The Jordan Harbinger Show - 184: Naveen Jain | How Moonshot Thinking Will Save the World

Episode Date: April 11, 2019

Naveen Jain (@naveen_jain_ceo) is an entrepreneur driven to solve global grand challenges through innovation. He is the founder of Moon Express, Viome, Bluedot, TalentWise, Intelius, and InfoSpace, and the co-author of Moonshots: Creating a World of Abundance. What We Discuss with Naveen Jain: How Naveen and his siblings all became wildly successful professionals in spite of growing up financially and educationally underprivileged. How to know when a billionaire really becomes successful. Why it's the thought processes -- not the habits -- of highly successful people you should be emulating if you want to succeed. Why Naveen believes sustainability is not sustainable, and why we have to create more of what we need rather than consume less of what we have. What moonshots are, and how they make seemingly impossible goals achievable. And much more... Full show notes and worksheet here: https://jordanharbinger.com/184 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! The jet-setting lifestyle of an entrepreneur requires a little work on the road. But what if the jet you're setting on doesn't have Wi-Fi? Before you take your next flight, tune in to The $100 MBA Episode 1231: 5 Tips To Getting Work Done On a Plane here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. Growing up with scarcity and lack of food forces us to focus on survival. This type of inward thinking largely precludes having the time or energy to look at the big picture. Today's guest, Neveen Jane, while he grew up sometimes not knowing if there would be food on the table or not, he's thinking both very small and very, very large. Neveen runs a portfolio of businesses being a serial entrepreneur. However, his primary endeavors these days include looking at our gut biome and the bacteria that live in it and their ability to cause or prevent disease. However, he's also pushing forward to get us to the moon. Yeah, I know we've been there, but Nevin wants to

mine it for resources that are extremely scarce here on Earth because he knows these resources are key to human survival on planet Earth. It sounds a bit like science fiction, which makes sense coming from someone on the board of both the X-Prize and Singularity University. Today, we'll explore why the highly curious are the highly motivated and how the ability to shift perspectives quickly trumps being smart any day. If you want to know how I fill my network with amazing folks like Neveen, who's a good friend of mine, check out our course six-minute networking. It's free and it's about relationship development either in your business or in your personal life,

and you can find that at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. here's Navine Jane. You know, a lot of people have been asking me to have you on the show. They're like, have this guy, Nevin Jane. Do you know this guy, Navine Jane? And I started to do the research, and I thought, okay, he runs three companies. Or is it only three companies? I'm forgetting a few here.

I'm listening. Okay. And then you have three kids. Are you aware that you have three kids? I don't know. You have three companies. I don't know if you can pay attention to all those things at once. Yes, I do have three kids.

Yeah. And the reason I know them is because I'm just so proud of them of all the things I have done in life. If you were to ask me what's one thing that I would just absolutely say is my biggest accomplishment, I would say that what kids are actually doing is not who they are, but what they actually stand for and what they're doing is probably the one of the best things I've done. So there's not like one kid that you would trade for a better company? Well, so it's interestingly that our oldest, I would just, you know, amazing. I mean, he's 17-year-old when he started.

Cairo Society to help all the college entrepreneurs around the world became the largest college entrepreneurship thing. After he graduates, he starts a company, sells the company and now focused on affordability, so affordable housing, affordable child care, affordable senior care, and really looking at how can we as entrepreneurs find the technologies to help the middle class actually live a better life? So unlike a Silicon Valley, we're just so much into tech. So technology looking for a problem. He comes from saying, here are the problems that everybody feels. So millennials graduate from college.

They can probably pay for the rent, but they have no money to pay for the deposit. How do you solve that problem, right? So it's really looking at the real life problem solving that. Our daughter graduated from Stanford, and she's Stanford STEM fellow, Stanford Mayfield Fellow. She is in the board of Stanford Women in Business, Youth Ambassador for United Nations. But what I'm saying is all she cared about was women. empowerment. And what she do? She works at the AI company to remove the gender bias for hiding. So that means they found their own niche. Our youngest one is now graduating from Stanford this year,

and he became his Schwartzman scholar because you really want to see that as we are growing as a world humanity together, the political divide is separating the geographies. Entrepreneurs knows no boundaries. It is the political boundaries for politicians. Can you bridge that gap. So he's a Swachman scholar going to China at the Chimua. So none of them work for you? None of them. Do you think any of them would consider working for you? I would be very, very disappointed if they actually were to say, hey, Dad, can I do

go do the things with you? Really? Why? For a very simple reason, because I want them to be going out and doing their amazing things. It is about there's so many problems in the world. If the two best minds have to work on one problem. That means at least one of them is unnecessary. Fair enough. Okay. It seems like there's a lot of pressure, not necessarily from you, but upward pressure to become an entrepreneur in your family. Actually, to me, the entrepreneur is not about starting a company. Entrepreneurship actually is about solving a problem. So our daughter did not start the company. She joined the company

when she was under 10 people. Now there happened to be 150 people. But so in terms of true sense, that's not entrepreneurship. That was simply a about are there other people who are focusing on the same goal? And can she join them to essentially pursue the mission? That's interesting. So you don't think that, because I think that right now there's a lot of kids, kids and adults, the thing, I have to start a company, I have to be an influencer, I have to be my own boss, otherwise I'm not an entrepreneur and I'm not doing something important.

But really, it sounds like what you're saying is you can join another cause and that still makes you entrepreneurial. You don't have to be the guy whose face or the gal whose face or name is on the building. So to me, I divide the human beings into three types of problems, three types of people. People who think of a problem, every one of us are really good about that. So let's call them human. Like identifying a problem. Identifying them.

So we call them human beings, right? And the people who are really, really smart, they come up with a solution to that problem. We call them visionaries. We call them whatever you want. And there are only one group of people who go and say, let's go solve that problem. Those are the entrepreneurs. You could be working for a large company and you focus on solving a problem. you are an entrepreneur. We can call them an entrepreneur, whatever you call. But fundamentally,

an entrepreneur is someone who can go out and solve a problem. You're a problem solver. And that's an entrepreneurship to me. Yeah, I like that. I can imagine that. So how did you eventually develop this entrepreneurial mindset? Because it's not, I know you grew up in India, you grew up relatively poor. Your father doesn't sound like the type of guy who went, look, you're bound for great things. You're going to build a big company. Go for it. It's kind of the opposite. So, you know, somehow this people have this idea of, one fine morning, it just happens. To me, the life is a set of accidents and they just happen.

And life is this continuum. And, you know, sometimes we go back and rewrite the history and say, aha, I know exactly what I happen. The point is, it's literally you think about it for a while. And suddenly the last thing that happens is not really the one that made you do it. It just happens to be the last thing that you say, okay, fine, enough is enough now, right? So you can identify. Yeah, it's the straw that broke the camel.

Yeah, but not necessarily the thing the camelback wasn't already broken. So I think in that sense, you know, my brother went and started a company and, you know, he was just doing it. And at that time, I just thought, oh, my God, that just thing is not something for me. And I'm just going out and doing things. And it just so happened. I was at Microsoft. I started at Microsoft very early when Microsoft was to some really tiny company and nobody really knew about it. And I was at Microsoft and this internet thing was coming along.

and I'm seeing this, Yahoo is coming along and these companies that you probably won't even remember, you're way too young. Lycos and Excite and Magellan, I mean, he probably said like, whatever the other. Alta Vista. Much, much later, much later. But anyway, so I just start thinking that,

you know, this thing is really something fundamentally could change the way we live. And I wanted to go out and do something. And essentially, I quit and I started this company. I wanted to go do something on the internet. And the fact is, I really didn't know what. And that was an interesting thing, that I quit the job without knowing what I was going to do.

And then I spend the weekend just trying to figure out what is it. Now I have no job. I have no job security. What should I be doing? And that I think to me is really the lesson that I learned was people who try to find something while they're still there is literally having a two feet on two separate boat. And I know what happens to them. They normally fall in the water, right?

You have to cut the umbilical cord. Unless you're willing to cut the umbilical cord, you're always doing a half-hearted job on two things. So if you're starting a company, you're working, and in the evenings you're doing, you suck at work because you're not putting all your efforts there, and you suck at the thing you're trying to do because you're not putting all your effort there. So to me, if it's worth doing, it's worth giving every iota of your brain cycle to it. What if you have a family that you have to support and you can't quit your job?

Or you shouldn't, I mean, responsibly, you shouldn't quit your job while you're working on an idea that's unvalidated, right? And that is really the risk. So for example, we didn't have money. We had saved enough money just for about a year. And that's the savings we had. And I was willing to risk half of that to roll into the company, invest in this company and thought, what if I could now, in six months, we have enough savings to last for six months?

Can I actually go and do something and find it will work or not work? And if in six months, if it doesn't work and there is no traction, I'm going to go out and get another job. Yeah. And that was a thing to me. Is it really the point is it's not like you're not going to get a job again. Even if you quit your job and you try something, you in fact become more valuable, even to the same company that you quit because now you have experience that you would have never had.

In fact, more often than not, you get better salary than you would have stayed there. Because you get to renegotiate when you come back. So you're risk tolerant. What about your wife? Is she cool with all this? Or is she like, wait a minute. Yeah, that was not a great conversation. So here's what I'm going to do.

We have enough savings for a year. I'm going to quit my job, take half of that, and throw it into this company, and then we keep our fingers crossed for six months. Yeah. So that conversation did not go valid. You can possibly imagine, right? There's some convenient thing to be done there. Yeah, yeah. It was more like a conversation you and Jen would be having.

Yeah. I am pregnant. What do you mean you're going to quit your job? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So she was pregnant at the time. Yeah. Oh, she must have wanted to throw you out the window.

Yeah. Yeah, oh my gosh. Irresponsible husband is the call. Yeah, completely. Wow. Wow. Well, she must be happy for you now. Yeah.

I think, you know, things that end well, really. Yeah. Now you can point to the ending and go, see, I knew it all along. Exactly. Yeah. And that's actually how the history gets related in, right? I knew all along we are going to be successful. She knew it all along.

She believed in me. No, I'm saying, nah. Yeah, right. She's like, you're so lucky you didn't lose all our money. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So here's a tacky question. but I'm so curious and a lot of my listeners are always curious.

So you grew up relatively poor. In fact, you know what? Let's start there. Tell me about your childhood in India before I get into anything else because I think a lot of people, they look at immigrants now and they go, oh, well, you know, they're either looking for this or they have an advantage or they have a disadvantage. There's all these sort of stories we tell, but nobody really, it's almost rare to hear about someone's childhood.

We hear about the story as soon as they get here, you know? It's very interesting. Almost every immigrant who came early, I mean, they literally have very similar stories. I mean, sure, my story is my story. But the fact is, it's all of us are like a slumdog millionaire. We all come here with almost nothing. And, you know, we come from the countries where there is not a lot of it. And my story is really about growing up with not a lot of food to eat, not having a place to stay.

So your family was homeless or something like that? Not really quite homeless, but the fundamental thing was that it was like we didn't have to be poor. So it was a decision that my dad made that caused us to be poor. What do you mean? So my dad had a job and he was a supervisor for construction for the government, and his job was to build the buildings for the government. And India is extremely corrupt country. And the way they do that is to tell the contractor, hey, you don't have to use the cement.

just put half sand and half cement. A building is going to fall apart and fuse it. But so be it. The money that you save, you give me that piece of that. I'm going to take my portion, give it to my boss. My boss takes his portion, gives it to his boss, and all the way to the top of the food chain, everybody gets paid. So everybody is happy.

Now, what really happens is you don't know. The government realizes that everybody is going to take the bribe anyway. So why should we pay them a lot of money? So they pay them a tiny bit of salary thinking go take a bribe. My dad decided that he wants to be an honest man. And that is really very solid. When he decided to be an honest man, obviously we didn't have much money. And it turns out that lack of money is rarely the issue.

Because we eat way too much. We don't have to eat as much as we really do. So not having food actually was never, I do not recall that was ever the issue. What really starts happening was every six, nine months, my boss, my dad's boss would call the contractor and say, hey, I'm not seeing any money. in here. Is he keeping all of it? What's going on here? Oh, yeah. And it says, no, no, no, you know what he's asking me to do? What? He's asking me to build a building to this back. He's telling me to put the Dempsey vent and build a building. And I'm thinking, if I had known, I'm going to have

that kind of a person. I would have never bid in this contract. I am losing my shirt. In government, you never get fired. You get transferred. So every six to nine months, they transfer one place to another place, ultimately, every place we went until we went to the most remote villages where there was absolutely no building to be built, now he's not taking anybody's bribe away. So they didn't really care what he was doing. All they cared was he didn't take someone else's money away. Right. So now we're in the most remote areas of the country where there are just no schools,

there are no tables, just chair, tables, chairs. You sit on the floor and some elderly generally, gentleman will get a pity on you, he'll start teaching you. Oh my gosh. Despite all of that, my sister went on to become a postdoctorate in applied mathematics. My brother has a PhD in statistics and PhD in computer science. Now, I'm the least educated person in my family who ends up just getting an engineering degree and an MBA.

And then I came to this country with absolutely nothing. We had $5 in my pocket that we saved. And I was working for $3 in armor jobs. What was your first job when he got here? I was actually working as a, what I would, they call them an intern, but basically with slave labor, we were getting paid $500 a month. Where? In New Jersey.

Oh, okay. Like doing what? So here's very interesting. I got this opportunity because they came to the college campus, and this is story I have not shared with this. I'm going to share. This is very interesting. So I'm finishing my MBA, and there is a company called Burroughs, which became ultimately

unis. Oh, yeah. They came to the college campus to recruit for the people. Obviously, they're looking for computer people, and so I, they're no reason for me to apply. I'm the guy who is engineering for industrial engineering, no computer background, and I'm doing now personnel management and labor relations. Nothing to do with this thing.

It sounds like you're completely unqualified for the job. Yes, I don't apply for the thing. And I'm having lunch with a bunch of buddies. And one of the guys, you know, when they do these act, things that make you take the SAT, like, aptitude test. And one of my buddies is sitting next to me. So, you know, this is one of the hardest thing. This company came from America.

Their aptitude is the hardest have ever done. And I'm like, dude, how hard can it be? And he said, have you done that? And I said, no, not really. He said, well, then you have no right to tell me it's not hard. And I'm thinking, this is just stupid. I'm going to go do the damn thing. So I go there and I take the test and I aced it.

So you took the test just to piss off your friend. Yeah. That's right. Now I get a call next day morning. And I said, we want to talk to you about being computer programmer. What are you talking about? What is this computer thing? He said, if you look at you at the thing, schools, you got a perfect school. You have to be a computer science person. I say, I don't mean what computer it is.

And now this guy thinks I'm just not messing with him. Messing with him. He said, do you know the difference between a bit and a bite? And I'm saying, of course I do. Small and a bit. He said, there you have it. That gentleman is how I came to this country. Oh, my God.

So now I come to this country and they want to teach me to be a computer programmer. So they brought you over. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. And that's why they pay me 500 bucks. Oh, okay. So they go to India and they're like, we're going to teach you how to be an intern. And then they go, look, these guys are worth for $500 a month.

Yeah. And then they schlep you over here? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And so I come here making $500 a month. And I'm supposed to be a computer programmer. If you're a brown guy, you're damn good a computer.

I don't care about anybody says. Yeah, sure. They just automatically assume. you're a brown guy, you're good at the computer. Right, but they got to give you that fake name for when you answer the phone. Like, oh, you can't say you're Nevin, you got to be like Tom. You ever call a text report and it's like, hello, this is Tom? And you're like, no.

Your name is not Tom, dude. Especially when I call, it's like, God, my job, not my name is John. No, sir. Yeah, no. I mean, look, if your accent was stronger back then, for sure, you weren't, we're pulling off John. All right. But interesting thing, I've always been Navine so that he asked. Yeah, that's perfect.

That's so funny. So you got, okay, you started working here, and you grew up, I assume, with very little, if you're moving around so much, and you said you even had almost a lack of food sometimes. What was the first thing you got that you, that you bought when you started making real money, you know, when you started selling your companies? Because I'm thinking, if I grew up and I didn't even have food to eat every meal, what kind of thing did you dream of back in India that you, that you never had, that you finally were able to get? You know, it's very interesting. never actually, when you don't have something, you know, so many dreams about once you make the money, I'm going to have a Rolex, I'm going to go buy this,

or I'm going to go do that. It turns out all of the stuff just goes out the window. When you actually have it, you know, something like, why? You don't care anymore. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to, right? I drove my beat-up Lexus truck, and, you know, you could argue I could have bought anything in my life. that I wanted, right?

They're not. They need a watch because I need to wear a watch. I just don't wear a watch. So the point was it just suddenly became unimportant. I mean, there's the same reason. It's not I can't have a private plane. I just don't feel the need to have a private place. It's a waste.

It's a good way to go broke, as you know. And my point is, so a lot of the times you, all the things that people want because they don't have it, once you get ability to have them, you actually really want them, right? So these ideas are what I, I will do when I have money are simply because you don't have it. Because once you have it, you start thinking about what can I do with this that is more

meaningful? And I think that change, I think everyone goes through that. When that change happens, is the happiest movement because as long as you're changing something, you're always stress, you're always trying to prove something. And the day you actually stop chasing, the day you become humble, the day you don't have to tell someone, you know what I drive is the day you actually become successful. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Navine Jane. We'll be right back

after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now back to our show with Navine Jane. Was there something you wanted as a kid that you later decided you don't care about? I mean, I assume at some point you were like, look, I want a pair of basketball shoes or like a boat. Honestly, it just never went through that face. And it was one of those type of things that I got whatever I enjoyed at that minute, right? So not because I, oh my God, and this is my childhood dream of having it. So now that I can, I'm going to

have it. That's good. So you never really had a lot of materialistic. No. But don't get me. I don't want people to think that I don't enjoy materialistic. But it's never because that was how I wanted it to be. Today, I live in a decent house. I drive a good car. I mean, none of the stuff. But that to me is because I just enjoy them, not because I wanted them. Interesting.

Okay. So it's more optional. Do you think that growing up, moving around a lot, not having a lot of material things actually increased your capacity for risk tolerance and business? You know, it goes both ways. When people don't have much, they somehow, they start to believe the money is the only thing that matters and they chase that until they die.

Or for others, it becomes a thing. He said, look, what is the worst thing that can happen? This business is going to go broke. I'm not going to have food to eat. Been there, done that. So it's literally, you can use that. It's just your mindset of how you start thinking about that. And to me, the difference between people who are successful

and the people who actually are not successful is how they think. It is not what they do. It is how they think. And I really hope that people realize that even the books have been written about seven habits of successful people. And I really believe that is a misnomer. You never want to follow the habits of successful people. You want to follow their thought process, right?

So an example that I always get. Tony Robbins takes ice bath every morning. You can take your ice bath three times a day. You're not going to become Tony Robbins. You become Tony Robbins thinking like Tony Robbins, not behaving like one. Yeah, okay. I can see that. And of course, I mean, mindset versus just blindly following habits is a common theme on the show.

You grew up with a lot of scarcity, though. And I know that in moonshots, you mentioned that scarcity moonshots, the book, which will link in the show notes. You mentioned that scarcity causes war, causes disease, and that we're going to need more of everything soon. And one interesting point that you made was that sustainability is unsustainable. We're shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. We actually need more of what we need, not merely to use less or recycle, which is kind of depressing. I've been recycling my whole life.

What do you mean by this? Are we just totally screwed? I mean, it seems like if we can't recycle our way out of this problem, what's going on? I'm not even remotely suggesting that we should waste or we should not recycle. Sure. What I'm suggesting is that we have to think about why do we even believe there is a scarcity? So this is the scarcity mindset, right? So why do we believe there is somehow finite amount of resources that exist?

Because that is because our imagination is limited. So we believe the value of the land exists because there is only finite amount of land. Without ever realizing that our planet Earth is nothing but a tiny dot in our solar system. Our solar system is not very unique. It's a tiny dot in our galaxy. Our galaxy is nothing very unique. It's a tiny dot in our universe. And our universe may be a tiny dot in this multiverse.

We don't know that. The point really is the scarcity happens because somehow we believe this is the only planet that we can live on. And if we start to dig into that and say, what if we could live on the moon? What if we could live on the Mars? What if we could live on Titan?

What if you could live in Europa? Where is their scarcity? Right? Now people say, well, the energy is scared. because we only have this finite amount of this fossil fuel. Now, we all talk about renewable energy. Every 90 minutes, there's more solar energy falls on planet Earth than we use in the whole year.

Simply a matter of conversion. And as you can see, the cost is coming down today to be at par in most places at a distributed level. But the fact is, this is no different than just a couple of hundred years ago. the most scarce element on planet Earth was aluminum. That's funny. It was the most scarce. In fact, it was so scarce that on the tip of the Washington monument, it is made of aluminum.

We wanted the Britishers to know we have arrived. Look what we can do. In fact, when Napoleon hosted the king of Siam, he wanted to show how rich he is, he fed all his generals in the golden platter. all his troops in the silver platter. But for King of Siam, nothing else will do other than an aluminum platter. Wow. And the reason was because we believed the aluminum is so hard.

And the reason it was hard was, even though there was so much of it, it was always in the form of bauxite. And extracting aluminum from bauxite was very, very hard until the technology called electrolysis came about. And it became so cheap we threw it away. Now, what is that electrolysis of? of that solar energy. Right.

So what's the electrolysis? What's the bauxite conversion of solar power? Exactly. And then when that happens, we're going to have unlimited energy. And the beauty of the thing is, once something becomes abundant, it becomes democratized, and it becomes demonetized, right? And suddenly we don't fight over it. And I think a lot of people have this misconception.

The human beings are just greedy. It doesn't matter how much we have. We want more and we're going to fight over it. It turns out we actually humans are generosity is built into our DNA. We all realize that the part of evolution, when our tribe died, we died. We want to take care of each other. That's the only way we could survive. Now here's the interesting part.

We all could sit in the stadium behind us. You see that Levi's Stadium? 70,000 of us could sit there, enjoy a game. and we never slept the guy next to us and say, hey, you're breathing my air, it's my oxygen. Why is that? Because we inherently believe air is abundant. Oxygen is abundant. It's free.

Everybody has it and we don't value it. Now, what if energy was the next air? What if food became the next air? What if land became the next air? What if the freshwater became the next year? And now I can go through and say, how do we get there? Now, it's not just about solar energy. What if you can start to get the helium three, a small quantity of helium three, which

you can get on the moon, you can get them on any other asteroids, is simply an isotope of helium that a small quantity could power this planet for generations using fusion energy? And most people were saying, did he say fusion energy? Is it that dumb not to know that there is no fusion reactors right now? No, I'm not. But the fact is helium three is not there either. It's going to take us five to ten years to get the helium three. Just is going to take that long to get the fusion reactor going.

When somebody has built a fusion reactor, what are they going to swing? Does someone have helium three? Right. Oh, shoot. Call Nevin. We need more helium three. Exactly. We built the electrolysis.

We don't have any bauxite. Exactly. So now you want to be where the soccer ball is going to be, not where the soccer ball is. Right. I think we use a hockey analogy. puck. I know I was going to say puck, but I didn't say puck. I think most people don't get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends on the audience, right? European audience, it's the football, the American audience, it's the puck.

Right. So you, and you mentioned in moonshots that moonshots, entrepreneurs are our greatest resource, those taking a moonshot. Tell us what a moonshot even is in your opinion. So to me, what I really meant is the biggest or the, I would see the most scarce resource on planet Earth really is dreamers. The dreamers are the ones we just don't have enough of. Now, to answer your question, to me, a moonshot is something an audacious goal, something so audacious that people believe on the surface it is impossible. And most people, once they believe something is impossible, it becomes impossible for them and no one else. Then you take yourself out of solving that problem.

So the more people they believe is impossible, now you have. less and less competition to doing that. As a matter of fact, one of the things I learned is, it's easier to solve a big, massive, audacious problem than to solve a smaller problem. Why is that? What do you mean by that? So if you go and say,

I'm going to build an app that's going to help me find a roommate. People say, oh, great idea, John, go enjoy. Now, if you tell someone, hey, I'm going to go out and make illness options. People say, what do you mean by that?

Imagine living in a world where chronic disease is simply a matter of choice, not a matter of bad luck. Who would choose to get a disease? Who would choose to get a disease? Everyone says being healthy is a choice. You heard that. Being healthy is a choice, sure. So what do you really mean? Being sick is a choice.

So my point is we make those decisions every day, whether it makes you healthy or sick. I'm going to come back on how you make those choices. Yeah, because a lot of people get sick. It's not their choice. Aha. So that's why I say being, when you say disease, I mean the chronic diseases. I don't mean the infectious diseases. You and I don't make a decision to get a flu. Sure. But you rarely come home and say, you know what, Jen? Last night I was out with the boys, I think I might have caught diabetes. Right? Or you say, I think I might have caught obesity. Have you noticed that? I have been gaining a little weight. Yeah, but it's my point of you didn't catch obesity. You don't catch diabetes. You don't go out and catch depression. You don't go out to catch anxiety.

You don't go out and catch autoimmune diseases. These are the chronic diseases that happen over a long period of time, and they all happen because of certain lifestyle, right? So the idea really is if we know what is causing them and what if you know what to do about it, and you have actionable thing you could do. So let's assume you're gaining weight. Yeah, gaining weight, yeah.

We don't have to assume much. We can just observe. Yeah. Yeah. So that observation is my diagnostics now. So we have a diagnostic tool called eyes. And I just diagnosed you. Yes, you might be.

You're heading towards, here's you, here's obesity. You're moving in that direction. Yeah. So I'm almost like a doctor now. Yeah. Dr. Navine. So now, but seriously, but the point is, now let's assume somehow I could tell you, this is what you need to do to stop gaining weight and reduce your weight.

you need to stop eating spinach, you need to stop eating kale, you need to stop eating apple. No problem. But here's the thing. Now, once you know what needs to be done, and let's assume scientifically we can show you why you need to be doing that, and you continue, you say, no, I'm going to do that. I'm going to keep eating them. That's a choice. Got it.

So once you know what is causing it, you know what action you need to take and you decide not to take them, that's what I mean by it's a choice. Got it. Okay. So you're still attributing responsibility to people for their bad choices. That's right. I can get behind that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Right. So let me continue the thought. So what thought is, when you go out and say that's what you want to do, amazing things happen. The world's best and the brightest want to help you solve that problem because that problem is worth solving. You, that is the reason someone like us. we were not in the healthcare expert, the top person in artificial intelligence, the head

of Watson resources, that problem you mentioned about making it less optional, I want to be part of that. I don't need to make the money that I'm making at IBM. I'm going to come and help you solve the problem. The best and the brightest people who understand the human biology, they want to work on solving the problem. And that's literally what happens. We ended up finding the technology at Los Alamos National Lab.

we ended up finding the person who was working on a biodefense project to understand if a bad actor were to get hold of something, how would we know what's making us sick? I know exactly what makes people sick. I can get you that technology. I can tell you exactly what needs to be done. These best and the brightest came together because we had that moonshot. And that is what I mean by that is the best in the brightest are not going to come and say, I think I'm going to help you write this app.

Yeah. Right. And that's what I mean is that it suddenly becomes amazing and easier to solve. because the best minds want to work on the most audacious problem. That's a good point. And it goes to your point also in moonshots about extreme near-sightedness. Tell us about that because I feel like extreme near-sightedness is something that you see this when you watch the news.

They go, pretty soon you're going to be able to do this. And you go, wait a minute, who cares about being able to check my email on the phone? Like, what about being able to send data on all these other things on the phone? In fact, I think data on cell phones is an example that you actually gave. in the book now that I think about it. Tell us about this near-sightedness. So it's very interesting that we back when there was, you know, we used to have, you probably won't remember Jordan, you flip phones. I've had, I'm 39, man. I know, I know about flip phones. Larry King still has one. Star Trek phones, you flip them and they're like, that was the fancy phone. Now, at that time,

this was now in late 90s. In year 2000, this is seven years before, if you were, you, jobs and now's iPhone. I am on record and I'm interviewing at Washington Post with a lady named Leslie Walker. Leslie says, what do you think you're doing at that is exciting? And I say, imagine one day we're going to have a phone. We're going to be able to get our email on that phone, our contacts on that phone, the weather and the spark code. And imagine when you drive by the Starbucks, you'll get that Starbucks coupon and someday we're going to use our phone to make a payment instead of using a credit card. And she looks at me, he says, not in our lifetime.

And I called her seven years later. And I say, Leslie, I hope you're still alive because it's happening. But my point was, now, it's not, now, interesting thing is it's not that I had some crystal ball of that, oh my God, I had this vision one day in the night when I woke up in the morning and God showed me this stuff that is going to come out. No.

To me, it was simply a way of thinking. So in those days, anything that I said was really not a surprise. Everyone used to carry this thing called Palm Pilot. Oh, yeah. So Palm Pilot was a device. You could get your email and a calendar. It was a nice, big device. The people used to carry the pagers, right?

Pages and how you communicated. And they had this flip phone. And everybody kept thinking, the phone is the phone. How are you going to get the email and the tiny screen? I was thinking, why can't you put the phone on the Palm Pilot? Right, yeah. Right. And so it wasn't like a lot of,

imagination other than simply thinking if they can come together, people think Palm Pilot needs to become phone. I'm thinking, why can't put the phone in the Palm Pilot and you're done? Right. And that's literally what Steve Jobs ended up doing. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Neveen Jane. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air and keeps us going. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to us on the Overcast Player for iOS, please click that

little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Neveen Jane. In order to predict the future like that, though, and you say this yourself in Moonshots, entrepreneurs have to have their feet in multiple technologies. So, for example, self-driving cars. Tell us about this. This is an interesting example, because you're right. Self-driving cars have all this different technology that was not designed for self-driving cars and they all sort of come together for this thing

that's going to change the whole world. So it's very interesting is that a technology until it becomes, or I would say, let me repeat, not just the technology, especially the artificial intelligence. It is always this mystical thing, but once actually it becomes a reality, we all look at it and think da, right? Right.

People talk about robots in the house and people, I don't want the robots in my house. You remind them what's the dishwasher. Dishwasher is a robot that's in your house cleaning your dishes, right? But people don't think of the robot. People, self-driving car, including our brilliant president, say, I will never get into that car. Mr. President, the plane that you fly in is also an autonomous flying vehicle.

So just in case you're wondering, you do use that, right? It's no longer people think of, you know, self-driving car, And self, no longer, I may say after 737, you want to talk about that. But the fact is, the planes have been self-flying for the longest time. Autopilot. Autopilot has been in the planes for the longest time. And it's one of the safest thing. And we fly every single day.

So the interesting thing is the technology for self-driving, as you mentioned, has been coming along. Remember, even five years ago, we started to see the brakes. You know, basically we assisted brakes. You could start to see the lane change. people would beep, beep, beep when you're trying to change the lane. When you get too close to a car, it starts to beep. All these are self-driving features that have been coming along.

And now we're starting to put all of them together, and suddenly you say, oh, we've got to start driving a vehicle. But interesting thing about that is the implication of a single technology is not just what you see primarily. What is the secondary and tertiary implication of the technology? So, for example, self-driving car is pretty obvious how it's going to be. to disrupt the automotive industry. The idea of owning a car probably

will go away. But that is just one industry and you say that's really the implication. What you don't realize is if the cars are constantly communicating with each other, now more cars can drive much closer to each other. That means you don't need to build as many roads. What happens

to the construction companies? Now you say, oh, now if I need a car and it can come to me when I need it, I don't need to have a parking lock right inside my building. So what if all the parking lots in the most expensive real estate in Manhattan can become affordable housing? And cars can be anywhere. They just come to you.

Nothing in Manhattan is going to be affordable, but I see where you're going to this. But my point is, all the stuff, real estate that suddenly frees up. All the parking lot frees up. Now that can be affordable housing. But now, if you start to see how the virtual reality comes to come together, that means your car becomes your office, your home becomes your office, Do you really need to be even driving to the office? Do you really have to leave in close to the office anymore?

What if the office can be created in a virtual room? And it starts to suddenly start to change everything, right? So there are a couple of concepts here that I just wanted to bring up, and I really think that in terms of practical nature of how people think about it. I want to give you some example because I know your audience and they would just love it. So part of it is how do you take a problem that is so complex that on the surface like a moonshot, seems very difficult and how you think about solving you. So I'm going to give two examples.

So let's assume people say, are you crazy enough to think you can live on the moon? It is impossible. And you say, wow. So instead of saying it is impossible, what if you were to rephrase and saying, what technologies need to be developed for us to be able to live on the moon? Now you're in the solution, just by asking that question. And you say, okay, the first thing is, how are you going to, humans are going to live on the moon?

Don't you know there is a tremendous amount of radiation? That's good. Now, what if we know that there are tremendous amount of bacterial species that are growing in radioactive nuclear waste? What does it mean? That means nature has figured out how to protect its DNA from very high radiation and use the radiation as a source of energy. Now, we can take the genes from those bacteria, modify ourselves using CRISPR and in vivo,

and suddenly we become radiation resistant. And people say, the CRISPR is not quite ready yet. And I'm sorry, we're not living on the moon either yet. But the fact is you don't have to solve that problem. That problem is getting solved, whether it takes another three years or five years, we're going to get the CRISPR to be able to modify our human genes. So we'd end up with a subspecies of human that thrives in radioactive environments. Or at least can live in the radioactive environment, right?

Now the second part, people say, fine, you can do that. How are you going to grow the food on the moon? Maybe you don't need it if you're using radiation for energy. So now we're getting it. But the answer, that is not the question. The question you need to be asking is, why do we need food? Why do we eat food? And once you ask that question, you say, okay, we need food for two reasons.

We need energy and we need nutrition. Energy we can get through photosynthesis through radiation. What about the nutrients? So nutrition, what kind of nutrition? Maybe you need hydrogen, maybe you need hydrogen, maybe you need hydrogen. But what if we can find the water on the moon? We know there's plenty of it. That means now you've got hydrogen and you got oxygen

and the thing that's left over is nitrogen. Now, we don't know there is enough nitrogen on the moon or not. So either we're going to find the nitrogen or living on the moon is simply about how do we take enough nitrogen from Earth to the moon and now we can live on the moon. And that problem is a solvable problem. So things that seem so insurmountable

just by asking different questions, you're able to break it down and you're able to solve that problem. So that's a concept. I really think you can apply to almost every, single complex problem that you're looking at. This is fascinating. So what are some of the more exciting developments you think are coming in like the next 10 to 20 years that you think are at near certainty, as much as one can?

I mean, look, so first of all, there's several things. And I'm going to give, I'm going to answer your question on just do one more concept that I really think is important for any entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs, when they start, they want to solve a problem. And it's really interesting for them to know, are they solving the symptom of the problem? are they solving the root cause of the problem? And I can give you multiple examples where it applies, but let me take one example to the thing, and then I can tell you how to think about it.

So first day, let's assume you know it is not assumption. We all know there are many parts of the world where the lack of fresh water is one of the biggest problems. And you say, I being a person who cares and it's a big problem, I'm going to go figure out how to get more fresh water. Can we build a nanotechnology to be able to desalinize the water? How do we get this fresh water? to these people. And you start to solve the problem. But if you're smart, you will ask the question,

why is there a shortage of fresh water? And the answer would have been, oh, because we use majority of the fresh water for agriculture. And you say, ah, so all I have to do is come up with the way of doing agriculture like aquaponic, aeroponic, hydroponic, and if you can do that, or even use lightly sorted water, suddenly I can now free up all that freshwater for humans. And you feel really good until you ask the question, wait a second, why do we have all this agriculture? And suddenly you realize majority of the agriculture is for feeding the cattle.

Yeah. And you say, oh, that's it. Now, what if we can get people to eat what they want, the beef, and all they want to eat is muscle tissues? Can we do exactly what nature does? Take a stem cell instead of growing eyes and ears. You don't eat them anyway. Just only grow the muscle tissues.

And now suddenly you realize the freshwater problem really the synthetic biology problem that lies here. And that's really, if you don't do that, you end up solving symptom. Somebody comes behind you, solves the problem and you basically have no business left. Right, right. And that applies, by the way, almost everything. This is just one example. So, for example, there was somebody came to me and say, hey, I'm really passionate about

orphanage and I want to go build more orphanage. And I say, is that problem if you keep doing it, you're not solving it. You need to start thinking about why do these people become orphans? If you're not solving it, you're constantly getting the new feed, and you can never solve that. You've got to solve the root cause. And the best story I remember from my childhood days, there was this man in Ganges River, and he's frantically seeing these bodies coming down, and he's promptly picking them up

and trying to save them, and there's another gentleman passes by, and he sees him do that, and he just keeps walking. And, can you see, I'm drowning myself trying to save these people, bodies coming down? Can't you just sit down and help me? And I say, I'm going to go up there and find out where these bodies are coming from. Because if you're not, the two of us are going to be drowning here. Yeah. Right.

Right. So solving the problem instead of the symptom of the problem. Yeah. And I think that looking at problems by identifying the root causes is obviously a more efficient way to do it. It does require, again, to your earlier point, to have your feet in multiple technologies so that you can find a real solution to those. So you asked me the question that I didn't quite answer for in terms of what are the things that I see that are going to happen in the next. decade that fundamentally, that we know, it's near certain in someone's mind and other people

don't think this is absolutely a crazy idea. Sure. Like self-driving cars, we know those are coming. No, that's an easy part, right? That's an easy one. But here you think about it. In the next 10 years, it's going to fundamentally change the way we live our lives. I don't think there's ever been a time in the human history where we're going to see more change

in the next 10 years than we saw in the last 500 years. The exponential technology used to come one at a time. This is the first time when we're seeing the convergence of these technologies that are coming together that fundamentally changes everything. So it's not just about the autumascar. What do you really mean to be in seeing what's a reality? Right. So reality people, you say, I'll believe it when I see it.

Right. Right. What you see is really not real. What you see is your perception of what is there. So, for example, if I were to tell you, there is a Taylor Swift song playing here, you're going to say, Navin, you have a distorted sense of reality because I can't hear it. I can't hear it. Now, if you put a shortwave radio here or FM radio here and you hear it, how is it suddenly coming here?

It has always been here except our auditory cortex cannot hear that wavelength. Right. Good point. Yeah. Thankfully. Thankfully. Right. But my point is the same thing also happens.

what you look at. We don't see the infrared. We don't see a lot of the wavelength. All those things, what if you start to see? So the point is, what is the reality is simply our perception. If someone is a colorblind and he says, this is, I'm telling you that's red. He said, no, no, that is black. How do you argue that what I'm seeing is real and you're seeing is not real? Right. Yeah, we really can't. We did a whole show about perception with Beau Lotto a couple weeks ago. So my point I'm to say is that idea of what is real will fundamentally change. As we we start to get into mixed reality. The mixed reality fundamentally changes of what is real and what is not real.

Mixed reality being like augmented reality type of... So augmented reality, mixed reality is essentially virtual objects in the real world, right? And as you start to change even what human brain can perceive, so let's assume I'm able to modify my eyes to be able to see a bigger wavelength of light. I'm able to modify my auditory cochlear quality. cortex to hear a larger wave of sound, from ultrasound to the short waves to everything. Now, are we more conscious at that point? Are we as humans have distorted sense of reality now that we can see a lot more? And that to me is really the interesting thing is when people

used to say Steve Job had a distorted sense of reality, did he actually have a clear sense of reality? We just couldn't see it. Right? So we have a distorted sense of reality, not he. And the point I'm trying to make is that everything that we think of it, the idea of that we used to go somewhere to get on a plane that will run like a fast car and then it'll take off. People are going to say, you mean, you just don't put a jetpack on your backyard and just laugh. And even there, someday is going to change. People are going to say, you mean you just deatomize yourself and appear somewhere else? Do you think that's on the horizon being able to deatomize ourselves and then build a replica? It's very interesting.

So it's already, the life is already being transmitted at the speed of light. And let me explain you what I mean. It is simple life. Today, if you can sequence a bacteria or a virus, and you can send that sequence on the other end, and you can synthesize that on the other side, have you just transmitted life on the other side. I don't know, which one is, that leads all these philosophical questions, right? No, no, no.

My point is it transmitted bacteria electronically from one side to the other side. Is it possible? I don't even know. You can synthesize. You can basically a sequence on one side and synthesize on that side. You can DNA synthesize it, right? So you can essentially take the DNA here, synthesize it here. That means I can take a bacteria from here to the moon and you can print the bacteria on the moon.

You just transfer the bacteria from here to there. Now imagine the whole idea, the first thing that was ever sequence was actually the sperm is single cell, right? So the sequence is sperm. Now actually if you take that idea and you can transfer the sequence of that and someone prints it and has a baby, the idea of honey I was not in town doesn't even matter anymore. Right.

So my point is the idea we start thinking about what happens when you start to take these things. People used to say you can't be on two places at the same time. Why is that? What if we can be on 10 places with 10 G is constantly being synchronized and there is a, holographic image of Jordan in 10 places, and Jordan sitting here is experiencing every one of them because it's constantly being synchronized. Your brain is actually experiencing there is no difference

that you are being there or not there because your brain doesn't know the difference. Oh my gosh. So the social media of 20 years from now is being in those same places at the same time. You think kids aren't paying attention in class now. Wait till they're in three different locations. Imagine.

But today, what is it that makes you feel that you're actually experiencing it. You don't experience through your eyes. You don't experience through your ear. You experience it through your brain. Right. My brain creates it. Your brain creates it.

Now the brain is being synchronized with your audio cortex with your visual cortex. What if those cortex are sitting somewhere else and your brain is still synchronizing it? It doesn't know what input it's getting. Right. That's a good point. So basically, I'm a software as a service. Right. So you can now be in multiple places experiencing the same thing.

your brain is experienced as if it is happening. And that, by the way, is starting to happen today in a virtual reality. Your brain does not know the difference. And most people, I think probably some of the people may not have experienced it. There is a game called ledge. You step up on a small platform. That's just about a step one and a half step higher. Suddenly, you're putting a virtual reality, you're going up on the elevator,

elevator starts to break, and you have to take a step off on the ledge. and you're seeing 60 story down, you know you are in a thing. And I've tried trying to take a step and try and find the earth and I cannot see it. And your brain will not allow you to just say, get off that.

It just is simply a platform. Your brain thinks you're going to die. Yeah. And people have screened, people panic because they try to take a step, they're thinking they can find the thing and they cannot touch it because step and one and a half step, right? Oh, my God.

And you cannot take that step. The brain just does not know the difference that what's happening. So my point is brain is such an easy thing to food. So when we start to experience all that is going to fundamentally change. Now, imagine that all the things that can change, what do you really mean to be together anymore? Oh, yeah. Right? So I can simultaneously watch Netflix all day and hang out with my wife all day.

Right. That's only two things. Right. That's only two things. Yeah. The imagination runs wild now. Yeah. I'm just going to leave it at those two things.

Thanks, but you also mentioned in the book something that's very sort of fascinating concept for me that I think is very useful, which is that curiosity beats IQ every time. What do we mean by this? Yeah. So what I really mean by that is what is really important is having the intellectual curiosity to be thinking what the world can be, not what the world is. IQ is generally based on what you can see and what you can imagine. today to be.

And curiosity is what allows you to start thinking about what the future can be. So the way I think about is the day that you as a person stop being intellectually curious is the day you die. So only way to me being alive means you're constantly curious and you're constantly learning. The day you stop learning is the day you actually become, stop being curious. And if you're not learning, you're dead, you're a zombie. As an entrepreneur, what I found most interesting is, people idea of this risk-taking and these ideas are ups and downs. What if you actually anticipate this and accept it?

So what I tell people is that life of an entrepreneur is like a heartbeat. It goes up and down. When it's a smooth, you're already dead. You just don't know it. You never want the smooth heartbeat. You want that up and down. The interesting thing up and down is when you're actually down, just you need to hunker down and know the next beat is up.

When you're on the top of that beat, never get too cocky. You know the winter is coming and you get ready for that. And that really to me is once you accept that, and the part of the thing we talk about intellectual curiosity is that we always, as a teacher, as a parent, what do we do? We want our children, we say, God, I'll take you, I can take you to the water, but I cannot make you drink. But what if our job is not that? What if our job is simpler than that? What if our job is to simply make them thirsty? If you can make them thirsty, they will not only find their own water, they will drink.

And that thirst is what I call intellectual curiosity. Now, how do we develop that? How do we develop that in ourselves and in other people? So that is, interestingly, first of all, so I can tell you that what we did, I used to do with our children, was allowing them to imagine of how different things can possibly be connected. So one of the things I used to do when the kids were young, people would read the stories to our children. What I was actually, what I used to do was very different. I would sit down with them at the night and say, you know, take these three objects. A tree, a building, and a frog tell me. story that brings all tree together. So you're having them create the story? Having them find

these connections that nobody sees them. How do you connect that frog to the building, to the tree? You start to imagine what can possibly be. And those connections allows you to start be creative and imaginative. Interesting. So the more we create or force ourselves to create solutions, the more we develop our curiosity. Is that what you're saying? No. The more we develop creativity. The curiosity is wanting to know why. And the children are inherently curious. Do you remember? Do you have any kids?

Not yet. Okay. So interestingly, when the kids, once you have, they get to two, it doesn't matter what you tell them. They say, why? And you answer the why, then they say, why? And they're curious. They want to know every why.

And what we do as we grow up, we actually shut their curiosity now. Our education system shuts the curiosity down. In fact, it starts to mold them. Our current education system starts to mold them. There is no multiple right answers. Here is a problem, and here are the four possible solution. And if you think two of them are right, wrong.

Only one of them is the right solution. And at work, what do we say? There are multiple ways that skinning that cat. There are multiple solutions. And here is the interesting one. When I am sitting and taking my test, and I say, hey, Jordan, you know, what do you think might be the answer to that problem? They call that cheating.

Sure. At work, what do we call that? Team player. Yeah, team player, collaboration. Collaboration, right? Exactly. So my point is all of that has to fundamentally because we are taking the curiosity away. Intellectually curious person is the one who wants to learn about different subjects.

So I can tell you what I do. Every couple of years, I go down into a different rat hole. So I can tell you a decade ago, I was just into neuroscience. I probably must have at least 30 books on neuroscience. I probably met 20 neuroscientists. I wanted to know how human brain works. Then I got into genetics. Then I was going into nanotechnology.

I just constantly wanted to know. And I know I spent two years just learning about cancer. Because I was just curious. How is it? The cancer can grow in the body. And our immune system doesn't kill it. So I wanted to know how this we call homogeneous. And the more I realized was it was actually cancer is an organism that's heterogeneous.

It's constantly morphing itself to escape itself of a safe from. the immune system. And it was just not that because I had anybody that was worried about cancer. I just was curious. And the interesting thing is all these data things, all the things that I learn are simply the dots I collect. And when I keep collecting these dots and I read, by the, a lot. So I spend about three hours every day in the morning just going through research on every different topic. And I keep collecting these dots. And someday when I'm thinking about a problem, or I read something, I say, oh, that was a missing piece, I need to solve that problem, right? So it literally allows you to say, when I'm reading a particular research, what does it really mean to what I'm doing right now?

You mentioned the ability to shift perspective is better and more useful than just being smart. So how do we develop and work on the skill of shifting perspective? So it's part of it as an example I gave, asking on different questions, right? So, first of all, learning to be comfortable to be different. So most people feel if they are different, they feel outcast. They feel they are no longer part of that group. And to me, it's all, all of the innovation always happens or done by the people who are on the edges. In the bell curve, it's the middle of the person, never does.

They are always going to be the middle of the curve. It's the people on the both edges are the one who end up innovating. So B is okay to be different. For me, it's very interesting, is that I don't look like most people in this country. I don't talk like most people in this country. I still have that strong accent. Yeah, you do.

Certainly do. And my point is, I'm okay with that. I didn't go out and say, I need to hire a speech therapist to teach me how to talk like everyone. on that. I think that's an advantage for me to be that different because for everyone else you can interview, you can almost pay 50% of your brain cycle pay attention and you still can understand them. And by being my being having such a thick accent, if you're not giving me 99%

of a brain cycle, you have no idea what I guess. There are plenty of people who decided early on to give you zero percent attention, I think, after the accent because they went, look, I'm too early for this. But I think the rest of us are well rewarded for that. But you're right. Yeah, good. Maybe I'll develop an accent. What do you think? No, but that's only. No, no. Ideas to be different. It doesn't matter. I'm saying it's accent, whatever it is. In any corporate structure, if you're like everyone else, you're going to be in the bottom of the pyramid. Sure. It takes one person to be on the top, and what is the difference between that person in the top and everyone else? He's different. And they're different. And different doesn't have to be a thick

accent. Different can be any number of ways. You're different. Sure. Sure. So all I'm saying, embrace that differentiation. That goes to your point about experts never being the ones who disrupts. Experts and people who are well-versed or I should say authorities on a certain subject, they're never the ones that cause disruption. Why? What's going on here? So once you are an expert, the best you can do is to make something incrementally better.

So being an expert means having a foundational knowledge of that area. If you're a non-expert, you're able to actually challenge the foundation because you don't have that taken for granted because you're not an expert. And that's where you get 10x or 100x disruption. So if you are a novice or non-expert, you are able to challenge the industry and able to make something 10 times better, not just 10% better. Why is that? What is it about disruption and moonshots?

So one is because it's it. Experts take the foundational knowledge for granted and they're able to include. incrementally make it better. Non-experts come in and completely change the foundation and they're able to rebuild that foundation that makes it 10x better. So I can give you two great examples of that. When I started a company called Moon Express, everyone believed that to go to the moon will cost a billion dollars,

which is what everyone thought we could do. We thought we could go out and do this for $100 million because the technology is an exponential curve. It turns out we were able to do it for $10 million, for under $10 million, because we rethought that why do we need to build a build rocket? What if we only take a small rocket that costs only a couple of million dollars and put on top of that another rocket and lender that can go from there to the moon? Because once you got out of the gravity, you don't need a big rocket anymore. And that

mindset change got our cost of going to the moon that we're doing next year under $10 million, right? Wow. Same thing happened in the healthcare. You know, I started wild. Did you say you're going to the moon next year? Not you, but Moon Express is going to the moon. That's big news. Well, part of it is actually you probably have seen it, that NASA just awarded the companies, nine companies, is selected $2.6 billion contract. And that's in your Moon Express is in there. Wow. So point of us trying to make is that same thing we did in healthcare. I had no idea about healthcare. I had no background in science. I have no background in healthcare. I started Wyoming and fundamentally challenged the idea that you pill for every ill. that you have to understand that all diseases are literally have a same underlying cause.

We believe the underlying cause is inflammation, but why inflammation is causing different for every person. So you can't have one drug. And that's the reason people give you one drug is the efficacy of those drugs is only 20%. That means 80% of people are only harmed by that drug. And 20% people who benefit are also harmed. And the reason is when they try to find something that's common between the people, what happens here the lower level is different. So they keep going up and up and up and up until they find something common.

And the higher you go, the more damage it does. Right. And underlying cause is still not being solved. All they're doing is solving the symptom. So for example, you have an autoimmune disease. Nobody says, hey, let me figure out why your immune system is attacking your own self. They say, let's suppress the immune system. Sir, if you suppress the immune system, don't you think I'm going to get other disease?

Oh, yeah, yeah, but don't you worry? We've got drug for those things. But, Doc, what happens when you take drug for those? Well, you're going to have a whole bunch of side effect, but we've got drugs for them, don't you worry. And by the time you get to my age, you're taking more pills than blueberries, and there's a problem with that. Yeah, that sounds awful. And I think so going... And the only reason we can solve that is because I didn't have a baggage. If I was an MD, by that time you graduate from MD, you're not taught about nutrition.

You're not thought about anything. In fact, they don't even know microbiome. 20 years of work has gone into this. The idea of that we are not a human being, homogeneous. We infect 99% of all the genes expressed in our body are not our own. They actually come from 40 trillion organisms in our gut. Think about that for a second. The 40 trillion starts up there, all the humans on 5,000 are living inside each one of us. Think about it. And we have not paid attention to them. And that was a breakthrough for us. So that's what Viome does, is researches this gut bacteria? That's the first part of it. We saw what if we can understand. So The whole concept was, now we have technology to understand everything that's happening

inside the human body. There are only three types of genes that are expressed in the human body. Your mitochondrial genes, but most people don't know what mitochondria is. It is actually inside the human cell, but it used to be an ancient bacteria. It has his own 13 genes. And then there are genes we get from our mom and dad. They call human genes. They express about 22,000 genes.

Mitochondry is about a couple of dozen. And the bacteria in our gut, the 40 trillion, they express 2 million genes. Now, imagine we as humans, the DNA that we get from mom and dad, they have less genes that are expressed than the earthworm. If that doesn't give me infinity complex, I don't know what. Yeah, no kidding. But the only reason we are able to be such complex, because we outsource most of our functions to those 40 trillion organisms, they have 2 million genes.

So now we have massive amount of gene pool. but when we destroy them, they are no longer actually doing the work that keeps us healthy. And that is the key to understanding that we are a walking, talking ecosystem. That's so impressive. There's so much going on in the gut. It seems a little scary that people who are working on this are not actually doctors. But what you're saying is that's better. That is better.

So it's very interesting that you say that it is something as if we are inventing it, right? Right. History is very humbling, Jordan. So I was thinking, you know, we figured something out what's happening inside the gut, and we figured out how these different diseases are caused. And by the way, we even figured out the same food is not good for everyone. We know that spinach and apple may be good for you and not be good for me. And here's the best part.

We start thinking, oh, my God, we're starting to figure out all these different diseases. We can actually solve them and cure them, not simply suppress the system just with the food. And we felt that, oh, my God, we really have invented something. until you read the history. 2,500 years ago, the Greek doctor named Hippocrates, he said, all diseases begin in the gut.

One man's food is another man's poison. Let food be thy medicine, let thy medicine be the food. Think about that. That is what we are doing. So in fact, now we develop the science to do something

they intuitively knew. So what exactly are you developing? Is it going to be like a pill that I take? Is it going to be something? What am I going to get from Viya? So basically what we do is simply give you the information that's happening inside your gut and soon we'll be adding in terms of what's happening in your mitochondria and human genes. Then we take all other stuff and we look at, use the AI to say, hey, eat this food, don't eat this food.

So what you get is an at-home kit. You do this tool test today and there will be a blood test. And once you do that, we analyze everything and say, you know, Mr. Jordan, you should not be eating. You should not be eating blueberries. You should not be eating spinach. However, it's okay for you to be eating everything else. And we tell you why. The beauty is we tell you, don't eat this and why.

Eat these food and why. So people are going to be mailing you their poop. Well, you know. That's what's going to happen. Yeah, that's basically there's more information in that poop than you can possibly imagine. I don't know. It's a good place to be talking about it. Did you know?

You mean it's a good place to be talking about? Did you know that most high-profile people, include the president, always have a portable toilet? Did not know that. So when the Kim Jong-un-ung, he brings a portable toilet. Trump brings a portable toilet because they do not want that poop to be going out. Because from the poop, we can see what diseases you have. We can tell you what drugs you're taking.

We can tell you everything that is going on inside your human body. So that poop is really valuable. So don't call that. Don't call it shit. That's interesting. So world leaders, they bring their poop with them. Whose job is that? That's the intern job at the Secret Service,

carrying the poop, the portable poop briefcase. Geez, I did not know that. Are you sure about that? Oh, yeah. That is completely bonkers. Wow. So every world leader pretty much. Like there's a cutoff, though, right?

Certain world leaders, they're not at the level. So you and I are probably not carrying a portable drug. No, no. I don't care who has my bacteria. If you want to steal my poop, you can go right ahead. That's unbelievable. So theoretically, somebody could take someone else's poop, send it to Viome, and they've got a whole read on that person.

The new espionage stealing there. That is really the great spy. You can see, now we know, not that just people believe our president may be crazy. We actually can prove our president is crazy. That's right. Where's the data? It's right here in this back. Unbelievable.

Nevin, thank you so much. When do you go to the moon? Do we know yet? So we're going to be actually launching our first mission to the moon our second half of next year. And what happens when you get there? You're going to the moon and then what? So, you know, obviously the first mission is going to be a robotic mission

for us to be able to know that we have underlying technology to be able to land on the moon, hop on the moon, and to be able to explore the moon. And then the second part really would be to understand that how can we take the water on the moon and to be able to create hydrogen and oxygen. That means now we have rocket fuel and you also have a fuel for humans.

And then now we can be, how do we create the habitat for humans? and to be able to start living on the moon. That's so crazy. So you're going to send this robot to the moon. It's going to stay there and never come home, I assume. That's the first one is going to be a one-way ticket to the moon. Wow. Wow.

And that's just the beginning. There's a beginning. And I really believe you're asking me that in the next 10 to 15 years, we as humans are going to become a multi-planetary society. We'll be living on the moon or the Mars or moon and the Mars. In the next 20 years, there's going to be baby born on the moon. And parents are going to be looking at the stuff and saying, look up, we come from that planet. That is crazy.

I don't know if I could do it, but, you know, that's for future generations. They might be excited about this. But we all, I mean, at the end of the day, we are all explorers. We explored the seven continents of this planet. Think of the moon as our eighth continent. I mean, why wouldn't we want to explore it? It used to take months going from one place on this planet, Earth, to other place, And we still explored for 90 days.

And you think for three-day journey to the moon, we just don't want to do it. Yeah, good point. I didn't realize it was only three days. I think the problem is when you get there, the Internet's really slow. I think that's the real idea. But the point is that only slow today. It's not going to be slow tomorrow. You're going to have very high-speed internet.

I mean, think about what if you had all the high-speed internet and you're able to be connected? What's the difference between, you know, you and I living here in Bay Area and someone living in a Sydney and we are able to have the same conversation? That's going to be yet another Sydney. nobody wants to go. True. Yeah, right, with nothing to do. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it might be... Good point. Did I say Sydney? Amazing. Hypothetic. Yeah. Not Sydney, Australia. Love that place.

The other one. Other one. Right. That is fascinating. It's funny that if things go the way they're currently going, the moon will have faster and better internet than North Korea at that point. Well, that is no doubt about it. Because there's no reason for us to not be able to connect, right?

I mean, there's absolutely no theoretical reason. why we and at the moon are not going to be a high-speed connection that you could do. Wow, so fascinating. Well, thank you for your work and thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you, John. Look for it. Great big thank you to Nevin. He's really a sharp character, and I hope he's successful in everything that he does because he's just got big dreams and small dreams, if you look at our gut biome, which is now new science is really showing. There's a lot going on in the gut that we honestly just don't understand.

So Viome, his gut biome company and Moon Express should be doing big things here. in the near future. And I know they just got a huge contract with NASA. So there's real news here. It's not hyperbole in smoke. Stuff's going to happen. Fingers crossed, anyway. If you want to know how I manage to book all these great people and manage my relationships for business and professional reasons, I've got systems, I've got tiny habits, and I'm teaching you those for free in six-minute networking over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Don't say you'll do it later. Dig that well before you get thirsty because you need those relationships at some point. And when you need them, you're too late to build them.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where that's at. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Neveen Jane. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with podcast one, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Moonshot DePhilippo

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