#689: The Brothers Who Live One Life — The Incredible Adventures of David and Daniil Liberman

Brought to you by AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses, and Protekt’s REST https://protekt.com/tim sleep supplement. David Liberman and Daniil Liberman (@DaLiberman https://twitter.com/DaLiberman) are visionary entrepreneurs and investors with a close partnership spanning 16 years. They gained valuable experience at Snap, contributing to projects involving avatars, bitmoji, animation, and product operations. They are currently based in Los Angeles, where their primary focus is on building Product Science https://www.productscience.ai/, a service dedicated to optimizing mobile apps. Moreover, the Liberman brothers have established The Libermans Company https://libermans.co/, referred to as a People Company. Through their commitment to the Founders Pledge, they have allocated all future earnings and economic value for the next three decades to LibermansCo, including founder shares of Product Science and potential returns from future investments. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health. * This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2022 by GQ magazine, Wired, and Apartment Therapy. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 25% off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim http://helixsleep.com/tim. The 25% off offer is valid until September 10th. * This episode is also brought to you by Protekt’s REST supplement https://protekt.com/Tim! Protekt’s REST https://protekt.com/Tim is a new take on getting deeper, more restorative sleep. Protekt’s REST supplement helps provide consistent, restful sleep without any habit-forming ingredients or groggy side effects. Simply add it to your last glass of water before bed, and it goes to work. REST https://protekt.com/Tim has no added sugars, artificial sweeteners, or artificial ingredients. Protekt https://protekt.com/Tim is veteran-owned, and they make all of their products right here in the USA. Visit Protekt.com/Tim to buy Protekt REST and you’ll get a FREE bottle of Clarity with your order https://protekt.com/Tim. Clarity https://protekt.com/Tim is a neurotropic mushroom blend of lion’s mane, reishi, cordyceps, and turkey tail, designed to support brain function and mental performance. I haven’t personally tested Clarity https://protekt.com/Tim yet. * [06:59] Childhood. [09:46] The influence of scientist parents on curious kids. [12:42] The perils of pursuing anti-corruption innovation in post-Soviet Russia. [18:09] Building a business with cables and crossbows. [23:21] Lessons learned by bankrupting a gaming studio. [29:42] Moscow-style investment recovery. [31:07] A lucky break in the darkness of debt. [32:07] Streamlining production through decentralization, parallelization, and a DJ connection. [35:00] When playing the fools is the smart move. [41:04] Coming to America. [44:46] Building momentum with animation in Los Angeles. [46:19] Divorce lawyer power dynamics. [47:10] Another unforeseen financial hurdle. [49:02] To Silicon Valley and nonprofit transparency. [52:21] How are David and Daniil able to pivot between different ideas so quickly? [58:12] The formation, advantages, and drawbacks of the Liberman hive mind. [1:07:18] Separation pros and cons. [1:08:56] How does external romance fit into this arrangement? [1:12:12] The Dalai Lama, Jerry Murdock, and Snap. [1:19:28] Reversing Snapchat's 2018 decline by adapting to data and fixing real problems. [1:27:40] Applying principles of compound growth to life. [1:33:23] How working with family has helped with logistics. [1:37:11] The value of interdisciplinary synthesis. [1:45:46] How the Libermans might teach people to code. [1:52:55] A data-driven look at our current financial crisis. [2:04:21] What's the Liberman solution? [2:06:46] Incentivizing adoption of such a solution. [2:10:33] A real-world test. [2:14:08] Who/what makes for a good investment in this model? [2:19:35] Do we reduce or elevate the potential for success by minimizing suffering? [2:27:33] How to invest in people (and why you should). [2:37:52] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers - that's not me - and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix Sleep Quiz at helixsleep.com/tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  Personally, for the last few years, I have been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10- or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge. And there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded #1 mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines.

• 1:22Tim Ferriss?

  And now, Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring you a truly elevated sleep experience. Their newest collection of mattresses, called Helix Elite, includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences, so you can get exactly what your body needs. Each Helix Elite mattress comes with an extra layer of foam for pressure relief and thousands of extra micro coils for best-in-class support and durability. Every Helix Elite mattress also comes with a 15-year manufacturer's warranty and the same 100-night trial as the rest of Helix's mattresses. Helix is now running their Labor Day Sale, which you can take advantage of until September 10th.

• 2:03Tim Ferriss?

  Get 25% off on all mattress orders plus two free pillows. That is very significant savings. That's 25 off because of their Labor Day Sale. So check it out. Go to helixsleep.com/tim. One more time, helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

• 2:29Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Protect's Rest Supplement, a new take on getting deeper and more restorative sleep. I was introduced to this by former Navy SEAL Nick Norris, who has been on this podcast. And as a mutual friend of ours put it to me, "It's very annoying that Nick has no physical weaknesses." This is somebody who can climb like a spider. He has incredible abilities. He's a rock climber. He is incredibly strong and can also run ultra marathons. It's quite something to behold. And this is one of the tools that he uses. So Protect's Rest Supplement helps provide consistent, restful sleep without any habit-forming ingredients or groggy side effects. Simply add it to your last glass of water before bed and it goes to work. So I tried this after I mentioned to Nick

• 3:13Tim Ferriss?

  that I was avoiding melatonin due to next-day sluggishness and its possible effects on testicular function. So I was trying to wean myself off of things like that. This Rest Cocktail has worked wonders and I've made it part of my sleep toolkit. It's literally on a counter about 20 feet from where I'm recording this right now. Pro tip number one, if you have trouble opening the packets, just use scissors. Don't make it hard. Pro tip number two, mix the packets with water. Do not skip that step and chug it alone. I've learned from experience. Rest has no added sugars, artificial sweeteners, or artificial ingredients. Protect is veteran-owned and they make all of their products right here in the USA. Visit protekt.com/tim to buy Protect Rest and you will get a free bottle

• 3:56Tim Ferriss?

  of Clarity with your order. Clarity is a nootropic mushroom blend of lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, and turkey tail, designed to support brain function and mental performance. I have not personally tested Clarity yet, but I'm excited to give it a shot. And check it out. That's protect, that's P-R-O-T-E-K-T.com/tim for a free bottle of Clarity with your purchase of Protect Rest. One more time, P-R-O-T-E-K-T.com/tim.

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:48Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where my job is to interview and deconstruct world-class performers. I get a two-for-one. In this episode, I have brothers David Lieberman and Daniel, or Daniel Lieberman. They are both entrepreneurs and investors, one-of-a-kind entrepreneurs and investors with a close partnership spanning 16 years. They gained valuable experience at Snap, contributing to projects involving avatars, bitmoji, animation, and product operations. They are currently based in LA, where their primary focus is on building product science, a service dedicated to optimizing mobile apps. I'm going to pause here and just say, there's a lot more to this story and this conversation than the bio I am reading. We

• 5:30Tim Ferriss?

  get into crossbows, we get into Russian mobsters, we get into some of the craziest stories, honestly, I think I have ever heard. So, take everything I'm saying as just a preview of one dimension of 17 dimensions that we will share. Moving on, the Lieberman Brothers have established The Liebermans Company, referred to as a people company, through their commitment to the founder's pledge. They've allocated all future earnings and economic value for the next three decades to Liebermans Co., including founder's shares of product science and potential returns from future investments. Some of you may recognize the Lieberman Brothers from a fascinating profile in The New Yorker on selling shares in yourself. What might that

• 6:12Tim Ferriss?

  look like? What can that look like? What might it look like to invest in other people for their future earnings, etc.? They have a lot of wild ideas, a lot of great ideas, and you can find them online at libermans.co. That's spelled L-I-B-E-R-M-A-N-S, libermans.co. You can find them on Instagram at Liebermans, so L-I-B-E-R-M-A-N-S. And there's a lot in the show notes. There's going to be a lot in the show notes here, so be sure to check out the links after the episode at tim.blog/podcast. And without further ado, please enjoy this very wide-ranging conversation with none other than the very one-of-a-kind, unique Lieberman Brothers.

• 6:59Tim Ferriss?

  Gentlemen, David, Daniel, I'm getting that right? Nice to see you again.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Nice to see you.

• 7:08Tim Ferriss?

  So where did you grow up? And what did childhood look like?

• 7:13Speaker 02

  So the two of us were born in Moscow, still Soviet Union at that time, to a family of the very known neuroscientists, biophysicists, who, like, the family were sort of like upper-middle class for the Soviet measure. But as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed with the Soviet Union, the family collapsed to the below poverty type of situation. Because our dad was born in 1925, so in 1990, he was pretty old already. And Dean had a chance to adapt to the new reality.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  And it was six of us.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  It was six of us, kids, elementary school kids. So a complicated situation. Both of parents had to continue the work as they wanted, actually, to finalize and finish the work of their life. And at the same time, somehow survive and feed kids and like, get some clothes for us and stuff.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  And it's like six of us, one year apart.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Our mom was...

• 8:15Tim Ferriss?

  This mom?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  She was busy, busy, busy with making her breakthrough works in how neurons works and the signaling system in the neurons. At the same time, having six of us in eight years, less than in eight years.

• 8:30Tim Ferriss?

  How does any human do that? So let alone a mom, you know, not to get us into all these confusing gender waters, but let's just say for the time being, mom, primary caregiver? Would that be fair to say?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:41Tim Ferriss?

  So how did she manage both the scientific exploration with this groundbreaking work and six kids? I can barely manage one dog.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  As they always...

• 8:50Tim Ferriss?

  And what qualifies as my job? So how did she do that?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  I think that after the fourth one, we kind of a little bit managed ourselves.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, right.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  But still, it's not the answer to the question.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  No, there was a grandpa and grandpa from time to time. So from time to time, they would drop half of us at the grandpa and grandma's place and then took the half of us with them to the laboratory. That's how we

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Spent a lot of time.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Surrounded by the fish and snails.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  You know, we were like, we were surrounded by all this equipment.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Lasers.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  They got first PC as much earlier than anyone else. That's why like we also were quite excited about that. And I think that in general, they were super passionate about their work. That's what we definitely picked from our parents.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  And about each other. So there were six of us.

• 9:44Tim Ferriss?

  It's a full team. Yeah, it's a full soccer team. So you have lots of excitement. Maybe lots of chaos. You have goldfish, snail grandparents, lasers. Sounds like a pretty awesome setup for curious kids.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Curious kids.

• 9:57Tim Ferriss?

  Honestly. And what did you pick up on intellectually as a way of thinking from your parents? And I ask that because I know both of you, for instance, and I'm not trying to lead with this question, but pay a lot of attention to data. You're sort of geeks for parsing the data, whether it's to like refine how you think about or identify problems and then also how you might solve problems. What did you observe in your parents or pick up from them when it came to how they thought about things?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Now that you said that, I realize that our parents were doing those experiments, which required them years of repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating the same stuff. Like trying to get data which would make sense on top of their hypothesis of how everything works. So I guess we've been surrounded by the piles of papers with just numbers. Literally, I remember this.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  You know, this, how was it called this cards?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Perfect cards.

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, like the punch cards?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  The punch cards. Yes, yes, the punch cards. Like everywhere, the punch cards. Before the PC was there, there were like this huge type recording machines with all this data as well.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  But what's interesting, both of them was always challenging the status quo of the current understanding of science.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  So if just someone claims something and you cannot really prove it for yourself with data, probably something is missing and you need to dig deeper.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  And that's how they lived and they had their own discussions with everyone around. And we sort of picked it up. As we were growing already, like, I don't know, 15-ish years old, our dad was even older. So he needed someone to escort him to the conferences and like meetings of scientists. Just basically like it's Moscow and winter and the roads are icy. I don't know, five, six months a year, like something, something like this. So he needed someone to basically help him get there. And being there all the time, we saw his conversations with the rest of the scientific community in the, in his institute. As they were just like laughing out of nowhere.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I mean, just like, oh yeah, of course, like, again, Lieberman is talking about the quantum nature of, of this consciousness, blah, blah, blah, blah, something like that. And we were like, looking at this, it's like, why? He has some ideas and proofs. So it was sort of a resistance, resistance to the rest of the world. We felt his resistance and we like, were challenged with this as well, like, ah, we're gonna prove everyone.

• 12:37Tim Ferriss?

  Lieberman's against the world.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Lieberman's against the world, exactly.

• 12:42Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so we're gonna leapfrog from that. As far as the next logical plays, I mean, I like hopping around because I see things on paper. I find certain things exciting to talk about and then we can fill in the gaps. So I'm just gonna actually answer my own question and I'm gonna take you to around, and then we can fill in the gaps as we go. So you're around 18 to 19 years old and you're presenting to Russian parliament. What are you presenting about and how is the reception?

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so a little bit of background. So after Soviet Union collapsed, the entire population of the country, it all lost their savings in the banks like twice during the decade. So it was a quite harsh time for everyone and for us it was...

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Really strange. Like, we weren't able to understand how with all the modern technologies, with computers, etc., how it's all like, how all this corruption in, how it's even possible.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  That your savings can just disappear.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yes, definitely some technologies.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Should be there.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Should be there to solve these problems.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  We had internet pretty early, and we were hackers. I mean, it was at that time of, of the internet era when everything was possible. Access to everything was possible. So, at that moment, we read lots of the hackers' manifestos and some, like, libertarian ideas wandering around the internet. And we saw all these ideas of decentralized type of data storage, which can be bulletproof from... Various attacks or... Attacks and modifications, like falsifications. Right, it's resilient against falsification. Yes, resilient against falsification, like blockchain type of ideas before Satoshi

• 14:34Speaker 02

  actually released his first paper on the block chain, which was never the one word. It was like block, like chain of blocks.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  But Bitorians and other type of decentralized storages existed even before.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Ideas about this were circulating over the internet. So, with this combination of those ideas, we came up to a solution, as we sought, for eradicating corruption in Russia, to make all of the governmental expenses completely transparent.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Store it on the people's machines.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  And store it in the people's machines, so that none of the corrupt officials can actually even do anything with, with the data. So, we are presenting this idea, and pretty soon, when people realize what we are talking about, they basically ask us to go out.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Just like shut down the mic.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Shut down the mic, he's like, "The, the, the, the, the meeting is over, thank you so much." Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties, you could step off the stage. And then the guy who was actually...

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Who invited us.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Who invited us. He was some sort of a deputy for the head of the party at the time. At the time, there was multiple parties, like United Russia. But this guy came...

• 15:42Speaker 02

  They like approached us in the corridor saying, "Boys, I can see you are very smart and all these ideas are just brilliant, but stop talking about this bullshit, otherwise someone will kill you." "No, no, no, not us, like, we're good guys, but there are bad people who are making lots of money and this is against what they want."

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so now, at that point, do you pretty immediately pivot to something else?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Pretty immediately, we realized that what we need to pivot into is grassroots those ideas instead of trying to make them top to bottom approach.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  Instead of being the missionaries of anti-corruption, distributing the risk of it.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  It started to be quite clear that people in the government are not those people who really can adapt those ideas. It was another story to that, that in a week after that, they actually invited us again to come. And like, we came in and they asked us to work on a project. And we said, "Well, like, what is a project?" And they said, "Oh, you mentioned something about digitalization and how digitalization can be anonymous at the same time. Can you create an anonymous HR agency which will sell seats in government?"

• 16:57Speaker 02

  And we were like, "Wait, what?" He's like, "Yes, yes, yes." So, imagine, people who actually making lots of money and who's capable of paying lots of money for a seat in the government, they are people who like business.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Can manage better than us.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  They manage better, like, they can manage stuff better than us, who like, just from the street, just happened to be here, just by chance, because someone was like a friend of someone. So, if we actually invite people who did something in business and have money to pay for the position in government, they can do a better job for their country.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  And our first reaction was like, "Do you really have a price list?"

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Price list for that? He's like, "Yes, yes, yes, for sure." We're like, "Can you give us an example?" And the guy was like...

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Deputy Minister of Finance was half a million dollar and Minister of Healthcare, oh no, Ecology, Ecology was three million dollars.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  The question was immediately, "Ecology? I don't give a shit about ecology in Russia." He's like, "Exactly. That's how the person who will take the position will have a return on investment pretty much..."

• 17:58Speaker 03

  They use all these like fancy words.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  They'll get their money back pretty much in a year on bribes.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  So we quite soon realized that they

• 18:08Tim Ferriss?

  You were like, well, I appreciate the invitation.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Appreciate the invitation, never call us again. Thank you.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  That was our reaction. But yes, that was a moment when we decided to pivot to building our own businesses and

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Making our own money, gathering resources and then building type of technologies ourselves.

• 18:29Tim Ferriss?

  And then you can buy the Ministry of Ecology.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  One day, one day.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Or we can like do the revolution or something like that.

• 18:38Tim Ferriss?

  Now, at that point, while you're observing all of this, and it's imprinting your young minds, are you thinking eventually we are going to want to build businesses somewhere else? Or did you anticipate that you would be building in Russia for the foreseeable future? How were you thinking about things at that point?

• 18:56Speaker 03

  For us, somehow, at this particular moment, it was still unreachable. The idea that we can fly somewhere and build businesses there. Like, it's only years after that we start to be more confident in our abilities and start to think about that.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  It was miserable. Like, the first time we flew to the United States just on our own, miserable experience. Very low level, like poor level of English, no understanding whatsoever what the country looks like and what's going on.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  We're trying to raise investment.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  We were trying to raise investment. Miserable.

• 19:29Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds like a hard slog of a first trip.

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so at the time then, you're just focused on building businesses. And what type of business were you building at that point?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  We had like ideas, 2001, 2002.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Even before that, our first company was in ISP, Internet Service Provider. We wanted to have a good internet connection and it was super unaffordable, like $5,000 to connect your apartment.

• 19:58Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Like.

• 19:59Tim Ferriss?

  It sounds very unreachable for most people.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Super unreachable for us as well.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Especially for the family of eight people who was making like a couple hundred dollars a month for the household, it was unreachable. So at some point, we realized that if we want to have such level of internet at our own apartment, what we can do, we can go through all of the neighbors. And it was like, what, sixteen hundred apartments in the.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Small district.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Small district.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  It's quite dense.

• 20:26Tim Ferriss?

  The neighborhood.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  The neighborhoods, like a dense neighborhoods of Novich, Remoshki in Moscow. And we literally rang all the doorbells and we're like, the question was like, do you have a computer? If the answer was yes, do you know what internet is? If the answer was no, like, okay, let us explain you. Let's have some tea. And we literally sneaking into people's apartment and starting to explain them what they are losing by not having internet already connected to their computer.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  So we pre-sold a couple hundreds.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Pre-sold a couple hundreds of contracts. And with that, we were like, okay, we can now go to the bank, get a, how is it called?

• 21:03Tim Ferriss?

  Loan.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Consumer loan, just like basically consumer loan. And we used the money to buy all the equipment, to buy the cable, like the fiber.

• 21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, fiber optic cable.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Fiber optic cable. And basically connect all these households and people paid and we covered the loan pretty fast.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  It still wa- it still was a quite challenging project.

• 21:23Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm wondering just what you're buying with the loans. You're buying like servers, sticking them in a bathroom or like, how did, how was it being connected to the existing infrastructure?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  First, we needed to, basically someone to bring the cable in. It was the most expensive part of the operation.

• 21:39Tim Ferriss?

  Digging trenches.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Like digging trenches.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  We hired.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  We hired the engineering team. We were lucky because the largest hub, communication hub for the Moscow internet was basically two kilometers away from us.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's great luck.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  It's a great luck.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  And we, because our parents are scientists, we were in the part of Moscow where most of the scientists were and like universities were there as well. And that's why internet first emerged at this part.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  So we hired these people. The engineering team to bring the cable and then by night mostly we were connecting twenty story buildings to each other. By shooting the cable using the athletic air ball.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  They just.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, like a crossbow?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Crossbow, yeah, yeah, crossbow.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  It's just local officials, local officials, they were bribed by the bigger player and they didn't allow us to actually.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  They wouldn't give us a kiss.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Uh, get into the, to the roofs and to properly.

• 22:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, competition.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Competition was there, even though we had the license and by law they couldn't prohibit us to do this, but they were like not allowing us, that's why. At night, we would sneak onto the roof, like pretty dangerous operation of getting onto the roof. Even without having an access through the door and then from the roof to the roof, we basically were like putting these cables. Uh, on our own, using the crossbows, shooting from one roof to another roof.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Um, this company uh was then acquired by a bigger player, there was a um significant consolidation on the market.

• 23:11Tim Ferriss?

  Between the Ninja Crossbow expansion and the acquisition, how long did that take?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Two years, like two, three years, yeah.

• 23:19Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, moving fast.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Then the later on, we realized that what we actually need to do is supercomputing. Like, we were like, we are smart in mathematics, we can write algorithms and this is something like, we foresee in the future of cloud computing. Using like machines in internet to parallelize compute. This was our idea originally, then we realized that it's impossible to do in Russia type of the business. And we decided that what we can do, we can start building games.

• 23:48Tim Ferriss?

  Now, before you go on, was the computer science and like whatever coding experience you had, was that self-taught? Was it school? Was it parents?

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Uh, our college degree is computer science, but in reality in Russia at this moment, no one will really. Teach you properly in computer science because your teachers would know less than.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Than you would, if you have internet.

• 24:12Tim Ferriss?

  If you're motivated.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Yes, so we were lucky because of our parents were scientists, we got PCs at our home much earlier than most of our peers. We got internet in our home much earlier than most of our peers and we were. Super excited about this technology.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Curious and naughty. So we would break the computers all the time and we had to fix them all the time for the parents to continue their work. And that's how we actually learned how to.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  We built our first website for our guilt.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Online game guilt, like Ultimate Online.

• 24:49Tim Ferriss?

  Great choice. Curious and naughty, that can be the name of your autobiography. The life and times of the Liberman. Okay, so you have the consolidation and then you decide to focus on games after that. And what form did that take?

• 25:06Speaker 03

  We played Ultimate Online. We were super excited about this type of games. We thought that this is revolution because people just hang out there. There is no like aim or you don't need to just kill all the enemies. It's just people hang out.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Sandbox. You can have a marriage there, build a house.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Like Roblox. Second life.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Instead of Doom.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  So.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  We were very excited about this, but had to play only overnight because of dial-up connection and the phone was for everyone in the apartment, for us at night. That's why we actually wanted the better internet all the time. And that's how the Ice Piece started.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  So then, when we decided to build such game, at that moment, this idea was really not popular. You even can find some quotes from CEO of Electronic Arts, who would say like, "All online games is just a niche market. No one play online games" and all this stuff.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  He actually officially admitted he was wrong.

• 26:10Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's very, I mean, that's very, I suppose.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Honest.

• 26:15Tim Ferriss?

  Honest. A lot of people don't own those things.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  He was super cool and he was like, "I said that, I was wrong." Like, "No, we are in the game."

• 26:24Speaker 03

  So, and we tried to launch several, one time failed our own savings.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Spent all of our own savings.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  It was out soon. But then, World of Warcraft. Was released and we were the only ones who were

• 26:43Speaker 02

  For years trying to raise money for such type of the project and that's how

• 26:47Speaker 03

  We got all that attention in this moment and we raised our first

• 26:51Tim Ferriss?

  So World of Warcraft comes out, it proves, it's a proof of concept for what you are also trying to pursue in a way.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Not only proof of concept, it was the first game ever netting one billion dollar of profit a year.

• 27:04Tim Ferriss?

  I think people outside of games also today do not realize how big the numbers are. Like the opening weekend for the new Call of Duty compared to like every Hollywood blockbuster for a six month period or something like that. The numbers are astronomical.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  This market was really for years larger than the movie market, yeah. But fifteen years ago

• 27:28Tim Ferriss?

  Not as obvious.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  But it was already obvious that it can make lots of money. So we were able to convince some of the investors.

• 27:34Tim Ferriss?

  Investors tend to like.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  And we got a lot of attention, grew pretty fast to hundred fifty, two hundred new players in different times. But then two thousand eight crisis came and just it's all

• 27:50Speaker 02

  And we were not ready. I mean, World of Warcraft, it took Blizzard, the top game development studio in the world. That what we didn't realize when we started, it took them like five, six years to build a game.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  Quite complicated. With an army.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  With an army and unlimited resources. And us, we're like, we can do it with like a couple million dollars. Okay, we were miserable in this, in this case, but honestly, in this experience, we realized that we can be cool in developing sort of hacking our way through the challenges, inventing new stuff, inventing how we can build and meet up with protos and technologists and etc. And even though we bankrupt the company in two thousand nine, by March two thousand nine, I had to fire everyone, like a hundred and fifty people in one day.

• 28:40Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds fun.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Super fun.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  The most challenging experience of our life.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  And then three, four months later, we already started an animation studio and used all of the ideas which came to our mind during this period, like, we can actually do this and this and that. We wouldn't do this in the games, but we can do this in the animation process.

• 29:03Tim Ferriss?

  So you were able to take things from the failed gaming studio and transfer them over into the

• 29:10Speaker 03

  In terms of experience.

• 29:11Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of experience.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Mostly the experience of like, lesson was learned. We knew how to do stuff better. As we were progressing from knowing nothing when we started to basically having like a pretty sophisticated production process. We immediately reinvented the animation process. So we basically took the guy who was experienced in producing 3D graphics and was like, okay, why don't we change it all? Why don't we take what you know and then try to figure out how to make it much more efficient?

• 29:42Tim Ferriss?

  How did you decide on that?

• 29:44Speaker 03

  It was a super challenging time. The company was bankrupt. By that time, we actually already were quite successful in different stuff. Already had a venture.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Venture firm?

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Raised thirty million dollars to the venture firm. But this venture firm was took over.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  By our investors of the gaming studio.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Um, so, so it's like Russian.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  It's Russian style, Russian style.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Like people with the guns on the cars.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Literally people on the like, the security people from the persons arrived to the office, took us in the like, black cars, driving us to the undergrounds of the office building in the middle of Moscow. And then threatening us that they will kill us and our family because they know where everyone lives unless we will return the money.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  So this type of business experience.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  This type of business experience.

• 30:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hardline, strict investors.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  In that moment, we knew that we need to, with the new projects, uh, we need to do something fast because we still had some obligations in place, which we just fired because we haven't paid the salary for the last month.

• 30:44Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, right. So you had outstanding debt to the employees.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Outstanding debt was like half a million dollars. And we were still living with our parents.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Um, so we knew that, uh, that we don't want to have investors anymore. And they see like all this experience which we had. We wanted to do something which can generate cash right away, not like.

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  Enough apartment building basements. He knows enough.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  A friend of ours, who is a famous actress in Russia, she told the CEO, the president of Channel 1, which is like NBC of Russia, like the largest network.

• 31:20Tim Ferriss?

  Or like one of the BBC channels in the UK.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  That we can do magic with graphics.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  We can do magic with the computer graphics.

• 31:29Tim Ferriss?

  How did you become friends with the actress?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Friends of friends introduced us and like we basically became super cool friends. We were like writing scripts together for the future movies and stuff.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  In reality, I'm not sure that she really knew that we can do that.

• 31:45Tim Ferriss?

  But she was very confident in selling it.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  She knew that we fixed her internet.

• 31:52Tim Ferriss?

  Goes a long way, keeping somebody on. So she tells that's head of the, you know, the, this primary channel that you guys can do, you can work magic with.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  We work magic with graphics. And we actually were doing magic with graphics, but for games.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  And he wanted to create a political satire show, which would be based on the last week events, which is impossible. Animation, usual production cycle is nine to 12 months.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  South Park is actually like three, four months, but then they leave this several minutes for something topical, which they can produce over a couple of weeks right before the episode is released. Like they're doing this.

• 32:29Tim Ferriss?

  And that's South Park. They're the fastest.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  They're the fastest. Exactly.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  And we invented the production process, which allowed us to produce half hour animated show 3D graphics in one week.

• 32:42Tim Ferriss?

  How did you do that?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  The interesting part was we just basically disassembled the entire process on smaller pieces and parallelized them. This idea of decentralization and parallelization was like, we couldn't leave it.

• 32:56Tim Ferriss?

  So rather than an assembly line type of production, you're like, how many of these can we have running in parallel?

• 33:02Speaker 03

  And we found out.

• 33:03Tim Ferriss?

  Were you able to borrow resources from the channel to work on those parallels?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  No. We actually at the time were able to borrow resources from IBM.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, how's that work?

• 33:12Speaker 02

  A friend of ours was the president of IBM of Russia.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  And we agreed that they would be able-

• 33:17Speaker 02

  And he was DJ in the club during the weekends. That's how we knew the guy. So during the-

• 33:23Tim Ferriss?

  Moral of the story, you never know who's DJing at the club. Make friends.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  The DJ DJing at night and they're like during the weekends and then being- He's in a suit. And in a suit, like a serious president of IBM during the weekdays.

• 33:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  That's crazy. And the guy was like, "I fucking love what you're doing." So, I'm sorry, can I say this?

• 33:41Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  And like, he was like, "Yes, I'll give you the equipment." And they gave us like a, I don't know, what was it?

• 33:50Speaker 03

  It was around like a million dollars worth of servers.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Servers.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  With the idea that they will give us this equipment, not permanently, but for some time, for free, in exchange that IBM will use the fact that the show was created with-

• 34:05Speaker 02

  The most innovative show was created using IBM equipment.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  They gave us equipment, but IBM decided that it's too political.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  They had office.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  And they never even use it.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Because the show was political satire in Russia. So the headquarters in the United States was like, "No, no, no, we don't want our-"

• 34:22Tim Ferriss?

  That does not sound low risk.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  They allowed us to use, they allowed us to use the equipment, but never put the logo in there.

• 34:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so they allowed you to use the equipment and then was the president just like, "Look, we're gonna forget it's there for a while, you guys can use it?"

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. It was exactly like that.

• 34:37Tim Ferriss?

  Very helpful DJ.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  We made the, we made the first season using that equipment. The Channel One paid us like three million dollars for the first season. And with that money, we were able to buy all the equipment we needed.

• 34:49Tim Ferriss?

  Because you owed like half a million to the employees.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yes. It was advanced payments. So we came to Channel One, it's like, "We need advanced payment." They're like, "Why?" It was like the processes. And we basically paid the debts.

• 35:00Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, okay. Okay, so what happens then? You have this parallel processing that's working with your semi-permanently borrowed IBM machines from the DJ. You make three million, you manage to negotiate prepayments. So you satisfy your outstanding debts to paying the ex-employees. And then what?

• 35:21Speaker 03

  This was the first time when we actually start to earn enough of our own funds. And we returned to, first we returned to our-

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Ideas.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Ideas that we need to think about.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  How to fight the corruption.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  How to fight the corruption, what type of technologies can be created to-

• 35:37Tim Ferriss?

  Were you guys not afraid?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Honestly, the part of us not being afraid probably somehow was related to our dad, was never afraid of whoever was challenging him. But at the same time, back in 2000, as we finished the school, we knew that if we have all these ideas of changing the world, it's gonna be impossible if we just stay home, play computer games and stuff. So we decided we would go to some business trainings, personal development trainings, fear trainings. We started challenging ourselves in developing ourselves. And by 2005, we spent like four years developing our own internal equanimity.

• 36:18Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, well, let's talk about this equanimity for a second, because this is super important. And it's sort of the enabler or the handicapper, the lack of it being a handicapper in so many different capacities. And I would say, a lot of the people listening to this are gonna be from the US. And fortunately for them, they have never had the experience of being under a political regime where people disappear. But I've spent a lot of time in South America.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Or poisoned.

• 36:46Tim Ferriss?

  Or fill in the blank, yeah, disappears in quotation marks.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:49Tim Ferriss?

  But what you realize is there are political regimes all around the world, very common, where people routinely are killed, poisoned, or otherwise made to disappear. So the risks were very real for you. And these are not conspiracy theories, like they were actual threats. So was the lack of fear a lack of fear of death? Or was it a belief that you could extricate yourself or avoid any type of like really significant consequence? Or something else?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  There are three answers to that. A, yes, we don't afraid to die.

• 37:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Somehow don't. I mean, this is like, you die, that's it, whatever. B, somehow, and it actually really helped with the Bandits in 2009, when they came to ask for all of their money invested in the game back. We knew that it's their way of threatening you, and they want you to be afraid, they want you to fear. And that's how you're on hook.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  As soon as you show the fear.

• 37:51Tim Ferriss?

  That's how you're controlled.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  That's when they like hook you and you owe them forever. And we showed them that like, fuck, they can kill us, whatever. I mean, like you will never get your money back. And the other case, like, we can probably work it out somehow.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  We learned through this experience that actually if you don't show the fear, it's much safer. Then if you show, it's a little bit like with lions.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Blood in the water.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Blood in the water, yes. But then the third one, the third one is when it comes to the political systems, let's say particularly Russian political system, for the KGB people who were actually running the country at that time, like Putin is ex-head of KGB, that's the only thing which we all should understand, that's a country run by KGB people. Yes, they call themselves FSB, but who's give a shit? It's KGB, it's the same guys who were just basically killing people sixty, fifty years before that, in Russia, after the war, before the war. So when it comes to them, they see two type of people who are playing against them. It's either enemies or idiots. Fools. Enemies or idiots.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Enemies or fools.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Spies.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Your eyes work on CIA. Or you're idiot.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Or you're an idiot who was convinced by CIA to fight against them, and you're just like fool who like... You're a pawn. Oh, a pawn. So we played the pawn card. We're like, let's show ourselves as if we're stupid, and we were completely transparent about all of our ideas from the very beginning, saying like, they will just see us as fools. Town lunatics. Town lunatics.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  This strategy worked at a particular time, at the time...

• 39:31Speaker 02

  It was just so rare that they're like, oh, these guys are just crazy.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Because we made it transparently. If you are a CIA agent, you will try to hide. But if you like transfer money to the biggest opposition, you're like...

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Hiding in plain sight.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Hiding in plain sight, and they're like, oh idiots, they spend their money, okay, whatever, we'll just steal this money from the opposition anyway, so fools. That was the situation. So for us, the shield for all these years was like, they believe we're just idiots.

• 40:01Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A-G-one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 41:05Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we may come back to this, but I want to make sure I don't lose the thread. So the graphics for this political satire seems to be working pretty well. You return to your ideas from prior, which is how we got here. So thinking about anti-corruption and things like that. And then-

• 41:25Speaker 03

  And also we started our move to United States. We already established our presence in Los Angeles because of animation in 2010 and started to move all attention to-

• 41:36Speaker 02

  So we were like, nothing good gonna happen in the country. It's ran by the KGB and will like, they're not going to release their grasp over the country unless it's gonna be like a revolution type of situation, which we saw that even a position, they were trying to play the political game. And it was a lost game from the very beginning. So we knew that the show, Political Satire, our own largest TV network in Russia, is not going to last more than the term of puppet president Medvedev. That's exactly what happened. Like as soon as Putin get back to his position, like the show was shut down immediately. So we knew it's gonna end. And we knew that we need to spend all of the money which we'll make from this in order to transit to United States.

• 42:21Tim Ferriss?

  So two questions, and it might seem obvious to you guys, but I think for a lot of people listening, they might wonder, well, why not- Europe, why not somewhere else?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  We tried.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  Why the US? And then, how hard was it, or how easy, to start to move your lives to the US?

• 42:36Speaker 03

  You know, in Europe, especially animation industry is...

• 42:41Speaker 02

  It's mostly subsidized.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Mostly subsidized by government. So you actually need to deal with bureaucrats and you need to get any funding. And the private sector almost doesn't exist.

• 42:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I would say that makes it very hard for immigrants.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And it was always like, if you want to get...

• 42:59Speaker 03

  If you're not local, you need to work with local studios. And they should get this funding and like all this stuff.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  We started developing the relationship, but even faster, we realized that in Hollywood, we have all the chances. And pretty quickly, we were introduced to people who then introduced us to agencies. And William Morris Endeavor signed up with us January 2010. Half a year after we started the company.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  You know, it's still a challenging process. Any immigration is a challenging process. It took us six years. Hope you really take us seriously and to get to the same type of level of professional acceptance like then we had back in Moscow.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  But we found our ways.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  But at least it is possible here. You know, like in airport, like in UK, you would never become...

• 43:47Speaker 02

  You would never be able to spend only five, six years and get into the like major Hollywood studios.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  To be the same, like equal in the market.

• 43:55Tim Ferriss?

  California has a lot of downsides, but it's... One of the upsides is like, this is true in a lot of the US. Like, no one is discriminating against green. And people like opportunity. And also California, a lot of people don't realize, part of the reason Silicon Valley worked is that California also makes it very hard to enforce non-compete.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  Contracts, right? So there are opportunities everywhere of all different types.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, we agree with the completion. This is the cornerstone.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  This was our observation that it's all about like non-compete, that they are not enforceable, that this allow you to actually work at Google, write your own search engine at nights, and then launch your own search engine and Google cannot do really anything with you.

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  There's a lot of free flow of talent.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Which makes it hard sometimes to retain talent in Silicon Valley, but that's a whole separate story. So you land in LA. You have introductions to people at, say, William Morris Endeavor and other places. What happens as that momentum starts building?

• 44:58Speaker 03

  We actually had a pretty good success working with different studios and different big names like Jimmy Fallon. We worked on a show with him.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  At some point, we met with the guy who used to be Jon Stewart's head writer. And he just moved back from New York to Los Angeles and was a sort of available-ish. He wasn't for a year, but then a year later, he was available and we took our chance to become friends over the year. And then when he'd become available, like, Josh, why don't you work with us? And we managed to convince him because we showed him how fast we actually can produce animation. Even like William Morris Endeavor or Josh, even being a friend for us for like a year, they never actually believed that we can produce animation in one week. And we had to prove it like literally by saying like, Josh, are you serious?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Okay, just let's write a script right now, a one pager. You will write one pager joke.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  In a week you will.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  In a week, you will have it in animation. And that's what we did. And he was like, wow, you guys were saying.

• 46:03Tim Ferriss?

  You guys can actually do it.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  You guys can actually do it.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Before that, he worked at Simpson before Jon Stewart and at Simpson's like 12 months.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Like a year. You're like, you're making a joke and it's already old, a year old joke. And with us, there was an opportunity for him to make jokes, which are super cards.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  So it was cool, but on the other hand, really wanted to focus more on the technologies which can transform society. And plus Hollywood wasn't really our thing, you know, like.

• 46:30Tim Ferriss?

  There are some trade offs.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Yes. No one cares about technologies, especially that time. You're like, it's before Netflix and before all the stuff, no one cared about technologies. No one cares that you faster and cheaper.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  We realized it's too late.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  Who is your like producers and like.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Divorce lawyers.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Lawyers and all this stuff.

• 46:48Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. How does the divorce lawyer fit in?

• 46:51Speaker 02

  We don't know, but people in Hollywood say so.

• 46:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh wait, you want, you need to know divorce lawyers?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Because they know people, like the power dynamics.

• 47:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, this is good for me to know.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  There's like a power dynamic of like the divorce lawyers who control.

• 47:05Tim Ferriss?

  I picked up a new stratagem today, thank you.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 47:08Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  So we then knew all the lawyers and we started to know the people and we started to meet the people. And eventually we deconstructed what the show needed to be in order to come to a meeting at Fox.

• 47:23Tim Ferriss?

  At that point, then you're pitching your own show.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Yes. So we get to the point understanding that we cannot sell our technology. We have to sell the entire show. We should package voice actors.

• 47:32Tim Ferriss?

  Trojan horse with the technology inside.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  We took it all. Like, that's why we needed Josh, because we needed head writer. That like we took the voice actors, we took like the best concept artists, like to combine this all and produce a pilot, like a literal final quality pilot and brought it to Fox. And who was it? Susanna Marcus at the time. She was like, wow, I love it. Because we actually knew what she likes, who she likes.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  What type of artist?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  What type of artist, what are like, we, we like engineered it all, data, data, data.

• 48:05Tim Ferriss?

  Went to a custom tailor to put together a pilot for her.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  But it was also some misfortune time, because still like we didn't get back to power. So our show was cancelled back in Russia. In 2013, the banking crisis in Cyprus. All our money was nationalized. So by that time we had.

• 48:25Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, hold on a second. So Cyprus, so does that mean that you had moved your finances from Russia to Cyprus? And then it was out of, out of the, uh, out of the pan and into the fire?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:37Tim Ferriss?

  And then Cyprus got nationalized. It was like, oh, it's the same story all over again.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Same story all over again. Six million dollars like earned.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, we couldn't pay anyone in the United States. No voice actors, no screenwriters. We'd like, we couldn't pay anyone. Immediately it all fell apart.

• 48:56Tim Ferriss?

  So did you get the green light for the pilot?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  And then Cyprus?

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:00Tim Ferriss?

  And then?

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:01Tim Ferriss?

  Bye bye few.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Bye bye few. And we tried to think what we can do in Hollywood more for like half a year, a year. But then we realized it will take us another four or five years to recover because there's no money. There's like nothing in there. So like, screw it. We're not going to stay in Hollywood. Let's move to Silicon Valley.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  And we moved to Menlo Park.

• 49:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right in the middle.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Right in the middle.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  And also, we really already wanted to return to our real ideas. We started with transparency again. We decided that we can do a trick, that we can actually not target governments to become transparent, but target nonprofits. Like, why? We don't see how nonprofits actually spend their money. It's kind of obvious. It's not your personal money. It's like we all together gather these funds to make

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Change.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  World a better place. So we created a transparent banking platform for nonprofits.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  For many reasons, we were wrong about the ability and readiness of

• 50:07Tim Ferriss?

  The appetite.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  The appetite, exactly. The appetite for the nonprofits.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  But you know, like, this was one of the, this was also the times when we realized that some of the challenges, like fundamental challenges, which we saw in economy, actually, they were true in the United States as well. Not only in Europe, not only like Russia, not only Israel, but in the United States as well. And we realized that even with the nonprofit transparency, if you will look at research of what actually donors want, you will see that the previous generations of donors, they don't really want to see where the money spends. It's like, it's almost

• 50:48Tim Ferriss?

  Don't ask, don't tell.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. It was almost the last item in the list of their

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Requirements.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Is their requirements. But our generation and generations younger, they actually is in the first place. We want to see what happened with

• 51:02Speaker 02

  The dynamic of thinking behind this is for the older generation, they donate money because it's a give back for them.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  They're like Society gives them a lot.

• 51:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's feeling good versus doing good.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Yes. And for the youngest, it's like given forward. We want to change what's bad right now and we want to see it's changing.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  And also, actually, previous generations got a lot from society in terms of form of free education, almost free college education, like thirty years ago, anything like that. New generation being

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Hammered.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  hammered with student debt and so on, they don't really feel that society gave them much. But they really still donate the same portion.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Share.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Their share than the older generation, but it's just different reasons.

• 51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I feel like some of the younger generations here, younger than certainly than me, get a bad reputation for misunderstood reasons. Or I should say they're misunderstood in the sense that, I know you guys have spoken about this before, but if you look at, say, previous generations' ability to get a higher education, put a down payment on a house and pay for a mortgage compared to some of the more recent generations, it's night and day. So it's important to factor that into how you evaluate them. So a question for you guys with the, looking at the nonprofit and the this and the platform, right? You're very good at, it seems like, letting go of ideas, having a light grasp on ideas if things are not working so you can move to something else that you think might work better.

• 52:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's not true for everyone, right? Some people get very attached to one thing and they want to ride it until they die and they get attached to things that may never work. And I'm wondering how you think about changing direction, maybe failure in quotation marks, like what allows you to do that so readily?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  A, we learn the hard way. So the first, the game studio, we grasp and we try.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  You know that if you don't stop at the right moment, you can actually get to a dip.

• 53:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you can get into a hole.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Yes, but also what we saw in the data is that, in what we realized also through the experience of game development failure and then animation's success, that we realized that

• 53:29Speaker 02

  It is not always about your abilities.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  So you can fail just because of different reasons like financial crisis.

• 53:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's like poker, right?

• 53:38Speaker 03

  The time.

• 53:39Tim Ferriss?

  You have to study the decision making, not just the outcomes.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Yes, and the statistics of venture startups is that two thirds will fail.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Like completely fail, losing all the money.

• 53:51Tim Ferriss?

  Zero.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  And if you will look at all these failers, there are rare exceptions. But in most cases, what you should see is that if your startup is growing, you should continue. You should like double down with your all attention there, etc.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  If it's not.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  But if it's not, you should stop.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  And probably.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  You should stop and quit and start another one.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  If we look at this purely from the perspective of statistics, if it's not doubled the growth, that if whatever numbers behind your understanding of your business isn't doubled, it didn't double. How to say, isn't doubled.

• 54:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, didn't double.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Didn't double.

• 54:28Tim Ferriss?

  Over what period of time?

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Over fourteen months?

• 54:31Tim Ferriss?

  Fourteen months. Why fourteen months? I have to ask.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  It's pure statistics.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Like if you look at the statistics.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  If you look at all these failures.

• 54:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see, I see. That's the pattern.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  And successes.

• 54:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is over that period of time.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  It's like a pattern.

• 54:40Tim Ferriss?

  Doubling over fourteen months.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  If you take all of them and divide, then just fourteen months.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Because if you're also not growing with this space, venture capital will not be accessible to you. And you won't be able to actually raise money, this is funds to grow further and things like that. So this market is actually a pretty special in terms of these probabilities, like just one out of hundred.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  It's going to be a unicorn.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  Success. And if you don't see trajectory to get there.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Probably you're not getting there.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  The right, the right thing is just to stop and start something new.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  And knowing that your chances are one in a hundred, you should try as many attempts as possible.

• 55:21Tim Ferriss?

  Take more shots.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Moreover, moreover, you know, like we usually show to the young.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Want to be entrepreneurs.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  People want to be entrepreneurs. We show this picture of Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Spiegel, who made into success from the first step.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Dropping out from the college and look, they're billionaires.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Most of them billion dollar companies created not like that. It's created by people who failed.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Multiple times.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Multiple times and then got to success. In terms of statistics, this is what we should observe with this thing. Definitely something depends on your abilities to execute, etc. But there are things which.

• 55:58Tim Ferriss?

  Totally.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Independent.

• 55:59Tim Ferriss?

  Man, I remember angel investing, starting in 2008, and seeing business models, companies that couldn't execute in a period of time because the technology just wasn't there and the adoption wasn't there. And then five, six years later, basically the exact same company, but a few things have changed. Mobile phones have become more powerful. A handful of protocols have been developed and then boom, it works.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Uber is mobile phone with GPS.

• 56:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Yes, with a wide enough adoption. And it was tried, these ideas were tried before.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Online taxi, ordering or taxi online? Yes, for sure it's been there.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  And because of that, you know, especially because we really like, you know, we balance ourself between sometimes when we work on some forward-looking ideas like

• 56:50Speaker 02

  flying cars.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  Like something which is not happening yet. And also we work on some projects which down to earth, which already something which is happening. And we know that with these projects which are not there yet, yes, there is the chance to win big, but this chance is small. And there is like a lot of timing issues. And you can lose just because timing is not right. And we, as Daniel mentioned, we learned it hard way with Game Development Studio. It was really hard for us to stop, even though it was obvious that probably we need to stop.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  We were lucky with the animation studio and then another unfortunate event was losing all of the money just in banking crisis in Cyprus. And we stopped pretty fast. I mean, we're like, are we going to spend time recovering or are we just starting something new?

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, when Silicon Valley Bank crisis happened, we were among like really small group of our friends founders all this time.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  We were obsessed.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  With diversifying.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  The money on different banks. And everyone would tell us that, oh, like in the United States, you shouldn't think about that.

• 58:01Tim Ferriss?

  Don't worry about this.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  It can't happen. Cannot. Cannot just because cannot. And we're like, right.

• 58:07Tim Ferriss?

  Surprise. We are not immune from all the problems we've seen other places. All right. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna zoom out for a second because I like to think about sort of meta decisions that span across a lot of other decisions and projects and so on. So the two of you living one life, we have to talk about this. I have never seen an example quite like this. I mean, there are couples who are, say, power couples, but it's a different dynamic. I mean, you guys have been seemingly sort of hive mind from a very early age. So when did this start, right? So you have one email address, one Instagram account, one LinkedIn. I think the phone is maybe the same.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  It's connected.

• 58:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So I'm looking at some notes here. So since you were born, this year was the first time that you guys spent 10 days apart. Put another way, not being together in one place when you went to a Vipassana retreat. All right. So could you explain for people who understandably will find this interesting and kind of alien? How did this come about? And how is it helpful versus confusing? How do you guys do it?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  It is confusing in many ways. But A, we should understand that we, the six of us grew up in one room of a size smaller than this studio.

• 59:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. And for those who can't see the full studio, I mean, it's not huge, right? It's not, this isn't an airplane hangar. It's not a basketball court. It's like a bedroom.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Three bunk beds. That's how the six kids could fit in the room like this. And then even later, so we grew up like this up until like school already started. And I think like until 13, 14 years old, that was the situation, more or less. And then parents also send us to school by pairs. It was like a logistical innovation.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's like buddy diving when you're scuba diving.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  It was dangerous to.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Walk on the streets in nineties.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Alone. So if we're together, they don't need to walk us to school, so we can do it by ourselves and all the stuff.

• 1:00:15Tim Ferriss?

  High degree of confidence.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. So they were sending us by pairs to school, not only the two of us, but the other kids as well. So we were a pair. Date was five years old. I was six years old when we went to the school. And the rest of the kids were seven. So we were bitten.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  But because it's two of us, we learn how to.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  We learn how to like avoid.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  To protect ourselves, being two rather than one.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  So had to survive. It's like bonding experience.

• 1:00:44Tim Ferriss?

  Very helpful for the bonding, yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Very helpful with bonding, helping each other like through the education, like doing homework together, all the stuff together. By thirteen, fourteen years olds, that's when we started forming our own ideas of what could be cool for us to do in our life. And that was already like a social justice type of thinking, like how can we make the world a better place for everyone? And starting from there, we saw how no one literally was supporting this idea, except two of us. Basically continued the conversation in between, in the two of us, and it never fade away.

• 1:01:18Tim Ferriss?

  Which ideas this? This is the combining.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  The idea is that like transparency in government, it was just one branch of this idea.

• 1:01:26Tim Ferriss?

  So the two of you are very aligned.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Yes, the technologies can actually lead us to a better governance. And that's what we thought. And through this experience of being kids, you know, at first we realized that when you go to school, all kids, they are alone, but we weren't. It gave us a lot of advantage.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  We're always still.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  We don't need to struggle to company gather around us because it's already two people. It's much easier to gather a company, like group of friends around. Also, we realized that if I know mathematics better, we can do it the way so that no one wouldn't know that Daniel don't know mathematics as I do.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  As good as he does.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  So, and so, so you can actually like copy. Yes, Voltron, Voltron type situation. And we learned that that's what we can do that. And if we weren't allow outside worlds to actually distinguish.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Who has which qualities.

• 1:02:30Tim Ferriss?

  You can cover the bases.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  Yes, we will be able to seem to be a superhuman because we have both of the qualities.

• 1:02:38Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I know you guys, as an example, are fans of the Collison Brothers.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:43Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. And Patrick's been on the podcast. My understanding is they have, they're very powerful together, but they have maintained, they're like, I don't want to say Batman and Robin, that's not quite the same. They're like, you know, two of the Avengers, right? I mean, they're superheroes, but they have clearly delineated separate points of contact and so on. What have been some of the other advantages or drawbacks of doing it the way that you guys have approached it?

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Even though they definitely more separate than we do, but they did a lot of really great stuff. For example, they were like, CEO and president, they switched who is CEO and who is president and they switched roles. So they actually showed to the world that they are interchangeable.

• 1:03:25Tim Ferriss?

  A team.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  They're the team and, and they are great in this regard.

• 1:03:29Tim Ferriss?

  But.

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  In our case, we went to just in an extreme version of that, having one line of communication. So if you text me, you actually text both of us and you don't know who answered this text.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  But we can answer faster.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  We can answer faster, seems to be this superhuman and that worked pretty well during negotiations of the contract.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  David honestly hated speaking to people as he was young. He was like, super not into talking to people. And I was super easy to talk to people. So it was my role in the couple to talk all the time.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  And I would, it still never.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  He was never picking up the phone.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  If someone called.

• 1:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  I don't pick up the phone either. That's for me. It's just too much. I don't know what I'm signing up for. Unless it's my brother or family. Okay, fine. There are a few exceptions.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Imagine that you can outsource that.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  So, and that worked in business pretty well, even though our first like business partners, they were like, why you're on the same meeting? Like you can be in two places at the same time and think like that. But we even at some moment gave up on like trying to explain to them that, you know, that's allow us to, in business especially.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  He allows us.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  Win or lose, like you, you won this contract or lost the contract. And, and all these meetings are important.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  If you like playing two contracts and losing both of them, it doesn't matter that it was two of them. If you're playing one, but you're playing hardcore game of us being a team in this conversation, which can win the contract, it works much better.

• 1:05:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, bird in the hand versus two in the bush.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Tim Ferriss?

  So what are your respective roles generally then? In terms of responsibilities or strengths? How do you think about that?

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  I would put this this way. We have two different intuitions and they're like completely different. David's intuition is he observes data, he remembers everything. And then at some point, he can just like, the answer is this, like 42, like just out of nowhere, out of like, you're like, why? He's like, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that it's 42.

• 1:05:39Tim Ferriss?

  Forty-two, yeah. It's the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the next morning, he can wake up, he's like, yeah, and now I know why. I cleared my path to this place in my mind, which actually made the calculation and tell me it's 42. So here's why. My intuition is completely different. The mind intuition is like, we need to fly to London tomorrow. And he's like, why? I have a good feeling about this. And then we fly to London and we got the investors. It's like this. I'm like, we need to offer this people this. And David's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, we need to offer them this. I offer them this and they're like, yes, agree. Handshaking and they're like, how did you know? And they're just like, I felt it.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  So Daniel much better in reading people? Daniel much better in reading citations? In general, I am much better in processing data, processing knowledge. I have this strange qualities that I remember everything.

• 1:06:39Tim Ferriss?

  Is that hard for you? I'm just wondering, because I have family members like this and sometimes it's a huge advantage, but are there things that you wish you could forget?

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  I learned to live with that. I think that because we have both of it and I see what is the advantage of a different type of thinking, et cetera, and I learn how to live with that and now I embrace it. I understand the limitations, but I cannot read the citation properly. Like I understand the limitation of this tool, but because it's two of us and we have both, I actually double down into these qualities and develop these qualities further and further and further.

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  Do you guys get? Physical or psychological anxiety when you are separate?

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  This was the first time when when we were separate.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  April was the first time when we were separate, like not even being able to text each other because the phone is off during the Vipassana for 10 days long.

• 1:07:36Tim Ferriss?

  What was that like? Well, Sue, you had you had something to do. I mean, you're in your own mind, right? But you had a task. So what was it like for you, David?

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  It was unexpected, but for me it was okay because I knew that Daniel is working on something which is important. I knew that if he will extract some new experiences out of it, I also will do that. So it's kind of I outsourced this.

• 1:08:01Tim Ferriss?

  It was the guinea pig.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  That was the guinea pig. And I actually felt like I had this intuition like I gotta do this. And I just went. And it was so quick. So David had to wait for three months.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  So everyone expected.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  I was accepted four days before the course started.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  Everyone expected around that I will be devastated by this experience. But somehow I was super calm because probably because I knew that Daniel is working on something important for us.

• 1:08:27Tim Ferriss?

  There was a purpose behind it.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  And then the second time was like the same situation, but reversed. He was working on his mind and I was back home. For me, it was a little bit more challenging, meaning that I had this mind trick, which was it's your fault that he's there struggling there. And like, what are you talking about? For you, it was a great experience. But yeah, but for David, maybe it's not as as great. Maybe it's challenging for him. Like, come on, seriously, stop it.

• 1:08:53Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So you had the internal voice keeping you company.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  It was part of the reason I ask, and I don't know if this is true. This is from the New Yorker piece, is selling shares in yourself the way of the future, which I would love to hear if there's anything you wish were different in that piece for those people who might check it out. But I was curious because at one point it says, at home, the brothers share a single king size bed. Is that still the case?

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Recently changed it.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  In April, we moved to a new house and we basically decided to have more bedrooms. And we have separate bedrooms now.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Because this behavior creates some limitations, especially around relationships.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would imagine so.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  So we decided that, especially now when it's published, we have an additional problem.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  I was already.

• 1:09:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right, in the New Yorker, right. I imagine I'm not the first person to ask about this.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  So in Kenya, our bond is quite challenging in terms of relationship. That's why we decided that we need to make it easier.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Like romantic relationship, he means.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Yes, we decided that we need to explicitly make it easier for potential romantic partners. And like splitting bedrooms is like, is one of the first.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Maybe a key aim. Different floors, like Daniel has his own floor and David has his own floor in the house, so.

• 1:10:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I can imagine those in my mind, right? As I'm painting a picture, I just imagine the floors looking very different. Like if the respective brother, the floors must be very different.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  But also, you know, like when we were in the same room, it was for purpose. We usually would stop talking only like before, like a minute, we will go to sleep and.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  And start talking as we wake up. So what are we doing today? Like this is like, this is a wake up call.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Now we're traveling to New York, we're in one hotel room. So we constantly talk.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  And we constantly talk nonstop.

• 1:10:38Tim Ferriss?

  What an incredible blessing and gift it is that you guys have each other.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like, we're absolutely enjoying this way of life. Yes, as David said, challenges in the romantic relationship, like we will work it out.

• 1:10:53Tim Ferriss?

  So do you think when you have romantic partner, like, let's just say you have romantic partners, maybe you have families, who knows? Do you think you guys will still live together?

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Yes, we maybe will, we maybe will do some, you know, like is in our vision, we maybe can create kind of special house. When you have like sections of like private and not private and something like that. Because we definitely need to hear also what our partners.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Partners have to say about things.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Have to say, yes, but we really want to still have a place for, for two of us when we can spend a lot of time together.

• 1:11:27Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I have heard, people need to fact check this because I think a friend of mine told me, just as a model, that Tim Burton and his wife, I think it's Helena Bonham Carter, if they're still together, I don't know, but that in their house, they actually lived in separate wings, and then they would come together for shared meals and things like that. So they had a very unorthodox.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  We have friends who build houses when they have joint bedroom.

• 1:11:51Tim Ferriss?

  Separate bedrooms?

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Separate bedrooms.

• 1:11:53Tim Ferriss?

  And a wing for kids.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  A wing for kids.

• 1:11:55Tim Ferriss?

  So like wing for him, wing for her, wing for kids, and wing for them together. It's like a spaceship. Yeah, I like it. I like it. I'm very interested in all. That's why, maybe the divorce lawyers can give you some advice from Hollywood. What has worked? What has not worked? You mentioned Evan earlier. Not everyone's going to recognize that name. How did you guys end up at Snap?

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Our point of view will always tell the story from the perspective of us meeting Dalai Lama in 2010.

• 1:12:27Tim Ferriss?

  When in doubt, go with the Dalai Lama story.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  So it was back in 2009, right in between us starting the animation studio and bankrupting the game studio. There was a three months of us.

• 1:12:41Tim Ferriss?

  Took a Dalai Lama sabbatical.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were three months of us clearly not knowing what to do. And then the bandits are threatening our lives. We don't know how to like return the money. And then we just decided to go for a five, six days meditation retreat of Rinpoche, Tibetan Lama, who just arrived to Moscow, and a friend invited us. So we came there with no expectations whatsoever. But the gentleman was very interesting. He was young, he was super smart, speaking like 11 languages. And from time to time, he would switch from this Tibetan stories about the enlightened kingdoms

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  to something more practical, even like claiming that a single person can actually change the world if they want. And for us, it was like, wait, what? Are you talking to us?

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  And we then asked if we can have an audience with Rinpoche. And we were told that everything is booked already. But five minutes later, he called us.

• 1:13:47Tim Ferriss?

  Now, just so clear, so he is which teacher?

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Gyatral Jigme Rinpoche is like a Tibetan

• 1:13:55Tim Ferriss?

  Spiritual leader.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Spiritual, yes.

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  It's like a title which you can get only from your childhoods. If you recognize.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  He recognizes the reincarnation of the previous ones.

• 1:14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Reincarnation of someone else.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Yes, so this gentleman is in Moscow and Rinpoche is asking us to come see him. And we're like, wait, okay, cool. So we.

• 1:14:14Speaker 03

  We shared our ideas.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Shared our ideas and our story.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Transparency about how in the future we can live within governments without physical borders. And for Tibetan peoples is really important subjects, knowing that they don't have.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  So it resonated with him and when we finished our story by saying like, and now it's just two of us. He immediately abrupted us as like the three of us.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  And it was touching and like unexpected. And he finished his phrase with, come visit me in India in, what was it, January next year. I'm hosting an inauguration of a monastery. Dalai Lama is going to be there and I will introduce you and we will introduce your ideas together and we'll see what we can do together. That meeting actually happened and not happened at the same time. So we flew to India. We spent this week in the monastery in India, Tibetan monastery. Dalai Lama actually arrived. We had a non-private meeting with him with in a group of 10 European donors of the monastery.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  But then we had to have a one-on-one meeting with him next morning, which never happened because a storm came. This, I know it, this is like a movie story. The storm came and Dalai Lama immediately took off.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  Was packed into helicopter.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  To helicopter, like the military helicopter and just disappeared. And we're standing there and in half hours, a storm just rushed and flooded the entire valley.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  For next two days, we weren't able to leave.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Able to leave the place because it was flooded. But then a month later, we received an email from a gentleman whose name was Jerry Murdock. He's the founder of Insight Partners.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  One of the biggest VC firms in Europe.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  And the email was like.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  I'm at the dinner.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  I'm at the dinner with Dalai Lama and this other monk. And they told me I have to email you and they give me your email. So that's what I do. That's why I'm emailing. That's what I'm eating, why I'm eating you. We've met with him a few months later and we've become close friends.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  And eventually through the many different stories, he invited us to a dinner. This dinner wasn't really for us. He thought that other people will come, but it didn't work. So.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  So he invited us.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  And there.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Whatever gets the job done.

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  Yes, but since this introduction, we always were quite cautious about everything which.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Was related to him. I mean, Dalai Lama introduced to someone, you stick to the person. There should be a reason, like, and we always tried to help him and like be around. And just see where it will come, where it'll go. You're talking about Jerry. Jerry, yes. And at some point, eventually he introduces us to Evan at his house. And then Evan gave me his phone number just right away at the meeting.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  And it was the right moment.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Which wasn't expected for everyone around, because that's not what he's doing.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  And we were developing technologies around 3D avatars at that moment. Uh, and that's, uh, what was exactly.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  On his mind. On his mind, like, on his mind was, he wanted to combine a bit more G, which were the 2D avatars he acquired from the Canadian company. And 3D engine of AR technology of Luxury, the Ukrainian company he acquired. He wanted to merge the two technologies. And our experience in Hollywood was merging technologies. We literally were transferring the 2D styles of existing animated shows into 3D and back and forth and back and forth.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  In that moment, we also focused on the, on 3D avatars and how like technologies can actually, not a show, not, not something, uh, which require.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  Game type of thinking, like, because we decided like, right after the financial transparency of a nonprofit didn't work. We decided that we looked around and realized that the technology advanced. Like a computer vision and style transfers and like all this stuff advanced. A lot since we left CG graphics and we realized that we know everything and more than probably everyone in the field, so we can try to just start something and probably gonna like build a successful company. Half a year later, Evan offered us, not offered, but already acquired us.

• 1:18:30Tim Ferriss?

  And so just for people who might not have the acronym, so AR augmented reality.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Augmented reality.

• 1:18:35Tim Ferriss?

  So people may recognize some of the current or recent iterations on Snap where you can say put any number of different sort of overlays of characters. I mean, they do partnerships with all sorts of companies and so on. So you can add something to your face that sort of tracks your eye movement and augments the kind of visual experience. So is that what you guys were working on in some capacity?

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  This technology, face tracking technology, it was Ukrainian company Luxory, which they recently acquired before us.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Snapchat's recent group.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  And we worked how to combine the avatars into this technology.

• 1:19:15Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  So right now, 3D version of BitMud is the most used avatars daily in Snapchat. It's already everywhere in your profile in games, in lenses, in all places.

• 1:19:28Tim Ferriss?

  And so you guys get acquired. And if I'm missing a chapter, let me know. But can you describe what you did, what your analysis looked like when Snapchat suddenly started losing users? I think it was in 2017?

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  2018.

• 1:19:46Tim Ferriss?

  Eighteen.

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  So it was early 2018.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Are you right.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  2017, Instagram released our stories. And in the beginning of 2018, new version, new update version of Snapchat was released. Kim Kardashian tweeted, or Kalijeni tweeted that like no one would use Snapchat anymore, all this stuff. And audience started to decline. And at that moment, most of the people believed.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  Internal idea in the company was that it's due to the.

• 1:20:19Tim Ferriss?

  Public sentiment competition.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Public sentiment of the bad new version or competition of Instagram in TikTok.

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  Or altogether.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  While our analysis of data showed us that it's not true. And then the major reason for the decline of the audience was related to the fact that Android version of Snapchat, after the update, becomes so slow that people, over time, gave up.

• 1:20:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they just abandoned.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  They just abandoned, started abandoning. 10% of the slowest devices of Android users could have experienced like up to 40 seconds before the feed with stories would load.

• 1:21:01Speaker 03

  Next time, when you will open some feed, like count to 40.

• 1:21:05Tim Ferriss?

  Forty seconds, no way. I'll barely wait for four seconds.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. So it was so obvious that this was the reason, but it took some time.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  We realized that we didn't have any specific position related to that in the company. And we realized that what we can do is actually to just bring all the insights which we were able to extract to Evan.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  To the engineering team, to Evan?

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  And to just give him all the evidences so that more focus can be added to the problem and to making the app faster.

• 1:21:40Tim Ferriss?

  Now, why do you think you guys spotted this? Right? Because it doesn't sound like it's immediately your department or responsibility. So was the narrative that it was, you know, the Jenners and the Kim Kardashians and then the competition, was that so accepted at face value that people weren't looking at the data or what happened?

• 1:22:00Speaker 03

  So there were several reasons. First of all, it's Android.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Android.

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  We're Android users and among executives, it was a really rare things to use Android as day to day. Evan, he pushed himself to use Android to experience this all, what his users usually experience when they use Android. But we use Androids as a day to day devices. We hackers, we don't like limitations of Apple app stores and close up ecosystems. That's why we always were there. So when we developed our 3D avatars, it was the first product.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  It worked faster. On Android, then on iOS.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  And it was quite unique to compare to other products. And through this experience, we learned a lot about some limitations. And we already, at that moment, looked at some data just for our product to be launched properly.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  We wanted to fix Snapchat's Android app earlier, just for our product to work.

• 1:22:57Speaker 03

  So we kind of had already some predispositions and beliefs related to that.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  Then, when the product was launched, we decided to research everything about the user behavior in order to understand how we can better position our product inside of the Snapchat ecosystem.

• 1:23:12Speaker 03

  And with such problems, the challenge, you know, there are different methodologies. For example, there is a methodology to A/B tests. When you launch, half of the users will see one version and half of the users will see a different version. And then you will compare the results. But with performance degradation, the result is delayed. It's not immediate. You cannot really like, it's really hard to A/B test.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  It's not apples to apples.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Yes. So you need to wait for some time, you need data for a longer period of time.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  And more or less, you need to break it, give your users a bad version, wait for them to use it for a long enough period for you to see the difference in behavior.

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  And, uh...

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  Sounds like a tough assignment.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Yes, even decision, moral decision was never do that. So you shouldn't really make the experience of users worse intentionally.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  And as hackers, for us, it was like, okay, can we find a way how to get this data anyway? So we started to look at all the previous bugs.

• 1:24:13Speaker 03

  Accidental.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  Accidental mistakes.

• 1:24:15Speaker 03

  Degradations.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Which led to, and then was discovered, but lasted for long enough so that we can actually extract the change in behavior data.

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  Still, it's really important to note in the article in The New Yorker, it's the words not from us. That's why they are not as clear. There were people who also believe in this idea, not only us.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  It was basically their initiative.

• 1:24:39Speaker 03

  There were not enough momentum and not enough people who would work on this problem. There were really brilliant engineers already before that started to rewrite.

• 1:24:51Tim Ferriss?

  You could be a good ambassador.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we used our previously earned social capital.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Of building this avatar product.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  We need to just spend all the social capital on this problem, otherwise shares drop to $5 per share from 20 in all our, like the entire compensation of ours.

• 1:25:10Tim Ferriss?

  In the equity, of course.

• 1:25:11Speaker 03

  In equity and force. And also, we saw the opportunity, you know, for us, we got through two major crises in our life, not counting the childhood crisis, financial crisis. That's why somehow for us, when it is a crisis, for us, it's a great times. It's like, oh, like now our.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Now we can show how we can handle.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Never let a good crisis go to waste.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And at some point, we just had to show that we are good engineers as well. In order to challenge the status quo, David had to sit down and fix camera. Snapchat is camera. And David made it load twice as fast.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  Like not load, like when you press a button, how fast the picture would be ready. I showed that it can be.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  The speed can be doubled. And it was like, oh, wow. So, yes, you are guys also great engineers as well. So, how did you do that? And we showed some of the principles of how you can find inefficiencies in the code.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  But still, it's really important in a sense, so it was a really team effort. All the great engineers actually was part of this process. What we see is our contribution, this promotion of this idea.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  Their voice was heard.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  And bringing this voice to the decision makers, so that they also will be empowered with data to then spread it to the entire organization. And that was definitely really great times.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  It was serious.

• 1:26:36Speaker 03

  It worked. And, you know, like even though Snapchat has some challenges right now with. Uh financial side of things, but with audience since then it's growing.

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  The audience is growing.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  They recently reached like eight hundred million.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  The audience is growing in the countries where the Androids are even slower. So the app actually is pretty significant, right?

• 1:26:55Speaker 03

  It's still like in terms of Android apps, it's still like one of the fastest apps to load uh compared to the major apps.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  What was interesting as well, so launching a new updated version only happened when like in March ish of two thousand nineteen. But it was also important and like we put lots of efforts into this program more than more than the other one. To fix the existing version before the new was released, the old had to be fixed in order to stop bleeding.

• 1:27:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  And by December, the bleeding stopped. And in January, the audience started to grow. In March, the new version was released, it never actually slowed down since then.

• 1:27:40Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a question about this type of data-driven analysis. Do you attempt to do this type of analysis with goals or challenges that you have in your personal lives? Is do you try to apply it everywhere? Are there examples that you could give outside of the business context?

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  First of all, we we should know that we, as Daniel mentioned about intuition, we believe in both. We believe in intuition, we believe in data approach. But yes, so for example, one of our major principle is that we know what is compound growth. And for example, when we have some crazy goals, crazy for some people, they will will set some goals. And these goals are seems to be impossible. What we show again and again that actually if you have goals, like like for example, number of followers or a number of dollars in your pocket.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Quantifiable.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  Quantifiable things.

• 1:28:38Tim Ferriss?

  Quantifiable.

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  What you can do is that you can evaluate what you have right now. And then if you can multiply this number.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  If you can double.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  Two times a year. Actually.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Every year, if you can double your results.

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  It is greatness. You have the entire money on earth, the entire

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Population on earth.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Population of following, etc. So it's really important when you have these big goals. You can't have any big goal with this approach.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  But you just don't need to run faster than doubling the number two times every year.

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  Actually, what we realize that there is this corridor.

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  Physical limitation at the top, which is around 2.4. Like you cannot run faster than increasing your results 2.4 times a year in a long run.

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  But what we realize that is actually it's really tiny corridor. If you increase this number 1.6 times, you are successful. If you increase this number 2.4 times.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  You're a superhuman. You're like god like.

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  So this is only the small corridor. You don't need to think about something faster.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  If anything slower is just like normal life.

• 1:29:55Tim Ferriss?

  Now, this is multiplying your KPI by 1.7 times.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  Every year.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  Every year.

• 1:30:00Tim Ferriss?

  Every year.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:30:00Tim Ferriss?

  Once per year.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Once per year.

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Yes. And we applied it a lot in our life, in our business life, in the life of our companies, in our personal life. So we use this method.

• 1:30:11Tim Ferriss?

  How do you apply it? What would be an example from the personal life? Maybe it doesn't have to follow that doubling heuristic. It could, but what might be an example?

• 1:30:20Speaker 03

  But for example, amount of hours you spent with a romantic partner you inspired by.

• 1:30:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:30:30Tim Ferriss?

  And so you would look at your, you would track the hours and then look to multiply that over time?

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  So you shouldn't expect that immediately you would start a relationship which would be perfect. And like you will spend all the time and all this time would be perfect and great, etc. But if you have one hour. All this experience a year, this the next year it can be two hours, the next year it can be four hours.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  For some it might sound like.

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  In in ten years, you have the entire life like that.

• 1:31:01Tim Ferriss?

  Slow build.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  Slow build. And and we just realized that when you try to run faster, you can actually break yourself.

• 1:31:09Tim Ferriss?

  I see what you're saying. So you can make a mistake by saying, okay, I'm going to spend half of my time this year with this person because you're sort of biting off more than you can chew.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:18Tim Ferriss?

  And maybe shooting yourself in the foot for the long term.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:31:24Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so basically having an eye towards growth, but not being excessively ambitious in the beginning because you'll break things.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  Yes, I know on personal experience. Yes, this is like when you want too much right away, you break stuff.

• 1:31:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can see that as someone who's got a lot of physical breakage also.

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, but even even with the acceleration, when you're in a rocket flying to space, there is this limitation of like

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  three G.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  You're like three times G, which then actually start breaking stuff in yourself. So it seems that it's an it's kind of natural number. This is what we can sustain, like 2.4, like two, 1.6. This is something which we can sustain physically and mentally.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  And you can honestly can find it anywhere. You want to play music? Just start from something achievable right now, today, double your result every year.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  And you will become like Beyonce.

• 1:32:23Tim Ferriss?

  Superstar. Certainly true with physical activity too. If you think about say weightlifting or whatever, you don't need to 10x

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:32:31Tim Ferriss?

  The number every year. And if you try.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  You want 10x.

• 1:32:33Tim Ferriss?

  If you try, like I've tried, then you start damaging your connective tissue or.

• 1:32:37Speaker 03

  Yes, I remember that was one of the Olympic teams. Was it in UK or something? Because I don't remember exactly. But they got a new trainer and the new trainer was a coach was with this approach like. But the approach was like, we need to improve our KPIs 1% a week. It's almost the same. And they become champion from nowhere.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  From like nowhere, like the last position on the list.

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  So it's about physical activity is the same in in business activity, money, finance.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  Music.

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  But really important is that you can achieve anything. You can have any type of mission or big goals. But then you write this, you like draw this

• 1:33:19Tim Ferriss?

  As long as you're consistent.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  For yourself and be consistent.

• 1:33:23Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the logistics challenges and how have you addressed them in running your businesses, how you run them or organizing your lives the way that you guys organize them?

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  We have a very messed up calendar. It's like multi-dimensional.

• 1:33:46Tim Ferriss?

  Does that mean that you're just traveling all over the place?

• 1:33:48Speaker 03

  We travel a lot, for sure.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  We probably like this year were in the States for three months all over the year. But at home, like at home in L A even less time than that, maybe like one week a month, not more than that.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  But what helped a lot, it started with two of us, but quite fast, two of our sisters.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Joined.

• 1:34:12Speaker 03

  And they usually

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  And they don't travel that much?

• 1:34:15Speaker 03

  And they usually run operations and scaling of the

• 1:34:20Tim Ferriss?

  Do any of your other siblings have the pair bonding that you guys have?

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  No, no, it didn't work. But five of us, we are quite close and we work together.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  We work together, we live together in L A, like our houses is literally like two minutes away from each other.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Yes, and they start to run our operations since game development and then they become

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  Are equal partners.

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  Our equal partners in animation studio. And since then, it's much easier for us to dream more and to act.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  No, now we discuss everything together, like philosophy, the vision for the future, the morality, like it's a constant discussion among all of us.

• 1:35:02Tim Ferriss?

  So I can imagine, I'm just putting myself in the place of people listening to this, that I'm sure there are people out there who work with family. And then there are other people who don't work with family, but I imagine working with my family and I love my family. But I'm like, wow, if I hired Two people from my family to run my operations. What do you do if it's not working? I mean, would you ever fire them? Or you just have complete confidence that you can resolve anything that might come up? How do you think about?

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  You definitely can fire, but for sure. We went through really harsh experience with game development studio bankruptcy. And they were the only ones who stayed with us through the challenging period. Yes. And when you actually went through such experience, it's much easier to trust, not trust just because it's family, but because you know what you can expect.

• 1:35:54Tim Ferriss?

  You saw how they behaved.

• 1:35:55Speaker 03

  And especially in venture business, when, as we mentioned, most of your attempts would fail. It is really important quality to have someone who you can trust that they are with you long term, not just for this project. I would say this worked pretty well. Maybe this was the results of this experience, which we all had. But maybe just because our parents worked together. For us, we didn't have this concept that it's not right.

• 1:36:26Tim Ferriss?

  Never work with your family? No.

• 1:36:28Speaker 03

  And we went through challenges. Definitely, we argue with each other, etc. So we went through a lot of challenges, but it worth it.

• 1:36:35Tim Ferriss?

  I was thinking also, as you saw your sisters, I suppose, during the challenges of the game development company. It reminded me of a quote, I don't know the attribution, but in English, there's a common expression, adversity builds character. But the alternative, which I think might be just as true or maybe truer is adversity doesn't build character, it reveals character. And so you got to see how they responded to a lot of challenge, which gave you the confidence then.

• 1:37:06Speaker 03

  And there were a lot of challenges.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  We are lucky in many ways.

• 1:37:12Tim Ferriss?

  I want to ask you about, this is a same question applied to two different groups. So the first is going to be your parents. And I wanted to ask about what ideas of theirs you find most interesting. Maybe that's a place to talk about chymatics, maybe not. Then the second is what ideas you guys are most excited about right now. But I wanted to start with.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  Do we have a couple more hours for each?

• 1:37:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  So our parents, so our dad, he was from physics. But he was by government pushed out from physics because he was Jew. And.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  And switched to biology.

• 1:37:52Speaker 03

  Biology, because biophysics was an open field.

• 1:37:57Tim Ferriss?

  And. So physics was more protected and Jews were more discriminated against in physics.

• 1:38:02Speaker 03

  So he found this niche. It was a new niche. It was an emerging new science. And he came there with the knowledge of physics. And that gave him a different perspective than most of the biologists who would see everything through a prism of chemistry or through a prism of biology.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  He looked at this through the prism of physics.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  And he started discovering things faster in this field.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Starting with the first thing which he discovered was that the color which received by an eye is encoded not in the frequency, which is then translated as a signal inside of the eye nerve, but as a pattern of a signal.

• 1:38:48Speaker 03

  Poses in between spikes.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  So this pattern. Almost like a Morse, like. And this is sort of like.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  And that's how he realized that it should be a computer there, that should be a computation because the encoding happened.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  He came to this idea, there was a really interesting weird obsession of his on the idea that if evolution was working properly for millions of years, if not billions of years, then it should be optimal. That the most optimal mechanism should have survived the evolution process. And therefore, what's the most optimal from the physics perspective? In terms of measuring.

• 1:39:29Speaker 03

  Amount of energy spent on the operation?

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  On the operation and and data? He's like, time, time in between the quantum events. This is probably the most optimal one. And that like from this perspective, he was like, from the perspective of optimality, he was trying to find how the eye works. And he was the one to discover exactly how it works. And he's like, wow, so I was right about optimality. And then used optimality all the way down, exploring into the nerve, into into neuron and into the core of the cell, into the DNA, and then like cross the entire cell.

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  So chematic was the abbreviation of chemistry optics in mathematics. So he always believed that the real discoveries are in combination of different fields. That actually, the fact that we learn this subject separately.

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  Limiting us.

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  Limiting us in terms of us being able to discover some things which requires you to.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Have some interdisciplinary synthesis.

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  And their success, both like our dad and mom, the success was because of that. They would combine things which others wouldn't combine. For example, he brought the quantum physics into describing cells' processes. So even till like maybe 2008, 2010, it was really marginalized idea in science. They were trying to avoid as much as possible, some complicated processes in biology, because it will challenge the idea that it happened randomly. And that's they they were trying to avoid that. And only recently, more and more discoveries around photosynthesis, which probably requires quantum tunneling and then the smell and the this fact

• 1:41:18Speaker 03

  that the birds can see the direction of polarization of light and like where is north pole? This all can be described only through the quantum properties of some processes which happen inside.

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  In life?

• 1:41:34Speaker 03

  So biggest discovery, which we personally, like it's the last discovery, you know, it's always like that.

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  It's not just discovery, it's like the entire concept, that our consciousness. Work, there is a quantum compute inside every single neuron. Every single neuron is sort of a qubit. It's like a quantum state machine itself, which then combined in the network produce all the results, but every neuron is quantum state machine.

• 1:42:00Speaker 03

  This can actually explain a lot about our psychology, about how we think, how our consciousness work, but also it can give humanity a lot of clues how to build proper quantum computers. So currently, the quantum computers which we build, like Google builds or Microsoft builds, they are all require some really complicated environments. So you need to froze the computers to like minus 270 degrees.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  Fully isolated from any chaotic fields and stuff?

• 1:42:32Speaker 03

  So it's really complicated. While if our parents write in every cell.

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  Every cell in our body has a quantum.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  This process happening at room temperature, so we can actually look at how biology made it and then build a new class of quantum computers, which can actually be in your watch. And then this can accelerate the personal AI development, not the corporations big AI, but the one which would be with you always and things like that.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  Plus, there is a chance also as well that if these processes are happening inside of the cell, the answer to a room temperature superconductors can also be there somewhere. I know that recently there was this entire hype with supposedly discovery of the room temperature superconductors.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  It seems that it didn't work this time, but we all like, why it was so excited? Because it can change everything.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  Understanding the quantum limitation, all roads can be done from superconductors. If all roads can do, then we have flying cars. If the same roads can then become the electric network, which distributes electricity around the globe from sustainable sources of energy, like solar panels. We have day somewhere each hour, all the time. And if the superconductors can surround the planet, then we have electricity everywhere without the losing of power. Lots of stuff can come from the superconductors. The answer can be inside of our cells.

• 1:44:10Speaker 03

  Yes, so in the biggest discovery was that the answer can be inside of the cells. If we can actually look at the properties of these nanotubes, and they are really special. It's really like right now, there are a lot of discoveries showing that these nanotubes have properties which no one would expect that they would have, even though we all know about physics and chemistry, but we cannot predict these properties.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  Like because this is recent, probably not even published, or maybe some discussions in the conferences is happening, that the nanotubes of that sort, the cytoskeleton nanotubes, microtubulars, they can capture photons. They can capture light and direct it within its structure. As the light actually hits the microtubular, the photon goes inside the tube. And then like as if it's a cord which captures the light and then...

• 1:45:04Speaker 03

  So a lot of really unexpected and great properties, which can be used in industries and which can be used by humanity to just accelerate our developments. What is important is that they just realized that to achieve that, we need to be interdisciplinary and we need to combine. This was last years, he was a promoter that he believed that in schools we should teach kids like that, like not to teach like physics and chemistry and like...

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  But separately, but all together.

• 1:45:33Speaker 03

  But teach it all together and show how all this interconnected in that we need to kind of grow a new generation of scientists who wouldn't be so silent in disciplines.

• 1:45:46Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so I want to segue to the ideas that you guys are currently most excited about. Thank you for explaining all that. I could spend hours just digging into what you just said. Maybe another time. But since you mentioned teaching, which relates to learning...

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  How would you teach kids to code or people to code versus how it's maybe currently taught?

• 1:46:09Speaker 03

  So first of all, we we saw that computer science historically emerged from mathematics.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  And geeking minds like ours.

• 1:46:20Speaker 03

  And so it's really great for us, but for most people, it's really alienating. Because if you're not good in math, you mathematics, you will just avoid even learning because you will think that you are not really great at that. In reality, coding is much closer to learning French or Japanese. It's actually a language.

• 1:46:43Tim Ferriss?

  A friend of mine published a small book, which was basically code is poetry.

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 1:46:49Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Can you share it? Because we actually also wrote a tiny book like Code is Language.

• 1:46:53Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, sure, I'll find it for you. And I'm not sure if he published it, but he gave it away as a gift. Matt Mullenweg, who's the founder and CEO of Automattic and was one of the lead developers, arguably the lead developer of WordPress.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  We need to combine our thoughts in one book and then publish it.

• 1:47:09Tim Ferriss?

  So I'll find it for you.

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  I created during pandemic, had some additional time. So I created an interactive book where you learn that you can actually first type something in a normal language, description of the world.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Description of the.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  And then it can be easily translated by you in.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Into coding.

• 1:47:33Speaker 03

  Coding language like Python or C++ or Swift.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  It's literally like a translation. First, you you wrote it in your own language and then you translate it into the code.

• 1:47:43Speaker 03

  So the only thing which you need to learn is this a little bit different way to describe the world. And that's what mostly you should learn. You should learn the words and punctuation and in arphographics of this language. And if you use this method to learn, then you can actually code in any language. Because it appears that Swift or C++ they like they all the same. They're all interchangeable. Every time when I interview an engineer and this engineer would say that, oh, like I know only this language. This would be a red flag for me because it means that you don't really understand. And all these languages, they're almost the same.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  Yes, there are nuances, but you almost don't have tasks which actually require you to use these nuances. But if you understand the metal language, and this metal language is really close to real human natural language, then you can actually code in any language. And that's what we really promote. And we happen to actually teach some people coding. Who would never think that they can code? And who would think that mathematics is not theirs?

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  Like moms of two housewives. And they are great.

• 1:48:56Speaker 03

  Because they're great in language. And if you're great in language, you can actually learn this language as well. Especially right now, even though, yes, chat GPTs of the world, they can code for yourself. If you know how to code, you will be well off in the next 12, 20 years, like 10, 20 years.

• 1:49:14Tim Ferriss?

  So for people who are listening, if they are resonating with what you're saying. So for instance, I'm a casualty of mathematics. I was actually very good at math. My brother also very good at math. And we had very different experiences with teachers. So he had a few great teachers and I had one very, very angry kind of abusive teacher. And so I said, no more math for me, even though I was innately quite good at it. He kept going and got PhD into statistics and he's very math capable. But I developed, I had like an adolescent onset allergy. But I recognize the beauty and elegance and value of code. I don't think I would ever use it as a profession, but I like the idea of testing myself.

• 1:49:58Tim Ferriss?

  But I've always struggled with trying to identify how to start. And I've looked at AI as maybe a way to use an intermediary. So I can use natural language to do some type of coding. But how would you suggest to someone who? Is interested, maybe a little nervous, but would like to explore coding.

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  There is a free book on our Instagram, like there is there is link which you can try. It's definitely only the first step, then you will need to learn more. But at least through the step, our expectation that you will stop being nervous and afraid of coding. And it would be more natural for you. That's why we wrote this book just to make it easy. Because I don't like any other courses, because they all like start with syntaxes and etc. And it's not the way you start to.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  There are great, they are great courses. It's just like not the way you start, because you alienate people who are like, oh, function. What is function? They're able.

• 1:50:54Tim Ferriss?

  Which I don't know anything about coding, but it's it's the same with foreign languages, right? I mean, it's like you see the way that they're taught and it's like, oh, here's a huge table of conjugations. Memorize this and people are like, ah, no, thanks, I'm out. I'm like, no, no, like here's a comic book, like let's look at some things that you can use immediately. Make it fun and then like later we can do the harder stuff.

• 1:51:12Speaker 03

  And also what we found, and that's how we learn how to code, is that usually when you learn language, you first read, not write, you read and you need to read some easy but good written book to learn the language.

• 1:51:30Speaker 02

  Soccer engineer is the same, like we actually.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  We mocked an Instagram application.

• 1:51:34Speaker 02

  We wrote, we wrote a clean code of a simple Instagram application.

• 1:51:39Speaker 03

  Everyone knows what it is and everyone understands how it works. So if you read this code, you understand what.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  And then in the middle of the course, you're just, okay, now change. Now change some stuff in the code and you will see the changes in the app. And as you change the part of the code, you see the changes in the app and you're like, oh, that's how it works.

• 1:51:59Tim Ferriss?

  Also positive feedback.

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  Yes, and also if even if you decide not to be an engineer, if even for example, if you're product person, product manager or marketing person.

• 1:52:10Speaker 02

  QA.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  It's really important for you to understand. Otherwise, you won't be able to give properly the tasks to engineers. You won't be able to manage engineers and in losing a lot of opportunities. You will always be triggered by engineers because you will ask them to do something, but they will do something really different if you don't really understand their language. But as soon as you do, it's actually.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  I wish we had more time and more like eager to actually finish the full course. But it's absolutely not the primarily goal in our like hectic life as well. So.

• 1:52:48Tim Ferriss?

  But I'll link to that in the show notes so that people are interested can at least find it and give it a shot. I might do the same thing. So ideas, exciting ideas.

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  Exciting ideas.

• 1:52:59Tim Ferriss?

  Could be projects, could be missions, could be ideas, just things that have you both feeling excited and motivated.

• 1:53:09Speaker 03

  First, observations which we have about the world. And this observation gave us a different perspective. And this perspective is almost obviously led us to some ideas. And then usually when we have ideas, these ideas exist in us for some years. And then we're trying to crystallize them in the project.

• 1:53:28Speaker 02

  Product.

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  One of the major observation, which actually started from bankruptcy of a game development studio. We really wanted to understand what was that.

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  What the hell happened with the financial crisis?

• 1:53:41Speaker 03

  Like what? How we missed it.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  Not that we missed it, like we saw that there was like a problem in the real estate market. But everything collapsed around.

• 1:53:53Speaker 03

  We thought that just real estate market will collapse, but everything collapsed.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  Little did we know about how the financial market works.

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  Yes. So in then we dig deeper and get first, we got to the same conclusions.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  That everyone.

• 1:54:11Speaker 03

  Like economists.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  Derivatives, credit default swaps, this all adds to this bubble, some primes, like all this stuff.

• 1:54:18Speaker 03

  Yes, people usually like when it's about derivative and credit default swaps.

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  Blame the bankers.

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  Blame bankers, like bankers, they made this deregulation, they are the problem and that's how it all happens. But we usually, every time when we have a statement, we check it with data and we decide and say like, who was?

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  The actual beneficiary.

• 1:54:40Speaker 03

  Beneficiary of credit default swaps.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  Not of their fall, but of them being created and popularized that way.

• 1:54:46Speaker 03

  And then we realized that most of the credit default swaps through some vehicles, they were owned by pension funds. And we're like, what? Because we are from a region where pension funds really, small pensioners are really poor people and you would never think that they own some like multi-trillion dollar.

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  Huge, yes, huge. Pensions in the United States are like, what is it?

• 1:55:14Speaker 03

  Forty trillion dollars. It's more than the entire publicly traded market combined. You will combine all Apple, Google, Exxon, Walmart, you will combine all these companies, it's smaller than the assets of.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  Altogether, less than the assets of pension funds.

• 1:55:31Speaker 03

  So through this prism, we started to learn more and more like how the hell it happened and what does it mean.

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  And it was a great invention. I mean, the fact that the United States is the greatest economy in the world is because of this.

• 1:55:43Speaker 03

  So we realized, not because of the army, not because of military.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  Some big chunk of their money and the money was not just saved, but was invested into the market and that's how market got all the capital to grow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:55:57Speaker 03

  But then we realized that unfortunately, as soon as this population not only grew to the amounts that they are the majority of voters, but also they have this enormous financial power. The financial power, bigger than the banks, the bigger than any other organization. So this financial power and this voting power.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  Together combined, led to lots of popular political decisions.

• 1:56:28Speaker 03

  And regulations.

• 1:56:29Speaker 02

  And regulations, which was completely false. What types of things?

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  We can give you some taste of it.

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, for example, when we first came to the United States, we learned about student debt. And for you, it's obvious, like it's United States, everything is commercial, that's why college is not free, that's how we got to the student debt.

• 1:56:52Speaker 03

  But the student debt, if you will look at the size, before 2000, it was really a small problem. It's now like $2 trillion. But before that, it was a much, much, much, much smaller problems. And what we realized that previously, like in 80s, your tuition when you go to state college would be mostly subsidized by governments. Like 90% of your tuition would be subsidized by government. That's how your parents were able to actually pay for their tuition during the summer job, like through the summer job. And that's how the debt never accumulated as much. But in late 80s, beginning of 90s,

• 1:57:37Speaker 03

  because of almost bankruptcy state of public pension funds, the governments in different states and in federal level as well, made a decision to not only bail out, but also for the future, protect these pension funds. For example, in California, the growth of public pension funds, including teachers' funds, guaranteed on a level of 7.8% a year. Imagine that your deficit would be guaranteed at this level.

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  A state budget.

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  And it's not even average.

• 1:58:10Tim Ferriss?

  A state budget. So the subsidies to education went down as a result.

• 1:58:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:58:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  You can see tons of information become publicly available online. You can trace it. It's all there. Tons of data. But if you like to dig in this data, you can find it. It's just there. You can see it. You can like, oh, right, the money goes into the education and then...

• 1:58:30Tim Ferriss?

  To the pension.

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  To the pension, like CalSpurs in California. Yes, it's a public pension fund, pension fund of public workers and pension fund of teachers of California. No one really realized the size of these funds.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  And no one really realized the gap in between...

• 1:58:50Speaker 03

  Assets and liabilities.

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  Assets and liabilities of this fund.

• 1:58:52Speaker 03

  So...

• 1:58:53Speaker 02

  So when everyone discusses the pension funds are underfunded...

• 1:58:57Speaker 03

  It's only public pensions.

• 1:58:58Speaker 02

  It's only public pensions funds which are underfunded.

• 1:59:00Speaker 03

  Five trillion dollars of a gap. Five trillion dollars. This is accounting the money which is constantly transferred.

• 1:59:09Speaker 03

  From subsidies to the pension.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Someone might think that this is just public workers. Like they're probably what 15% of workforce in the United States. And yet, the size of their pension funds is half.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  Of all pension.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  Of all pension funds.

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  Even though it's only 15% of workforce.

• 1:59:28Speaker 02

  Why? Because of a guaranteed 7.8% annual growth. Because when the rest of the market goes down, up, down, up.

• 1:59:37Speaker 03

  So, and this problem is not only education. If you look at the police, you know, there was this big movement of unfunding police. And we looked at the budgets. And per person in LA, for example, per officer in LA, it's almost like 250,000, 250,000 a year.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  And people was very angry about that. Like, what the hell? Like, we pay you a lot and like you're not doing your job.

• 2:00:00Speaker 03

  The real workers right now, the real officers.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Are not paid as much.

• 2:00:03Speaker 03

  Are not paid as much. And they get only a tiny portion of it. And most of it goes as a transfer for pension funds for officers who worked 30 years ago.

• 2:00:14Tim Ferriss?

  So where does this lead? You guys are looking at the data. And I suppose like a good set of data ideally allows you to have some predictive ability or at least speculation ability. So what do you do with this?

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Zooming out to a larger picture. What it led to is that through the generations, starting saying from boomers. I know, I know, this is like a false science about dividing people into these generations, but we can buy a batch.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  People who was born around 50s, yes, so let's say.

• 2:00:44Speaker 02

  The boomers, as they were getting into 30 years old on average as a generation, own something around 21, 23% of national wealth in the United States. That following generation, Gen Xers, at the same average age, owned around seven. Us, the millennials, by the same age owned only less than 3%, like 2.8 ish. And then the trajectory shows us that together with the crisis which happened during the COVID. We can expect that the next generation after us, the Gen Z, gonna be in that.

• 2:01:23Speaker 03

  By the same average age.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  On average, as a generation, they still gonna be in that.

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  So trajectory really bad. And also, what this create that if these young people, not if, when they realize that the social agreement is not working, social structures will start to fall apart.

• 2:01:43Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think are some likely ways that that will show up?

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  We will see like the new wave of unions, protests, people not working, economy slowing down, this stuff. New businesses not created. We can see from the statistics that over the last 10 years, the share of the new businesses created in the United States, and in the United States, lots of new businesses created every year, lots of them never survive the year, but like, that's the case. You create many, many, many businesses and lots of them die and some of them survive, and that's the economy. So the share of the new businesses created annually in the United States by the people under 30 years old, used to be 40%, or 45%, let's say 40, and now 10 years later, now

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  it's a 30, it's down 10%.

• 2:02:33Tim Ferriss?

  Is the same number of companies being built just by younger and older? Or is the total number?

• 2:02:39Speaker 02

  More companies, the total number is sort of the same, it's just like not young people creating them, it's people 55 plus creating them.

• 2:02:48Tim Ferriss?

  That's surprising.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  That's surprising, and know what like I would expect? I never checked the data, but my intuition tells me all those businesses are just real estate, people buying houses and renting them out. So nothing new is created, just the spike in the price in real estate is just because they're buying and renting out. And those are the new businesses.

• 2:03:09Speaker 03

  There are a lot of problems, but still, like when you talk about the problems, it's really important also to at least propose some solutions in what we saw, because we realize that this shift is based on regulations. It's not natural that this shift is happening, it's regulations, that's the rules which was set by the previous generations which making this constant transfer. We realize that if you would decipher these regulations, what they did, that they made a preference to equity.

• 2:03:43Speaker 03

  To like shares of the companies, etc., compared to the income. So, capital gain is taxed. Last, like, there are a lot of things which actually made the huge difference between equity, how equity treated by the regulation and by the market.

• 2:03:59Tim Ferriss?

  And personal.

• 2:03:59Speaker 03

  And how personally.

• 2:04:01Tim Ferriss?

  Got it, right. The taxation.

• 2:04:03Speaker 03

  Everything.

• 2:04:03Tim Ferriss?

  The incentives.

• 2:04:04Speaker 03

  The pension funds can invest in that, but cannot invest in that. And things like that. There are limitations set, not naturally.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  If you have all the capital, like, the majority of the capital is pension capital, then where it can be invested matters a lot.

• 2:04:20Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 2:04:21Speaker 03

  So, in this term, we realize that the solution which we can test and propose.

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  At least try.

• 2:04:28Speaker 03

  Is to try to convert income.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  Individual income.

• 2:04:34Speaker 03

  To.

• 2:04:35Speaker 02

  Into securities.

• 2:04:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So, this is where the Lieberman's company comes in?

• 2:04:41Speaker 03

  Yes. First time we did this.

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  To ourselves?

• 2:04:43Speaker 03

  To ourselves. With, as a scientist, you need to make the experiments, and the experiments first.

• 2:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  Wish more scientists did this.

• 2:04:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:04:51Tim Ferriss?

  You gotta be the first monkey shot into space.

• 2:04:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:04:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:04:54Tim Ferriss?

  At less than three Gs.

• 2:04:56Speaker 03

  So, even though our income is not stable, but if you will build a model around all the founders, all tech founders, and the probabilities of successes during the period of time, we can build an income model, like you would do with a company, projections.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  Risk-weighted, risk-adjusted cash flow projection of an entrepreneur?

• 2:05:18Speaker 03

  And then, based on this.

• 2:05:20Tim Ferriss?

  Like a value stock.

• 2:05:22Speaker 03

  Yes. And then, by based on these projections, you can actually set a price for a company which would have the same type of income. In this case, if you can form the company, then you can attract investment, the same way companies do. And in this case, you will eliminate this bias, and vice versa will be supercharged by improving your future.

• 2:05:46Tim Ferriss?

  So, supercharged, just to try to ensure I'm hearing you correctly. So, supercharged meaning if you're showing a decent rate of growth, even though you're capital constrained, if you can bring in equity investors who invest in you as if you were a company, you can accelerate your growth and potential.

• 2:06:05Speaker 02

  And then we can average this as an index, as an index cross some cohorts of specific professions or specific cohorts like students, for example, you have higher education or you don't have higher education. How does it change your average income in the United States?

• 2:06:23Speaker 03

  Should we invest in you having good education?

• 2:06:26Speaker 02

  In every kid to have the good higher education for them to increase their individual income? And that's where investors get their money back? Or should we just leave it the way it is right now with the loan, which then suppress the wheel to go and risk? And that's how young people don't create new businesses and just go find a shitty job?

• 2:06:46Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you think you incentivize this type of wider adoption and data sharing, right? Because I can imagine if, let's just say, we flash forward and this has been widely adopted. Now I can choose, all right, do I want to invest in people who are going, getting accounting degrees? Or maybe I have a more reliable return on my investment year on year? Or do I want to invest in like the growth stocks that have much higher volatility? Like the entrepreneurs of a certain class or maybe age bracket where it's going to be a much riskier by volatility measurements investment, but who knows, the gains could be higher. How do you go from a single proof of concept? I have also questions about taxation, just if you're being taxed at an ordinary income level,

• 2:07:30Tim Ferriss?

  how you translate that effectively to equity holders who might be your investors, let's just say. But we could tackle any one of those. So it could be like, how do you contend with maybe the handicap of having ordinary income taxed? Even though that's presumably what people are investing in on some level, like the discounted cash flow or whatever. And then how do you take this and encourage other people to experiment with it?

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  We start with ourself as tech entrepreneurs because most of our income comes from building companies and selling companies or like making companies.

• 2:08:05Speaker 03

  It's even today, there is no difference whether you registered this company under your name or you registered this company under a holding company name.

• 2:08:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great point. You guys are actually operating in a very. In an easier case, straightforward case, because most of your gains would be

• 2:08:23Speaker 03

  From companies.

• 2:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  From companies, therefore, likely long-term capital gains. Maybe you have like

• 2:08:28Speaker 03

  That's why.

• 2:08:29Tim Ferriss?

  USBS exclusions, et cetera, versus if you guys were like very high-paid lawyers or something.

• 2:08:34Speaker 03

  We went through.

• 2:08:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, we went through that.

• 2:08:36Speaker 02

  Example, thousands of entrepreneurs can actually show in their example that it works for the investors. And then if it works for the investors, then we can introduce new regulations, which will make it work for the professionals, let's say, software engineers, doctors, lawyers. And from there, go to even wider groups like students. There need to be more, even more regulations, because like kids need to be protected and stuff like this. It all possible to be done.

• 2:09:06Speaker 03

  So we're pretty sure that at least some politicians who will see that their voters can benefit out of it and that they can actually live better life. And the problems like student debts can be solved in just really short term by the tools like that. We hope that some rules will change.

• 2:09:27Speaker 02

  Right now, most of the pension funds are invested in really bubbled, overpriced assets, just because it's too much money and not that much of instruments, like financial instruments, to actually generate the growth.

• 2:09:43Speaker 03

  That's why they needed this credit for swaps, et cetera, because they need this derivatives, because it was just too much money to invest. And so if they would be invested in people.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  If we're talking about investing in people.

• 2:09:57Speaker 03

  Everyone will win, like pension funds will win, like people will win. It's just the growth of the economy would be much faster than.

• 2:10:03Speaker 02

  It's likely going to be 10 times larger market to invest in when we start investing in individual income as equity.

• 2:10:13Tim Ferriss?

  What do you say to people who think about this and they're like, okay, I'm sure there are cases where this would be very attractive, at least initially, right? So you might have somebody like a very promising YouTuber, they want to build out a studio and hire. I guess they could go out and raise like an equity round if they're really...

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  That's what we did.

• 2:10:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:10:30Speaker 02

  But with individual income, like into YouTubers.

• 2:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm. Okay, so how, now, do you think if somebody is really successful, that they would try to renegotiate or that they would not try to renegotiate?

• 2:10:43Speaker 03

  There is an example. It's not us, it was before us, there is a fund which invested in college athletes. And they proposed to every college athlete, they took the statistics because it's quite statistical.

• 2:10:58Speaker 02

  It's like a Moneyball type of a game, like they calculated their way to understanding how to predict how many students they should invest in in order to basically hit the...

• 2:11:07Tim Ferriss?

  Have a couple of LeBron James.

• 2:11:08Speaker 03

  Yes, and they offered every student, like...

• 2:11:12Speaker 02

  The same price.

• 2:11:12Speaker 03

  5%, 10% investment.

• 2:11:15Speaker 02

  We're buying 5%, 10% of your future income and we pay you the same price, it's $10 million of...

• 2:11:21Speaker 03

  So half a million, million, 5% to 10%. Seventy students agreed.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Athletes.

• 2:11:27Speaker 03

  One of them already netted a 15 years contract for $350 million. So they did great with the fund.

• 2:11:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they did pretty well.

• 2:11:36Speaker 03

  There is one athlete...

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  To Susan.

• 2:11:38Speaker 03

  Who's tried to challenge this agreement in court.

• 2:11:41Tim Ferriss?

  This one athlete challenge?

• 2:11:42Speaker 03

  One athlete.

• 2:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Was it the same athlete?

• 2:11:44Speaker 03

  No, no, this one, there is a great interview of him where he explained that this money actually helped him a lot.

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  Best decision in his life.

• 2:11:51Speaker 03

  And he would never do another decision.

• 2:11:53Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just imagining, like, he might be cool with it, but I'm thinking about like the managers and the agents who are like, what the fuck is this?

• 2:11:59Speaker 03

  But he's...

• 2:12:00Tim Ferriss?

  But it worked out.

• 2:12:00Speaker 03

  Yes, it worked out.

• 2:12:01Speaker 02

  For everyone.

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  But there is another athlete who netted like...

• 2:12:06Speaker 03

  Three, four million dollar a year type of contract. He tried to challenge this in the court. And everything in this case is more complicated than with our case. He was sixteen when he signed. English wasn't his main language and things like that. So he signed in steel court was on the side of investors.

• 2:12:26Tim Ferriss?

  Upheld the agreement. How can people find more about this particular example? If they wanted to Google something.

• 2:12:32Speaker 03

  I will send you the link.

• 2:12:33Tim Ferriss?

  You can send it to me and we'll put it in the show notes.

• 2:12:35Speaker 03

  Yes, I think it was in Wall Street Journal, the description of all this case. But also I can send you the links to the court case because all the court cases, they open. So you can see all the arguments and arguments of the court. They were about the fact that he did well. So it's not about investors taking the last penny of you, I think like that. Uh, so he did well and, uh, and also investors described all these scenarios. There is a scenario in the agreement that there is a scenario that you will do well. In this case, we will get this amount of money. So they described all these scenarios.

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  Precisely described. Moreover, I don't remember what was in their contract, but in our contract, when we

• 2:13:17Tim Ferriss?

  With your investors.

• 2:13:18Speaker 02

  With our investors and when we invest in other people ourselves. We also invested already in like around dozen people. We have this

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  Minimal sum which we don't touch a year.

• 2:13:28Speaker 02

  Which we don't like minimal income of yours before which we are not getting anything.

• 2:13:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, there's a hurdle, right?

• 2:13:35Speaker 02

  There's a hurdle, like we actually aim to have the outliers.

• 2:13:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's a power law distribution.

• 2:13:40Speaker 03

  In most of industries, there is this power law. It's not only in tech, it's just in art, in podcasts, in like

• 2:13:46Speaker 02

  Our opinion about this, like we will all win. The market will win, society will win, humanity will win from the fact that we will use this power law for wider groups of people to invest in them, provide them capital and provide them chance to get a higher education, to try to start a business.

• 2:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  So question about your investments.

• 2:14:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:14:10Tim Ferriss?

  To the extent that, and we can look at it at least two different ways. So one could be your investors and why they chose to invest in you guys. But since you guys made the decisions about your investments, I'm curious about those people. To what extent did you? Choose them based on their earning potential and so on versus their potential to be a good ambassador or story for this model because they both seem to matter, right?

• 2:14:37Speaker 03

  Yes, now we care about both.

• 2:14:39Tim Ferriss?

  Like a good investment may have the financial ROI, but there's also showcasing.

• 2:14:44Speaker 02

  Obviously, because we have not that much money to invest in every people we want, we needed to pick those who will be a good story.

• 2:14:51Speaker 03

  So definitely, we will look at both. So in terms of investors in us, the first investor who supported us.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  He did not allow us to back off, like how to say back up.

• 2:15:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  And we were almost ready to say like, oh, to give up. It's like, okay, we're not doing this. And he's like, no, no, no, guys, you have to do this. Like, please.

• 2:15:10Speaker 03

  Some lesson. He actually had the similar idea when he was out of high school in 2001. He is one of the general partners of Slow Ventures. So he invested in us. But then other prominent names like Mark Andreessen or Chris Dixon or Josh Kushner, they also invested.

• 2:15:30Speaker 02

  Tiny share of Valium.

• 2:15:31Speaker 03

  In the payments, but we earned it. It did work right away, but we made the first round, then we proved some results, then we made the second round. So like with the startups. So when we invest for us, definitely it means a lot that we want to find really great examples because all these examples will affect the future of the idea. And this will help others to get access to the same type of resources.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  But what's more important for us, the major thing is whether we believe, and this is intuition, if the person will continue building after failing.

• 2:16:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one, right? Because you're not just investing in one company or one idea.

• 2:16:13Speaker 02

  Yes, we invested in one company. Moreover, we would come and already did this through the last year and a half as we investing in people. We came to people and said, like, quit it, drop it. I mean, that's not worth your time. It's not working. Like, switch to something new.

• 2:16:27Speaker 03

  You will never hear about.

• 2:16:28Speaker 02

  You will never, ever hear something like that from the investor who invested in this particular company. If I invested in you personally, I am mostly interested in your success. And if you are like locked yourself into something which you're like, no, no, no, I gotta do this. Like, this is failure. It's not failure. It's an attempt. Seventy percent of those attempts is gonna end up with zero. So just move on. Start next one. You'll be successful later.

• 2:16:54Speaker 03

  With Sam is probably our like best relationship with the investors ever. Um, so because it can be really open in not just, you know, like showing the good results, but also showing the things which are not working, struggles. Because now we like in a different type of relationship and we really like it. And we actually, we had challenging experiences with investors.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  I don't think Sam is gonna take you to any basements.

• 2:17:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:17:24Speaker 02

  Seems unlikely. Exactly.

• 2:17:26Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  But not even that. I mean, like, he's fully supporting us.

• 2:17:31Speaker 03

  The same when we invest. So we understand that some of the founders who invest, they already failed with their, their current projects. And they started the new one and we were the ones who supported them through this process.

• 2:17:42Speaker 02

  Some of them are coming through like hard times and I would say, go for a sabbatical.

• 2:17:48Speaker 03

  Go to Vipassana.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  Go to Vipassana. Like, take care of yourself. Like, you need to be super efficient and you need to be like happy with your own life.

• 2:17:55Speaker 03

  Long term, you need to be efficient.

• 2:17:56Speaker 02

  Long term, this will score us much more than if you're like, well, destroy yourself right now.

• 2:18:02Speaker 03

  Yes, and we already have a really beautiful examples when founders were able, through this freedom, were able to act the way they wouldn't act. And they, they, it's already gave them results and.

• 2:18:16Speaker 02

  Like, we completely enjoying with the passes of all the people who we invested in. And they're all, they're different, different stories, different individuals, different spheres. Like, it's everywhere from YouTuber to like reinventing quantum physics.

• 2:18:37Speaker 03

  Yes, and with YouTuber Marina, she is actually really also awesome example. She is a founder, she had the startup, but to create a marketing vehicle for the startup, she created a YouTube channel, then this YouTube channel

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  Media Empire.

• 2:18:52Speaker 03

  Becoming like a much larger thing than the startup.

• 2:18:56Speaker 02

  Making like a million plus a year. But a mortgage, family, kids, it's all risk, which you like, you wouldn't bet all of your income to the growth. Yes, she was growing fast, but as soon as she got like the understanding that she can use the capital from her future, like literally, this is what we're doing. This is capital from your future. If you are doing as you are doing right now, then clearly you're gonna have that amount of money in the future. You can take part of this money, which already almost exists into the current, into the present time, and use it in order to make your future even more successful.

• 2:19:35Tim Ferriss?

  So this brings up something that I wasn't sure we would get to, but I figure I can bring it up.

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  Time machine. Is it possible?

• 2:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there's the time machine, but there's also maybe the, and I go back and forth on how I feel about this, but the, I guess we could, you could look to the data, if you have such data, and there is some, it would seem, but the, maybe the over fetishizing of suffering and how that contributes to success, or the belief that the more one struggles, the more likely you are to have outside success, because those make for good stories, right?

• 2:20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:09Tim Ferriss?

  Somebody suffers for their whole life and then they show how much they can persevere and then they succeed. But if you look at, you know, some of the examples that you mentioned earlier of like the dropout and then the big company, these are not stories of abject suffering from the earliest stages of childhood generally. So would you say, and this is tying it to what you just said, that by relieving some of those pressures with the mortgage and the kids, you're improving the likelihood of a bigger success later, or somebody could certainly look at it and say, well, she's not going to be as hungry?

• 2:20:44Speaker 02

  So we have lots to say about this subject.

• 2:20:48Tim Ferriss?

  That's why I'm asking.

• 2:20:50Speaker 02

  If we will look at the most successful experiment of all times for the humanity, providing free school education, free school education for everyone, doesn't matter whether their smartest kid on the street or not, like every kid gave us more than any other investment which we, which we as a humanity, like infrastructure and stuff, no, providing free education is this, like a capital early on.

• 2:21:19Speaker 03

  It was a controversial idea like hundred years ago.

• 2:21:21Speaker 02

  It's an expensive investment to provide education for every kid, expensive investment. And we scored a beautiful world, gave a lot to us. So providing a little bit more of the same can give us unexpected results. The different perspective is if we'll look at majority of the unicorns created in the United States and look at who were the founders of those companies.

• 2:21:49Tim Ferriss?

  And these are companies worth a billion or more.

• 2:21:51Speaker 02

  Those companies worth a billion of more or more.

• 2:21:54Speaker 03

  A big share of them, like most of them are from upper middle class families. They never struggled as us, you know, like they never went through real like poverty type of situation of hunger.

• 2:22:06Speaker 02

  Losing all of their money on the bank accounts and stuff like this.

• 2:22:09Speaker 03

  All the stories about dropouts from college. They never had the student debt, so parents paid for their college and that's how they afforded to do that.

• 2:22:19Tim Ferriss?

  The other thing that gets left out of those stories is when you drop out of a fancy school, they always let you come back generally. It's not like you burn the ships behind you.

• 2:22:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then the last one, probably not the last one, but the one also the last one for me, then David will tell something. The struggle will come. It doesn't matter if you have millions of dollars, you will always be struggling because you strive to achieve more and it's challenging. And it's not necessary that the struggle is needed, but it will be there.

• 2:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:57Speaker 02

  Doesn't matter if you're like rich or not, like what was this, rich people also cry?

• 2:23:07Tim Ferriss?

  Not gonna wear that T-shirt around, but yeah, I mean, that's true.

• 2:23:11Speaker 03

  And the challenge comes, especially when you start a startup. You wanted to succeed, but the-

• 2:23:16Tim Ferriss?

  And also, human nature is human nature. Life is suffering, you're gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna find you, don't worry.

• 2:23:21Speaker 03

  Sansara, still here. But ingeniously, you're like, with this argument, we hear a lot that founders should struggle. So, we struggled a lot through our founder's path. We were like, even no resources. In the country where investments are always considered as a debt, you need to put as a collateral your house and things like that. Compared to San Francisco, where there is no collateral, you can have a salary. You're like, in our case, we were prohibited to have a salary as a founders. You should have the skin in the game, they said.

• 2:24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Salary, that's hardcore.

• 2:24:01Speaker 03

  Uh, so hardcore, and if you compare this experience with Silicon Valley experience, this is a struggle. Not struggle. Not struggle at all. So, most of the successful companies you know, would never exist without venture capital. Venture capital is money in advance, is, is actually not struggling. Struggling is like having the cash flow and, and building your like bootstrap business. Most of the companies are not like that. Because some levels of achievements in, at least in some areas, they require this freedom for you to actually risk and to try things.

• 2:24:44Speaker 03

  That's why we believe that some struggle is needed, but we believe that not on the level we have right now.

• 2:24:51Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have to manufacture it.

• 2:24:52Speaker 03

  And there, there will always be competition. But student loan, which just stops most of young people in United States from actually taking the risks early and to achieve more.

• 2:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  And later, and later too. I mean, I know people in their thirties who still haven't paid off their, you know, and I'm talking, not talking early thirties, like mid, later thirties, especially if they go to like an extended-

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Graduate school or professional school are still paying off student debt.

• 2:25:18Speaker 03

  This is a needed struggle. This is really an optimal, not needed, artificial struggle, because we know that the subsidized money is paid by tax, through taxes by people, but it's just spent on a different stuff. So we don't believe in this idea that the struggle is needed and vice versa. We believe that the different local maximum, which would be much higher in terms of the size of the economy, is in the place where we removed some of the struggles, especially those which are artificial.

• 2:25:53Speaker 02

  It's just like trying to imagine what it is ten times higher. More electricity, more power, more roads, more cars, more education, more whatever, more everything, ten times more everything. This is when the abundance is probably likely to be close to reality. And that's what we can do in this new local maximum. If we just change the perspective on what's worse to invest in.

• 2:26:24Speaker 03

  Shares.

• 2:26:24Speaker 02

  The individual income or the undying companies. The companies are dying.

• 2:26:31Speaker 03

  On average, they live actually less than human beings. Like, all the statistics is for people in their potential, but all the regulations are actually supporting for companies and shares, yes.

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  It's obvious why it's this way, because in the past, we needed this invention of limited liability companies in order to like remove the personal.

• 2:26:57Speaker 03

  Obligations.

• 2:26:57Speaker 02

  Obligations, individual obligations over the business. Like when your ship is sunk in the sea, now you own not only you, all of your money, your house, but your family can be taken and enslaved. Like, we are far away from this world, like hundreds of years away from this world.

• 2:27:15Speaker 03

  So now we can.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Through the innovation of like limited liability and then the public market. And this is all innovation in the way how we see the market and the way we look at the market. But we are ready for the new innovation. And this new innovation can uplift the economy.

• 2:27:33Tim Ferriss?

  So question for you guys, I'll answer it first too. So what would you, what request would you like to make of my audience? So very diverse audience across many countries, many places. Most of them are interested on some level in technology, not all of them. Well, let's be honest, all humans are interested in technology. They just might not recognize it as technology.

• 2:27:54Speaker 02

  As I said, like, is it technology?

• 2:27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Is it technology, right? If we all use tools, that's the reason, it's the reason that Homo sapiens have done what they've done, good and bad. But my request for my audience would be to send me links to some of the biological and biophysics topics that you both discussed earlier. Very interested in all of that, including quantum effects and potentially be a bird vision or olfaction. All of this is of great interest to me. So people can shoot those to me on Twitter at T Ferris or elsewhere. But what requests would you like to make of my audience or places you'd like to point them, anything at all?

• 2:28:39Speaker 03

  Two things. First, there is a conference about quantum biology in near San Diego in twenties, like eighteenth of August.

• 2:28:48Tim Ferriss?

  All right, here we go.

• 2:28:50Speaker 03

  Like best scientists right now are getting, it's still like, you know, like still a quite a small group of people. That's why they're really supportive to each other, even though they should compete with each other, but they actually are quite supportive to each other. We will be in the conference as well. But what we would ask is actually first to think, who would be those individuals you would invest in?

• 2:29:14Speaker 02

  Likely all of us have someone who we're like, this guy is going to be very successful.

• 2:29:19Speaker 03

  Second is send this information out to us. So if you know the great person, you would invest, you would invest, you would invest your money in like.

• 2:29:29Speaker 02

  Probably we also should invest.

• 2:29:31Speaker 03

  And the third one is think that maybe you should invest in this person as well.

• 2:29:37Speaker 03

  You're like, maybe it's your kid and you're a parent and maybe you should make an agreement. It's actually in the first.

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  Our agreement is publicly available online. You can all read it and check what's the clauses in there. Like you can use this.

• 2:29:50Tim Ferriss?

  And that's libermans.co?

• 2:29:52Speaker 03

  Yes, there is an agreement there. So I would say that this is your request. So first, think about these people you would invest in. Send out the information about them to us.

• 2:30:04Tim Ferriss?

  So what is just being cognizant of the fact that this is a large audience? So sometimes not good to give out like your private email. I've had people do that. I warned them about it. How should people notify you?

• 2:30:18Speaker 02

  We have a form.

• 2:30:19Tim Ferriss?

  You have a form?

• 2:30:20Speaker 02

  Yes, we have a form.

• 2:30:21Tim Ferriss?

  And that's it?

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  Humanism.is. Humanism is?

• 2:30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Humanism.is.

• 2:30:27Speaker 02

  Is.

• 2:30:28Speaker 03

  And also, we communicate quite extensively through Instagram. Usually, we, you know, we use Instagram not.

• 2:30:35Speaker 02

  Million people will come.

• 2:30:36Speaker 03

  Wait, wait a sec. Usually, we use Instagram not for pictures, but for larger texts in some of the ideas.

• 2:30:43Tim Ferriss?

  That's instagram.com/libermans.

• 2:30:45Speaker 03

  Libermans.

• 2:30:46Tim Ferriss?

  L I B E R M A N S. Also, same spelling, libermans.co. Just telling people. All right. So Instagram, the form at humanism.is. And people can find the agreement.

• 2:31:00Speaker 02

  On the libermans.

• 2:31:01Tim Ferriss?

  Libermans.co.

• 2:31:04Speaker 02

  What's, the other ask can be.

• 2:31:09Speaker 02

  If we truly want to see this world happening, we need to educate the older population and the investors and the grandmas and grandpas who actually are shareholders, stakeholders in the pension funds. We need to educate those people who actually own most of the money in the country to gradually start investing in this type of agreements, to at least check, to see what's going to happen in five, 10 years from now. If they're going to make more money by investing in individual income rather than private companies, public companies. And in this case, we will be able to have an experiment. And if it's a successful experiment, we will educate country and market to shift towards this.

• 2:31:51Speaker 03

  Yes, you can ask your grandma to look where are the pension money of her are invested.

• 2:32:01Speaker 03

  And to see that probably some companies we all blame for some

• 2:32:07Speaker 02

  Problems.

• 2:32:07Speaker 03

  Problems in the world, they can be the investors. That actually companies which affect our ecosystem in a bad way, they are not owned by bankers.

• 2:32:20Speaker 02

  Bankers or whatever.

• 2:32:21Speaker 03

  People, they actually, most of them, like ninety percent owned by pension funds. So if we can educate our previous generations, that they can be the problem.

• 2:32:34Speaker 02

  Shareholders in the problem. They're not the source of the problem.

• 2:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Or they're shareholders in the future and they have to choose.

• 2:32:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:32:41Tim Ferriss?

  How their money is influencing that.

• 2:32:42Speaker 02

  They can be the shareholders of the future.

• 2:32:43Speaker 03

  And.

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  This is the heritage they can leave, destroying the planet or actually switching.

• 2:32:48Tim Ferriss?

  And I would imagine ninety nine point nine percent of them have no idea.

• 2:32:51Speaker 03

  That they can control it.

• 2:32:52Tim Ferriss?

  That they have a choice.

• 2:32:53Speaker 02

  Yes, and they have. That's the funniest part.

• 2:32:56Speaker 03

  They can log in and they can actually change. Let's sit down with your grandma, maybe look at their like.

• 2:33:01Speaker 02

  Write an email saying, I do want some share of my pension funds to be invested, or my savings to be invested in the individuals corporations.

• 2:33:09Speaker 03

  Or in sustainable companies at least. This education should happen, otherwise there is this belief that they did, previous generation did everything right. And just the new generation is fail. But it's really important to educate that some decisions which were made thirty years ago affect us a lot today. And some of this effect can be changed if we change where the money.

• 2:33:37Speaker 02

  And where is the knowledge about it?

• 2:33:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think a lot of it is a communications problem and an education problem. And that net net, humans of different generations have more in common than they have different amongst them. But as you pointed out, sometimes the problems aren't obvious and sometimes. Problems aren't discussed and the options aren't discussed, right? The fact that I didn't know this until, I mean, shockingly recently for me, like 10 years ago, that I could, with retirement accounts, you can invest in privately held companies and all sorts of other things. It is an option, it's just not readily exploited by most people because they don't realize that it's on the menu. So I'm excited to see what people come up with.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  Maybe someone needs to make a startup which actually offers a solution for the pensioners to do it easier.

• 2:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:33Speaker 03

  To just do the sustainable companies, like that's it.

• 2:34:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, some type of interface that makes it less manual, less one-on-one.

• 2:34:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Because right now it is hard, you need to spend some time to actually set up your account properly.

• 2:34:46Speaker 02

  But that's the greatest opportunity, we just need all to talk about this. If you have some challenges believing in this,

• 2:34:55Speaker 02

  you A, you can make your own research on trying to understand whether we are right with our data and our points of view. B, you can like, you can ask a question in the form, you can like, find a way to reach us out and ask a question. So we will explain how we see this and why we believe this is actually the really, really, really good way of investing your money.

• 2:35:16Tim Ferriss?

  Well, also, I mean, this conversation has raised so many good questions. I mean, one of which is like, how do you take capital, which is a, you know, it's a currency, like it's something that you can exchange for other things that is currently locked in a somewhat static form, that may not be generating much positive value in the world? And how do you liberate that for other faster-growing, more dynamic sources of value? Not just for the individual, but for the community, for society? And I mean, I think about that a lot, I mean, it's asset allocation, but on sort of a karmically considered level, at least at the collective.

• 2:35:58Speaker 03

  And you don't need to spend the money which you need right now. It is money which.

• 2:36:03Speaker 02

  You will only get access like in 30 years from now.

• 2:36:05Speaker 03

  So we made an experiment when we joined Snap, it was first time in our life when we got 401K.

• 2:36:10Speaker 02

  First time in our life employed.

• 2:36:11Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 2:36:14Speaker 02

  So Snap acquired us, we are employed, we now have 401K. And the experiment was, we are getting exactly the same salary, exactly the same savings in the 401K account for both of us. David.

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  Changed everything in his account, where the money is allocated, to towards more sustainable companies, like companies caring about the planet.

• 2:36:39Speaker 03

  Like Procter and Gamble's and Coca Cola's of the world.

• 2:36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And the Monsanto's of the world, removing them from there and just like shifting the investment towards the companies which are more sustainable. Me, I just left everything as it was by default, provided by the fidelity.

• 2:36:55Speaker 03

  So far, I earned 20,000 more than Daniel.

• 2:36:58Speaker 02

  The gross is 30% higher than mine.

• 2:37:02Speaker 03

  So in this, it's just, this is the case.

• 2:37:05Speaker 02

  That's the funniest part, like.

• 2:37:06Speaker 03

  If you believe that other people believe in the same, is that actually the world is moving in a more sustainable, clean society, you will win financially as well. Because if this shift is happening, if you believe in this shift, then.

• 2:37:19Speaker 02

  And it should happen, otherwise we're all gonna die. But because it's, and because it's happening, like naturally, logically, it's happening, then you should, it should be no brainer that we should invest in the companies which actually does this, because others will lose in the market game.

• 2:37:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it doesn't, doing right morally doesn't need to mean doing something that is self-destructive. You can align the incentives.

• 2:37:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And investing in your kids, in your grandkids, is the best thing ever.

• 2:37:51Tim Ferriss?

  So I think everybody listening has a good amount to think about, and they have options for communicating with you. They can go to Lieberman's.co to see examples of the agreements, right? The types of contracts that have this participation in future earnings potential and outcomes of individuals. They can go to humanism.is to fill out a form. After they think about which of their friends, which of their peer group, which of their circle they would most invest their own savings into. And they can also consider doing that themselves with the templates that you provided. We've got the Instagram book and course for those interested in exploring coding. And Instagram is instagram.com/Liebermans. David?

• 2:38:35Tim Ferriss?

  Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time today.

• 2:38:38Speaker 03

  It's awesome, Pat. Absolute pleasure.

• 2:38:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so much fun to traverse so much ground with you. And for everybody listening, as per usual, we'll have extensive show notes linked to all the resources, everything that was mentioned. And we'll track down a few things here and there, including links to, might have been in Wall Street Journal, but the sports example. And you can peruse those at your leisure at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be a little bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And as always, thanks for tuning in. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun

• 2:39:24Tim Ferriss?

  before the weekend? Between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you

• 2:40:09Tim Ferriss?

  head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Protect's Rest Supplement, a new take on getting deeper and more restorative sleep. I was introduced to this by former Navy SEAL Nick Norris, who has been on this podcast. And as a mutual friend of ours put it to me, it's very annoying that Nick has no physical weaknesses. This is somebody who can climb like a spider. He has Incredible abilities as a rock climber. He is incredibly strong and can also run ultra marathons. It's quite something to behold. And this is one of the tools that he uses.

• 2:40:54Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:41:38Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:42:22Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:43:07Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:43:52Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:44:37Tim Ferriss?

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