive and not necessarily humble.

You know, if you talk to a lot of the greats over the years, you see they're very self-aware and very comfortable in who they are. They don't need to espouse their talents. They have a very distinct humility to. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong combination either. I think resiliency you brought up is a common term right now, the ability to get back up. that may manifest itself in some of the conversations, have you failed before? Sometimes we have this saying, you know, a talent is a curse, because if you come to us as the best in class over, you've been that rising star, the shooting star for your entire career, and you come to us, we know at some point you're going to get beaten. And if you've never been beaten badly until you're right at the top, we don't know how you're going to unpack at that point.

And it could be a quick spiral down. So I know there's a lot of work being done on sort of successful businesses have had two or three prior unsuccessful businesses in play. And there's a lot of conversations around that. And we ask about that. We ask what's been the toughest thing you've ever faced and how did you overcome it? So we get into courage as well and your ability to want to take risk, but more your ability to understand risk.

So those general things are really powerful as an overview. You know, we're not perfect at it. I think you've heard the saying there's no such thing as 100% selection. And yeah, but we're getting better and better at all the time. And again, the data is a big piece of that conversation. At least points us in a direction to ask the right questions. Let's get back really quickly. I mean, Sonal touched on this, and we started Felix Baumgartner.

Seven years you were saying to prep for that? I mean, I thought he just had to screw up his courage and jump, right? Or let go. Why seven years and what happened in that time? I think that's the classic thing. People see some of the stuff that goes on and they go, wow, they just turn up and do that, which is, you know, it'd be great if it was like that. But, like, that was a flight test program, you know.

Colonel Joe Kittenger set the original record, 1960, the original astronaut, really. And it took us sort of 50 years to even get close to that. And I think the seven years is in a flight test program is pretty standard, you know. You've got to come out. You're trying to do something that's never been done before. you're testing equipment, you're testing hardware, you're testing software, you're testing the individuals. And all of those different tests have a point of failure

as you develop that process. And you're working through those failure points over and over again to get to that final result. And along the way, we had our hiccups. We had, you know, Felix has spoken openly about his challenges with the project. We had big hardware fails, software fails. We had technology issues along the way.

And even just issues with the weather, you know, those balloons don't like the wind. So our day of the final launch when we were all ready, set to go, and the little gust of wind and reset two days later. So as luck would have it, we finally got Felix out of the capsule down to Earth safely, broke the speed of sound in free fall.

The day Chuck Jagas set the original Mark I record many, many years before. So it worked out in the end, as luck would have it. And that's one of the big lessons, I think, for us. These moonshot kind of ideas, what's really powerful for me is that you learn so much about yourself, You learn so much about the organization. It's sort of the things you learn ancillary to the final objective that seem to have the most value. And for us, the great takeaways were this sort of idea that training for these times, training for the unknown, preparing people to deal with that moment when things go wrong is a real important part of any preparation.

Because anyone get it right and it's going right. Well, what's crazy is that most people, when they do those moonshots, you don't know about the failures because they're private. you guys were very public about that and it could have honestly gone the complete opposite way and it didn't and so it's a little it's a little brave I mean it's crazy and brave and and a little crazy yeah but you know again that's that seven-year development time we'd spend a lot of time so from the outside looking in it probably looks a lot at a higher level of risk and you know we were you know the last thing our number one goal for us was to keep Felix safe alive yeah alive yeah alive and that's exactly safe this is not like this is not just like

randomly injured. This is a lot, dead or alive. So everything was geared to us. So we're only going to go when we have a high level of confidence. We're not going to risk anybody's life for the sake of the event. And that's the, that's the piece that really takes the work and effort. To say there's zero risk would be disingenuous, but we feel pretty, you know, pretty confident that we get it to a level where everyone feels like this. We're ready to go. That's actually helpful to hear because I think we have a tendency in the media when we see these amazing, and some people call it a stunt in that case actually it literally was or like performances or like launching of rockets or ships or whatever we have a tendency to to think that's the moment and and it's brave and wonderful

and scary but it's true and you remember that there's so much preparation that goes into that it does help you realize actually this is a lot more possible than it otherwise could have been and all the way back to the football drive and the fourth quarter with two minutes left right you know how do they how do they make that final drive and go for a touchdown it certainly isn't luck you know It's the years of practice that they put in. Yeah, yeah. You can prepare. And again, if you prepare well and you prepare for things to be chaotic and you say,

look, today you've got to train and we're just going to keep throwing random stuff at you to make sure you're ready for whatever happens. And if they get used to understanding what they operate and how they operate when things go wrong and how to address that and recover from that, then they're in a great situation. So if they are two minutes down at the end, they've got to go a long way down the field to win that game. if you've kind of given them a sense of what that's like before and they rely on years and years and thousands and thousands of hours of practice, then you get it together and pull together. Well, I'm going to get it together and pull it together to dunk.

Or just maybe be good at really the best there forever. Andy, Jordan, thank you guys so much for joining the A16Z podcast. Thank you, guys. Thanks very much. Thank you very much.