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

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

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. Catherine Boyle is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In this conversation, we discuss American dynamism, investments like Anduril and Flock Safety, and why building and funding American-centric technology is so important. I really enjoyed this conversation with Catherine, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high-yield interest account, a US dollar loan product against your crypto collateral, and a no-fee cryptocurrency trading product. BlockFi also just released a brand-new

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  dot io slash pomp. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:14Speaker 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.

• 2:38Anthony Pompliano?

  We have Katherine Boyle, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and probably one of my favorite investors, because I don't think I've ever told you this before, but you're a very principled investor.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  That means a lot.

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I know it means a lot to you. But what we're going to talk about is a couple of different things. I think we should start. You wrote this piece, which I think you've talked about previously, but then you actually wrote like a seminal, I think is the right word, seminal piece.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  You're being too complimentary.

• 3:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, is the is the right terminology, called American dynamism. Now, first thing I should call is dynamism. I always mispronounce, so I've practiced all morning to make sure I say it right.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Appreciate it. It's a big word. It's a big one.

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  The second thing is I Googled around to make sure I really knew what it was. And for those that don't know what that word means, basically, it's momentum and energy. And one of the examples on the internet, which to a small brain like me, made a lot of sense, was like, somebody who has high energy gets a lot more stuff done during the day than somebody who's not. And so you would have dynamism if you have high energy. So I was like, okay, like, that makes sense.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43Anthony Pompliano?

  What is American dynamism? Right? When you when you put a country before it, that isn't the same thing as just a person having high energy during the day. Like, how do you think about American dynamism?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and I actually love your simple definition in terms of it's movement.

• 3:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I got a lot of it.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  No, no, no, but that's truly what it is. But I think there's, there's a broader story as to why we think it's so important that we focus on American dynamism now. So there's been a lot of, you know, cultural critics who've talked about the decline of America. And people point to the 70s where, you know, it, housing and education became more expensive. And when you look at sort of the core factors of American decline that people point to, it's Loss of civic and institutional trust, a huge one that we saw during COVID, where any sort of civic institution, whether it's education, whether it's universities, whether it's religious institutions, they're all declining in American trust. The second thing people point to is sterility, the lack of or the declining birth rate. A country that does not believe in its future ultimately decides not to have children.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  And the third thing that people point to is memetic culture. When you look at the number one blockbusters, any type of movies, any types of books, they're all based on previous books. The creativity that we thrive on as an American society is just exporting creativity from different generations. And so when we think about what is going to pull us out of this stagnation, I think the only thing that we can bet on is founders building a future in technology. And the reason why that is so important is when you look back at the last 25 years, the things that are not declining are the companies that are being built. I point to, in the last 25 years, if you looked at 1996, there were no technology companies in the top six companies by market cap. Now they're all technology companies.

• 5:20Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  So it's incredible how fast technology has changed the prospects of America. But we need to see that not just in the internet or in the sectors where it's easy to build. We need to see that momentum in places where it's hard to build and places that touch all Americans. So for us, American dynamism is companies that are building for the national interest. It's aerospace, education, it's defense. It's companies that touch government and the workings of government, but are ultimately trying to solve our biggest national problems.

• 5:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So what's fascinating to me is, and you wrote in the piece about this institutional failure. Like, I think that if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today and you're like, you'd be like, what the hell happened? Right? And you would see that in everything from the technology we have to literally the entire population trusted certain institutions and now everyone just thinks it's a joke.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And some of the examples that you use in here is the Afghanistan withdrawal and stuff like that. And what is top of mind for me right now is the media's reporting that the US just went and did this airstrike and immediately, it was like I had two different timelines, right? I saw some people being like, this is amazing. We took out this terrorist leader, like all the talking points that you would expect. And other ones being like, hey, by the way, like, we actually know that civilians were killed in this and like, it was a bad situation. And so the reason why I use that as an example is like, I don't know what happened. Right now, I'm not here to try to sift through public information because the truth is like, we're never going to get all the information and that's unfortunate, but like, that's just a reality.

• 6:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But that's a story that is now possible because of Twitter, because of technology, because people go out and seek it. And to me, it's a story of distrust, whereas if you trust an institution, you just blindly take whatever the talking points are and you're like, okay, let's move on. What they said is true and anyone who kind of digresses from that is misinformation. And we can get into that. But like, how do you think about just the way that the society has presented the information around this? And how much of it is we now have a default of distrust versus what maybe before was a default of we just trusted these institutions?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and I think that's a good thing. I mean, I think the interesting thing that has happened is that there are now more voices on the internet. Like, I think we've talked a lot about Substack before. We've talked about companies that actually allow alternative viewpoints to flourish. And that's a hallmark of America. That's the First Amendment right there. And so we should be really excited that technology is actually supporting the values of this country in that respect. I think the interesting thing that is, when we're talking about American dynamism that we're most excited about is that it used to be that to work on these big problems, you had to work directly with government. And you had to go through a 10, 15, 20-year sales cycle. And we talk about the DOD. These companies that work directly with the DOD are 100 years old. They were founded in 1920. And so when you think about what's happened over the last

• 8:05Speaker 02

  few years is that a lot of founders are now saying, we want to work on really hard problems. We know we're going to have to work with regulators. We know we're going to have to sell to government in certain cases, but we're going to move at a speed that's the internet speed. We're going to move at the speed of Silicon Valley and we're going to innovate. We're going to try to do things as efficiently as possible. And I think that's what we're excited about is that more and more founders are looking at the big problems in society and they're saying, we're going to build for ourselves, build outside of the confines of what you had to build inside before.

• 8:35Anthony Pompliano?

  So this brings the question of like,

• 8:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the critique of the technology industry, right? And again, I'll get yelled at because I won't get all the critiques right. But I think that that argument would basically be, oh, the technology industry wants to privatize everything. The technology industry thinks that they can solve every problem. What do these people know that, you know, the government doesn't know? And it's very much, I think, like the anti arrogance argument of like, oh, these people think that they can solve problems. But to your point, the track record of the technology industry is that they have solved a lot of problems. Right? And so, sure, there are examples where things haven't worked out, or people spent a bunch of money and it ended up, you know, going to zero. And there's plenty of examples that people laugh at and point or whatever. But on a net basis, technology has been incredibly accretive to humanity. It's been incredibly accretive for the United States, from an economic prosperity, job

• 9:22Anthony Pompliano?

  creation, innovation, et cetera. How do you think about the balance between like the need for some public, whether it's funding, you know, government organizations, accountability, all that, versus like the ability for the private sector to actually push the pace on a lot of these things?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, there's, there's a lot in there. And I think one of the things that I'm constantly telling people in Washington is that, you know, there's big tech and the big tech companies have now, they're legacy companies now. They're 15, 20, 30 years old in some cases. And so everyone points to big tech and says, oh, it's gotten too big. I work with small tech. I work with startups. You know, I work with, with napkin stage companies of people saying, I'm really upset with the status quo and I want to build something new and I want to solve a problem from first principles. And that is the American experiment or experience. That's like the American dream, you know, starting a small business and scaling it as fast as possible so that you can solve a problem that's unique to your community, that's unique to your family. So, so it's, you know, in some ways, I think like people, people hate on tech, but not all tech is the same. And the tech that we're talking about is early stage technology companies that are

• 10:21Speaker 02

  looking at problems and saying, we're not going to do it within a big company. We're not going to do it within legacy prime contractors that have been around 100 years. We're going to do it inside of a company that's going to scale the way that it should. And I, and I think that is, that's, that's more and more common. I mean, we're seeing this coming from founders. We're seeing like, this is the thing that people want to work on. They don't necessarily want to go to Washington and solve problems. They want to solve it from where their, their community is. And that's, that's an exciting thing.

• 10:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's use Anduril, I think, as Kind of an example here. I know that you think you've invested in multiple rounds of this business.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And the founder's Palmer Lucky, or one of the founders who previously did Oculus. And so obviously a technologist at heart. And there's a number of other great technologists, entrepreneurs, operators, even venture capitalists that all came together to start this. And if you just Google Anduril, right, the description of the website is just Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OC OS, an AI-powered, open operating system that brings autonomy to defense's toughest missions. Now, that's what I expect from a technology company. That is not what I would expect from the government to describe what they're building. And so I think just like literally at the most basic level, the way that the technology industry thinks about what they're building, the way they describe the technology is very different.

• 11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  What is so interesting about this business as an example of like pushing forward kind of this American dynamism?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And what's interesting about Anduril is that they speak both languages. I love that you've brought up the language because one of the things that I've constantly kind of harped on between government and Silicon Valley is that it's like two different worlds. They have two different languages, two different customs. Everyone in Silicon Valley is wearing a hoodie. Everyone's in Washington's wearing a suit. They can't speak, you know, they can't understand each other. And so what I think is really unique about Anduril is that it's a team of people who've worked with the government in the past. A lot of them came out of Palantir. They have tremendous empathy for the customer. There's a lot of veterans there. There's a lot of people who understand exactly what the military goes through. And because they had that sort of unique understanding of what the pain points are, they were able to build this company, again, from first principles, saying, we are going to be a software AI company at heart

• 12:21Speaker 02

  that solves the most important challenges of the military, but we also understand how procurement works. We understand that there's amazing people working in the DOD, working very hard to try to get this technology, and that they're part of a bureaucracy that they didn't create. In fact, it was created before they were born. So, you know, they're just as frustrated as Silicon Valley is in terms of working together with government. So what I, what I think is really exciting about Anduril is they've been successful. You know, they've been able to work with the government on multiple contracts. They just announced a very large contract with SOCOM the other day. And when you look at founders who take on really hard problems where they, you know, they could have easily, you know, built a pure software business that That you know, everyone in Silicon Valley would have understood. But they said, we're going to do something very hard. It's going to be a big challenge. It's going to take a long time. It's going to take a lot of capital.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And ultimately, we are going to be a prime contractor that sells to the US government that looks like the Lockheed's and the Raytheon's of yesteryear. And it's such an important mission. And this is what I always want to stress. It's such an important mission that the most talented engineers in America said, we want to work at Anduril. Like, and that is what I think sometimes the government misses is that the most talented engineers don't want to work for 100-year-old companies. They don't want to go into government and spend a nine to five in the bureaucracy. They really want to work with companies that challenge them, with people who challenge them and go after the hardest problems. And so that's what's exciting about this company is in five years, it has completely changed the language around how Silicon Valley wants to work with government across a variety of domains.

• 13:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and for those that don't know, when we're talking about hard problems, this is not like, hey, who can write software code that does XYZ? What we're talking about is literally counter UAS systems, counter intrusion, maritime, counter intrusion, autonomous air systems. So literally self-driving aircraft is kind of a simplistic way to think about it. Underwater vehicles that are autonomous, et cetera. And so these are things that I think if most people said, hey, I want to build, let's say, autonomous underwater vehicle. I don't think they like, oh, the government's probably going to do a good job of that.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, and again, it's generalizations. That doesn't mean that they've never done that before. It doesn't mean that they can't provide funding and all this stuff. But I think generally, people think like, oh, that's probably a technology company that's going to do it. And so how important is it to marry those different, maybe not experiences, but like expertise, right? So the ability to build a technology, obviously, is hard.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But then also the ability to actually get through the bureaucracy. I think that, to me, is the more impressive part, is you're basically signing up, knowing what you're getting into, right? You're like, hey, we're going to go and we're going to navigate all these different things. Some of it is very clear-cut. There's processes and bids and primes and subcontractors. And some of it is more like, hey, I got to go talk to this person 20 times in Washington DC so that they don't think that we're, you know, bad actors or whatever. And it's like, how do you? Think about the non-technical components of building a company like this and it being kind of out of the control of a lot of things that technology investors normally would like to see like on paper.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's such a good question because I think everyone thinks, okay, if you can build it, they will buy it. That is not how that's not how most companies work, but it's definitely not how the US government works. And I think the reason why I'm hopeful because I oftentimes when I write, people say, wow, it's really depressing what you're writing. And I'm like, no, I'm an early stage investor. I'm an optimist. I think things are changing. But I think the reason why I'm hopeful is that you finally have examples of winners. Like you finally have SpaceX, which is the coolest company in America of just pushing through that 10 year slog of, okay, we're doing really, really difficult science, but we're going to get to Mars. You have people like Elon Musk, who talk about how hard it is to do these things, but have made it really cool to work hard. And you have Palantir, you have Anduril, you have now examples of people who've shown that it can be done. And all Silicon Valley needs and really all America needs frankly, is examples of people

• 16:02Speaker 02

  doing hard things where other people say, okay, I want to go after those hard problems too. And so our view is that over the next 10 years, we're going to see people graduating from great engineering programs or self taught engineers saying, you know what, like, I don't just want to build for the internet. Like, I really want to build for some of these physical problems that I see in my community, that I see in my country, because I know how difficult they are and because I know how meaningful and impactful they are. So we really have winners now. And I think that that's what ultimately the government needs to see. And that's what founders need to see as well.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  How important was SpaceX to kind of kickstarting or maybe re kickstarting a lot of this kind of technology, you know, Silicon Valley, being able to build this stuff?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Where are they the shot across the bow of like, okay, there's an entire generation now that sees it's possible?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it changed everything. And the reason why I think it changed everything, I mean, I love Elon's quote where he says, like, you know, I was dumb at the internet after PayPal, you know, and it's like just seeing someone do something very difficult. Like, part of the reason why Elon was successful and, you know, and he's talked about this, a number of people have talked about this is, you know, he put all of his private capital into these companies. Like, this was something that he said, I am betting on this. And when other people wouldn't give him capital to be able to, you know, to test rockets, like, he was doing it himself. And so I think like, that was something where, you know, the This generation of companies, like something we always say is like a lot of government companies require billionaire co-founders and it's no surprise that SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril have very successful founders who've previously built amazing companies and can now go after

• 17:29Speaker 02

  harder problems. The thing that I think we're thinking through is we have the capital and we're seeing founders who want to do this and you shouldn't have to be a billionaire to serve your country. Like you really shouldn't have to put all of your money into something because other investors and because the government doesn't want to work with you. So what I'm excited about is there's now incredible examples of success where investors like us and other investors in Silicon Valley can say, hey, like there are great founders out there and we're willing to back them.

• 17:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I have a random question for you that you just made me think of. I hope that this doesn't, I hope this makes sense. So if I remember the stats correctly, I think after, maybe it was the Vietnam War, the American publicly traded companies, it was like 80% of them, the CEO was a veteran. Now, some of that was, we just sent a bunch of people to war, right? And so naturally, you know, kind of young males coming back that eventually 20 years later in their careers, ended up rising in the ranks of corporations. There was a lot of like work trends of you went to work at one company for a long period of time and so you kind of worked your way up. But also too, is there was this whole like training of leadership, etc. in the military. The United States has been at war,

• 18:36Anthony Pompliano?

  depending on who you ask, for 20 years, some 200 and something years. But this generation, right? If you will, kind of maybe, I don't know, 60 and below, for the most part, has been at war for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there's a lot of people who have served, even though it's a small percentage in terms of the US population. How does that play into some of this like American dynamism, like feeling like a service to the country, having, frankly, the leadership skills equipped to actually build some of these businesses, having the on the ground experience? Like, how do you think about that part?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I love that you bring this up because veterans do have extraordinary leadership capabilities and we're lucky. We have a lot of veterans at Andreessen Horowitz and it's something that I think we're passionate about, championing this message that veterans make incredible founders for that reason, because they have that training. What I was thinking about when you were talking is, one of my favorite scenes in Mad Men's, one of my favorite shows is they're going Around the boardroom, basically saying what war they served in. And this was, of course, pre 1973, before the revocation of the draft. And something I've talked a lot about is, I think, the biggest change in America was, and it was something that was unanimously praised. Everyone loved Nixon for doing it. But the biggest change in America was when we said, we are not going to have compulsory service. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be optional. It's going to be something. And what you've seen is a bifurcation,

• 19:50Speaker 02

  where it used to be that everyone in America served alongside each other. And that was how people learned about each other. That was, you know, you had camaraderie. You had a brotherhood in many ways because you served alongside your communities. And that was part of the ethos of the country. And so we don't have that anymore. And so I don't think it's surprising that our bureaucracy is filled with, you know, it's optional bureaucracy, but there's a lot of people who don't necessarily want to serve their country. They go into finance. They go to Wall Street. They go into other fields. And so we see very passionate people saying, we want to go into technology. And the reason we are going into technology is because we want to serve our country. And so I think that is probably the most important call that you can have, is to build something for your country.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And, you know, we're certainly seeing it across the founders we work with. It's something they care about.

• 20:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So a quick Google search turns up three data points. One is, right now, I guess this year or last year, CEOs of the S and P 500, 8% were officers in the military. It's not just in the military, but officers, which is far above the average percentage of the entire US male population, who served in the military, only 3%. So kind of an outsized number. Second is CEOs with military experience have longer tenures as CEO than those without. And also CEOs with military background are more likely to deliver strong performance. There's a specific study, this Corn Fairy study, that found that companies led by military veterans as CEOs delivered higher average returns than the S and P 500 index over 1, 3, 5, and 10-year horizons. And what I always wonder is like,

• 21:21Anthony Pompliano?

  how much of that is just like, these are people who went into the military, but were going to be successful anyways. And like, that's why they were drawn to the military, versus the military actually kind of shaped who they were. But a lot of what you talk about and do is not just around the military, right? So there's other things that go into this kind of idea of American dynamism. Like what else fits other than just like, let's go serve the Defense Department or the government?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, it's really anything that works with government. And so I'll talk about another company that I love that I think is a perfect example in the public safety realm. Because when you think about, you know, one of the biggest issues in the media today is law enforcement, it's questions around safety in our cities. And there's a company that was founded out of Y C, I believe it was in 2017, based in Atlanta. So this was even before, you know, pre-COVID. You know, it wasn't like people were talking about all these new tech, you know, epicenters. It's like you had to be in Silicon Valley. So this company called Flock Safety, founded by a repeat entrepreneur, Garrett Langley, he asked himself after his first company, he's like, what's the big problem I want to solve? I want to solve crime. And most crimes in America are committed with cars. It's vehicular crime. If you can track the car, you can end the crime.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  And so he asked himself, he's like, you know, we have all these great cameras everywhere and like the cost of building a camera is so cheap. Like, why isn't that we don't have cameras around the city that can look at crimes that happen particularly? And this is where it's just incredible what he's been able to do. Amber Alerts, like, why do we not have networks of cameras that can help solve Amber Alerts when a child is kidnapped? So he started selling in Atlanta. He started actually selling to HOAs, homeowner associations, selling to, you know, private citizens. And then got pulled from law enforcement. You know, chief of police in random cities across America started calling him, saying, hey, we need this. We have a police officer shortage. We love the fact that you're tracking cars and not people. Can you, can you come to our community and can we put some of these up in places where we see these sort of crimes with cars happen?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  And it's just, it's exploded. It's across the country now. And what's amazing is, you know, local news stories, you know, you see them every month. It's, we solved an Amber Alert in a small town in Georgia or a small town in Texas, because this, this camera and this network of cameras was able to track a car. And especially, I mean, one of those, I'm getting goosebumps even thinking about it, but one of the most recent ones that happened was a baby was stolen, a one-year-old baby. And it was a husband and wife team that changed the baby. It was dressed as a boy, and then they changed him to dress as a girl. So like, the baby would have never been found. It's every parent's worst nightmare. But here's a tech company that built a cheap camera that is just helping police officers solve the most horrific crimes. And so, you know, when you think about, you know, tech gets a lot, as we're talking about tech gets a lot of heat, these are like, this is tech for good.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  I mean, this is, this is solving like the most horrible things that can happen in society. And it's, it's a team that's just so mindful of the work they're doing with government.

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So I have some questions about that specific company in a second, but I don't think you know the story. In 20 Fifteen, I think, is when we built it. I was working at Facebook and they came out with this Amber Alert product. And the whole idea was we have hundreds of millions, if not billions of people staring at a newsfeed all day long. What if we could figure out a way to do this? And there was a woman who used to work at the FBI, who now worked at Facebook. And she had this idea and she gets all the credit in the world for basically championing this, both in the United States, and then she went globally with it around the world. And the whole idea was if an Amber Alert went out, you could basically take all the information that's the law enforcement agencies are putting together and just put it into the newsfeed and simply say, hey, look for this car, look for this type of person, look

• 24:39Anthony Pompliano?

  for, you know, the baby, here's a photo, the whole nine yards. And we launched it and about six weeks later, we get to the office one day and quite literally, there was a baby that was found. And it was some story about like somebody had kidnapped the baby, they handed it to like their boyfriend, or I think it was their boyfriend, he's at home, he's on Facebook, he like looks at the baby, like, oh shit, I have the baby, right? Like, you know, he calls the police and says, uh, this person gave me this baby, it's not my baby, you know, please don't arrest me, whatever. And I remember thinking to myself, like, there was no special technology there. That was just a awareness play. It was just like, get it out in front of more people. What you're talking about is something that takes that idea 10,000 steps further and

• 25:21Anthony Pompliano?

  says, well, what happens when you start to use the technology itself to actually solve the issues, right? And be able to do this from a remote standpoint, which gives you much more leverage to be able to kind of canvas areas, et cetera. With that, I think, again, like the critique of it would be, oh my God, now there's cameras that we're, you know, living under in a society and like, that's authoritarian, that's all this stuff. How do you think about like the good versus bad? And like, understanding that it's a net good, which doesn't mean that there's not downsides, but like, how do you think about the trade offs there?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and this is an important question. I mean, I love that you asked like before, you know, how do you think about working with government and should private companies be working with government, that sort of thing? I mean, what's great about, this is a perfect example of, these are police, you know, these are police departments that are using the technology and they're the ones making the decision. They're the ones who are trained specially to figure out, okay, how do we solve these crimes? They have the investigators. So it's not the company doing this and kind of, you know, usurping the powers of government in that way. It's a company that's supporting police officers in their important mission. And trusting them to make the right decisions. But I think it's a good question. I mean, one of the things I love about what Flock is doing is they're they're tracking cars. They're not tracking people. And you know, that's, that's something I think is very important. They have a, you know, a number of advisors who help them think through these thorny questions. But I think we can all agree that, you know, it's, it's

• 26:32Speaker 02

  when you see what's happening in terms of labor shortages across a wide variety of, of industries and, and public safety is one of them, we are going to have to use technology to make up for that shortfall. And I think people want safe communities. They want to make sure that their children are safe. They don't, they don't want to see amber alerts on their phone every day because children are getting kidnapped in America. So if we can use technology to solve those problems in a way that, that people are comfortable with, and I think people are comfortable with solving amber alerts. I think it's just a, a, an important thing and it's something that we, you know, we think deeply about.

• 27:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things in both of these companies, Andro and Flock, is they're very unique solutions. Right. And some of it is there's a technological kind of background and expertise that's needed to be able to understand it. Some of it's an understanding and empathy for the problem itself. It reminds me a lot. In the military, there are these devices called rhinos, which basically is in its most barbaric form, a stick that sticks out in front of the vehicle and it's kind of a heat box. And the, I don't know how true the story is, but the story within the military is that in the early days of the invasion of Iraq, there was a lot of infrared type IEDs where people would basically see the

• 27:42Anthony Pompliano?

  heat of the engine go past a certain point. There would be like a half second to second delay. And then they would shoot a projectile and you could basically time based on how fast it was going. You're going to shoot it into the passenger or driver side of the door and it was triggered by the, the heat of the engine going by. So pretty sophisticated kind of attack vector. And so some young, again, according to the story in the military, some young private figured out, well, I'm tired of having this happen. And so he basically took a stick or like a pole, put it on the front of the vehicle. He put a ammo can with spark plugs in it to basically trigger, well, if we just do it, you know, 10 feet in front or five feet in front of the vehicle, then by the time it shoots, it'll basically miss the vehicle. And so the military is like, well, That's a great idea. We should do that on every single vehicle and they ended up

• 28:26Anthony Pompliano?

  commercializing it, etc. But I use that as the example because you gotta understand the attack vector. You gotta understand how the vehicles work. You gotta understand that the solution doesn't have to be some super complex thing that was drawn up in a boardroom that's gonna take five years to create and billions of dollars. But you also gotta care, right? And I think that's part of a lot of the stories that I've heard you talk about before, the companies that you've invested in, where these people genuinely care, but it's not just caring. They have the experience, they have the expertise. And it's like, how do you, as an investor, underwrite like all of these different ingredients? Because a lot of people who try to solve these problems and they're their elementary solutions, or they end up not building big companies.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  But you've got a pretty good track record of finding the right ones. Like, how do you do that evaluation process?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such a good point, because I think the best founders have such empathy for the customer that they are meeting with the customer and talking to the people on the ground every day. And like, that's, that's the difference. Like, I see so many companies that are spun out of, you know, Stanford labs, and it's, you know, it's brilliant minds and brilliant academics who've never left the lab. And it's like, this is gonna solve the biggest problem that the US military has. It's like, okay, have you ever talked to someone who served in the military? It's probably not gonna solve their problem. And if you, and if you haven't talked to them, you're certainly not gonna be able to sell to them. So, so there is something to be said of, I mean, to your point, you have to know how to be able to sell to the, to the government, but also you have to like, very much have empathy to the point where you're spending a lot of time. Because if you're not spending time with these people, if you're not understanding the unique reasons why it's so difficult to get through the procurement process, then, then you're, you're

• 29:53Speaker 02

  not gonna have the empathy you need to, to kind of stand the test of time.

• 29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about the funding that's needed for these things, Andorol, I think, has raised hundreds of millions, maybe a billion dollars to this point. I mean, just an enormous amount of money. It can't be funded only by one individual, right? For the most part, I mean, maybe, maybe Elon or somebody could at least get it off the ground. But also, even one venture firm probably can't kind of carry these things to the finish line, which I think is unique, because we see in consumer technology or somewhere else, you might see the same venture firm now, given that they're raising these huge funds, kind of do every single round. A lot of these other businesses, it doesn't seem like that's happening. And my guess is that it's just the capital requirement. But is there other dynamics or like, how do you think about the need for many different

• 30:41Anthony Pompliano?

  parties to come together, not just the founder, but also from the investment community to actually make these things happen?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this is the big difference between when SpaceX was founded and even when Palantir was founded. I mean, these are now, you know, companies that were founded 15, 20 years ago, almost. Like, the big difference is there's a lot of capital and there's a lot of people willing to underwrite risk. You know, venture capital, you know, 20 years ago was sort of a cottage industry. There were a few big players and, and, you know, they were funding a lot of innovation in software, but they weren't necessarily focused on these things because it's like there was a lot to do in the software revolution. And now I think that software revolution has moved to the physical world and there's more capital than ever across the ecosystem. And so the, the good thing is I do think private capital can build these companies. And, and I don't think it's just going to be billionaires anymore. We certainly wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be, you know, asking founders to be independently wealthy to, to build these companies. And we see so many founders who are just excited to start these problems and have learned from the previous generation.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Uh, but there's, there's a lot of capital and there's a lot of people who are excited. I mean, there is a network in Silicon Valley, people who are now excited about defense innovation. And that was not true, you know, five, seven years ago. And this is the thing I'm constantly, you know, saying in Washington is like, you have a lot of patriots in Silicon Valley who, who want to help solve the problem, like, let us help. Um, and so as long as we can start learning how to speak each other's languages, like that, that's, I think, the, the big thing that, that's kind of in the way of, of really hitting our stride. But to be, to be fair, I mean, a lot of companies are hitting their stride now.

• 31:59Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about founders that I can think of that are solving really, really big, hard problems with a degree of success already? So like, not just people who have aspirational, hey, I want to go solve this problem, but people who seem to be getting down the road. So Elon jumps to mind, uh, the Jeff Bezos's of the world, uh, even maybe like a kernel with Brian Johnson, right? We're kind of really going after something that isn't necessarily American dynamism as much as just like, it takes a lot of money and it's like

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Hard science.

• 32:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Crazy, hard science, you know, hard problem. They're all repeat founders, right? Or this is their second, third, fourth company. And yes, there's wealth involved, but how much of it is just like, you gotta cut your teeth? Even Elon, right? Like Zip2, again, he made it successful, but that wasn't necessarily the hardest problem, right? It was more of, I want to start a business. I want to be successful. Okay, here's kind of a starting point. Is there almost a requirement of you've had to kind of churn through a couple of other ideas, whether you've been successful or not, before you finally have like the confidence to try a hard problem? Or how do you think about that?

• 33:02Speaker 02

  So I think there's, there's very good examples of people who are second time founders, but the, the key differentiation, even beyond just the more capital existing is like, there's so much education now. Like there, like, I mean, your show didn't exist. Shows like yours didn't exist 20 years ago. I mean, it was like, no one was talking about how do you actually build a business? Like, no one was educating the public on, on how venture capital works. And now you can go on the internet, there's thousands of great podcasts, there's great books, like there's stories of how people like Elon did it. You know, it's, I think what we see, and we back a lot of first time founders who are extraordinary, very successful. And I think what we see is the people who are students of history are the ones who succeed.

• 33:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, if you've had the experience yourself, like you're going to remember that history really well. And so you're going to do a great job the next time too. But like, if you've studied history, like you've, you've certainly are, you know, if you've studied history, if you've read the lessons, if you're, if you're reaching out to the right networks, like, and you're learning from people who've done it before, I, I think first time founders can build extraordinary businesses.

• 33:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't want to over promise and under deliver. We don't know anything that we're doing here, so I just want to make sure that's clear to everybody. What questions you guys got?

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Captain, thanks for coming.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Of course. My question would just be about how you think about the, the trust that the public has in government in general, right? I think we've all seen the statistics. It's declined greatly from maybe like the 1960s to today. So just talk me through kind of how you think that role plays with entrepreneurship? And then where you see it going from here?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a great question. I mean, I think the, the example I point to is COVID. It's like, what are the things that people were really excited about in COVID that were working? It was Amazon, you know, every, you know, same day delivery. It was DoorDash, it was not having to leave your house. It was Instacart. It was these companies that were actually like solving functions that were very much needed when the government said. Hey, we are going to completely close down. It was Moderna, it was our pharmaceutical industry, Warp Speed. There were good examples, I think, of government actually working with private industry to say, hey, we actually have to figure out how to solve some of these problems. But it wasn't government. Government is, when you look, we're two years into COVID and there's still massive debate about whether like three-year-olds should be wearing masks in preschools. So it's like government hasn't necessarily solved the problems that are in its domain, the policy problems.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And that's where government's really good, or should be really good. Obviously, they've had some issues in the last couple of years. But like in tech, I mean, the things that were holding this country together, these were venture-backed businesses and public businesses that were able to Zoom. Like, our entire lives were built on Zoom for two years. If you're a knowledge worker, and I think that's something we need to remember, is that tech was a major force for keeping the country afloat during what could have been an even more horrific time.

• 35:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And is this a main driver in your mind of like people going towards and helping public policy? If they see that, for example, in COVID, many people don't believe that they've handled it the right way, right? So like, is this a thing where you see entrepreneurs going towards this? And saying, hey, maybe we can build something that's helpful here?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  And I think we need more of it. I always point to Ryan Peterson at Flexport, who went, right before Christmas, when we were looking at all of these, out of the port of Long Beach, we were seeing all these containers that weren't going to be delivered. He actually got on a boat. None of the lawmakers in Long Beach got on a boat, but he got on a boat and he went around and he said, here's the problem. Here's what we need to do in the next 24 hours in order to stop this bottleneck. It was a very, it was an engineering-focused mentality of, okay, how do we solve this problem in the shortest amount of time? And how do we get things running again? And so I think we need to bring in our best and brightest in the engineering realms, in the science realms, like the people who are building in the private sector to actually not only advise on policy, but educate the American public. He didn't go into a back room in Washington and give solutions. He literally got on Twitter and was just like, these are the steps we need to take.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  And the American people were like, listen to this guy. He's brilliant. Like, he knows what he's talking about. So I just think we need founders to tell their own story. We need them to tell their solutions publicly. And we don't need people to wait for approval from Congress.

• 36:42Anthony Pompliano?

  How important is that? So he's like a perfect example, right? And in your piece, you wrote that, look, Flexport is initially considered like a government contractor. Then I thought it was like a GovTech or whatever you call it. He went, he found the problem in terms of like a first-person experience. I think he even went with somebody who historically had been dealing with the port. And so it wasn't just his knowledge, it was his plus somebody who did this on a daily basis. But then to your point, he didn't go and like write a letter to the governor or to the mayor or whatever. He like just started tweeting and then everyone just piled in. Everyone was like, oh, this guy sounds smart. Like, that's the smartest policy decisions that I've heard. And it was like stupid stuff, right? It's like, hey, they stack containers too high. We should do a five high, right? And is it essential now to like, kind of go

• 37:26Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think the internet's good at sorting for good ideas. That's one of the biggest misconceptions is, you know, we're having this massive debate about is the internet good for the types of information that's out there? I actually think the internet's very good at sorting for good ideas and people are good at finding people who have smart ideas, especially around policy. I think you can still work with government. Like, I think there's always an argument that, like, especially on longer term strategy, if you're a company, like, you're gonna have to sell into government. Like, you need to be able to, you need to respect the customer and respect sort of how things work. But I do think when, you know, when we have these immediate problems, there's no better opportunity than just getting your voice heard. And like, and, you know, Ryan has a large following, but he's not Elon Musk. He just doesn't have the world watching him. And so I think founders need to realize, like, if you are founding a company, you are the voice of that company.

• 38:32Speaker 02

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

• 38:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. John, what do you have?

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you for joining us. So I want to talk about one part of your piece here that basically says that technology and people that are starting these businesses and solving critical problems is important, but also optimism and believing growth and opportunities is important. So how do you think about getting people excited to solve these problems? And what like incentive is there?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the incentive is Is an interesting question. I just think it has to be cool. And like the thing that I think Elon has done for this segment of companies is he's just made it really cool. There's nothing cooler than seeing a rocket, a reusable rocket come back from launch. Like there's nothing cooler than what Elon has been able to do. And so that I think is something that it leads to people being inspired. Like and for a long, you know, there's nothing inspiring about bureaucracy. Like there's nothing inspiring about red tape, about being told no, wait your turn. I think we're all in Miami for a reason. You know, Miami is an incredibly inspiring place where when you drive down the street, you see cranes everywhere. I came from San Francisco where it's like impossible to build anything. So it's like you just want to be inspired by there's growth, there's movement, there's possibility.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Like a culture of yes versus a culture of wait your turn or a culture of no. You're not, you're not old enough or you're not smart enough or you didn't go to the right school. And so I think Elon is the embodiment of that, but there's so many founders in his vein. They're going after hard problems that aren't waiting their turn and that very much, you know, have made it really cool. Palmer is that. I think Palmer is a really cool guy and like, you know, he's, he's someone with just like an incredible spirit in terms of the types of things he's trying to solve and the way he solves problems. And so when I see founders like that who are just like so intellectually earnest and curious and really focused on the problem. I mean, it's inspiring. It makes you, it makes you want to get up out of your chair.

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So along these lines, I think the most shocking part of your piece was 68% of Americans answered no to the question, will your children be better off than you will, which is I believe an all time high. And you said that it makes us the sixth most pessimistic country in the survey.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Which to me, when I was reading the definition of dynamism, this idea of like the high energy person. It goes hand in hand with the optimistic person, the person who believes something is possible. And I think that there's plenty of academic studies at this point that like, if you don't think you can accomplish something, you're just, your mind tricks your body and you don't do it. Right? But the opposite is true as well. And there's like the super cheesy stuff of like, you could stand in the mirror and tell yourself something a hundred times. And like, then you believe it. I don't think that's what's going on because that's almost like a unfounded belief or like blind optimism to the point of almost like insanity.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What we're talking about here is like, hey, I'm rational about how hard the problem is.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:30Anthony Pompliano?

  But somebody's got to do it. I think Ryan's example, Elon, Andoril, Flock, etc. Like, these are problems that if these individuals don't go try to solve them, they just probably don't ever get solved, right?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's urgent. I mean, that's the, I mean, it is sort of a pessimistic kind of statistic and a call to action in many ways, but it is urgent. Like, we need people to believe that this country is great. And I think, you know, we're coming out of, coming out of two years of lockdowns. You know, people are still debating again, like, three-year-olds in massive preschools, like, you know, like, to your point about, like, the fall of Afghanistan. I mean, that was a really hard thing for veterans to watch. It was a really painful thing for people to watch. And so I think we need a belief in this country that looks a lot like the belief when we believed we could land on the moon. And that was, when you think about how long ago that was, I mean, it's extraordinary what we are capable of doing as a country. And the people like Elon, the people like Palmer, the great founders that say, hey, like, this is impossible, this is hard, but I don't care. Like, this is urgent, and we need to solve this mission.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  And I'm asking everyone to work all the time to solve it. Like, we need that sort of call to action. And that's essentially what American dynamism is. Like, there's a lot of problems that need to be solved in this country. And like, we are willing to support anyone who's willing to get up out of their chair and solve them.

• 42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So I got two last questions. One of them somehow has become controversial, although I don't think that it should be, which is around hard work. I think I actually tweeted yesterday and was like, you know, hard work is not popular anymore, but it's essential. And I don't know anyone who's been successful that hasn't worked hard. When you're working on hard problems, it almost feels like hard work, persistence, like, all these kind of, you know, almost in some weird traditional values or qualities becomes even more important because the problem is hard.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you guys try to underwrite for that? Is that just a kind of a benchmark or like a, of course, they're gonna have to work hard? Like, how do you think about that as a quality or a feature for the companies and the teams that they build versus maybe what we see in other parts of society?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I love this question because I think part of the reason why this has become so controversial is because we talk about hard work in terms of careers. And when I meet with the best founders, it's not a career for them, it's a calling. Like, it is, it is a vision. It is them being inspired to do something where it keeps them up at night. They have to work on it and it's not, it's not a choice for them. I mean, Elon talks about this. He's like, I don't necessarily wish this burden on anyone else, but it is not a choice for me. I have to sleep on the factory floor. And I've met so many founders who were like that, where, you know, they don't necessarily talk about it publicly, but it is an obsession. It is a calling. They feel like they have been put on this earth to solve a problem. And I think there's a, everyone has a calling, like every, every person in this world has a calling. And so finding that calling, it doesn't turn into, oh, well, I'm working more hours and I'm, you know,

• 44:12Speaker 02

  it's, it turns into, we have to solve this problem or else. And so I firmly believe that, that, you know, it's, it's less about hard work. It's more about doing what it needs, what needs to be done in order to pursue your calling, to ultimately, you know, fulfill why you are here. And so that, that is what I think the greatest founders have. So they don't think about it, oh, I'm working 80, 90 hour weeks and my team has to work 80 or 90 hour weeks. They are inspiring their teams to say, hey, come on this mission with me. Solve this problem with me, because if we don't, no one else is going to. And I truly believe like that, that's, you know, people like Elon is people like Palmer. It's, it's a lot of the companies we've backed.

• 44:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think it's very obvious when people see this. And, and one of my favorite photos that kind of sums up the technology industry. I don't know if you've ever seen the photo of Elon. I think he's looking at a rocket going up and he's basically got his hands on his head and he's just like in awe of what he's watching.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's like, you know, this guy's been dreaming about this for 20, 30, 40 years. And still the second it happens, he's even in awe, right? And you're like, oh, that guy's actually a human, right? Like he thinks this is cool just as much as the rest of us.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I love that photo. I want to wrap up with this idea of like, what happens if we don't do this? Right? And, uh, I think that there's a couple of ways to think through this. One is, uh, America is only one country on a pretty big planet. Is there like a competitive aspect to this? And then also just like, what does it mean? Forget like what anybody else does. Like, what does it mean for the people that live in the United States? Or aspire to have the kind of, you know, Western centric ethos and values and lifestyle and capitalism, et cetera. Like, what's the? Opportunity cost almost if like we don't actually become successful in pursuing this.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I don't want to end on a negative note because

• 45:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll ask you a positive question.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, but I actually think like there's like failure is not an option here. One of my favorite quotes is actually a quote by Margaret Thatcher. And she says, Europe was built on history. America was built on philosophy. We're the only country that can say that like a true, like a true, an experiment that was, that came out of philosophy, that came out of anger. It came out of wanting to build something greater. And so we have to succeed. Like we don't have a history we can fall back on in terms of like, like we stand for something else. Like we stand for a group, we stand for values. We stand for, you know, a philosophy that was built that people come to this country to achieve great things. And so we can't really fail. And I don't think we will. I think there's so many examples, and this is why it's not a pessimistic piece.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  It's a hopeful piece. Like there's so many examples of people saying, hey, I'm not going to sit down. I'm not going to just wait my turn. I'm going to build something great. And it's never been easier to build a company. It's always a hard thing to build a company, but there are people who know how to do it now. There's capital for really great ideas. And so I think founding a company entrepreneurship is one of the most noble acts that anyone can do. And we're seeing more and more people turn to it.

• 47:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it is. It almost just feels like we need people to be optimistic and have aspiration again, right? And I think a lot about it became so easy, like the friction got reduced so much to just create a mobile app. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's plenty of mobile. I mean, I spend way too much time on Twitter every day. It's just a mobile app.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  We all do.

• 47:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, you know, you can have kind of like, I think of like the intellectual argument of like, oh, it's breaking down the barriers to information and like all that. Or you could just be like, no, it just sucks a bunch of my time. And like

• 47:31Speaker 02

  It's just fun.

• 47:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, there's like a mix of truth and both, right? Like, yes, it does have this great profound impact on our lives, but at the same time, it wastes a lot of our time too. And so you almost need that, whether it's a calling, whether it's, you know, aspiration, inspiration, whatever, to work on these hard problems. But I think also a lot about like, we focus on the founders and these companies, I don't know how many people work at SpaceX, but it's not like five people in a room, right? You know, this is a big company. Think of Tesla. If you think of Anduril, if you think A bunch of these companies. And so it's not having to take the like founder risk of like, oh, I'm going to be the person who goes stakes, my reputation, my capital, all this. You can literally be somebody who works in the marketing department. And if you feel called

• 48:16Anthony Pompliano?

  to work on the problem, and you're like, hey, I have a specific skill set and experience that can be helpful here. Like, actually, you're probably a better marketer than, you know, maybe the founder of the business.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's so important. Like, the reason we focus on the founders because they set the culture, they set the mission. And they're the ones that are constantly recruiting great talent, asking people to join them on this calling. But yeah, I think, I think joining a startup, I mean, you should never join a company where you don't believe in the mission. And there are so many great companies that are being built today that are working on these hard problems. You know, I spend a lot of my time just helping people find their next role in life, their next, you know, helping people try to find their true calling. And whether that's a founder, or whether that's a person who's going to join a startup, I'm just, that's probably the most rewarding part of my day is helping people find their callings and find their missions.

• 49:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I lied. I have a couple more questions because I'm seeing people saying stuff in the chat. The first is, somebody said Boyle for president.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no, definitely not. That's not the point of this.

• 49:15Anthony Pompliano?

  But here's what it made me think of, right? So the person who said, here's what it made me think of, is if we use kind of an egregious example. So obviously, the current administration's been talking a lot about EVs. They haven't mentioned Tesla. Elon's called it out, whatever. Why they're doing it is intentional, not, almost who cares, right? Like, it's just more of this thought process of like, I think one of the reasons people are drawn to Miami is because they feel like the government is cheering for their success on a local level.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:41Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the reasons, one of many reasons why some people are leaving California, New York, wherever, is they feel the opposite. They feel like, hey, actually, there's this like abrasive relationship between me and my local government. When you extract that out to the federal level, it feels really like, maybe over the last two decades or so, there's been people in the technology industry that have been like, oh, my government is bad, they do bad things, like, I don't want to work to help them. And there's been some distrust in the other direction of them saying big tech and all this. From the government side, in some way, it just feels like you and others that are investing alongside this investment theme are like trying to bring people together and say like, sure, you can both yell and scream at each other from different sides of, you know, kind of the the story, but like at the end of the day,

• 50:27Anthony Pompliano?

  you need each other.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And the only way these problems get solved is if we all work together, both in the government and the private tech side. And it seems like the companies we're talking about have been the ones that have been successful and really kind of closing that gap. And it's essential to solve these problems.

• 50:40Speaker 02

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

• 51:20Speaker 02

  We have similar goals. Like, we want to see America be become a great country. Want to see it maintain its its vibrancy. And so, yeah, I I I think in a lot of ways, the more conversations we can have and the more we can actually do things, not just have conversations, but actually do things so that things get done, the better the better it will be.

• 51:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't imagine Mayor Suarez on Twitter, if he had all of the things that San Francisco or New York City could brag about.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? He would be like out of control.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Miami's got a lot of positive things going on. He's done a great job marketing the city. But imagine if he had every single major financial institution in this city, right? Or he had every single major tech company, like he would be absolutely, he wouldn't sleep. He'd just be sitting there tweeting all the accomplishments all day long.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 52:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But I do think that there's a key piece that. All right. Last question for you is, I'm an investor in Eight Sleep. They're one of the sponsors of of the podcast.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:12Anthony Pompliano?

  What is your sleep schedule? And I'm asking, and this is great.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  I love this question.

• 52:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I think I asked you before.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And you had just had a baby.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Now I am two months into this. You are a year and a half.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  13, yeah, 13 months, yeah. I was gonna ask you, are you getting any sleep now?

• 52:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, so my brothers knows I've been celebrating because, you know, four or five hours sleep of, uh, stretch of sleep. I'm like,

• 52:36Speaker 02

  It's the best.

• 52:36Anthony Pompliano?

  The baby is a genius, right? Sophia is on it.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 52:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Has your sleep schedule changed? Uh, and like, how do you think about sleep now?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's, it's gotten a lot better. Yeah. The last time we talked, it was, it was rough. I, I, I actually asked you not to put my, my photo up on the thing. Cause it was so rough. I hadn't gotten any sleep that night. I was like, please take pity on a, on a, on a new mom. Like, it's just terrible.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Now I have sympathy.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know you have sympathy. You know how bad it looks if you have, you know, like spit up on your shirt. Yeah, this is horrible. But yeah, no, getting a lot more sleep. I'm a firm believer in sleep as well. I, I actually think like some of these new studies too about like being, uh, like potentially naps could be very curative. Like you, you need to actually, you know, you don't necessarily need to sleep like 10 hours in a row or nine hours in a row. Like there's like new science coming out about like, maybe we can actually sleep in different ways and maybe it's more personal than we think. You know, society, because of industrialization, it kind of forces people, uh, okay, you have to work, you know, you have to sleep from nine o'clock to seven or whatever, whatever timeline you can. But like, if we have more kind of new ways of working, like maybe people can sleep when it's more natural for them to sleep. But yeah, I think it's, it's the most important thing is to get enough sleep, of course. And I wish it for you.

• 53:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, no, I'm actually doing it. I mean, I don't think I've actually said this yet, but, uh, I actually am getting more sleep post-baby than before.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 53:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And the reason is because I, uh, before I'd go to sleep whenever I got tired and I'd have to wake up in the morning and I, you know, might sleep a little less. Now I know when the baby goes to sleep, if I don't go to sleep.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So like I'm more disciplined now, which leads to more sleep. So I actually can't complain compared to the horror stories I've heard. But speaking of not sleeping kind of eight, nine hours, I think Kobe Bryant used to do the, uh, was it polyphasic sleep? I think, or whatever it is where you basically sleep like, he'd sleep like one and a half, two hours and then kind of like take naps throughout the day.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And his, his whole thing was he's like, I can basically sleep like four to six hours rather than the full eight or nine and get the same amount of rest, which, yeah, I don't, I don't know if that's true or not, but. When Kobe Bryant does it, I guess is good enough.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and when people have kind of flexible work too, when they can work from home, when they can do things at their right tempo, then they can sleep in the way that makes sense for them too.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Well, that's the thing too. If he's playing a night game, then you want to take a nap in the middle of the day. You may be up till midnight or 1 a.m. If it's on the West Coast and you're playing and traveling.

• 54:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What is so crazy to me is just like you always get reminded, so much of our society is built around the industrialization of work.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:56Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's nuts.

• 55:09Speaker 02

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

• 55:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It is, um, there's a lot of people, I think, you know, mutual friends that we have where people are just like, I don't need to travel. I don't need to do this as much. And, uh, I, it reminds me, you wrote a piece, I think, what on seriousness?

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Remember? And, um, ultimately, I think what it comes down to, right, is I, I forget who, somebody tweeted or something where, uh, there's companies that were like, oh, we're, we're banning non-essential travel. And they were basically like, since when did, like, what, what happened in the company's life cycle to get to the point where you knew that people were taking non-essential travel and you were funding it, right?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, was it entertainment purposes? Like, whatever, right? And so, uh, I think that that's probably a return to like, whether it's seriousness or intentionality or whatever. But there is this aspect of like the world, or some corner of the world is returning to that, which is ultimately a net positive.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and on a personal note, I know, I know you know this, and just talking about like being more like, you know, exacting with your sleep, like having a baby makes you very serious. It's like you have to be very intentional with everything that, everything that you do. And I think, yeah, I think people are returning to this, hey, like, you know, like I was locked in my home with my family for nine months a year. And like now I'm going to be far more intentional about how I spend my time, who I spend my time with, what job I take, the great resignation is likely, you know, it's a lot of people doing soul searching, saying like, hey, I want to be a lot more intentional about who I am.

• 56:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't have the courage to write it in the emails, but there's been multiple times where somebody's asked me to do something and I say no, but I'm literally like, I could do that or I could spend time with Plana and the baby. And I'm like, this is neat. Like this is like,

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 57:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And like there's been a couple of times like, I should really just say it and like rip the Band-Aid off. But I'm like, ah, you know, sorry, I have something else, you know, whatever.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  It's priorities.

• 57:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But, but, but it, but it is a thing where, uh, I think if you can break the norms as well, right? It's kind of like 25 minute meetings, you know, the people are like, oh, you can hack, you know, psychologically, whatever. But there is an element of like, some people are just, they're, okay, let's talk, let's get coffee, let's do this, let's whatever. And if you can just start to break it back, no, just send me an email.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  Do you guys think that we'll ever get a point where that becomes like the opposite, right? Like where your home becomes your workplace and people are overwhelmed with kind of what's going on at their home? And they're looking for an outlet relative to like freelance work or going in.

• 57:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's a balance, right? Where it's like, I don't think anyone actually wants to 100% of the time work from home every single day, 365 days a year, like no travel, no anything. And I also don't think people want to go into an office every single day, whatever. I think it's like, I would guess the ideal scenario would be sometimes you want to be around colleagues, peers, other humans, et cetera. And sometimes you're like, I just want to be at home and having the flexibility to do both. Part of it is the job, right? Like some jobs, just you can't do that. But for the jobs that can, uh, I think people want optionality, right? More than anything is probably the way.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  And optionality at different times in their lives. So when, when you have a new baby, it's like you're, you're far more focused on, okay, like, when am I going to be there? You know, when am I sleeping and that sort of thing? But like, you know, when like there's, there's, life is in cycles. And so I think like just allowing people more flexibility to, to choose their time. And it's technology that's, that's really driving that, I think is, is that's, that's one of the exciting things that's going to come out of COVID.

• 58:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Somebody said, depends how happy the home is.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 58:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And there, there is an element, I will say, here's my biggest surprise, actually, post, uh, the baby being born is, um, I've been on calls with people and they'll like, be like, hey, so like, you know, how's the baby? And they start to like say things and I'm like, oh, they think that my approach to this is going to be like, man, it's really tough. Or like, maybe not like a shit talking session, but like, uh, like definitely like a misery finds company type situation. And I feel bad when I'm like, dude, I'm on cloud nine. Like, this is amazing. And then I'm like, oh, let me tone down the excitement, optimism, whatever.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  But we don't need, no, we don't need people to tone down their optimism. And I think that's the thing, as you say, like misery loves company. Like, one of the things that we do need to make normal in business and relationships is like, people are whining. It's like, no, like, like, find the joy. You know, it's like, we really need to do it at a small scale, too, so.

• 59:30Anthony Pompliano?

  The, uh, my, my two brothers now that are uncles, uh, we had our first.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Congratulations. Uncles are the best.

• 59:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, they, they already know why.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  We, we've had a couple of accidents.

• 59:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Except for, we, we recently, uh, we breached an important milestone in Sophia's life, which is she pooped on Joe.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Okay, that means you're the favorite. That means you're the favorite.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. That's what I said.

• 59:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why when you said uncles were the best, I liked his name. He's like, eh, kinda.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got to pass that quick.

• 1:00:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Where can we send, uh, people follow you on the internet? Or, uh, find more work that you guys are doing, or entries in Horowitz on?

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. So we're at, we're at, uh, a16z.com. And then I, I'm on the internet at, at KTMBoyle, uh, on Twitter. So, so find me there.

• 1:00:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:00:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Anyone who, uh, who's not following on Twitter is missing out. And, uh, I love that you don't write that often, but when you write, I'm like, oh, stop everything. And we gotta go read. So, please, uh, please keep writing. It's, uh, it's fantastic.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thanks for having me.

• 1:00:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.