The Pomp Podcast - #816 American Dynamism - Investing In America's Future w/ Katherine Boyle

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Katherine Boyle is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. She recently published an article about "American Dynamism" and how we should approach investing into the future of American infrastructure. In this conversation, we break down this article and discuss the meaning of "American Dynamism", investing in Anderil and Flock Safety, optimism for the future, and why building American-centric technologies is so important. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://eightsleep.com/pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Catherine Boyle is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In this conversation, we discuss American dynamism, investments like Anduril and flock safety, and why building and funding American-centric technology is so important. I really enjoyed this conversation with Catherine, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high yield interest account, a US dollar loan product against your

crypto collateral, and a no fee cryptocurrency trading product. BlockFi also just released a brand new Bitcoin rewards credit card. It's a normal credit card that when you swipe it, you get Bitcoin back rather than cash back or airline miles. I'm an investor in the business and I'm a very happy user. The BlockFi Bitcoin Rewards credit card is absolutely amazing. To start earning today, go visit blockfi.com slash pomp. Again, blockfi.com slash pomp. I've got the credit card. I love it. I think you will too. Blockfi.com slash pomp. Next up is Choice. It's time to stop paying capital gains taxes on your Bitcoin and Choice is here to help. Choice is rebuilding the way Bitcoiners approach retirement by making it possible to invest in

Bitcoin, and 19 other digital assets inside your IRA. Right now, every time you make a trade, you have to pay capital gains taxes that can be as high as 37%. Choice enables you to trade real Bitcoin, other cryptos, and stocks without having to pay a dime in capital gains. The best part? They just released an iOS app, so you can open an account in less than 10 minutes and take control of your future from the palm of your hand. Join me and the 20,000 other Bitcoiners who have started their tax-efficient stack and open your Choice account today. Search StackSats in the App Store or visit choiceapp.io slash pomp. Again, search StackSats in the App Store or visit choiceapp.io slash pomp. And one more thing, if you want to hold your private keys, Choice lets you do that

too. Start stacking tax-efficient Satoshis today and visit choiceapp.io slash pomp. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. We have Catherine Boyle, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and probably one of my favorite investors because I don't think

I've ever told you this before, but you're a very principled investor. That means a lot. I know it means a lot to you. But what we're going to talk about is a couple of different things. I think we should start. You wrote this piece, which I think you've talked about previously, but then you actually wrote like a seminal, I think is the right word, seminal piece. is the, uh, is the right terminology, uh, called American dynamism. Now, first thing I should call it is dynamism. I always mispronounce. So I've practiced all morning to make sure. The second thing is I Googled around to make sure I really knew what it was. And for those that don't know what that word means, uh, basically it's a momentum and energy. And, and, uh, uh,

one of the examples on the internet, which to a small brain like me made a lot of sense was like, somebody who has high energy gets a lot more stuff done during the day than somebody who's not. And so you would have dynamism if you have high energy. So I was like, oh, okay. Like that makes sense. Yeah. Uh, what is American dynamism, right? When you, when you put a country before it, that isn't the same thing as just a person having high energy during the day. Like, how do you think about American dynamism? Yeah, no. And I actually love your simple definition in terms of its movement. No, no, no. But that's truly what it is. But I think there's, there's a broader story as to why we think it's so important that we focus on American dynamism now.

So there's been a lot of, you know, cultural critics who've talked about the decline of America. And people point to the 70s where, you know, housing and education became more expensive. And when you look at sort of the core factors of American decline that people point to, it's loss of civic and institutional trust. A huge one that we saw during COVID where any sort of, you know, civic institution, whether it's education, whether it's universities, whether it's religious institutions, they're all declining in American trust. The second thing people point to is sterility, the declining birth rate. A country that does not believe in its future ultimately decides not to have children.

And the third thing that people point to is mimetic culture. When you look at the number one blockbusters, any type of movies, any types of books, they're all based on previous books. The creativity that we thrive on as an American society is just exporting creativity from different generations. And so when we think about what is going to pull us out of this stagnation, I think the only thing that we can bet on is founders building a future in technology. And the reason why that is so important is when you look back at the last 25 years,

the things that are not declining are the companies that are being built. When, you know, I point to, you know, in the last 25 years, if you looked at 1996, there were no technology companies in the top six companies by market cap. Now they're all technology companies. It's crazy. So it's incredible how fast technology has changed the prospects of America. But we need to see that not just in kind of the internet or in kind of the sectors where it's easy to build,

we need to see that momentum in places where it's hard to build and places that touch all Americans. So for us, American dynamism is companies that are building for the national interest. It's aerospace, education, it's defense. It's companies that touch government and the workings of government,

but are ultimately trying to solve our biggest national problems. So what's fascinating to me is, and you wrote in the piece about this, like institutional failure. Like I think that if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today and you're like, you'd be like, what the hell happened, right?

And you would see that in everything from the technology we have to literally the entire population trusted certain institutions and now everyone just thinks it's a joke yeah and uh some of the examples that you use in here is the afghanistan withdrawal and stuff like that and what is top of mind for me right now is um the media is reporting that the u.s just went and did this airstrike and immediately it was like i had two different timelines right i saw some people being like this is amazing we took out this uh you know terrorist leader like all the talking points that you would expect and other ones being like hey by the way like we actually know that civilians were killed in this and like

it was a bad situation and so the reason why i use that as an example is like i don't know what happened right now i'm not here to to try to sift through public information because the truth is like we're never going to get all the information and that's unfortunate but like that's just a reality but that's a story that is now possible because of twitter because of technology uh because people go out and seek it and to me it's a story of like distrust right whereas if you trust an institution you just blindly take whatever the talking points are and you're like okay let's move on you know that what they said is true and anyone who kind of digresses from that is uh you know misinformation or we can get into that but like how do you think about just the way that the society

has presented the information around this and how much of it is we now have a default of distrust versus what maybe before was a default of, we just trusted these institutions. Yeah, no, and I think that's a good thing. I mean, I think the interesting thing that has happened is that there are now more voices on the internet. Like I think we've talked a lot about Substack before. We've talked about companies

that actually allow alternative viewpoints to flourish. And that's a hallmark of America. That's the first amendment right there. And so we should be really excited that technology is actually supporting the values of this country in that respect. I think the interesting thing that when we're talking about American dynamism

that we're most excited about is that it used to be that to work on these big problems, you had to work directly with government and you had to go through a 10, 15, 20 year sales cycle. And we talk about the DOD, these companies that work directly with the DOD are a hundred years old. They were founded in 1920.

And so when you think about what's happened over the last few years is that a lot of founders are now saying, we want to work on really hard problems. We know we're going to have to work with regulators. We know we're going to have to sell to government in certain cases, but we're going to move at a speed

that's the internet speed we're going to move at the speed of silicon valley and we're going to we're going to innovate we're going to we're going to you know try to do things as as efficiently as possible and i think that's what we're excited about is that more and more founders are looking at the big problems in society and they're saying we're going to build for ourselves um build outside of the confines of what you had to build inside before so this brings the question of like um i think the critique of the technology industry right and yeah again i'll get yelled at because i won't get all the critiques right but i think that that argument would basically be oh the technology industry wants to privatize

everything the technology industry thinks that they can solve every problem what do these people know that you know the government doesn't know and it's very much I think like the anti-arrogance argument of like oh these people think that they can solve problems but to your point the track record of the technology industry is that they have solved

a lot of problems right and so sure there are examples where things haven't worked out or people spent a bunch of money and it ended up you know going to zero and there's plenty of examples that people laugh at and point or whatever But on a net basis, technology has been incredibly accretive to humanity. It's been incredibly accretive for the United States from an economic prosperity, job creation, innovation, et cetera.

How do you think about the balance between like the need for some public, whether it's funding, you know, government organizations, accountability, all that versus like the ability for the private sector to actually push the pace on a lot of these things? Yeah, no, there's a lot in there. And I think one of the things that I'm constantly telling people in Washington is that, you know, there's big tech and the big tech companies have now, they're legacy companies now. They're 15, 20, 30 years old in some cases. And so everyone points to big tech and says, oh, it's gotten too big. I work with small tech. I work with startups. You know, I work with napkin stage companies of people saying, I'm really upset with the status quo and I want to build something new and I want to solve a problem from first principles.

And that is the American experience. That's like the American dream. you know, starting a small business and scaling it as fast as possible so that you can solve a problem that's unique to your community, that's unique to your family. So, so it's, you know, in some ways I think like people, people hate on tech, but not all tech is the same. And the tech that we're talking about is early stage technology companies that are looking at problems and saying, we're not going to do it within a big company. We're not going to do it within legacy prime contractors that have been around a hundred years. We're going to do it inside of a company

that's going to scale the way that it should. And I, and I think that is, that's, that's more more common. I mean, we're seeing this coming from founders. We're seeing like, this is the thing that people want to work on. They don't necessarily want to go to Washington and solve problems. They want to solve it from where their, their community is. And that's, that's an exciting thing. So let's use Anduril, I think as kind of an example here. I know that you, I think you've invested in multiple rounds of this business and the founders, Palmer Lucky, or one of the founders who previously did Oculus. And so obviously a technologist at heart. And there's a number of other great technologists, entrepreneurs, operators, even venture capitalists that all

came together to start this and uh if you just google andrew right and the description of the website is just andrew's family of systems is powered by lattice oc uh os an ai powered open operating system that brings autonomy to defense's toughest missions now that's what i expect from a technology company that is not what i would expect from the government to describe what they're building and so i think just like literally at the most basic level the way that the technology industry thinks about what they're building the way they describe the technology is very different what is so interesting about this business as an example of like pushing forward kind of this American dynamism? Absolutely. And, and, and what's interesting about Anduril is that they

speak both languages. I love that you've brought up the language because one of the things that I've constantly kind of harped on between government and Silicon Valley is that it's like two different worlds. You know, they have two different languages, two different customs. Everyone in Silicon Valley is wearing a hoodie. Everyone's in Washington's wearing a suit. They can't speak, you know, they can't understand each other. And so what I think is really unique about Anduril is that it's a team of people who've worked with the government in the past. A lot of them came out of Palantir. They have tremendous empathy for the customer. There's a lot of veterans there. There's a lot of people who understand exactly what the military goes

through. And because they had that sort of unique understanding of what the pain points are, they were able to build this company, again, from first principles saying, we are going to be a software AI company at heart that solves the most important challenges of the military. But we also understand how procurement works. We understand that there's amazing people working in the DOD, working very hard to try to get this technology, and that they're part of a bureaucracy that they didn't create. In fact, it was created before they were born. So, you know, they're just as frustrated as Silicon Valley is in terms of working together with government. So what I think is really exciting about Anduril is they've been

successful. You know, they've been able to work with the government on multiple contracts. They just announced a very large contract with SOCOM the other day. And when you look at founders who take on really hard problems, where they, you know, they could have easily, you know, built a pure software business that, you know, everyone in Silicon Valley would have understood. But they said, we're going to do something very hard. It's going to be a big challenge. It's going to take a long time. It's going to take a lot of capital. And ultimately, we are going to be a prime contractor that sells to the U.S. government that looks like the Lockheeds and the Raytheons of yesteryear. And it's such an important mission. And this is what I always want to stress. It's

such an important mission that the most talented engineers in America said, we want to work at Anduril. And that is what I think sometimes the government misses, is that the most talented engineers don't want to work for a hundred year old companies. They don't want to go into government and spend a nine to five in the bureaucracy. They really want to work with, with companies that challenge them, with people who challenge them and, and go after the hardest problems. And so that's, what's exciting about this company is in five years, it has completely changed the language around how Silicon Valley wants to work with government across a variety of domains. Yeah. And for, and for those that don't know, when we're talking about hard problems, this is not

like, Hey, who can write software code that does X, Y, Z. What we're talking about is literally counter UAS systems, counter intrusion, maritime counter intrusion, autonomous air systems. So literally self-driving aircraft is a kind of a simplistic way to think about it. Underwater vehicles that are autonomous, et cetera. And so these are things that I think if most people said, hey, I want to build, let's say, autonomous underwater vehicle. I don't think they're like, oh, the government's probably going to do a good job of that. And again, it's generalizations that doesn't mean that they've never done that before doesn't mean that they can't provide funding and all this stuff but i think generally people think like oh that's probably a technology company

that's going to do it and so how important is it to marry those different um uh maybe not experiences but like expertise right so the ability to build the technology obviously is hard yeah but then also the ability to actually get through the bureaucracy i think that to me is the more impressive part is you're basically signing up knowing what you're getting into right you're like hey we're gonna go and we're going to navigate all these different things some of it is very clear-cut there's processes and bids and primes and subcontractors and some of it is more like hey i gotta go talk to this person 20 times in washington dc so that they don't think that we're you know bad actors or whatever and so like how do you think about the non-technical

components of building a company like this and it being kind of out of the control of a lot of things that technology investors normally would like to see like on paper yeah i mean it's such a good question because I think everyone thinks, okay, if you can build it, they will buy it. That is not how, that's not how most companies work, but it's definitely not how the U S government works. And I think the reason why I'm hopeful, because I, you know, oftentimes when I write, people say, wow, it's really depressing what you're writing. And I'm like, no, I'm an early stage investor. I'm an optimist. I think things are changing. But I think the reason why I'm hopeful is that you finally have examples of winners. Like you finally have SpaceX,

which is the coolest company in America of just pushing through that 10 year slog of, okay, we're doing really, really difficult science, but we're going to get to Mars. You have people like Elon Musk who talk about how hard it is to do these things, but have made it really cool to work hard. And you have Palantir, you have Andrel, you have now examples of people who've shown that it can be done. And all Silicon Valley needs, and really all America needs, frankly, is examples of people doing hard things where other people say, okay, I want to go after those hard problems too. And so our view is that over the next 10 years, we're going to see people graduating from great engineering programs or self-taught engineers saying, you know what, like I don't just want

to build for the internet. Like I really want to build for some of these physical problems that I see in my community that I see in my country, uh, because I know how difficult they are and because I know how meaningful and impactful they are. So we really have winners now. And I think that that's what ultimately the government needs to see. And that's what founders need to see as well. How important was SpaceX to kind of kick-starting or maybe re-kick-starting a lot of this, uh, kind of technology, you know, Silicon Valley being able to build this stuff. Yeah. Are they the shot across the bow of like,

okay, there's an entire generation now that sees it's possible? Yeah, I think it changed everything. And the reason why I think it changed everything, I mean, I love Elon's quote where he says like, you know, I was done with the internet after PayPal. You know, and it's like just seeing someone do something very difficult.

Like part of the reason why Elon was successful and, you know, and he's talked about this, a number of people have talked about this is, you know, he put all of his private capital into these companies. Like this was something that he said, I am betting on this. And when other people wouldn't give him capital to be able to test rockets, he was doing it himself.

And so I think that was something where the previous generation of companies, something we always say is a lot of government companies require billionaire co-founders. And it's no surprise that SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril have very successful founders who've previously built amazing companies and can now go after harder problems. The thing that I think we're thinking through is we have the capital and we're seeing founders who want to do this. And you shouldn't have to be a billionaire to serve your country. Like you really shouldn't have to put all of your money into something because other investors and because the government doesn't want to work with you. So what I'm excited about is there's now

incredible examples of success where, you know, investors like us and other investors in Silicon Valley can say, Hey, like there are, there are great founders out there and we're willing to back them. Yeah. I have a random question for you that you just made me think of. I, I hope that, uh, uh, uh, this doesn't, I hope this makes sense. So if I remember the stats correctly, I think after maybe it was the Vietnam War, the American publicly traded companies, it was like 80% of them, the CEO was a veteran. Now, some of that was, we just sent a bunch of people to war, right? And so naturally, you know, kind of young males coming back that eventually 20 years later in their careers, ended up rising in the ranks of corporations, there was a lot of like work trends,

if you went to work at one company for a long period of time, and so you kind of worked your way up. But also too, is there was this whole like training of leadership, etc, in the military. the united states has been at war uh depending on who you ask for you know 20 years some 200 something years uh but this generation right if you will kind of maybe i don't know 60 and below uh for the most part has been at war for 20 years in iraq and afghanistan and there's a lot of people who have served even though it's a small percentage uh in terms of the u.s population how does that play into some of this like american dynamism like feeling like a service to the country, having frankly, the leadership skills equipped to actually build some of these businesses

having the on the ground experience. How do you think about that part? I love that you bring this up because veterans do have extraordinary leadership capabilities. And we're lucky we have a lot of veterans at Andreessen Horowitz. And it's something that I think we're passionate about championing this message that veterans make incredible founders for that reason, because they have that training. What I was thinking about when you were talking is one of my favorite scenes and Mad Men's one of my favorite shows is they're going around the board room basically saying what war they served in. And this was, of course, pre 1973, before the revocation of the draft. And something I've talked a lot about is I think the biggest change in

America was and it was something that was unanimously, you know, praised, everyone loved Nixon for doing it. But the biggest change in America was when we said, we are not going to have compulsory service. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be optional, it's going to be something and what you've seen is a bifurcation, where it used to be that everyone in America served alongside each other. And that was how people learned about each other. That was, you had camaraderie, you had a brotherhood in many ways because you served alongside your communities. And that was part of the ethos of the country. And so we don't have that anymore. And so I don't think it's surprising that our bureaucracy is filled with, it's optional

bureaucracy, but there's a lot of people who don't necessarily want to serve their country. They go into finance, they go to Wall Street, they go into other fields. And so we see very passionate people saying, we want to go into technology. And the reason we are going into technologies because we want to serve our country. And so I think that is probably the most important call that you can have is to build something for your country. And, you know, we're certainly seeing it across the founders we work with. It's something they care about. So a quick Google search turns up three data points. One is right now, I guess this year or last year, CEOs of the S&P 500, 8% were officers in the military. It's not just in the military, but officers, which is

far above the average percentage of the entire u.s male population who served in the military only three percent so kind of an outsized number uh second is ceos with military experience have longer tenures as ceo than those without uh and also ceos with military background are more likely to deliver strong performance there's a specific study this corn fairy study uh that found that companies led by military veterans as ceos delivered higher average returns than the s&p 500 index over one three five and ten year horizons yeah and what i always wonder is like how much of that is just like, these are people who went into the military, but we're going to be successful anyways. And like that, that's why they were drawn to the military versus the military actually kind

of shaped who they were. Um, but a lot of what you talk about and do is not just around the military, right? So, so there's other things that go into this kind of idea of American dynamism. Like what, what else fits other than just like, let's go serve the defense department or the government? Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's really anything that, that works with government. And so I'll talk about another company that I love that I think is a perfect example in the public safety realm. Because when you think about one of the biggest issues in the media today is law enforcement, it's questions around safety in our cities. And there's a company that was founded out of YC, I believe it was in 2017, based in Atlanta. So this was even before, pre-COVID, it wasn't like

people were talking about all these new tech epicenters. It's like you had to be in Silicon Valley. So this company called Flock Safety, founded by a repeat entrepreneur, Garrett Langley, he asked himself after his first company, he's like, what's the big problem I want to solve? I want to solve crime. And most crimes in America are committed with cars. It's vehicular crime. If you can track the car, you can end the crime. And so he asked himself, he's like, you know, we have all these great cameras everywhere. And like the cost of building a camera is so cheap. Like, why isn't that we don't have cameras around the city that can look at crimes that happen, particularly, and this is where it's just incredible what he's been able to do. Amber

alerts. Like, why do we not have networks of cameras that can help solve Amber alerts when a child is kidnapped? So we started selling in Atlanta. He started actually selling to HOAs, homeowner associations, selling to, you know, private citizens, and then got pulled from law enforcement. You know, chief of police is in random cities across America started calling him saying, Hey, we need this, we have a police officer shortage. We love the fact that you're tracking cars and not people. Can you can you come to our community? And can we put some of these up in places where we see these sort of crimes with cars happen? And it's just it's exploded. It's across the country now. And what's amazing is, you know, local news stories, you know,

you see them every month it's we solved an amber alert in a small town in georgia or small town in texas because this this camera and this network of cameras was able to track a car and especially i mean one of those i'm getting goosebumps even thinking about it but one of the most recent ones that happened was a baby was stolen a one-year-old baby and it was a husband and wife team that changed the baby he was dressed as a boy and then they changed him dressed as a girl so like the baby would have never been found it's every parent's worst nightmare but here's a tech company that built a cheap camera that is just helping police officers solve the most horrific crimes. And so I, you know, when you think about, you know, tech gets a lot of, as we're talking

about tech, it's a lot of heat. These are like, this is tech for good. I mean, this is, this is solving like the most horrible things that can happen in society. And it's, it's a team that's just so mindful of the work they're doing with government. So I have some questions about that specific company in a second. Uh, but I don't think you know the story. Um, in 2015, I think is when we built it uh i was working at facebook and they came out with this amber alert product and the whole idea was we have hundreds of millions if not billions of people staring at a news feed all day long what if we could figure out a way to do this and there was a woman who used to work at the fbi uh who now worked at uh facebook and she had this idea and she gets all the credit

in the world for basically championing this both in the united states and then she went globally with it around the world and the whole idea was if an amber alert went out you could basically take all the information that's the law enforcement agencies are putting together and just put it into the newsfeed and simply say hey look for this car look for this type of person look for you know the the baby uh here's a photo the whole nine yards and we launched it and about six weeks later we get to the office one day and quite literally there was a baby that was found and uh it was some story about like somebody had kidnapped the baby they handed it to like their uh boyfriend or i think it was their boyfriend he's at home he's on facebook he like looks at the baby oh shit i

have the baby, right? Like, you know, it calls the police and says, uh, this person gave me this baby. It's not my baby. I, you know, please don't arrest me, whatever. And I remember thinking to myself, like there was no special technology there. That was just a awareness play. It was just like, get it out in front of more people. What you're talking about is something that takes that idea 10,000 steps further and says, well, what happens when you start to use the technology itself to actually solve the issues, right? And be able to do this from a remote standpoint, which gives you much more leverage to be able to kind of canvas areas, et cetera.

With that, I think again, like the critique of it would be, oh my God, now there's cameras that we're, you know, living under in a society and like that's authoritarian, that's all this stuff. How do you think about like the good versus bad and like understanding that it's a net good, which doesn't mean that there's not downsides, but like how do you think about the trade-offs there?

Yeah, no, and this is an important question. I mean, I love that you asked like before, you know, how do you think about working with government and should private companies be working with government, that sort of thing. I mean, what's great about, this is a perfect example of these are police, you know, these are police departments that are using the technology and they're the ones making the decision. They're the ones who are trained specially to figure out,

okay, how do we solve these crimes? They have the investigators. So it's not the company doing this and kind of, you know, usurping the powers of government in that way. It's a company that's supporting police officers in their important mission and trusting them to make the right decisions. But I think it's a good question. I mean, one of the things I love about what Flock is doing is they're tracking cars. They're not tracking people. And, you know, that's something I think is very important. They have, you know, a number of advisors who help them think through these thorny questions. But I think we can all agree that, you know, it's when you see what's happening in terms of labor shortages across a wide variety of industries and public safety is

one of them, we are going to have to use technology to make up for that shortfall. And I think people want safe communities. They want to make sure that their children are safe. They don't want to see Amber Alerts on their phone every day because children are getting kidnapped in America. So if we can use technology to solve those problems in a way that people are comfortable with. And I think people are comfortable with solving emperor alerts. I think it's just an important thing. And it's something that we, you know, we think deeply about. So one of the things in both of these companies, Andrew and flock is they're very unique solutions, right? And some of it is there's a technological kind of background and expertise that's needed to be able to understand it. Some

of it's an understanding and empathy for the problem itself. It reminds me a lot in the military there are uh these devices called rhinos which basically is uh in its most barbaric form a stick that sticks out in front of the vehicle and uh it's kind of a heat box uh and the i don't know how true the story is but the story within the military is that uh in the early days of the invasion of iraq there was a lot of uh infrared uh type ieds where people would basically see the uh heat of the engine go past a certain point there would be like a half second to second delay and then they would shoot a projectile and you could basically time based on how fast it was going you're going to shoot it into the passenger or driver side of the door and it was triggered by

the end the heat of the engine going by so pretty sophisticated kind of attack vector and so some young uh again according to the story in the military some young private figured out well i'm tired of having this happen yeah and so he basically took a stick uh or like a pole put it on the front of the vehicle he put a ammo can with uh spark plugs in it to basically trigger well if we just do it you know 10 feet in front or five feet in front of the vehicle then by the time it shoots it'll basically miss the vehicle and so the military's like well that's a great idea we should do that on every single vehicle and they ended up commercializing it etc but i use that as the example because you got to understand the attack vector you got to understand

how the vehicles work you got to understand that the solution doesn't have to be some super complex thing that was drawn up in a boardroom that's going to take five years to create and billions of dollars uh but you also got to care yeah right and and i think that's part of a lot of the stories uh that i've heard you talk about before the companies that you've invested in these people genuinely care but it's not just caring they have the experience they have the expertise and it's like how do you as an investor underwrite like all of these different ingredients because a lot of people who try to solve these problems and they're their elementary solutions or they end up not building big companies yeah but you've got a pretty good track record to find in the right

ones like how do you do that evaluation process yeah it's such a good point because i think the best founders have such empathy for the customer that they are meeting with the customer and talking to the people on the ground every day and like that's that's the difference like i see so many companies that are spun out of you know stanford labs and it's you know it's it's brilliant minds and brilliant academics who've never left the lab and it's like this is going to solve the biggest problem that the u.s military has it's like okay have you ever talked to someone who served in the military, it's probably not going to solve their problem. And if you, and if you haven't talked to them, you're certainly not going to be able to sell to them. So, so there is

something to be said of, I mean, to your point, you have to know how to be able to sell to the, to the government, but also you have to like very much have empathy to the point where you're spending a lot of time, because if you're not spending time with these people, if you're not understanding the unique reasons why it's so difficult to get through the procurement process, then, then you're, you're not going to have the empathy you need to, to kind of stand the test of time and so when you think about um the funding that's needed for these things uh andrew i think has raised hundreds of millions maybe a billion dollars i mean just an enormous amount of money uh it can't be funded only by one individual right for the most part i mean maybe maybe uh

elon or somebody could at least get it off the ground uh but also even one venture firm probably can't kind of carry these things to the finish line which i think is unique because we see in consumer technology or somewhere else you might see the same venture firm now given that they're raising these huge funds kind of do every single round a lot of these other businesses it doesn't seem like that's happening and and my guess is that it's just the capital requirement but is there other dynamics or like how do you think about uh the need for many different parties to come together not just the founder but also from the investment community to actually make these things happen yeah i think this is the big difference between when spacex was found and

even when palantir was found i mean these are now you know companies that were founded 15 20 years ago, almost like the big difference is there's a lot of capital and there's a lot of people willing to underwrite risk. You know, venture capital, you know, 20 years ago was sort of a cottage industry. There were a few big players and, you know, they were funding a lot of innovation and software, but they weren't necessarily focused on these things because it's like there was a lot to do in the software revolution. And now I think that software revolution has moved to the physical world and there's more capital than ever across the ecosystem. And so the good thing is I do think private capital can build these companies. And I don't think it's just going to be billionaires

anymore. We certainly wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be, you know, asking founders to be independently wealthy to build these companies. And we see so many founders who are just excited to start these problems and have learned from the previous generation. But there's a lot of capital and there's a lot of people who are excited. I mean, there is a network in Silicon Valley of people who are now excited about defense innovation. And that was not true, you know, five, seven years ago. And this is the thing I'm constantly, you know, saying in Washington is like, you have a lot of patriots in Silicon Valley who want to help solve the problem, like let us help. And so as long as we can start learning how to speak each other's languages like that that's I think the the big

thing that that's kind of in the way of really hitting our stride but to be to be fair I mean a lot of companies are hitting their stride now how do you think about um founders that I can think of that are solving really really big hard problems with a degree of success already so like not just people who have aspirational hey I want to go solve this problem but people who seem to be getting uh down the road so Elon jumps to mind uh the Jeff Bezos's of the world uh even maybe like, uh, Colonel, uh, with Brian Johnson, right. We're kind of really going after something that isn't necessarily American dynamism as much as just like, it takes a lot of money and it's like crazy, hard science, you know, hard problem. Um, they're all repeat founders, right. Or this is

their second, third, fourth company. And yes, there's wealth involved, but how much of it is just like, you got to cut your teeth, even Elon, right? Like zip to, again, he made it successful, but that wasn't necessarily the hardest problem, right? It was more of a, I want to start a business. I want to be successful. Okay, here's kind of a starting point. Is there almost a requirement of you've had to kind of churn through a couple of other ideas, whether you've been successful or not before you finally have like the confidence

to try a hard problem or how do you think about that? So I think there's, there's very good examples of people who are second time founders, but the key differentiation, even beyond just the more capital existing is like, there's so much education now. Like there are like, I mean, your show didn't exist. Shows like yours didn't exist 20 years ago. I mean, it was like, no one was talking about how do you actually build a business? Like no one was educating the public on, on how venture capital works. And now you can go on the internet. There's thousands of great podcasts. There's great books. Like there's stories of how

people like Elon did it. You know, it's, I think what we see and we back a lot of first time founders who are extraordinary, very successful. And I think what we see is the people who are students of history are the ones who succeed. And so yeah, if you've had the experience yourself, you're going to remember that history really well and so you're going to do a great job the next time too but if you've studied history if you've read the lessons if you're reaching out to the right networks

and you're learning from people who've done it before I think first time founders can build extraordinary businesses I don't want to over promise and under deliver we don't know anything that we're doing here so I just want to make sure that's clear to everybody what questions you guys got? Captain thanks for coming in my question would just be about how you think about

the trust that the public has in government in general, right? I think we've all seen the statistics. It's declined greatly from maybe like the 1960s to today. So just talk me through kind of how you think that role plays with entrepreneurship and then where you see it going from here. Yeah, it's a great question to me. I think the example I point to is COVID.

It's like, what are the things that people were really excited about in COVID that were working? It was Amazon, you know, same day delivery. It was DoorDash. It was not having to leave your house. It was Instacart. It was these companies that were actually like solving functions that were very much needed when the government said, Hey, we are going to

completely close down. It was Moderna. It was, it was our, it was our, you know, pharmaceutical industry, like warp speed. Like there were good examples. I think of government actually working with private industry to say, Hey, like we actually have to figure out how to solve some of these problems. Uh, but it wasn't government like government is, you know, like when you look, we're two years into COVID and there's still massive debate about whether like three-year-olds should be wearing masks in preschools. So it's like government hasn't necessarily solved the problems that are in its domain, the policy problems. And that's where government's really good or should be really good. Obviously, they've had some issues in the last couple years. But like

in tech, I mean, the things that were holding this country together, these were venture backed businesses and public businesses that were able to Zoom, like our entire lives were built on Zoom for two years, if you're a knowledge worker. And I think like, that's something we need to remember is that tech was a major force for keeping the country afloat during what could have been an even more horrific time. And is this a main driver in your mind of like, people going towards and helping public policy if they see that, for example, in COVID, many people don't believe

that they've handled it the right way, right? So like, is this a thing where you see entrepreneurs going towards this and saying, hey, maybe we can build something that's helpful here? I think, and I think we need more of it. I always point to Ryan Peterson at Flexport who went, you know, right before Christmas

when we were looking at all of these, you know, out of the port of Long Beach, we're seeing all these, you know, containers that weren't going to be delivered. He actually got on a boat. None of the lawmakers in Long Beach got on a boat, but he got on a boat and he went around and he said, here's the problem.

here's what we need to do in the next 24 hours in order to stop this bottleneck. It was an engineering-focused mentality of, okay, how do we solve this problem in the shortest amount of time, and how do we get things running again? And so I think we need to bring in our best and brightest in the engineering realms and the science realms,

like the people who are building in the private sector to actually not only advise on policy, but educate the American public. He didn't go into a back room in Washington and give solutions. He literally got on Twitter and was just like, these are the steps we need to take. And the American people were like, listen to this guy.

He's brilliant. Like he knows what he's talking about. So I just think we need founders to tell their own story. We need them to tell their solutions publicly. And we don't need people to wait for approval from Congress. How important is that? So he's like a perfect example, right? And in your piece, you wrote that, look, Flexport isn't necessarily considered like a government contractor.

They're not thought of as like a gov tech or whatever you want to call it. He went, he found the problem in terms of like a first person experience. I think he even went with somebody who historically had been dealing with the port. And so it wasn't just his knowledge. It was his plus somebody who did this on a daily basis. But then to your point, he didn't go and like write a letter to the governor or to the mayor or whatever.

He like just started tweeting and then everyone just piled in. Everyone's like, oh, this guy sounds smart. Like that's the smartest policy decisions that I've heard. And it was like stupid stuff, right? It's like, hey, they stack containers too high. We should do a five high, right? And is it essential now to like kind of go around

the normal communication channels and build public support in order to force this stuff? because even the politicians are so susceptible to kind of their public receptivity and kind of the mob, if you will, whether it's used for good or bad? Or can people still use the normal communication channels and don't have to have a big Twitter following

or be known on the internet in order to get some of the stuff done? Yeah, I mean, I think the internet's good at sorting for good ideas. That's one of the biggest misconceptions is we're having this massive debate about is the internet good for the types of information that's out there?

I actually think the internet's very good at sorting for good ideas and people are good at finding people who have smart ideas, especially around policy, I think you can still work with government. I think there's always an argument that, especially on longer-term strategy, if you're a company, you're going to have to sell into government.

You need to respect the customer and respect how things work. But I do think when we have these immediate problems, there's no better opportunity than just getting your voice heard. Ryan has a large following, but he's not Elon Musk. He just doesn't have the world watching him. So I think founders need to realize, if you are founding a company, you are the voice of that company.

You kind of have to be on Twitter. You kind of have to be out there explaining your position or else no one's going to hear your position or people are going to say that your position is something that it's not. So I very much believe founders should tell their own stories and Twitter's a great place to do that. Substack is a great place to do that. And ultimately, great ideas get heard by the right people

and you can solve some problems. Yeah, John, what do you got? Yeah, thank you for joining us. So I want to talk about one part of your piece here that basically says that technology and people that are starting these businesses and solving critical problems is important, but also optimism and belief in growth

and opportunity is important. So how do you think about getting people excited to solve these problems? And what like incentive is there? Yeah, I mean, the incentive is an interesting question. I just think it has to be cool. And like the thing that I think Elon has done for this segment of companies

is he's just made it really cool. There's nothing cooler than seeing a rocket, a reusable rocket come back from from launch like it's there's nothing cooler than what elon has been able to do um and so that i think is something that it leads to people being inspired like and for a long time you know there's nothing inspiring about bureaucracy like there's nothing inspired inspiring about red tape about being told no wait your turn i think we're all in miami for a reason you know miami is an incredibly inspiring place where when you drive down the street you see cranes everywhere i came from san francisco where it's like impossible to build anything

so it's like you just want to be inspired by there's growth there's movement there's possibility like a culture of yes versus a culture of wait your turn or culture of no you know you're not old enough or you're not smart enough or you didn't go to the right school and so i think elon is the the embodiment of that but there's so many founders in his vein they're going after hard problems that aren't waiting their turn uh and that very much you know have made it really cool palmer is that i think palmer is a really cool guy and like you know he's he's someone with just like an incredible spirit in terms of the types of things he's trying to solve and the way he solves problems. And so when I see founders like that, who are just like so intellectually earnest

and curious and really focused on the problem, I mean, it's inspiring. It makes you, it makes you want to get up out of your chair. So along these lines, uh, I think the most shocking part of your piece was, uh, 68% of Americans answered no to the question, will your children be better off than you will, which is, I believe an all time high. Uh, and you said that it makes us the sixth most pessimistic country in the survey. Yeah. Which to me, when I was reading the definition of dynamism, this idea of like the high energy person, it goes hand in hand with the optimistic person, the person who believes something is possible. And I think that there's plenty of academic studies at this point that like, if you don't think you can accomplish

something, you're just, your mind tricks your body and you don't do it. Right. But the opposite is true as well. And there's like the super cheesy stuff of like, you could stand in the mirror and tell yourself something a hundred times and like then you believe it uh i don't think that's what's going on because that's almost like a uh unfounded belief or like blind optimism to the point of almost like insanity yeah what we're talking about here is like hey i i'm rational about how hard the problem is yeah but somebody's got to do it i think ryan's example elon uh andrew flock etc like these are problems that if these individuals don't go try to solve them they just probably don't ever get solved. Right. Yeah. It's, it's urgent. I mean, that's the, I mean,

it is sort of a pessimistic kind of statistic and a call to action in many ways, but it is urgent. Like we need people to believe that this country is great. And I think, you know, we're coming out of coming out of two years of lockdowns, you know, people are still debating again, like three-year olds in massive preschools, like, you know, like we, like to your point about like the fall of Afghanistan. I mean, that was a really hard thing for veterans to watch. It was a really painful thing for people to watch. And so I think we need a belief in this country that looks a lot like the belief when we believed we could land on the moon. And that was when you think about how long ago that was. I mean, it's extraordinary what we are capable of doing as a country. And the people like

Elon, the people like Palmer, the great founders that say, hey, like, this is impossible. This is hard, but I don't care. Like, this is urgent. We need to solve this mission. And I'm asking everyone to work all the time to solve it. Like, we need that sort of call to action. And that's essentially what American dynamism is. Like there's a lot of problems that need to be solved in this country. And like, we are willing to support anyone who's willing to get up out of their chair and solve them.

So I got two last questions. One of them somehow has become controversial, although I don't think that it should be, which is around hard work. I think I actually tweeted yesterday and was like, you know, hard work is not popular anymore, but it's essential. And I don't know anyone who's been successful

that hasn't worked hard. When you're working on hard problems, it almost feels like hard work, persistence, like all these kind of, you know, almost in some weird traditional values or qualities becomes even more important because the problem is hard. Do you guys try to underwrite for that? Is that just a kind of a benchmark or like a, of course they're going to have to work hard? How do you think about that as a quality or a feature for the companies and the teams that they build versus maybe what we see in other parts of society? Yeah, no, I love this question

because I think part of the reason why this has become so controversial is because we talk about hard work in terms of careers. And when I meet with the best founders, it's not a career for them, it's a calling. Like it is a vision, it is them being inspired to do something where it keeps them up at night,

they have to work on it. And it's not a choice for them. I mean, Elon talks about this. He's like, I don't necessarily wish this burden on anyone else, but it is not a choice for me. I have to sleep on the factory floor. And I've met so many founders who were like that, where they don't necessarily talk about it publicly,

but it is an obsession. it is a calling. They feel like they have been put on this earth to solve a problem. And I think there's a, everyone has a calling, like every, every person in this world has a calling. And so finding that calling, it doesn't turn into, oh, well, I'm working more hours and I'm, you know, it's, it turns into, we have to solve this problem or else. And so I firmly believe that, that, you know, it's, it's less about hard work. It's more about doing what it needs, what needs to be done in order to pursue your calling to, to ultimately, you know, fulfill why you are here. And so that, that is what I think the greatest founders have.

So they don't think about it. Oh, I'm working 80, 90 hour weeks and my team has to work 80 or 90 hour weeks. They are inspiring their teams to say, Hey, come on this mission with me, solve this problem with me. Because if we don't, no one else is going to. And I truly believe like that, that's, you know, people like Elon is people like Palmer. It's, it's a lot of the companies we've backed. Yeah. I think it's very obvious when people see this. And, and, uh, one of my favorite photos, uh, that kind of sums up the technology industry. I don't know if you've ever seen the photo of uh elon uh i think he's looking at a rocket going up and he's basically got his hands on his head and he's just like in awe of what he's watching yeah and it's like you know

this guy's been dreaming about this for 20 30 40 years and still the second it happens he's even in awe right and you're like oh that guy's actually a human right like like like he thinks this is cool just as much as the rest of us so uh i love that photo uh i want to wrap up with this idea of like what happens if we don't do this right and uh i think that there's a couple of ways to think through this one is uh america is only one country on a pretty big planet um is there like a competitive aspect to this and then also just like what does it mean forget like what anybody else does like what does it mean for the people that live in the united states or uh aspire to have the kind of you know western centric ethos and values and lifestyle and capitalism etc like

what's the opportunity cost almost if like we don't actually become successful in pursuing this yeah i mean i i i don't want to end on a on a negative note because i'll ask you a positive yeah no but but i actually think like like there's like failure is not an option here one of my one of my favorite quotes is actually a quote by margaret thatcher and she says europe was built on history america was built on philosophy we're the only country that can say that like a true like a true an experiment that was uh that came out of philosophy that came out of anger it came out of wanting to build something greater. And so we have to succeed. Like we don't have a history we can fall back on in terms of like, like we stand for something else. Like we stand for a

group of, we stand for values. We stand for, you know, a philosophy that was built that people come to this country to achieve great things. And so we, we can't really fail. And I don't think we will. I think there's so many examples and this is why it's not a pessimistic piece. It's a hopeful piece. Like there's so many examples of people saying, Hey, I'm not going to sit down. I'm not going to just wait my turn. I'm going to build something great. And it's never been easier to build a company. It's always a hard thing to build a company, but there are people who know how to do it. Now there's capital for, for really great ideas. And, and so I think founding a company entrepreneurship is one of the most noble acts that anyone can do. And we're seeing more and

more people turn to it. Yeah, it, it, it is it almost just feels like we need people to be optimistic and have aspiration again. Right. And I think a lot about it became so easy. Like the friction got reduced so much to just create a mobile app and there's nothing wrong with that right there there's plenty of mobile i mean i spend way too much time on twitter every day it's just a mobile app we all do yeah uh and you know you can have kind of like i think of like the intellectual argument of like oh it's breaking down the barriers to information and like all that or you can just be like no it just sucks a bunch of my time and like this is fun yeah well there's like a mix of truth in both right like yes it does have this great profound impact on

our lives but at the same time waste a lot of our time too uh and so you almost need that whether it's a calling whether it's you know aspiration inspiration whatever to work on these hard problems but i think also a lot about like we focus on the founders and these companies i mean i don't know how many people work at spacex but it's not like five people in a room right you know this is a big company i think it's tesla if you think of andrew if you think of a bunch of these companies. And so it's not having to take the like founder risk of like, Oh, I'm going to be the person who goes stakes, my reputation, my capital, uh, all of this. You can literally be somebody who works in the marketing department. And if you feel called to work on the problem

and you're like, Hey, I have a specific skillset and experience that can be helpful here. Like actually you're probably a better marketer than, you know, maybe the founder of the business. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I, I think it's, it's so important. Like these, the reason we focus on the founders is because they set the culture, they set the mission, and they're the ones that are constantly recruiting great talent and asking people to join them on this calling. But yeah, I think joining a startup, I mean, you should never join a company where you don't believe in the mission. And there are so many great companies that are being built today that are working on these hard problems. I spend a lot of my time just helping

people find their next role in life, helping people try to find their true calling. And whether that's a founder or whether that's a person who's going to join a startup. I'm just, that's probably the most rewarding part of my day is helping people find their callings and find their missions. Yeah. I lied. I have a couple more questions because I'm seeing people saying stuff in the chat. The first is somebody said, boil for president. No, no, no, definitely not. That's not the point of this. No, no, no, no, no. But here's what it made me think of, right? So the person who said, here's what it made me think of is if we use kind of an egregious example. So obviously the current administration has been talking a lot about EVs. They haven't mentioned

tesla elon's called it out whatever um why they're doing it is an intentional not almost who cares right like it's just uh more of this thought process of like i think one of the reasons people are drawn to miami is because they feel like the government is cheering for their success on a local level yeah uh one of the reasons one of many reasons why some people are leaving california new york wherever is they feel the opposite they feel like hey actually there's this like abrasive relationship between me and my local government when you extract that out to the federal level it feels really like maybe over the last two decades or so there's been people in the technology industry that have been like oh my government is bad they do bad things like i don't

want to work to help them and there's been some distrust in the other direction of them saying big tech and and all this from the government side in some way it just feels like you and others that are investing alongside this investment theme are like trying to bring people together and say like sure you can both yell and scream at each other from different sides of you know kind of the the story but like at the end of the day you need each other yeah right and the only way these problems get solved is if we all work together both in the government and the private tech side and it seems like the companies we're talking about have been the ones that have been successful and really kind of closing that gap and it's essential to solve these problems totally i mean

we we see build as a political philosophy it's not a red or you know it's not a red state thing it's not a blue state thing i mean putting your head down and building to solve for hard problems is in itself a political act, but it's not, it doesn't fit in the paradigm of, oh, I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat. And so I think when you're, when you're saying things like, you know, like the city of San Francisco really hated the builders there. I mean, people don't want to feel ashamed of what they're doing. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people have come to Miami because it's a, it's a message of, hey, we're, we're just proud of you for doing something, for getting up, for trying, for, for trying to do the hardest thing, which is building companies. So I, yeah,

I think we need a more positive aspirational message. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's not good for Washington and Silicon Valley to constantly beat each other's throats. We have similar goals. Like we want to see America become a great country. We want to see it maintain its vibrancy. And so, yeah, I think in a lot of ways, the more conversations we can have and the more we can actually do things, not just have conversations, but actually do things so that things get done, the better it will be. I can't imagine Mayor Suarez on Twitter, if he had all of the things that San Francisco or New York City could brag about, right? He would be like out of control. Miami's got a lot of positive things going on. He's done a great

job marketing the city, but imagine if he had every single major financial institution in the city, right. Or he had every single major tech company. Like he would be absolutely, uh, he wouldn't sleep. He'd just be sitting there doing all the accomplishments all day long. Right. But I do think that there's a, a key piece of that. All right. Last question for you is, uh, I'm an investor in eight sleep. Uh, they're one of the sponsors of, uh, of the podcast. Yeah. What is your sleep schedule and i'm asking this is great i love this question because i think i asked you before yeah and uh you had just had a baby yeah i now am two months into this uh you are a year and a half 13 yeah 13 months okay uh i was gonna ask you are you getting any sleep now well so my

brothers knows i've been celebrating because you know four or five hours sleep of uh stretch of sleep i'm like it's the best the baby is a genius right sofia is on it that's amazing has your sleep schedule changed? Uh, and like, how do you think about sleep now? Yeah, no, it's, it's gotten a lot better. Yeah. The last time we talked, it was, it was rough. I, I, I actually asked you not to put my, my photo up on the thing because it was so rough. I hadn't gotten any sleep that night. I was like, please take pity on a, on a, on a new mom. Like it's just terrible. Now I have sympathy. I know you have sympathy. You know how bad it looks if you have, you know, like spit up on your shirt. Yeah. It was, it was horrible. Um, but yeah, no, getting a lot more sleep. I'm a firm

believer in sleep as well. I actually think like some of these new studies too, about like being, like potentially naps could be very curative. Like you need to actually, you know, you don't necessarily need to sleep like 10 hours in a row or nine hours in a row. Like there's like new science coming out about like, maybe we can actually sleep in different ways and maybe it's more personal. And we think, you know, society because of industrialization kind of forces people, okay, you have to work, you know, you have to sleep from nine o'clock to seven or whatever, whatever timeline you can. But like, if we have more kind of new ways of working, like maybe people can sleep when it's more natural for them to sleep. But yeah, I think it's, it's the most

important thing is to get enough sleep, of course. And I wish it for you. Yeah, no, I'm actually doing it. I mean, I don't think I've actually said this yet, but, uh, I actually am getting more sleep post baby than before. Oh gosh. And the reason is because I, uh, before I'd go to sleep whenever I got tired and I had to wake up in the morning and I might sleep a little less. Now I know when the baby goes to sleep, if I don't go to sleep, so like I'm more disciplined now, which leads to more sleep. So I actually can't complain compared to the horror stories I've heard. But speaking of not sleeping kind of eight, nine hours, I think Kobe Bryant used to do the polyphasic sleep,

I think, or whatever it is, where you basically sleep like one and a half, two hours and then kind of like take naps throughout the day. And his whole thing was he's like, I can basically sleep like four to six hours rather than the full eight or nine and get the same amount of rest, which I don't know if that's true or not.

But when Kobe Bryant does it, I guess it's good enough. Yeah, no, and when people have kind of flexible work too, when they can work from home, when they can do things at their right tempo, then they can sleep in the way that makes sense for them too. Well, that's the thing too. If he's playing a night game,

then you want to take a nap in the middle of the day. You may be up till midnight or 1 a.m. It's on the West Coast and you're playing, you're traveling. What is so crazy to me, it's just like you always get reminded so much of our society is built around the industrialization of work, right?

Like literally there's a factory, it runs from this time to this time, you will be here, there's shifts, like the way we eat, the way that we sleep, like the way school works, the hour. I mean, just everything is built around factory workers. It's nuts. Yeah.

And I think a lot of that will change. Like I think, I think just Zoom work and remote work, especially for knowledge work, but it'll ultimately change society in that, like you don't necessarily have to have the same schedule or you don't have to, you know, go into an office at a boardroom from eight to eight, you know, 8am to 8pm. Like you can actually be with your family and be in your home. I think that's going to be one of the most fundamental transformations coming out of COVID.

Yeah, it is. There's a lot of people, I think, you know, mutual friends that we have where people are like i don't need to travel i don't need to do this as much and uh i it reminds me you wrote a piece i think what on seriousness yeah right i remember yeah and um and ultimately i think what it comes down to it right is i i forget who somebody tweeted or something where uh there's companies that were like oh we're we're banning non-essential travel and they were basically like since when did like what what happened in the company's life cycle to get to the point where you knew that people were taking non-essential travel and you were funding it right yeah like

was it entertainment purposes like whatever right and so uh i think that that's probably a return to like whether it's seriousness or intentionality or whatever but there is this aspect of like the world or some corner of the world is returning to that which is ultimately positive yeah no and on a personal note i know you know this and just talking about like being more like you know exacting with your sleep like having a baby makes you very serious it's like you have to be very intentional with everything that, everything that you do. And I think, yeah, I think people are returning to this. Hey, like, you know, like I was locked in my home with my family for nine months, a year. And like, now I'm going to be far more intentional about how I spend my time,

who I spend my time with, what job I take. The great resignations is likely, you know, it's a lot of people doing soul searching and saying like, Hey, I want to be a lot more intentional about who I am. I don't have the courage to write it in the emails, but there's been multiple times where somebody has asked me to do something and I say no, but I'm literally like i could do that or i could spend time with playing in the baby yeah like this is like this is like exactly and like there's been a couple times like i should really just say it like rip the band-aid off but i'm like you know sorry i have something else you know whatever priorities yeah but but but it but it is a thing where uh i think if you can break the norms as well right

it's kind of like 25 minute meetings you know the people like oh you can hack you know psychologically whatever but there is an element of like some people are just they're okay let's talk let's get coffee let's do this let's whatever and if you can just start to break him back no just send me an email yeah right absolutely do you guys think that we'll ever get a point where that becomes like the opposite right like work your home becomes your workplace and people are overwhelmed with kind of what's going on at their home and they're looking for an outlet relative to like freelance balance going in yeah i think there's a balance right where it's like i don't think anyone actually wants to 100 of the time work from home every single day 365 days a year

like no travel no anything and i also don't think people want to go into an office every single day whatever. I think it's like, I would guess the ideal scenario would be sometimes you want to be around colleagues, peers, other humans, et cetera. And sometimes you're like, I just want to be at home and having the flexibility to do both. Part of it is the job, right? Like some jobs just, you can't do that. Uh, but for the jobs that can, uh, I think people want optionality more than anything is probably an optionality at different times in their lives. So when you have a new baby, it's like, you're, you're far more focused on, okay, like, when am I going to be there? You know, when am I sleeping and that sort of thing, but like, you know, when like there's,

there's life is in cycles. And so I think like just allowing people more flexibility to choose their time and it's technology that's, that's really driving that I think is, is that's, that's one of the exciting things that's going to come out of COVID. Somebody said, depends how happy the home is. That's true. And there, there is an element, I will say here's my biggest surprise actually post the baby being born is I've been on calls with people and they'll like, be like, Hey, so like, you know, how's the baby? And they start to like say things and I'm like oh they think that my approach this is gonna be like man it's really tough or like like maybe not like a shit talking session but like uh like definitely

like a misery finds company type situation and I feel bad when I'm like dude I'm on cloud nine like this is amazing and then I'm like oh let me tone down the excitement optimism whatever but we don't need no we don't need people to tone down their optimism I mean I think that's the thing as you say like misery loves company like one of the things that we do need to make normal in business and relationships is like people are whining it's like no like like find the joy you know it's like well it's like we really need to do it at a small scale too so the uh my two brothers now are that our uncles uh we had our congratulations uncles are the best well they they already know why we've had a couple accidents except for we recently uh we breached an important milestone

in Sophia's life which is she pooped on Joe Oh, okay. It means you're the favorite. It means you're the favorite. Exactly. That's what I said. That's why when you said, I'll go from the best I like,

he's like, yeah, kinda. Yeah, we got past that quick. Awesome. Where can we send people to follow you on the internet or find more work that you guys are doing at Injuries and Horowitz?

Sure, yeah. So we're at a16z.com and then I am on the internet at KTM Boyle on Twitter. So find me there. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having me.

Anyone who's not following you on Twitter is missing out. And I love that you don't write that often, but when you write, I'm like, oh, stop everything. We got to go read. So please, please keep writing. It's fantastic. Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com.

we've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry it's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and i'll meet you guys for the next episode