#685 The Vibe Capitalist w/ Geoff Lewis

Geoff Lewis is a Founder and Managing Partner of Bedrock. In 2019, Geoff was named as one of the Top 100 Venture Capitalists in the world by CB Insights and The New York Times. In this conversation, we discuss having no investing framework, being outside information flow, best investors doing nothing, investing in defense, Austin Texas, Bitcoin, Midas List, and being positive sum. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com.

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Jeff Lewis is a founder and managing partner of Bedrock. In 2019, Jeff was named as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world by CB Insights and the New York Times. In this conversation, we discuss having no investing framework, being outside the flow of information, the best investors doing absolutely nothing, investing in the defense sector, living in Austin, Texas, Bitcoin, the Midas list, and being positive sum. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jeff, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, search StackSats in the App Store or visit choiceapp.io/pomp. And one more thing, if you want to hold your own private keys, Choice lets you do that, too. It's a no brainer, in my opinion. I'm using it. I think that you'll enjoy it, too. Choiceapp.io/pomp. Last but not least is Circle. Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce, and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin, or USDC, which is the fastest-growing, regulated, fully-reserved dollar-stablecoin in the world, which now stands at more than $30 billion market cap, and it's adding nearly $300 million of net new digital dollars in circulation every single week.

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  The free Circle account and suite of platform API services bridges the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading DeFi and NFT marketplaces. You can learn more by going to circle.com. Again, head over to circle.com. I've had many people from the leadership team at Circle come on the podcast before, and I'm really impressed with the growth of that fully-regulated, fully-reserved dollar-stablecoin. Go to circle.com to learn more. All right, let's get into this episode with Jeff. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Jeff, are you there?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Hey, what's up?

• 3:50Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Doing well. How about you?

• 3:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm doing fantastic. We've got a whole bunch of stuff to talk about. First, I want to just tell everyone a little bit about Jeff. Jeff is, I joke, but not really, that he's one of the last independent thinkers available on the internet. If you're not following Jeff on Twitter, you're missing out, so please go follow him. But Jeff, you recently moved to Austin. Maybe we'll start there. What was the thought process between leaving and then moving to Austin versus anywhere else?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't really leave. I didn't really leave anywhere. So, you know, it sort of travel around. I go places. I was living on Kauai for several months prior to moving here. And the debate was really around going back to sort of a major city. So, you know, I'd split my time. I think you and I met in New York. I sort of split my time between SF, which is just at this point, a total shithole city. So I could never go back there. I'm in New York, which I think is still probably pretty good. The debate was between returning to one of those or trying something different. And in spending so much time, you know, on the beach, on Kauai, like out on the water. I really realized that I actually get a lot of energy from just having a lot of empty space around me. I always thought I was a city person and wanted to be in a crowded city, but I love having space.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  And so I think it's a question for me of what gives you energy. For me, I get a lot of energy from having space, space to think. Austin has this very frontier feel to it. A lot of independent thinkers are moving here. Maybe I'm maybe it's very kind of you to say I'm one of the few that are still available on the internet. There actually, I think there are quite a few and a lot of them are here in Austin. So a lot of space and a lot of interesting heterodox thinkers. And so far, it's been pretty good. It's been a few months and, you know, planning to stay. Talk to us about Bedrock. You've got one of the more interesting portfolios because a lot of the companies are companies that either other venture capitalists don't find interesting, don't find valuable, they don't have the courage and conviction to invest in.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Whole bunch of different stuff, but what is the investment thesis of Bedrock when you when you talk to investors or founders? I mean, our whole like guiding ethos is we are truly trying to find what we call these narrative violations. So these companies that are either, you know, undiscovered or underestimated because they run contrary to a popular narrative. And so this really animates a lot of the stuff we've done, everything from our early investing in cryptocurrencies. When we were first getting started with the firm, obviously talk a lot about Bitcoin and Ethereum and things like that. To the companies that we invest in, things like Flock Safety, we were one of the largest investors, one of the earliest investors. That's a company that uses computer vision, sort of crime solving cameras to help help municipalities solve crime.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  And when we initially invested in Flock. For example, back in 2018, no one was talking about there being sort of a major crime problem in the United States. Like, no one thought it was a problem that needed to be solved. Moreover, that was a company that monetizes, while it monetizes through like a SaaS subscription, there is a hardware component and Peloton, you know, was was not a huge public company. People were scared to invest in hardware, but we both thought that crime was a huge problem, that you could have these hardware businesses that monetize through SaaS and those could actually be very valuable. And, you know, fast forward to 2021, Flock's valued at, I don't think I should disclose it, but many multiples of where we initially invested, we've continued to to back up the truck into it as it's as it's scaled.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And the murder rate, unfortunately, this is, you know, really bad for society. We wish it wasn't the case, but it increased by 30% in 2020. That is the largest single year increase in US history, largest single year increase in the murder rate in US history. And Flock is kind of an anecdote to this, uh, anecdote to this, uh, to this, to this issue. And so we try to find these counter narrative companies. A lot of it actually comes down to feeling a vibe with a certain entrepreneur, with a certain company mission, and then really peeling back the layers, really digging into the business over, over quite a long period of time before we invest. So it's, it's, it runs pretty contra to sort of the way that venture capital is, is being done today,

• 7:52Speaker 02

  where you sort of, you know, you meet someone on Zoom for 20 minutes, then wire them $100 million the next day. When you think about defense and public safety, you just talked about one of the companies, but it seems like that, uh, maybe it hasn't become taboo, but there's a bunch of people in what I'll just label as Silicon Valley. It's not geographically contained just there, but the tech industry more in general. For some reason, it's become like not an important thing, or even in some cases, they've actually tried to shun working in the defense industry or with public safety, law enforcement, et cetera. Talk a little bit about like, do you have a thesis there? Is it something that, again, just literally you meet the founders, you like the mission? And you back them. How do you think about it? Yeah, I mean, the way that we think about defense broadly is, you know, there's there's sort of this

• 8:36Speaker 02

  fundamental belief that I think we have as a team, which is we're actually, you know, quite pessimistic generally about the world. And so we're not sort of these, uh, these bright eyed optimists about the future. We actually are relatively pessimistic. Sort of broadly broadly speaking, but I think we're like quite, um, quite specifically optimistic. So we think there are these sort of specific things people can do. There are specific companies, there are specific places perhaps, so places like Austin or where you live, Pomp and Miami. We're sort of optimistic about these optimistic about these places and and sort of the, we think the cleanest manifestation of this sort of generalized pessimism.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Specific optimism is sort of, there's a lot we can do in defense and it's obviously existential for the US as a country. We have to imbue our, our, our defense industry with, with real technology. We have, there's been this insane sort of cartel of, of defense contractors and, uh, and primes that have sort of controlled the defense industry for, you know, half a, half a century. And we have to bring Silicon Valley prowess, engineering, state of the art technology into, into that area. So we're very, you know, proud to be investors in companies like Anduril, like Eperes, like Modern Intelligence, all of which are taking different cuts at trying to, uh, trying to really imbue the defense industry with Silicon Valley style innovation.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Quite honestly, Flock on a sort of more municipal civic level, uh, we, we view as also a manifestation of this, uh, of this defense theme. And then the hesitance of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs and engineers to work in defense, I think, I think they're becoming a lot less hesitant. So I think that there was sort of maybe this, uh, I think maybe the sort of pandemic in 2020 kind of woke people up to the fact that you can't sort of just slide into this like nihilistic zone where nothing really matters. And, you know, you should just be, uh, you know, uh, sort of coding, uh, making the Google PageRank algorithm a better or something, something stupid like that. Like actually you have one light. Uh, there are things that matter. There are.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Things that you can do as an engineer, as an entrepreneur, and one of the most important areas to work, and we believe is in defense technology. So we're really excited to have done a fair amount there. Yeah, and some of the companies you named are absolutely amazing companies with really kind of breakthrough technologies. Talk to me about when I think of you vibe capitalists. So most people look at venture capitalists, they have a specific kind of framework in their head or some generalizations. You have pioneered and popularized the idea of a vibe capitalist. Right on, right on. When you were in Hawaii, there were shirtless photos, there was videos with your glasses on. I think at one point you were even showing people how to use the forehead temperature

• 11:22Speaker 02

  kind of reader. And I think people just found it very refreshing, right? You were literally talking about serious topics. Obviously, you've got kind of this expertise and experience in technology and investing, but you did it in a different way. So what exactly is a vibe capitalist? And like, where did this come from? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're gonna be bringing the videos back. We're getting the custom thermometer made right now and building out the studio here in Austin. So a temp check with Jeff will be back soon. And thanks for those kind words. You know, this whole idea of vibe capitalism, sort of an outgrowth of where I think we're at in this technology, this incredible, this phenomenal technological cycle that we've been in really since I got into the industry. And really, initially as an entrepreneur in 2009, now as an investor,

• 12:07Speaker 02

  I started doing investing in 2012. And really, we've gotten to a point where, you know, algorithms really mediate so many of our interactions as humans. They mediate how we work with each other. So if you're scaling up a company today, chances are, you know, you've probably never met in person the employees you're hiring if you're running sort of a remote or hybrid company today. That's just crazy to imagine 10 years ago, hiring hundreds of employees a day. These folks are never meeting the teams they work with. It makes us a lot more efficient. You know, you can communicate really efficiently via Slack. We're doing this via Zoom. So algorithms really do optimize for efficiency. And efficiency is not a bad thing. Efficiency is actually, I believe, a Very good thing, but efficiency is not an end goal in and of itself.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  And I feel like we are in a zone societally because of all of this technology we have enabling us. Where it's it's sort of easy to mistake efficiency for sort of an enabling tool to help you live a better life, to help enrich your humanity, for efficiency being an end goal in and of itself. And this is, you know, why I sort of, I don't really like investing in productivity tools because I feel that sort of, you know, the anti-vibe type company, it's all about just efficiency is the end goal. Where there are these other types of businesses and companies where the algorithmic agenda is in service to a bigger mission, is in service to an end goal. And so sort of, there's not really a vibe capital framework, but there is a vibe capital filter.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  And I'd say that the vibe capital filter, you know, we're still working on figuring it, figuring it out. I'm going to be giving a, giving a keynote speech at Web Summit in Lisbon on November 2nd, where we're going to go through this framework in depth. But it's some version of filtering companies, filtering your own personal life, actually, through a filter of, is the algorithmic agenda of the, the algorithms that you're engaging with, is it serving your own personal agency? Or is it synonymous with your own personal agency? Are they the same or is the algorithmic agenda serving you? And so for you, Pop, you're a vibe capitalist, man. Like you are, you've mastered the algorithms, they're serving you, they're serving Pop. You're not, you're not, what you're doing is not synonymous with a, with the Twitter algorithm or the YouTube algorithm.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  You're using those to serve your own agency. You know, the company version of this would be, does the algorithmic agenda serve a company? Or, you know, if we're talking about the decentralized world, Web 3, a protocols mission, does it really, which is also, you know, a reflection of the entrepreneur's mission? Or is it synonymous with the mission? So you can think about something like Bitcoin. The mission with Satoshi is all around shifting economic control and power into the hands of individuals and communities. Contrast that versus something like, so that's a vibe. Bitcoin's a vibe, okay? That's a vibe capitalist type thing to be involved in. I would argue that something like Shiba Inu is not, Shiba Inu is not, it's just derivative of. Dogecoin. So you know, there's some version of this where Shiva is like an efficiency thing,

• 15:02Speaker 02

  even though it seems like a seems like a joke. It's kind of, you know, to Dogecoin, what lazy line is to Board A or something like that. So more derivative, you know, a company example would be something like New Bank, where I was a very early investor on behalf of a venture capital firm that I used to be a partner at prior to founding Bedrock, where their mission statement, and they live this, they've lived this from the first day I met that company in 2015, is to imagine a different world. It starts off with, you know, imagine a different world where what matters is your values, not the value in your bank account. So like, yeah, they're a they're a neo bank. They started out issuing credit cards and writing algorithms around that. But their mission is like very different from what those algorithms are actually doing. That is vibe capitalism versus something like versus something like

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Google, where their mission starts out with organize the world's information. That's exactly what the algorithms do. They give you the most efficient search experience. They give the advertisers the most efficient way to reach people. Google is all about efficiency. It is not a vibe company. And so we sort of have this filter around algorithmic agendas and efficiency that we that we use. And, you know, there's a level on which it layers up to the people running the company. So think about think about Travis running Uber versus Dara running Uber. You know, I was on the board of Lyft for many years while I hated competing against Travis. That guy has a vibe. Dara, you know, not so much. Steve Jobs versus Scully. And it can also go the other direction. So, you know, think about Twitter when Dick Costolo

• 16:31Speaker 02

  was Costello was CEO, sort of this, you know, kind of like a failed comedian or something like that. And and one might one might think he has a vibe. But I would argue that Jack Dorsey has a has much more of a vibe. And so we sort of think about things on all these levels and try to optimize more in a more in a vibe direction. As you already know, I love this framework. And it's one of those things where I think like, once you start to understand it, you see the examples, it's very easy to identify if you're looking for it. But it also requires something you've talked a lot about is like being outside of the information flow. So maybe tell us a little bit, you went on a trip recently and you tweeted out. Really like, hey, I didn't talk to anybody. And then all of a sudden I came back and like, everything is doing well. Like, maybe the best thing an investor can do sometimes is not do anything

• 17:15Speaker 02

  or remain outside of that flow of information because it allows them to kind of think differently. So talk a little bit kind of how you're you're thinking about it, at least right now. Yeah, I mean, one of the challenges as as one gets sort of more successful and, you know, we've scaled Bedrock pretty rapidly, managed about a billion dollars now to less than four years old, is that you get pulled into all of these information flows. People want to share things with you. And actually, all of the best investing I've done was I was sort of an outsider, reaching out to an entrepreneur, discovering something that other people weren't looking at. I wasn't in the mainstream Silicon Valley flow of information. And and I think it's been sort of this this very this very valuable thing for for me. I think at Bedrock, you know, we don't try, we don't want to be totally outside the information flows.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  You know, to sort of need people to to know what's going on. You know, I've got great partners in Eric and Spencer Bedrock where we sort of are are keyed in a bit to what's happening. But I try and spend real chunks of time, you know, outside of the flow. And and more specifically, I do feel like there are these phases of cycles where things just get so frenzied that the decision making can be can get sort of very sloppy. You can end up making sort of very manic investment decisions. And I felt this way in, you know, Q4 2017. We were we were trying to take off our fundraiser for Bedrock. You had the crazy run up in Bitcoin and the crazy ICO craze. And I really sat that stage of the cycle out. I didn't really do any ICO investing or I was just sat it out. It felt too frenzied.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  You know, one might argue that maybe the sort of growth stage, late stage venture capital markets today, maybe even the the public markets in some of these areas are maybe just a little bit too frenzied. And so I tried to sort of take part of the summer to really just take a vacation from investing. And, you know, I think I made more money this summer than I've made in a really long time. So sometimes you just you can just sort of do nothing if you've got the right portfolio in place and try and check out when things feel when things feel very frenzied. I don't think you want to feel pressured to participate in a frenzy because everyone else is doing it. That's sort of the The opposite of operating with personal agency that's sort of getting pulled in by the algorithmic agendas, whether it's on Robin Hood or Twitter or anything like that into a frenzy.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  You always want to try and avoid that to the extent you can. Yeah, I tend to think that that's right. You also have talked about this idea of iconic companies vibing with iconoclastic investors. What's that mean? Well, you know, you also be careful using the word iconoclast because historically, as I've sort of used it, but historically, it just means tearing down. There's no building up element. So if you're just a pure iconoclast, you're sort of ripping things down, but you're not creating anything to replace them. But the way that I use that phrase, iconoclastic founders, iconoclastic investors is, you know, vibe is something intangible. It's a feeling. It's just something that you sense, you feel, you vibe with someone. And the word's really, I think, been cheapened, this idea of vibe, because it's sort of become a meme.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  You know, I started using it and everyone's tweeting about it. But it actually means something profoundly human that can't be captured by an algorithm. And I do think there is just this sense in which there are very few investors out there. I think you're one of them. I can think of maybe a dozen more, very few folks investing in technology that have a public presence, that are digitally engaged, that are sharing their thinking, that have a real vibe, that are iconoclastic, that believe in things, that are trying to seek out truth versus just sort of doing what's popular, getting the most engagement. And I feel like there's a set of entrepreneurs doing the most interesting things that vibe with that set of investors. And so sort of just being true to yourself and trying to seek out truth and being courageous in the world,

• 20:57Speaker 02

  there's a lot of value one can generate or unlock or partake in through just being a little bit iconoclastic. But the caveat to this is you have to actually be trying to build things too. You can't just tear institutions down as. Broken as the old institutions are. So completely unrelated, yet somewhat related. You went on a tear. I can't remember if it was the end of last year or beginning of this year with the Midas list, which for those that don't know is the Forbes list of most successful investors in a given year. And everyone I think pretty much knows like how they count can be kind of subjective. And if you don't fit in the box, then that it doesn't count to some degree.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  But walk us through your Midas list locking of the horns. And are you submitting? Are you going to give them your returns? I don't submit. I'm too legit to submit. So no, I will, I will not be, I will not be submitting to the Midas list. I did it when I was much more insecure and earlier in my career. You know, I submitted, I think, two or three years to the list, the numbers. It's all completely subjective. So it's, it actually falls into this category of what I call these faux quantitative type, type things. And, you know, one could argue, one of the really common metrics in when you invest in, in, in private technology companies is NPS, net promoter score. That's like a faux quantifiable. I'm ESG, environmental, social good.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  It's kind of a faux quantifiable. You create these sort of fake metrics, but really it's sort of the subjective, subjective type thing. You're trying to quantify something that's fundamentally qualitative. And the Midas list server is a different cut on this where they, they ask the VCs to submit. You can go to submitmidastdata.com. There's an actual website you can check out. Entrepreneurs should really check that website out. I'd really encourage founders to go look at submitmidastdata.com. See what data the Midas is actually connecting or collecting on your businesses. All because these venture capitalists want to be ranked on this list. And at the end of the day, all of that data, it's really just information gathering for the list keepers, for the, for the list keepers.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  And in fact, they rank things. Ultimately, it's, it's, there's subjective judgment that that actually drives the ultimate ranking. And they even admit that in the, in the asterisks on the submit, submit Midas data site. So, you know, you always have to disclose your biases. One of my, one of my mentors who I have a lot of respect for us is praying, phrase, sorry. We're like, it's, it's okay to have biases, but you. How to disclose them and you know, my biases, I'm very strongly biased against the Midas list because I should have been on it. I should have been on it many times and they're biased against me. And then at the end of the day, I'm just too legit to submit. So, you know, the VCs can keep fighting over, fighting over their ranking on the Midas list. I'm busy generating vibes over here and we'll let, we'll let, you know, we'll see, you know, what happened to old King Midas was he,

• 23:47Speaker 02

  his lust for gold led to his death and we'll sort of see what happens to Midas list. I just created the pop list and I just put you as number one. So my subjective list has you at the top. Oh yeah. Okay. Now we're vibing.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I got one more question. Then I got my brothers here. They got a couple of questions for you, but there's this framework, fuck you money versus ignore you money. What's the difference? You know, I, I, look, I'm, I, I sort of try to have a positive energy. So I'm, you know, I'm sort of pessimistic about, about a lot of things with, with the future. I try and focus on, on the good and you know, it's, it just doesn't really feel worth to me in life, like trying to really fuck someone over. Like there are, there are these hyper successful people where it's like, okay, now that I have this level of wealth, I can just use this to fuck this person over. I'm just going to fuck them. And that's not really ever been a motivating thing for me. I kind of feel like free at this point where it's like, I don't have to worry about like fucking other people over.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I can live my life. I can work with people I really care about at Bedrock and with the companies that we invest in. If someone has wronged me and trust me, many, many people have wronged me over the years. There's a very long list of people that have, that have wronged me, but, but I just choose to ignore them. I don't really want to fuck with anyone and I, I feel like orienting around this fuck you money concept is actually quite unhealthy. It's, it's actually maybe borderline. It's not nihilistic. At least you believe in fucking people over, but there's definitely something somewhat unhealthy about that being sort of the animating factor for you. Once you've made it. Joe, John, what questions do you guys have? Yeah. Jeff, thanks for doing this. First off, your chain is giving off good vibes. So like that right there. It's like $5. I think I got it at 7-Eleven or something, but I'm, yeah, trying to, trying to not look like a.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Or something like that.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  I respect it even better than it was cheaper. So what's going on in San Francisco? You used to live there for a decade. You've obviously moved to Austin. What are the problems they're facing? And how do you think that impacts kind of the companies you're investing in? Man, well, there's a whole litany of problems. I'm definitely not an expert on it. I haven't lived there. So if the California F T B, the tax, the tax collection agency, I've not lived in California since 2017. So I'm, I'm really not positioned to, to comment, to comment too much on, on San Francisco today. But certainly they've screwed up all of the key things. So it's been crimes, you sort of need a relatively safe city. So that's sort of this completely out of control D A and in Chesa, who has just completely destroyed things from a crime standpoint.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  You've got the homeless issue, which San Francisco had, you know, the wealthiest city really in the world has the most income inequality, the most wealth inequality in the United States. That city's had decades to solve the homelessness problem that they sort of haven't been able to tackle it. They've alienated the tech entrepreneurs, the people who really brought the prosperity to the region. And there is sort of this mass exodus type thing going on. I really hope it can get fixed. The challenge, I think, at a sort of very nuanced level is you have a very powerful board of supervisors. Actually, this is a challenge in Austin where I live now as well, where you've got a weak mayor and sort of all of these, all of these supervisors where it's very hard to really get anything done.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  And so I think there's a sense in which if you're a city, you sort of want a government structure. It's quite easy to get things done, quite easy to make changes, make decisions. And San Francisco has an opposite, extreme opposite version of this, where it's almost impossible to get things done. This is the way that board of supervisors works and there's a lighter weight version of this in Austin. Although I think things are in much, much, much better shape here, but um, I am, yeah, really bearish on S F. I think Silicon Valley will still remain the epicenter. So, you know, one of the things that's, you know, good about Silicon Valley is there's lots of boring places outside of San Francisco that are very different. You could live in the East Bay, you could live in the, the South Bay. And I think a lot of folks, you know, will just continue to choose to do that.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  There's a version of that in Austin. It's somewhat more boring than Miami, uh, which for me is a feature, not a bug. But, you know, different strokes for different folks. John, what questions you got?

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Thanks, Jeff, for doing this. Really appreciate it. It's nice to meet you. Bitcoin is definitely a vibe. I'm gonna have to agree on that.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  One hundred, one hundred, yeah. I'm curious, even when the Bitcoin protocol becomes the norm, what companies and different, I guess, features are you excited to see being built? Yeah, I mean, look, I think, I think Bitcoin right now to me, I still buy into the store of value narrative there. I feel like maybe Ethereum is becoming the programmable money type, type thing. And then I really am intrigued by, by, by NFTs and, and, you know, some of these other, you know, I think Solana is very interesting. I'm, I'm trying to wrap my head more around NFTs and, and get an understanding there. But I, I really do just believe that there's such a high volume. When I think about all the most, you know, talented, interesting,

• 28:36Speaker 02

  like people with unique, sort of one of a kind vibes, a lot of those people are going into this world, into this universe. And I, I definitely think it's here to stay in some form. We obviously have a sort of existential risk with, with the governments, but I do think it's, it's here to stay in some form. And, and I'm, I'm excited about the whole ecosystem. I do feel like I've been not as engaged really as I should have been, you know, back in, back in 2014, I spoke at Coin Summit London. I was sort of early to this whole world and I, I remember that conference very well. And I, I sort of just ended up buying some of these things and holding them and every, you know, I've sort of sold along the way. Every time I've sold, I've regretted it. And so I'm working right now, my mission

• 29:17Speaker 02

  for 2022 is I have to just get much more engaged on this entire universe. And, you know, I think there are things more off the radar, like radar, like, like Urbit, that are, that are worth exploring and, and worth really digging into. But there's a, a ton of creative energy and a lot of excitement on my end around, around this whole area. Jeff, one of my questions for you is, what's your normal day look like? Like in terms of you, you've got a couple of different things going on, but you also try to stay outside that flow of information. You kind of take this different approach. What do you do during the day? And like, what does that kind of schedule look like? Well, I try to spend as, as, as little time as possible on Zoom. So this is an exception to my rules. I'm hardly ever on Zoom. I do a lot of running, walking, hiking,

• 30:01Speaker 02

  climbing. So I like to be outside. I like to be Active. I like to be physical. I'm then just meeting with smart, interesting people like in person. So if I have to hop on a plane to meet with someone, I'll do that. I love, you know, people come visit me. But I spend a lot of time meeting with people. That's one of the great joys of sort of this, this stage of sort of the pandemic is a little bit less acute right now. And, uh, and so it's meeting different people, trying not to have a schedule. So sort of basic routines. I want to sort of eat at the same time every day. I want to try and work out at the same time every day. Uh, you want to carve out time for independent thinking. They're obviously basic things you have to do in terms of like, you know, there's board meetings. There are things like that that you've got to do, but I try and schedule those in predefined blocks and then leave them as much unstructured time as possible.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Uh, for thinking, for activity, for being, you know, helpful and mindful as possible and not get pulled in. You know, again, back to vibe, not get pulled into letting an algorithmic agenda, you know, whatever the algorithm is, uh, dictate on my agenda for the day. I'm sort of always trying to avoid that very consciously. Got it. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about Bedrock? Jeff Lewis org on Twitter and it's spelled G E O F F Lewis org. And you can check out our website bedrockcap.com. Thanks so much. All right. Well, hold on. I'm not letting you leave. I got one more question. What's your, what's your pitch to founders? If founders are building a business, why, uh, why should they work with you? Or what, what do they get out of it? What's kind of when you sit down with the founder? What's the Bedrock pitch?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Well, the best salespeople never sell, so I can't disclose that on the, on the, on the head screen.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  That's the best pitch possible. All right. Bedrockcap.com, uh, as we said? That's right. B E D R O C K. Like make the bedrock cap C A P dot com. All right. Bedrockcap.com or Jeff Lewis org. Uh, Jeff, the people in the comments are asking how much you're benching these days. I'm like, I'm like, I'm a little bit yoked right now. I haven't, I haven't been hitting the gym as much as I usually do. I've been more focused on cardio. So I'm a bit emaciated, but we'll, we'll do some more shirtless stuff soon.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Walking program. I got it. Wait, hold on, because I got you out here. I gotta say this. The very first one that he put up with the temp check, but I don't think you were calling it temp check at first. I think it was just a video that he did. He was in Hawaii. And everyone was like, what the fuck is going on? Where is he? And then of course I talked to him and he was like, oh, I'm in Hawaii. And I was like, are you gonna keep doing them? And he was like, yeah, of course. And then the next one was like you on like a rock somewhere in like nature. And I was like, this is gonna get crazy real fast. And there's gonna be some people who love it and some people who absolutely hate it. And that's exactly what happened. So I love it. I think you should keep doing it. It's coming back. So it's coming back. Game on. Thanks for the support. Awesome, man. All right. Thanks so much for doing this. We'll talk soon. Thanks, Jeff. You later. Thanks, everyone. Bye.