305: Shervin Pishevar On Identifying Industry-Defining Entrepreneurs

Shervin Pishevar is one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. He has previously invested heavily into companies like Uber, Airbnb, and many others. Shervin was also the former founder and executive chairman of Hyperloop One, an ambitious plan to change the way that humans and cargo are transported. In this conversation, we discuss Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, the various industry-defining companies that Shervin has backed, why creators control the new media paradigm, and why Shervin believes Bitcoin is a long-term systemic bet on humanity. =============================== Our second sponsor is choice, 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/podcast?kid=19DN5C =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  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. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Shervin Pishvar is one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. He has previously invested heavily in the companies like Uber, Airbnb, and many others. Shervin was also the former founder and executive chairman of Hyperloop One, an ambitious plan to change the way that humans and cargo are transported. In this conversation, we discuss Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, the various industry-defining companies that Shervin has backed, why creators control the new media paradigm, and why Shervin believes Bitcoin is a long-term systemic bet on humanity. I really enjoyed this conversation with Shervin, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is BlockFi.

• 0:56Anthony Pompliano?

  BlockFi has three products right now. The first allows you to deposit crypto and earn up to 8.6% APY in an interest-bearing account. That's an unheard-of interest rate in the legacy world. The second, you can deposit crypto and get a US dollar loan. And the third is you can buy and sell crypto on their new crypto exchange. I personally used the interest-bearing account. There was risk, I did the research, I invested, and I'm a happy user. So go do the same and check them out at blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp and earn up to 8.6% APY on your crypto deposits in their interest-bearing account. The second sponsor is a new one, and one that I'm really excited about. It's called Choice.

• 1:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Their new self-directed IRA product. And if you're listening to this, you're likely part of the over 7 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with US dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. I was in that situation too. But 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. It's an absolute game changer. So go check them out at retirewithchoice.com or click on the link in the description. Again, a new self-directed IRA product that allows you to use your tax-advantaged dollars to buy Bitcoin and control your own keys. Absolute game changer. And then lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about

• 2:21Anthony Pompliano?

  business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com or go click on the description, link in the description. All right, that's it for today. Let's get into this episode.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:05Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Sherwin here. I'm super excited to have this conversation. So thanks so much for doing it.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 3:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's start with your background. You were not born in the United States and you've got a pretty cool story about how you came to the US and eventually got into the technology and business world. So we just kind of start back from Iran and how you get to the US.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So I, you know, I'm a child of revolution and war. I remember bombs falling into Iran as a six-year-old. You know, the bomb siren's going off, anti-aircraft shooting, red streaks in the sky. Everybody would go in the basement, you know, candles in the fear in people's eyes. My dad had to escape before us. And so that was a pretty, you know, hard experience. He, I found out years later, we were just talking about our dads

• 4:07Speaker 02

  and they're just, they're the greatest generation that they're, they're so humble about what they've done and they don't really talk about it. But my dad worked for the Shaw and he was head of radio intelligence for part of the country. And so he actually made some brave decisions, put foreign language broadcasts for embassies for people to know how to get out of the country. And he saved, he saved lives. I found out from people later, like in the last 10 years, people coming and saying, you know, your dad helped us back in the day. You know, in seventy nine and so on. And so he was put on the execution list by

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Pomanian, he had to go underground and hide. And so we didn't see him. And then one night, it's a good story about karma, which I think a lot about. And he helped

• 5:02Speaker 02

  a friend of his from his hometown on the Caspian Sea, who was from a poor family, but a religious family. The guy came and he had holes in his shoes and asked him for for a job, for help. And my dad gave him a job, you know, with him. And then a couple of years later, somebody fired the guy without telling my dad. And my dad found out. We instated him and said, you know, don't touch this guy. He's he's my guy. And that guy ended up being head of security for the airport. So it's like out of Argo, right? Like, he's like, so he comes and he's like, you're, you know, uh, reaches out to my mom and is like, your, your husband helped me a lot and I want to help.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  And she checked with him that it was safe. And then my dad got in touch and they met at column number four at the airport and he walked them through security on the Air France flight to get out of there before he was going to be killed. So, I mean, life became very

• 6:09Speaker 02

  real and dramatic, you know, quickly. Uh, we didn't see him for two years and then Iran report started and then me and my mom and brother sister got out and that had been Washington DC and started over. We came with nothing. So it's really like a American dream story. I mean, we're so grateful to America. Um, we're all American citizens. We love America and we wouldn't have any opportunity without America. And I think, given You know, it's very relevant in terms of, you know, the immigrant story and welcoming immigrants to America who rejuvenate the American dream and help build the economy.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  A lot of the tech companies we know about, you know, almost the majority are started by immigrants. And they create a lot of jobs and have a huge economic impact. So now that that's how we started and they just, my parents really focused on education. And so I just went from English for speakers of other languages. I didn't know any English and then to gifted and talented then to a magnet school where I was lucky to, you know, get access to things like NeXT computers and my dad worked overnight shifts. And so did my mom, so they can buy me an Apple IIc. I remember that was my first computer, a little green screen.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  That changed my life and never looked back. I've always been excited about science and research and technology and innovation from since I was a kid.

• 7:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and there's something I think really kind of special about immigrants that are highly educated, very successful in other countries, and they come to the United States. And I think that you said in previous interviews that, you know, your father started off as a cab driver.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And there's this element of humility that goes along with, I have to start over or at least rebuild a life. And I always, you know, laugh and kind of tell friends, Americans discount that. But Americans don't realize there's very few Americans who would do the opposite. Right? Leave America, go somewhere else and kind of be able to start over again. They don't kind of have some of that humility. And this is overgeneralization. There's plenty of people who could do it, but for the most part, I think that that's a discounted part of kind of the immigrant story is it takes a lot to swallow your pride and go from, you know, the what sounds like high levels of government and kind of success to driving a cab, right? And kind of rebuilding from scratch.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  You know, every American is an immigrant at some point, right? In their, in their bloodlines. Every one of us came here. And, you know, if you go back thousands of years, Native Americans came here. They migrated here as well. And so, you know, the American story is an immigrant story from the beginning. It's a story of, of immigrants. It's a story of bravery and courage. You know, and, you know, wherever you look at, you know, the first Americans to settle, or you look at later generations of Italians and Greeks and Irish and, and everyone that

• 9:34Speaker 02

  had to come here and wasn't welcome in some circles. There were signs saying, no Irish need apply, right? So, you know, every immigrant group, Jewish and so on, Arab and so on, has had to, and Persian has had to come here and bootstrap from the beginning, no matter what generation they came here. And I think that's what really bonds the American identity. Everyone still has that. Everyone, wherever your family came here 200 years ago, all right? Or, or five years ago, that, that is part of the, the ethic of, of what it means to

• 10:18Speaker 02

  be an American. So I think that, that's really what unites us more than divides us. And that's why I think entrepreneurship, and I wrote about this years ago. I was in, I was in Romania chasing a, a really an amazing developer who had developed a graphics engine for the iPhone back in like 2008, 2009 that enabled us to do multi-game, multiplayer games over 3G. Apple hadn't even enabled that yet, and this young guy had figured that out. So I flew to Romania and, uh, never been before and met him, closed a deal and we'd launched.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  The most advanced 3D graphics engine and game on the iPhone. And when I was out there, I wrote about entrepreneurship. And I realized at the time, as I met this young developer, that the American story had become global, that entrepreneurship had become global, that Silicon Valley wasn't a physical place anymore. It was a mentality. It was an idea and had gone viral. And I knew at that moment, this was like 2008, 2009.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  I knew at that moment that the world was going to accelerate by the energy of that virality of entrepreneurship.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  That American, the American story had inspired. And, you know, and one of the things I realized is that we could be left behind. Right? By that momentum if we didn't keep up. And that's where, you know, entrepreneurs like Travis or Elon and and others who are builders, as Mark Andreessen, you know, rightly talked about, it's time to build. This is a time for builders. This is a call to arms for builders. We can re-architect, rebuild everything. Whether it's our currencies, our financial systems, our health systems, our medical systems,

• 12:34Speaker 02

  our government systems, our, you know, all of the above is up for grabs, is up for people with talent and ability and drive and will and passion and love to like work and, and build incredible things today.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Like as we speak, you know, SpaceX is going to launch the first astronauts on on their rockets. And that is a momentous, a momentous achievement. This is, this is a private company that is now building the bridge for us to become an interplanetary species, which is Elon's goal. And, and that's the ultimate in terms of building, right? He's talking about building a whole new world, a new planet. And it sounds crazy, but I would never bet against Elon.

• 13:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, you've obviously spent a good amount of time with him. And, and I think that one of the pieces that to me is very obvious is he, one is misunderstood. Two, because he is so ambitious and believes so deeply that he and his team can drive so much innovation. It's an easy target to attack, both in the media, in private, et cetera. Maybe help us understand a little bit as you've actually spent time with him. Like, what are your takeaways and kind of how do you evaluate both him as a person, but also to kind of those ambitions across SpaceX, Tesla? And then maybe we can get into some of the Hyperloop stuff after that.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, my experience has been, you know, incredibly meaningful. We've had some experiences like traveling together to, to hear Square to, sorry, to, you know, he, he saw a trip that I did to, to hear Square in the middle of the revolution. And then I went to Libya in the middle of the revolution, same trip with Sean Penn. And we met with the rebels in Benghazi as they had liberated, like two weeks before Gaddafi was killed. And it was an incredible, incredible experience. And he was like, you know, look, next trip you take like that, I want to go with you. And I was like, well, we're thinking about going to Cuba.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  And there was an American who was in prison for eight years there. And we were like, you know, maybe we could help with that. And so we're basically doing hostage negotiations, as Elon likes to tell it. And, you know, we coordinated coordinated when in terms of what we were, what our goals were and said, you know, and also the idea of like, you know, bringing, helping to bring internet to the island. And we knew that bringing connectivity and communication to a country can really open things up. And, um, and so that was the trip and it took six months to get the approvals.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And Elon's jet was the second American plane to land in Cuba in 50 years. And so we landed there and we met with ministers and we met with university students. We, you know, uh, now with, you know, Castro's son, like, you know, with artists. Um, and one of the things we said was like, look, you know, you've got to release this American. There's nothing to talk about if you don't. And within a year, they they released them and and then Obama opened up Cuba. Um, and Rolling Stones came in for a free concert to half a million people.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  And it affected change, right? And in that trip, and Elon said that was his favorite trip at the time. Um, we started talking about on the plane, we started talking about, uh, Hyperloop. And I remember, you know, everything kind of very clearly. And I remember saying, look, you know, what are you going to do with it? You know, what this was an idea.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  The paper wasn't written. Um, and what he said was like, you know, he's got five boys, SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity. You know, he's super busy and he didn't have time to do it. He wanted to open source it anyway. So I said, you know, do you mind if I try to, you know, create a company around it? And he was like, no, go ahead. And my idea was I didn't want to just do people transport. I wanted to revolutionize the idea of logistics, cargo, um, and commerce. And the idea was imagine if you could order something, right? Uh, online and.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  It begins to be manufactured in real time.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Manufactured, distributed and delivered all within forty-eight to seventy-two hours from anywhere in the world. Imagine that kind of real-time pulse to the global economy. And, um, and he was like, that's a really good idea. And I don't see any technical reason why you couldn't do people and cargo. So that was, that was the business model and I started to, to work on it. And one of the things you, you know, to Elon is,

• 18:15Speaker 02

  one, he's an absolute genius. Two, he is incredibly loyal. I mean, uh, he's a family person. He loves his family.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  He loves his friends, you know, close friends. And he's incredibly loyal, uh, to those people and to his teams that are building these, these incredible, incredible companies with them.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  And I saw multiple examples of that. And it was just, you know, in every experience. There's a reason why people build great things with leaders and visionaries like that. They are inspired. They're inspired to do something more, uh, with their lives and to contribute something to the advancement of our world. And, uh, you know, there's nothing better than waking up in the morning and realizing all these years of work that you're sending two human beings into space on a private rocket. Like, come on. How cool is that?

• 19:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Look, if you see the, um, the, the kind of hype video, if you will, that NASA and SpaceX released today. I mean, you watch this thing and you're like, again, I, you know, I tweeted a couple of times. I don't know how you bet against these people, right? You know, whether it's Elon, whether it's the SpaceX team, whether it's NASA, just the fact that they have worked. And, and the part I actually wrote about this morning was this isn't something that they started working on two years ago. Right? I mean, we're talking almost twenty years. He's been working on this problem and it started from a first principle standpoint. I gotta fix this rocket technology, get the cost down. I have to kind of get cargo and then I can get people. And, and this is a multi-decade type body of work that we're just now starting to see.

• 20:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I think where people say, wait, they actually may pull this off, right? But it's twenty years in the making.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, I, all, everyone is praying for the safe journey of the astronauts. That's incredibly important, obviously, to their, to, to, to their families and, and to the movement of humanity expanding beyond, you know, our planet. And, you know, I, I was telling that story of having a conversation with Elon in 2012 about humans going, astronauts going on in his rockets. And we were going to the opening ceremony of the, of the Olympics in 2012. And we got stuck in traffic. We were going to be late and we saw some bikes for him.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  So we jumped out of the car and rented the bikes and biked and made it. But then my, uh, my leg cramped as we were walking, running. And he like put his arms around, you know, supported me to walk to a bench and then ran and got water because I was dehydrated, obviously. And we sat down and we talked and I asked him about, you know, when do you think humans will go on your rocket? And he was so thoughtful. His number one concern was the safety of the astronauts. That's all he was concerned about. He was projecting like 2023, I think, and he beat that. But, um, but that was his paramount concern, nothing else.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  He wasn't trying to rush to get there and risk, you know, anyone's life. And there's always some risk, no matter what you do. But it's also an important reminder that, look, we put humans on the moon in the sixties, right? I mean, wow. I mean, you know, and, and Kennedy got up there and said, you know, wanting to put a man on the moon, uh, within the decade. And they did it. They did it with computers with the power of a calculator today. And it's an incredible achievement, but we should also understand that it wasn't just, um,

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Just an engineering achievement. It was a financial achievement and decision. Uh, I think the numbers I saw once, I wrote about this once about the, the actual in kind of nineteen sixties dollars that they committed to uh, fund putting a man on the moon within the decade was something like two hundred fifty billion dollars. Right. And it was something like four or five percent of the GDP at the time. And that's an incredible achievement, you know, uh, uh, commitment and achievement. And so it's like, well, we've already done this. We, we have these skills. A private company hasn't done it.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Our government and our people did it, but companies have the, have that skill as well. And it's another area where, where I talk about companies becoming, you know, almost like sovereigns, right? I call them mini sovereigns. And, you know, Tim Cook of Apple has the power, you know, and Apple has the power and financial power of a, of a nation state. Amazon and Bezos, same thing. Google, right?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  And imagine in the SpaceX example, if Elon pulls it off and he colonizes Mars in the next twenty, thirty years and begins to seed humanity there, which is absolutely his goal. Again, it sounds crazy, but that is his goal. And every crazy idea he's had, guess what? He did it from PayPal to, you know, uh, to SpaceX, to Tesla, to SolarCity and so on. So, like you said, I wouldn't bet against that.

• 24:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And another founder that you spent a bunch of time with, uh, who I think has very similar qualities is, uh, is obviously Travis and Uber. Uh, maybe tell the story of, uh, when did you first meet Travis and, and kind of when did you become aware of, uh, Uber as a company and start looking at it?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got, um, I became aware of Uber super early, um, when it had launched and I was a fan and I was trying to get in touch with her. I didn't know him at the time. So this was probably like two thousand ten-ish.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  And It coincided with me becoming a venture capitalist for the first time. So that that opportunity came to me and and like I started June, June two, two thousand and eleven. And I chased Uber and a number of other companies that I thought were going to be massive companies like Airbnb and others.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And Travis was notoriously hard to get in touch with. He wasn't going to answer some VC's email, right? So I had to, and he said this, you know, he said this before. He was like, I had to, I had to respond to Sherwin because I basically had everyone in his network who I knew and knew well vouch for me. So they started saying to him like, hey, you should talk to Sherwin. And I'm talking about swarming, not, not, not, not like one person or two person like. And, you know, it was everyone from like Julius Janachowski, who was later the head of the FCC.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  You know, to Drew, Drew Houston from Dropbox to the list goes on. And so he did, you know, he finally responded.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And I had told another friend of mine who was an investor in, in Uber that, you know, and on the board, I was like, look, if, if they ever raise money, let me know. Or decide to take, you know, raise money. And so he did me a favor the day of that board meeting. He called me and he said, hey, you know, we're going to raise, raise a new round. And this is when Uber was, I think this was probably August, September of two thousand and eleven. Uber is probably doing about one point eight million dollars in net revenue, had about six or seven thousand cars, drivers on it.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Um, most of that was San Francisco and like New York was like 1,200 cars like it was tiny. So I started chasing it and I was in the race. I was hustling, was doing everything I can to win. And I got beat by another firm that I respect a lot, but Travis didn't. He called me and he was like, hey, homie. That's exactly what he was like. He was like, uh, I really like you. I wanted, I wanted to go with you, but I have to go to this other firm. And I took it real cool. I was, I was like, I totally understand because as an entrepreneur, I get it. Uh, sometimes you have to make that call.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  And so I said to him, you know, congratulations. I'm happy for you. Uh, I totally understand if anything goes wrong in the diligence or anything else, I want you to know that I'm like 110,000% behind you. So you negotiate with strength because you've got a backup. And he was like, I appreciate that. And that was it. And then I was giving a keynote in like Tunisia for President Obama's whole entrepreneurship thing in the Middle East. And I got a call on my cell phone and it was Travis. And luckily the signal was there. I picked up and he was like, hey, you know, you remember what you told me? I was like, yeah. He was like, is that still on? I was like, absolutely.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  He was like, can you meet me in Dublin? There was this founders conference. So I got on the next plane, landed, hit the streets of Dublin, had a pint with him in a Irish pub. And, um, as we were walking kind of the cobblestone streets at night, he, he told me his full vision that time. And it was, I'm not a taxi company. I, I, you know, I want to replace car ownership. Right? And suddenly the TAM or the total addressable market became, you know, trillions. It wasn't, you know, and that's the mistake my competition made is they were comparing Uber to a black car company or a taxi company.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And those comps are totally different than a technology platform, marketplace that could also expand into many other areas like transportation, food and so on. And so that night. We agreed on a valuation of 290 million and people thought we were crazy. You know, me and my firm were crazy for giving that valuation. But I went to his, you know, I printed it out at the business center in the hotel, went to knocked on his door. And I have a picture of us signing the term sheet at the door. And we ended up putting, you know, 26 and a half million at 290.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  So about 8% of the company.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  And it turned out to be a great investment and Travis and I became very close. I would say one, super intelligence, right? Like Travis, you know, Elon are in that category, like top 10 that I've met.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Grit, like real grit, incredible willpower.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Just constantly thinking and working.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  And they're both incredible recruiters. Absolutely. I mean, some of the best recruiters I've ever seen, Travis spends a lot of time recruiting. And you look at what he did with Uber. And then you look at what he's doing with his current company in the cloud kitchen space. And he's recruiting like crazy, he's, you know, and he's building a great company again. And he's right again, right? He's absolutely right about the trend and, and he's building a really, really important part of that vision.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  And, you know, and that takes that kind of incredible drive and commitment.

• 31:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you get that phone call, you go to Dublin. How much negotiating is there versus Travis, tell me what you want. And we're in because we believe in you specifically. And, you know, we have this kind of deep seated belief that you're going to build a successful company. And the terms today don't matter as much. Like, is it something where you guys are literally sitting down? It's every single term is getting negotiated? Or is it more of, you know, what I call like the Warren Buffett deal where he says, hey, look, this guy know if I'm going to do, you know, multi-billion dollar deal in the first five minutes on the phone. Right? And yeah, I got to figure out the details, but, but I pretty much know quickly. Like, how did that actually go down?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, the, the other firm that won initially tried to reprice the deal, which if you know Travis, you just don't do that. And, you know,

• 31:53Speaker 02

  I didn't know Travis that well, but my instinct already was, don't mess with that. Like, you know, if you give your word, keep it. And I'm, I'm a person of my word. Like, if I give my word, I follow through. And that's why also a key part of why we became so close. Because we knew, like, when you're dealing with someone where there's no artifice,

• 32:19Speaker 02

  right? Elon is exactly the same way. There is no tricks.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  They don't need to. Tricks are for people who are, have a reason to do the trick, right? To get some advantage. But if you work incredibly hard and you're super intelligent, you don't need to rely on tricks. You just build, right? And so we bonded because we knew when we were speaking to each other, there was zero artifice in what we said, we meant it. And if we were wrong about what we believed at the time, we were open to being convinced that we were wrong and, and then move on. And I saw that in him, like, he might disagree with you violently, you know?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Or I might disagree violently, but then, you know, after hashing through all the logic, one of us would come out the other side agreeing with, with the other if we weren't agreeing in the first place.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  So I think that's, that, you know, that's part of it. So I, I think we got lucky too, that we were in that situation where there was that repricing. So I remember offering 290 over text, because I went to like work on a term sheet, talk to my team and, and, uh, and.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Then, you know, I think iPhone had just come out with a little bubble thing, you know. But so I was like, I sent it. And then I was waiting for him to respond, no bubble. Right. And, you know, like, oh crap, like, I'm like, is he negotiating against me with somebody else, you know, or with the same firm using my offer to like, you know, get a better deal. And but, you know, that whole thing about keeping your word, you know, luckily he came back. And before he came back, I remember increasing the offer. I was like, 295.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Cause I got nervous. And he was like, no, I mean, that's, that's cool. We'll stick to 299. And I think 290. And then, you know, it was the first time, I think, Travis has ever agreed to a lower price on his own.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  You know, so that was, so we went with 290.

• 34:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so what's really interesting is Travis, Elon, there's many other examples in histories. These folks are all able to go across industries, right? Obviously Elon, there are similarities between space launching, electric vehicles, SolarCity, whatever. But the most common aspect of those three companies is Elon. Right. When you look at Travis with Uber, cloud kitchens. Travis. And so how much of these investments and the building of the companies is dependent just on who's driving the company versus picking the right markets or, you know, actually building the right products? Like you've invested in so many companies at this point. You know, there's the argument that some people are founder investors, some are market and some are product.

• 35:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, where do you come out on that framework? And what do you actually look for when you're making these investments?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was telling the story of my daughter, when she was 11, I took her to her favorite sushi place. And she was like, Dad, how do you, how do you invest? You know, what do you, what do you do? And, um, and I, I looked at her and I said, you know, I call it the love principle. Like you have to love the founder, the team, the product, the market. Right. And if you don't love any one of those things. Probably not a good investment. And she looks up at me and she's like, well, I love Great America. And it was true. She would go there every weekend. We'd always go for a Halloween ha- Halloween haunts and, and, um, and I was like, okay, so you love Great America. Like, here's what you have to do. You have to go there and interview and do what's called diligence.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Interview the employees, get, you know, get, get insights. And she did that. She came back, she was like, Dad, all the employees like love the company. They love the CEO. The company's called Cedar Fair. The Forty Niners are doing a billion dollar stadium there. And I was like, there you go. So Cedar Fair is a public company. That's your first investment. So she made a hundred percent return and she's starting her own company now at nineteen. You know, when she was eighteen, she started it. Um, and, you know, she learned a really important lesson. She's using the profits from that investment that she did when she was eleven to start this company. But I tell that story because that is exactly how I invest. Like, those are the four quadrants.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  And if I have any kind of, you know, qualitative or quantitative reason not to believe in one of those things, I'm not going to do the investment. And for whatever reason, that's been working. I'm, I'm up about seventy-three X, uh, since two thousand and eleven, which is amazing. Like, I never, I, first of all, I never thought I was going to be a venture capitalist investor. You know, I'm immigrant kid, poor kid. Like, I just didn't, I, I just never, I didn't think that was possible. And I was surprised when that, I started getting those, you know, offers and, and, um, and opportunities.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  And so that, that formula is something, you know, that is qualitative and quantitative. And some people are really good at the quantitative and some people are really good at the qualitative. If you're bo- good at both, I think you can go in the pantheon of great investors, um, in terms of track record and also in terms of just reputation amongst founders. I think. What you said about Elon and Travis is absolutely right. Like, we look for great founders, right, that are building industries. Like, one of the things I say is like,

• 38:26Speaker 02

  build industries, don't just build companies. And, you know, that is a, an interesting juxtaposition in terms of some of the fishers you're seeing in the venture capital world versus, you know, founders. Founders are amazing founders, have a lot of opportunity to get funding, and also can be picky and choosy. And when you're not picky and choosy, you end up with bad investors on your board, on your capital, and it is a nightmare.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  We've lived through things like that, and it can be an absolute nightmare. And so, you know, if you look at like Elon's story, like there were venture capitalists that when he needed the money in December, and that 60 Minutes interview where he, you know, had tears, talking about that, that moment where he thought that his companies were gonna die, right, that he had worked so hard, and he put every dollar that he had into those companies to save them, and he was living at his friends' homes and didn't have a house, and was basically homeless, working on these companies, having put every dollar that he made on PayPal

• 39:46Speaker 02

  and, and his other startup, there's a mapping company that he had started in his early twenties. And so, he took that kind of bold risk. And, you know, I think a couple of the VCs, especially one, bowed out, you know, at the last minute. And...

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Elon like had to rescue the company and um and I don't think he ever forgot that. Right? I don't think he and he never wanted to be in that position again where his company could get killed. Uh, I think Travis is has gone through similar types of journeys and you know, uh, he's working on his company. I don't think there is a VC on that cap table, right? And so I think what's gonna happen is great founders like Travis and others um are going to fund other great founders. And founders are gonna become more careful, right?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  If they have the luxury of choice, they're gonna be careful about who and what firms and what angels, what investors they bring in. Cause if you bring a psychopath into your company, you know, if you bring us, you know, uh, um, someone that schemes against the company for whatever reason, it can kill a company. It can destroy billions of dollars of value and also hold back progress for humanity, uh, especially with these types of founders. So it's it's an interesting branch of investing uh in entrepreneurship, which is there aren't that many of these types of founders, right?

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And I have a thesis that as entrepreneurship spreads and goes viral, that we're gonna find the Elons of Africa, the Travis's of South America, right? Like, we're gonna find um the undiscovered Edison's um that are out there that have that talent, but opportunity hasn't come to them because opportunity wasn't democratized. And that's where we're at now. And if you think about the next 20 years, the next 40 years, the, you know, people say disruption, but that doesn't really cover what's happening. The speed at which.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  These innovations are coming, are getting exponentially faster. Look at blockchain and Bitcoin and what's happening. These are, to me, systemic bets, long-term systemic bets on the future of humanity. And when you back someone like Elon, or you, you know, or you buy and invest in Bitcoin, these are two different types of asset classes, but they're long-term systemic bets on the future of humanity. And I'm into systemic bets. Those are massive bets. Those are, those are like TAMs, you know, squared.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  You know, they, they're, the, the, what's the total addressable market of a planet?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Of a new world, of a new civilization, like what, right? And so if you think that big and you think intergenerationally, if you think beyond your own life, in terms of your investments, whether you're investing for your family, institution, yourself, or so on, you have to think long-term.

• 43:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And it strikes me that, once you see one or two of these work, you almost become emboldened, right? So if you had never seen SpaceX, or Tesla, or Uber, or any of these companies actually play out, you almost become more risk averse. But when you see them work, you then start to think that way, right? You get that feedback loop of, hey, I actually want those market-expanding technologies. I want those founders who can think intergenerationally. And so maybe talk a little bit about, like, because you have been so close to some of these founders, who, you know, will go down as the best founders of our lifetime, right? It's kind of where this is headed.

• 44:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And these companies end up being industry-defining companies. How has that changed the types of companies that you invest in since you've been close to those people and those companies?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  That's a great, that's a great question.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  As you were saying, asking the question, I was thinking about it almost as...

• 44:29Speaker 02

  A hundred percent that that fear is what keeps people. Fear is what de-risks people's potential, right? And and so they in their mind, when when when you make a little bit, right? And I remember when I remember when I made my first little bit of liquidity. And I called my dad and then I was like, you know.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  It was like, you know, it was the first time I ever had any liquidity. And it was like, I don't know, about four million dollars. And this is like going from like, nothing to like, whoa. I just sold a company and I got four million dollars. Wow. And I had never felt what fuck you money was until that moment. I couldn't understand it. There's no way you understand until you have it. I swear. It it is a liberation of the soul.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Right? And um. Because at that point, you can walk away.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Greatest negotiators have the leverage to walk away from the negotiating table. Right? And as a negotiating table of life, if you don't have that leverage, you're trapped. And you're willing to compromise beyond your comfort levels. Right? But when you have that fuck you money, it becomes a liberation point. I called my dad and I was like, Dad, this is what it feels like. I didn't know what that felt like. Right? And guess what? I put every dollar that I made into Uber. Right? So that was like, that was the right thing to do because, you know, that's another 400X on top. You're right.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Like, so that was the right bet. But it but I was willing to kind of risk it all, put all the chips on one thing. And it could have gone really badly, but it didn't. Right? And then it's like, oh, do I do I risk it again? Right? Do I make that bet again? And that's where someone like Elon, that took every dollar and put it all into SpaceX and Tesla and and SolarCity. That he didn't have that fear. Right? So the antidote, the antidote to fear is exactly what you're talking about is

• 47:02Speaker 02

  that if you become attuned to the possibility of, of a massive bet that you believe in and you're passionate about, that's when you're willing to forget your fear. It gives you kind of antibodies, right? Makes you immune to that fear. And if you're willing to take a big systemic, you know, bet, it could turn out great. And it has in those cases.

• 47:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you, you obviously have been right multiple times. And I've, I've asked Chamath, I've asked Mark Cuban and a couple of others, what were you doing when you realized that you had a billion dollars? Right? So Mark Cuban said he knew exactly how much stock he had. He was just refreshing and refreshing. And he described it as he went and did a naked dance, right? He just, he was so excited. It's a little bit different, I think, with the venture capital side where everything's illiquid and it doesn't track kind of a stock price. So kind of what was that, you know, for you, like, do you remember what you were doing? And then two, mentally, you talk about kind of the unshackling, right? And you almost, it seems like can enter into a

• 48:19Anthony Pompliano?

  different mindset of what can I actually invest in? What do I want to spend my time doing? Maybe talk a little bit about going from nothing to 4 million is kind of, it seems like one level, then going from 4 million to a billion plus is a whole nother level and almost like another level to the game, if you will.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  The thing I'm proud of is that these investments have returned billions of dollars to a lot of

• 48:48Speaker 02

  LPs that are retirement funds.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  of our grandparents and nonprofits that are doing really good work in the world. Like that, like my measure of billions is not what I am acquiring, but how I'm contributing to the cycle of giving, right? And helping to fund these incredible institutions and nonprofits, pension funds that are the livelihood of humanity.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  That, you know, put bread on the table of people's, you know, in people's homes. And so that, that to me is the most important part. And one of the things I've noticed is none of the great founders ever really gave a shit about money. Like, once you kind of like, like that four million,

• 49:48Speaker 02

  that was the taste. It didn't make a difference. It was four million or a billion or 500 million or 300 million or whatever. It happens once. It doesn't matter wherever it was before. It's that moment, the mental switch, the unshackling, right? Of your mind and the opening up to the possibility that you can do not just a 10x, but 100x, right? And in some cases, thousands of X in terms of impact. And one of my good friends, Peter Diamandis, one of the things he talks about is, you know, the true billionaire is about having an impact on a billion people. And a positive one, not a negative one.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  And we see some great founders who build products that are inherently flawed in the impact they have on humanity. And, you know, I love Facebook, but I haven't been on Facebook for five or six years. And, you know, and we've seen the impact it's had systemically. And I believed in the early days of like the positive impact, but I think from a policy perspective, you know, and now we're going through similar types of things with other platforms.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  But we have to get ahead of those things. You have to have managed those, those products so that you, you continue to have positive impact at scale.

• 51:20Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about that balance for a platform? So take Facebook, right? I worked there in 2014 and 15. And there was always this balance, I think, even internally of connecting the world is a, you know, a great mission, right? And there's lots of kind of net positive aspects of that. It doesn't come without challenges though, right? And we've seen that everything from on the election side and kind of all of that stuff to other aspects like just, you know, terrorist content can get shared and communication between bad actors and all of that. And so how do you think through that balance for platforms? And do you get to a point where you almost have to accept that there's some negative impact, but it's a net positive?

• 52:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And so we should, you know, kind of continue to encourage these? Or do you see it as, hey, we should work tirelessly to eliminate any negative impact and only focus on promoting the positive aspect? Like, how do you mentally break that down?

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think part of it is when you're generating tens of billions of dollars of profit off a platform like that, you become trapped to the engine of profit, right? And it blurs the lines of right and wrong because you might make a decision that you know is wrong ethically, but is right for your profits. And that's not, that's, that's the conundrum. And when you're at that kind of scale, where you have a massive part of humanity on the platform, the impact it can have is it can change sway elections.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  It can, you know, lead to genocides and like, you know, violence and all these things. And, you know, it's unfortunate because in the beginning, the reason why I went to Egypt and Libya in the middle of those revolutions is I was inspired by people like Hemingway, who went to the Spanish Civil War. And actually, he fought, I didn't fight, I went to observe and learn. And it was still scary, right? And

• 53:29Speaker 02

  But back then, I was like, I wrote essays about this that, you know, I said, you know, the last bastion of dictatorship is the router. Right? And we have to, you know, if, if, if dictators can control the router, they can, they can base that, they can shut off the internet, the mobile, which is exactly what happened in, in places like Libya and, and Egypt. But back then, the impact of Twitter and Facebook on those movements was very positive. So I was an optimist about it. And I think the reason why Chamath and me and others have, have, you know, been persuaded

• 54:13Speaker 02

  that it's having an overwhelmingly negative impact is that something happened in between at, at the, at that kind of scale where the, the moral compass became blurred. And, and, and so, you know, it's, it's fixable. It's just a matter of will. And sometimes, you know, a company has to decide that it has to fundamentally change some things. And that might mean, that might mean short-term or medium-term, even long-term compression of

• 54:55Speaker 02

  the profits. But overall, it will lead to a healthier ecosystem within which to continue to scale.

• 55:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then on these platforms, we've seen a complete rise of what I'll call kind of a new generation of creators, right? And you've tweeted quite a bit about this, what I'll just call the creator class, right? And so a number of tweets that you've had, I just love where you're like, look, you know, Joe Rogan's a billionaire, Kylie's a billionaire. And this creator class is, some will call it new media, some will call it kind of influence or the influencer economy. But it's definitely something that wasn't there in the size, scope, or mechanism that it is today, even 10 years ago, right?

• 55:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And so maybe talk a little bit about like, what is drawing your attention to that? And how do you view that creator class, kind of in the world order, if you will, of what we're seeing happen?

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. I mean, I, um. So I started going down to LA in like 2008. I had SGM, Social Gaming Know-It. So it was one of the first gaming companies, social gaming companies on Facebook platform and then on the iPhone.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  And, you know, on the iPhone, we're one in four iPhones had one of our games. And we merged that company with a company called Mindjolt, and that's Jam City now. So they're doing like half a billion on the, uh, in revenue on the iPhone now. And so I was going out in LA and I was meeting with people in that world, in the entertainment world.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  And I remember like back then, I was saying like, hey, bring loss to the Facebook platform as a social game. And, you know, it was hard to convince people to take those kinds of bets, right? Because of that same conservative type thinking about platforms and taking that kind of risk. But it was absolutely the right call to do, right? Uh, you know, same, same pitch on the iPhone and saw it. And then when I started investing, I, I, um.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  I started talking to friends of mine down there that I was having those discussions. And I was trying to build bridges between Silicon Valley and, and LA.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  And some people got in, some people were like, I want 20% of the company. And I was like, sorry, like, that's not going to happen. That's not how it works. You've got to put some money into it, you know, invest just like everybody else and help the company. But, you know, you're not getting 20%. And so.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  We helped change the culture down there to an investor class culture, right? To shareholder culture versus like, I'm me and I deserve 20%. So that was important. So conversations and meeting people like Jay Brown and Jay Z, or Troy Carter, or Scooter Braun, or Adam Lieber, and Ari Emanuel, and bringing them into Uber. Like, those were the ones that got it, invested, and made a great return on their investment with us into Uber, right? And helped the company a lot and all of that.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  But then I think the legend of those investments is what changed the culture in LA. Because the people who passed that I talked to, who I won't name right now, they were kicking themselves. They were like, what was I thinking? Why didn't I put in that $250,000 check and get a 400x return, whatever it ended up being? So that's one. Then, between 2008 and now, in 2020, the evolution that's happened is that people now, the influencer and the founders and the people

• 59:12Speaker 02

  are the brand, are the company. And companies can live and die.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  But an influential person, whether it's a founder, an entertainer, and so on, anyone that has an audience that's loyal and spends time with them, similar to how you do, or Rogan does, and others do.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  You know, have a chance to build something that impacts billions of people and makes them billionaires. Right? And so the power, especially in terms of the new media paradigm, is that, you know, these influencer influencers who are also great entrepreneurs can build incredible value for themselves, their families, their employees, their teams and so on, and investors.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Faster than in any other time in history.

• 1:00:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What's driving that? Is that a technology inflection point? Is that a just mindset people now are thinking there's a different way to monetize this or build these companies? Or is there something else that's driving it?

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  It's the death of the middleman. Just like the death of the salesman, the middleman was a remnant of a different world. And all of the people that were in between these influencers and the audience and not just people, but companies. All of the agencies and the management companies and all these other things that were in the middle taking a cut. Even the lawyers in LA get a cut of everything someone makes. It's insanity. It's, you know, a form of slavery. And so, you know, I'm not going to get a lot of love from lawyers in LA. But I mean, it does make, when I found out the lawyers get a percentage, like, you know, agents and management, I was like,

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  why? Like pay their fees and move on. But that was the mentality and the culture, which then in turn made people desperate, overestimating their worth and saying, I want 20% of the company when it's like, no, no, no. Invest, make a great, amazing return and learn how to be a founder and build your own company. So I think it's that collapse and compression. Where the influencer and their audience became one, right? Like it's that trend that we just saw where the young lady created a cult, right? You know, the step, step chickens or whatever it's called. I think that's hilarious, right?

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  But it's a genius move because she realized that if she could collapse the audience and she becomes the audience and the audience becomes her. And suddenly she's a platform and suddenly the audience and the fans are a platform in unison, right? United and look what they did overnight, top of the charts, you know? You know, put out an app, the ranking goes up. All the comment streams of all these influencers, suddenly same profile picture, genius, right?

• 1:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what it reminds me a lot of is the old model was let's build a product or a service and then go spend a bunch of time, money and resources to find the customers of the audience, right? So it's kind of company first, audience and customer second. Now though, that's inverting, right? Actually what's happening is people are building the audiences first and then they're basically going back to the drawing board and say, okay, I've got this massive audience of hundreds of thousands or millions of people. What do I build to serve them? Is it a mobile app? Is it a, you know, a merchandise store? Is it some other product, you know, like a Kylie Jenner or whatever? And to me, that almost feels like if you can build the audience, it's actually a great way to de-risk the company building, right?

• 1:03:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause you know that there's an audience there and so you're drastically increasing the probability of the product market fit in the future.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  The product market fit is the, is the person, the brand is the person. And, and I mean, talk about reducing cap, right? The, the customer acquisition cost, if, if, if you, if you have an audience and you can do what Joe did and what, and what Daniel Ek just did together, um, you know, that's the beginning of the end of.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Any kind of middlemen in the media world. And we already have experienced that in the tech world. Where the Elons and Travis's can create, you know, incredible world changing companies on their own. And then back others like them, all right. Uh, or the Kylie can create a billion dollar company and she's what 22, 23 years old. Or Kanye can take his genius and design a shoe in Yeezy and create a three billion plus company. Um, with his creativity, all right.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Um, and so I think, you know, that's, that's a trend that's not, it's not going away. It's here. And I think, you know, this, this new wrinkle, what, what it kind of inspired me around thinking through is ephemeral influencers, right? Like, you know, she might suddenly show up with, you know, a cult, right? Um, with, and suddenly have a million people following and being their, the platform. And it might go away and that's okay, you know? So it made me think of kind of like the Andy Warhol quote of everyone's gonna have 15 minutes of fame. Right?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's in this case, everyone's gonna have 15 million dollars, right? It's like, like she might make 15 million dollars, right? And that's a life changing amount for her and her family. But because she was creative about something. And she basically created a new form factor within other platforms, a platform within a platform. And it might be ephemeral and go away and that's okay.

• 1:05:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels like it's becoming more and more obvious every day as the more redundant kind of minute activities are getting automated away and software is replacing a lot of that work. The creative side of this is just getting exponentially more valuable, right? And we're kind of seeing that just explode. And so something like the step chickens cult, which is hilarious that literally the New York Times is writing about it, but they're writing about it because it's real, right? And has serious audience, serious influence. We'll probably see a thousand more of those over the coming years.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And here's to not just that, but here's to having a thousand Yvonne's bloom, a thousand Travis's, a thousand Steve Jobs. And, you know, I think, I think that's that, that, that, all of it, like, everyone should rise. And anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur has the opportunity to do that. And the only, there's no middleman left. And all of the most expensive parts of building these components continue to drop over time. And I think we've learned a lot of lessons over the last 10 years of

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  capital is not, is not a guarantor of success or scale. Just because you have a billion dollars to spend, doesn't mean you have a billion dollars of scale. Those are two very different things.

• 1:07:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I won't name names, but we've seen a couple of companies raise a lot of money and, and they don't go anywhere, right? And usually they raise that money before they ever launch a product. And so that it's a, can almost hurt you more, right? Than, than actually just building a product to begin with. Before we wrap up, I want to talk about outside of tech investing, what else are you investing in? Or what else are you excited about? Either before kind of the coronavirus pandemic or now, as we're seeing some of the economic shocks, like, how are you thinking about the rest of your portfolio or your investing activities?

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  I, we care a lot about that as a family because we came from nothing and you know, we have to give back. Um, and you know, my children, you know, I have two kids. Uh, and they care a lot about giving back as well. And so does my, my nephews and niece. And, um, so we have them all involved. Uh, I'm lucky that my sister Sarah is, uh, head of the family foundation, the Fish Bar Family Foundation called PI, like, uh, PI. And, um, and then the, we're trying to bring the same kind of systemic thinking, but also, you know, innovation to what we're doing. So as an example,

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  in this, you know, crisis and pandemic, early on, I kind of latched on to the idea of, uh, using 3D printers and laser, uh, cutters to basically, um, 3D print, you know, masks, uh, face masks and, and shields and, and, um, and, and so we kind of created a movement to do that called Health OS. And we partnered with IRE Foundation and others and, and we've now, I think the number is like, we've delivered like something like 20,000 made and, and are delivering 20,000 face shields

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  to hospitals, um, here in, in Florida, in New York, in Mexico and, and other places. And we're continuing to scale that. And, um, you know, um, it, it was, it's been a really cool project. And, um, Sarah's been helping, uh, scale that. And those are the kinds of ideas we like. Um, we also did something called the Cyrus Prize, uh, to kind of find, you know, uh, young, uh, Iranian, uh, uh, Americans, uh, who are, you know, incredibly smart and, um, are working on big ideas and, you know,

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  giving out a hundred thousand prize, a hundred thousand dollar prize to them.

• 1:10:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome. Uh, before I end, I always ask the same two questions, everybody. The first being, what's the most important book you've ever read?

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Wow. That's a great question. Um. Yeah, that's like asking you to choose your children one over the other.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  I would, I remember when I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad in my early teens. It blew my mind. I just was like, I just remember what an impact it had. Uh, same with Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway. It just, those are stories that never leave you.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Stretch your minds. Uh, so from a fiction perspective, I would pick, you know, one of those of you to make me pick one. I'd say, um, you know, Heart of Darkness.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  And then in terms of, um, nonfiction, I would say,

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  you know, I read Burn Rate back in the nineties and it, and it had a huge impact on me. And, um, you know, it always made me remember that story. And, and that cycle has repeated itself so many times, uh, where people have raised a lot of capital and then forgot about their burn rate and burned too much capital and ran out. And capital is your oxygen and talent is, is as well. So you have to keep those two things in, in tandem in your mind and get ahead of it because you run out of both. You're dead.

• 1:11:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, th- those are two great books. Um, and then the last question, uh, we spoke a bunch about SpaceX. Uh, but what about aliens? Believer, non-believer? How do you kind of think through whether there might be intelligent life out there?

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  That's a great, that's, that's a funny question. Um, you know, back to some conversations with Elon in the early days.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  I remember talking to him well before everybody was talking about simulations. And I, you know, and we would go back and forth on it. And, you know, one of the insights was, I remember saying, like, given almost infinite time, everything that could have happened has already happened. So we're already living in the future. And, you know,

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  that from a scientific perspective, I think, I think that's a, I mean, it's a even weirder thing to say than to say aliens are, are, uh, are real, but scientifically, it, it, it could work out. And, and what, what I mean by that is that if you have highly advanced AI and, and some kind of merger between biological life and AI, if that's the future, right? And if we're already living in that future, my insight was, you know, that what would any advanced intelligence want to answer? And it's a fundamental question. When I was a kid, I'd look up at the sky and be like, okay, everyone says God created this, this world.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Well, who created God? And then I would blackout like that because that was such a scary thought that there was nothing and then there was something. So I was like, look, you know, an advanced intelligence would want to re basically reverse engineer history through trillions of simulations. And we might be living in just one of those stacked up against each other. And to them, it's a blink of an eye. Right? And, you know, the advanced intelligence would want mutants, would want people who experiment, who bend, who bend the universe. Because it's, it's the mutants and

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  the different thinkers like, um, like the Steve Jobs or the Edison's and so on, who, who bend the fabric of the universe. And one of the things, you know, people who have done that in our experiences, I, I've seen this universally. When we try to bend the universe, the universe yields.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Right? And so, um, and it yields in the way it's supposed to yield. If you understand that, then it's a, it's a core, um, generator of courage and allows you to not be afraid. It's the antidote to the fear of taking risks. Because if the universe is going to yield, if you try, ultimately, and you fail and you keep trying, you fail and you keep trying and it works in the end, like Edison's light bulbs, he made 1,800 versions of it. So my long answer to you is yes, but a different kind of alien.

• 1:15:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. And look, I think ultimately it goes back to that unshackling of the mind. Right? If you're able to, to do that, it's incredibly powerful. If people want to learn more about the work you're doing or the investing you're doing, where can we send them to learn more?

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  They can go to, um, pishawar.com or shervon.com. My first name or last name. And there's some info there and you know, uh, my email is just my name, [email protected].

• 1:15:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Listen, thank you so much.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  The next Elon or Travis or Steve Jobs, you know, let me know.

• 1:16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't, don't say that on the internet. You're going to get a whole bunch of trolls along with maybe one that might be real.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  No, you know, obviously you can't answer every, every, but, but the swarming concept is a good one. Like, you know, I emailed Travis, he didn't answer, but you know, if you have people that I know, like you, that vouch for you, then the probability of, you know, something happening and engagement and learning more is, is, uh, is going to happen.

• 1:16:37Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Listen.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  And bend the universe.

• 1:16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it. Uh, listen, thank you so much for doing this. I think people will get a ton out of this and do it again in the future.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Really love your approach and framework of, uh, thinking.