Brian Hooks, CEO of Stand Together & President of Charles Koch Foundation on Venture Philanthropy

Ian Cinnamon on Building a $2.3B Satellite Manufacturing Campus, Palantir Alumni & The Apex Space Thesis

Intro Ian Cinnamon is the Cofounder and CEO of Apex Space. He was previously at Zynga and Palantir (after selling his company). He joined Palantir after selling his weapon detection company to them which had gotten impacted by covid since all live events came to a halt for ~1 year. Interestingly, my final year project in electrical engineering was also weapon detection using Computer Vision - which I take no credit for since my teammates did all the work, I even back then thought I could just support on the BD/research side since my dad was working in the security administration function. He is the second member of the Palantir mafia on the show to have started a billion dollar company. The first was Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz. Both backed by friends of the show at XYZ Ventures. The company was valued at $2.3 billion as of their most recent fundraise which was led by Glade Brook and Washington Harbor. Their early investors include Andreessen Horowitz, XYZ Ventures and Point72, all friends of the show. We talked about his idea maze and choosing the right thing to work on in the middle of the crypto-craze in 2022, in that time he joined Village Global as an EIR to figure out what he wanted to pursue. I am a big fan of exploration and taking your time to decide what you want to go all-in on. Recently discussed the importance of this on the show with Ali Tamaseb (GP at DCVC and author of SuperFounders) as well, he conducted thorough research on billion dollar founders and companies and one of the things that is common is the fact that billion dollar founders take time to decide what they want to pursue. Another example that comes to mind is Qasar Younis of Applied Intuition who took ~2 years before he locked in the idea for Applied Intuition. Matt Angle at Paradromics was in his PhD and was thinking about it for ~4 years or more before starting the company. Brandon Sorbom at Commonwealth Fusion Systems also spent an ample amount of time working on the idea including at first starting a nonprofit dedicated to research before doing it as a startup. Watch on YouTube Timestamps 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo] - Introduction01:22 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=82s] - Moving from software and AI to the space industry02:12 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=132s] - Using computer vision to protect public safety04:37 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=277s] - Learning from the flat, fast-moving culture at Palantir07:54 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=474s] - Deciding to build the last company I would ever start09:59 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=599s] - How SpaceX made rocket launch reliable and frequent12:10 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=730s] - Stepping away to incubate a new kind of satellite business13:56 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=836s] - Building the Ford Model T of the satellite world15:15 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=915s] - What is a satellite platform?16:43 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1003s] - Partnering with Northrop Grumman for missile defense19:12 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1152s] - Understanding how much room is actually left up in space21:19 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1279s] - Choosing the right altitude based on what a satellite does24:13 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1453s] - Shifting space tech from custom crafts to a volume game27:25 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1645s] - How factory automation helps America win the current space race29:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7xmFDcXoo&t=1786s] - Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us [https://wethebuilders.us?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

E41: Austen Allred on X Posting, Lambda School, Getting Sued, ISAs, Lobbying & Future of Education

Intro Austen Allred is the Cofounder and CEO of Gauntlet AI which is running an AI training school which through its intensive bootcamp makes engineers AI-first operators. Austen originally founded Lambda School as a coding bootcamp, which later became Bloom Institute of Technology - backed by venture firms like GigaFund, Y Combinator, Ashton Kutcher and Google Ventures. Their business model for Lambda School was income share agreements for which there wasn't really a regulatory framework, this was the eventual reason for why the company went almost bankrupt as they got sued and couldn't keep operating. This is a wide ranging conversation where we talk about the decade long lessons from Lambda and why it didn't work out, how he came about the idea for Gauntlet and different models for the future of education. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA] - Introduction01:21 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=81s] - The strategic advantage of building a raw internet audience06:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=390s] - How an impressive product magnetically pulls a network10:34 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=634s] - Finding the Keel: Simplicity and the metrics of Paul Graham13:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=810s] - Navigating the extreme highs and lows of a tech hype cycle19:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=1172s] - Ditching college to sleep in a Honda Civic24:11 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=1451s] - Launching a growth hacking book to wipe out personal debt26:28 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=1588s] - Turning lambda calculus into a bootlegged code bootcamp29:47 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=1787s] - Bootstrapping a massive student waiting list on pure cash flow35:17 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=2117s] - Surviving five separate YC interviews on the bubble39:27 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=2367s] - Pitching alternative asset managers to financialize education43:39 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=2619s] - Creating a brand new financial asset class out of human potential47:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=2852s] - Risk-adjusting human data sets at a thousand ISAs at a time52:40 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=3160s] - The Capitol Hill lobbying 1:06:38 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=3998s] - Running on an empty bank account and a one-month runway1:09:14 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=4154s] - Reverse engineering how elite enterprise software teams use AI1:11:51 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=4311s] - Relocating the family to Austin for the thousand-hour Gauntlet1:15:34 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=4534s] - Swapping the ISA model for upfront corporate recruitment fees1:22:02 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=4922s] - Alpha School: Replacing traditional teachers with personalized AI software1:24:44 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=5084s] - The Texas Education Freedom Act voucher experiment1:26:28 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=5188s] - Why legacy Higher-Ed institutions cannot turn the big ship fast enough1:28:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=5310s] - The ultimate necessity of overriding generic consensus LLM views1:32:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=5566s] - Reclaiming localized outdoor communities over heavy lecture halls1:39:50 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=5990s] - Do modern tech companies emerge as the new universities?1:42:40 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t79O5nkS3MA&t=6160s] - Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us [https://wethebuilders.us?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Brian Hooks, CEO of Stand Together & President of Charles Koch Foundation on Venture Philanthropy

Intro Brian Hooks is the CEO of Stand Together, President of Charles Koch Foundation and co-author of “Believe in People” with Charles Koch. He has scaled Stand Together to a network of 1,000 partner organizations and has deployed over $1B using a framework he called “venture philanthropy”. They are driven by problems and don’t get restricted by whether the vehicle through which they fund the problem is a donation or an investment. Which is a very interesting approach. He also described some of his work as backing “social entrepreneurs”. My career actually started in social entrepreneurship and I thought that the experiment doesn’t always work but my biases come from a completely different set of circumstances and structure. Setting up a million dollar prize of teams of student entrepreneurs might be a great way to catalyze more high agency college students and build a community of these people but might be a misdirected approach to solve the problem at hand. I shared this concern with to get his thoughts on what he has seen work based on their work so far. We talked about the parallels of backing talent in venture capital and philanthropy. I was particularly interested in this question because Brian’s career started at Mercatus Centre at the George Mason University where he got a chance to work alongside Tyler Cowen who has written an incredible book called “Talent” with Daniel Gross, I was curious about his lessons from his time there. This is a special edition of our interview from Reagan National Economic Forum, I hope to have Brian back on for a longer wide-ranging conversation. Hope you enjoy the show! Timestamps 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE] - Introduction03:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=226s] - Thesis behind backing Trust Ventures07:13 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=433s] - Learning insatiable curiosity from Tyler Cowen10:29 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=629s] - Discarding what works to achieve real scale13:41 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=821s] - Pooling the minds of a thousand business leaders20:03 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=1203s] - Reforming a one-size-fits-all school system23:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=1412s] - Using a venture capital model to fund classrooms26:53 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=1613s] - Why higher education is completely broken30:38 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=1838s] - Changing how modern companies look at talent34:42 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=2082s] - The skills of the future38:19 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=2299s] - Trying something different after a thousand years41:34 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VPRMnWIyE&t=2494s] - Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us [https://wethebuilders.us?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

In Conversation with Dan Wright, Cofounder & CEO of Armada ($2B neo-hyperscaler for the edge)

Intro This is a special edition of our show from Reagan National Economic Forum where I interviewed Dan Wright, Cofounder and CEO of Armada, a decentralized cloud for the edge. They are valued at $2B according to their last round and are funded by some of the friends of the show at Founders Fund, Lux Capital, 8090 Industries, Overmatch and strategic capital from firms like M12 (Microsoft's venture fund), Pinegrove and a few others. Watch on YouTube Timestamps 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII] - Introduction01:16 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=76s] - Dan Wright's early journey04:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=272s] - Hyperscaling the remote edge data center06:41 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=401s] - Full stack commercial deployments from oil fields to the Navy bay09:12 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=552s] - Why DIY closet servers failed the scale test11:06 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=666s] - What Armada enables its customers to do?14:26 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=866s] - Joint ventures and open model ecosystem network effects17:42 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=1062s] - Reason behind Armada's "hyper" growth 22:39 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=1359s] -Why go for energy and mining companies?27:21 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=1641s] - Hiring the top 1 percent talent30:51 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYk_iD06EII&t=1851s] - Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us [https://wethebuilders.us?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

E33: Elon Musk's Most Useful Ideas, The Alpha in Long Form Writing and Investing with Eric Jorgenson

Intro Eric Jorgenson started a nights and weekends projects compiling the most useful ideas Naval Ravikant had publicly shared, this has sold five million copies so far. He has since doubled down on this niche of curating the best ideas from the best thinkers and entrepreneurs in the technology industry. He went on to write the Anthology of Balaji and most recently, The Book of Elon. I talked to him about the process of writing ideas with a high density of useful ideas and compiling, curating and shaping the final form of the book. He took five years to write the Book of Elon, I asked him about some of the concepts Elon has shared in his own words that he has highlighted in his book and his biggest takeaways having studied Elon for half a decade. Timestamps 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU] - Introduction00:37 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=37s] - The success of “The Almanac of Naval”02:22 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=142s] - Writing the “The Book of Elon”04:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=272s] - Inspiring a million future builders07:56 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=476s] - Finding useful ideas and cutting out the noise11:17 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=677s] - Clawing up the power law of book sales15:44 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=944s] - When Mike Moritz passed on Tesla19:14 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=1154s] - Chasing problems from clean sheets to janky car demos23:47 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=1427s] - The high internal metabolism of Elon companies27:53 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=1673s] - How the Twitter acquisition changed the startup world32:06 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=1926s] - Treating tech companies as a form of philanthropy36:37 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=2197s] - Completing a tour of duty at warp speed40:57 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=2457s] - Mission first empathy and the hardcore Tesla culture44:57 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=2697s] - Leading from the front lines like military generals48:37 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=2917s] - Self-education and learning anything you want52:58 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=3178s] - Re-reading sci-fi to break technological stagnation56:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=3406s] - What happens to money in a post-scarcity economy1:01:09 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=3669s] - Aligning raw talent with genuine interest1:04:49 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=3889s] - The high effort way to sample and shadow careers1:08:52 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=4132s] - Forcing breakthroughs through tight constraints1:12:31 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=4351s] - Guerrilla battles inside the early PayPal Mafia1:18:09 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=4689s] - Mapping the maze with long root building1:23:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41vS9CWiYU&t=4980s] - Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us [https://wethebuilders.us?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]