LaBossiere Podcast

Alex LaBossiere

5.0 (5)
BUSINESS

LaBossiere Podcast

The New Narrative

08/08/2024

#53 - Elad Gil

Elad Gil is a serial entrepreneur, executive, and one of the greatest tech investors of all time, with early stakes in something like 40 billion-plus dollar companies: AirBnB, Anduril, Coinbase, Figma, Flexport, Instacart, Notion, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe… I could really go on. He’s now managing a new billion dollar venture fund, for which he’s the sole investor. Elad is also the co-founder of 2 companies: Color Genomics, a company providing genetic testing, software and clinical services for large-scale health programs – and before that, Mixer Labs, a company building location infrastructure for mobile devices that was acquired by Twitter. He worked as a VP at Twitter and also started the mobile team at Google. 0:00 - Intro 6:11 - Blank Slates and Decaying Institutions 8:16 - Western Pessimism and Agendas of Abundance vs Scarcity 12:30 - The Long Boom: Is Innovation Speeding Up? 16:26 - Are Startups Founder Limited or Market Limited? 19:26 - EIR Syndrome and Choosing the Right Market 21:41 - What Makes for a Good Investor, Operator and Entrepreneur? 24:05 - Positives and Negatives of Investing and Operating 26:17 - The Brand Value of Individuals vs Institutions 28:05 - Competing with Massive Firms 30:33 - Market-Driven Investing 33:23 - Starting Companies as Surfing Waves 36:09 - Age of Accomplishment and The Deferral of Adulthood 42:15 - What to Say Yes To 44:21 - Defense Tech and Complacency 49:25 - Private Markets and The Future of Venture 52:11 - Discontinuities in AI 53:49 - On Google 55:16 - LLM Oligopoly and Long-Term Scenarios for AI 1:00:41 - AGI and Sleeping 3 Hours a Night 1:03:19 - AI Doomerism 1:06:05 - The Deterioration of Speed 1:09:27 - Bureaucracy and the State of Nuclear 1:12:52 - Generosity and the Culture of Silicon Valley 1:15:19 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://x.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 17m
05/03/2024

#52 - Erik Torenberg

Erik Torenberg is a technology entrepreneur and investor. Presently, he’s the founder of Turpentine. Previously, he was the chairman of On Deck, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, and first employee at Product Hunt. 0:00 - Intro 5:08 - On Investing vs Operating and Being a Player 7:34 - Trust and Direct Distribution 10:45 - Legacy Media and the Techlash 17:24 - What is Turpentine 18:41 - Lessons From 1000 Interviews 20:59 - The Printing Press, Barbells, and the Future of Media 25:22 - Pre-Internet Journalism and Survival of the Fittest Ideas 28:44 - Creator Monetization and Price Discrimination 34:55 - Does Media Have a Direction? 41:44 - Tailwinds and Turpentine at Scale 49:37 - Creating More Startups and Understanding Risk 54:24 - Is Entrepreneurship Founder or Market Limited? 59:04 - What Do Most People Get Wrong About Community Building? 1:01:34 - Probabilistic vs Deterministic Mindsets 1:04:29 - On Faith over Logic 1:08:06 - Modernity and God Shaped Holes 1:10:44 - The Hypocrisy of Elites 1:13:30 - Asking Erik Questions He Asks People 1:15:40 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 19m
03/21/2024

#51 - Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson is the world's most measured human. Johnson sold his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800m in 2013. Through his Project Blueprint, Johnson has achieved metabolic health equal to the top 1.5% of 18 year olds, inflammation 66% lower than the average 10 year old, and reduced his speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years. Johnson freely shares his protocols and data publicly for everyone to use. Project Blueprint, is an endeavor to achieve humanity and earth scale cooperation starting within Self. In 2023, Johnson launched Rejuvenation Olympics, a leaderboard assessing one's speed of aging using DNA methylation. Of the 1,750 people who have been using this state-of-the-art aging algorithm to track their progress longitudinally, Johnson ranks #1 in speed of age reduction. Johnson is also the founder & CEO of Kernel, creator of the world’s first mainstream non-invasive neuroimaging system; and OS Fund, where he invested $100M in the predictable engineering of atoms, molecules, and organisms into companies now collectively valued over $6B. He is an outdoor adventure enthusiast, pilot, and author of children’s books, Code 7 and The Proto Project. 00:00 - Intro 3:45 - Biographies 5:03 - Zeroth Principles Thinking and Genius 6:24 - Vision for Blueprint: A 25th Century Perspective 7:50 - Blueprint, Entropy Reduction and Planet Earth 9:23 - Impact of Blueprint 10:47 - Gene Therapy and Breaking Through the Longevity Ceiling 12:06 - Living Longer and Compounding Gains 13:31 - Bryan’s Relationship With Time 14:07 - Measuring Biological vs Chronological Age 15:05 - Encouraging Adoption, Dashboards for Society and Learning How to Swim 17:49 - Enriching vs Degrading Life and the Inevitability of Computational Intelligence 21:03 - Living Forever 22:19 - Knee-Jerk Reactions 26:03 - Free Will 28:12 - Social Drivers and Early Adopters of Blueprint 30:08 - Future of Engineering Atoms, Molecules and Organisms 32:43 - Critical Questions from Longer Lifespans 33:58 - Kernel and the Future of Brain-Computer Interfaces 36:28 - Ketamine 37:47 - Storytelling, Quantifying Reality and the Extent of the Algorithm 40:03 - OS Fund, Foundational Technologies and Architecting Reality 43:38 - Trust and God Shaped Holes 46:55 - Wealth, Effectuating Change and Competing for Legacy 48:23 - What Else Would Bryan Work On? 49:25 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

52 min
01/30/2024

#50 - Anthony Pompliano

Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano is an entrepreneur and technology investor. He runs his family office which makes private investments, along with owning majority stakes in a number of operating businesses. Additionally, Pomp hosts popular conversations on “The Pomp Podcast,” which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. Pomp also writes a letter that is read by more than 250,000 investors each morning. Pomp’s interests lie at the intersection of finance, technology, entrepreneurship, and economics, which he tweets about extensively to his more than 1.6 million followers. 0:00 - Intro 3:11 - Incumbents and Competition in the Age of AI 5:12 - Media’s Relationship with Technology 9:48 - Individuals vs Institutions and the Future of Content 11:46 - Consensus, Truth, and Misinformation 15:47 - How to Cut Through the Noise 18:47 - The Decline of Trust in Institutions 24:10 - Balancing Optimism and Cynicism 26:46 - National Debt 33:22 - Bad Legislation, Bad Politicians, and Bad Incentives 37:54 - Growing Our Way Out of the Problem 42:19 - Autonomous Cars, Pig Heart Transplants, and How Innovation Propagates Itself 49:22 - Legislating Technology 55:04 - Increasing the Number of Entrepreneurs in Society 1:03:08 - When Better Technology Doesn’t Mean Better Outcomes 1:05:24 - Talent Allocation 1:10:56 - What Does Pomp Do Every Day? 1:19:52 - Lessons From 1300 Interviews 1:21:56 - On Fame, Audience, and Parasocial Relationships 1:29:23 - The State of Crypto 1:34:14 - Institutional Adoption of Crypto 1:37:20 - Is Slow-Moving Bureaucracy a Bug or a Feature? 1:42:02 - Remote Work and Regulatory Arbitrage 1:46:22 - Promising Cities and the Internet as an Equalizer 1:50:03 - Lessons From War 1:58:07 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 59m
01/09/2024

#49 - Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. He’s the author of 8 books, including The Myth of the Rational Voter, The Case Against Education, and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. His next book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing, will be published by the Cato Institute in 2024. He’s the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He’s published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. 0:00 - Intro 2:23 - The Most Irrational Beliefs in Society 3:43 - Why Do People Vote? 5:57 - The Most Net Positive Delusions in Society 7:30 - Bottlenecks in Democracy 9:13 - Idea Traps 13:13 - The Ideological Turing Test 15:16 - Caricatures of Political Parties 17:49 - The Case for Open Borders 21:48 - Tribalism and Social Cohesion 25:33 - Privatization and The Confluence of Cultures 26:56 - What’s the Point of Countries? 28:26 - What Values Are (Mostly) Non-negotiable? 30:27 - The Net Present Value of Immigration 33:43 - The Competition of Cultures 38:15 - Is Globalism Inevitable? 39:30 - Resources and Culture 42:49 - How to Fix Immigration 45:07 - The Case Against Education 48:48 - What is a Degree Actually Worth? 52:05 - Why is Bryan a Professor? 53:13 - The Value of Conformity in Society 55:25 - Is Learning How to Learn Real? 57:51 - Is There Value in the Liberal Arts? 29:27 - Bryan’s Approach to Learning 1:01:49 - Who Does Education Well? 1:02:49 - The Biggest Problems in Academia 1:05:47 - Should we Abolish Tenure? 1:09:32 - Why Parenting is Overrated 1:11:51 - What Kind of Parenting Has an Effect? 1:14:23 - Positive Effects of Having Kids 1:16:03 - The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation 1:18:50 - Intangible Costs of Deregulation 1:21:39 - How does Ideology Propagate Itself? 1:24:09 - If Everything’s Mimetic are Free Markets Overrated? 1:25:54 - How to Get Ideas Into the Mainstream 1:28:19 - Are Politicians Evil? 1:31:35 - The Future of Labor Markets Under Remote Work 1:34:21 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 39m
12/12/2023

#48 - Delian Asparouhov

Delian Asparouhov is the co-founder, President and Chairman of Varda Space Industries, a company building spacecraft to manufacture materials in microgravity that are difficult or impossible to produce on Earth— starting with pharmaceuticals. He’s also a Partner at Founders Fund. Previously, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer. 0:00 - Intro 3:14 - How Does Innovation Happen? 6:23 - Varda and the No Science Allowed Rule 7:52 - A Primer on Solid State Microgravity Manufacturing 18:25 - Space Industrialization, Trading Posts, and the Chinese and Portuguese Navies 21:13 - Economic Incentives and Future Business Models in Space 24:24 - SpaceX and The Costs of Mass to Orbit 27:45 - Demand for Space Manufacturing and Varda at Scale 33:44 - Manufacturing, Servicing, Machining, and Future Markets for Space 36:42 - Incubating Companies 40:33 - When Would Varda Have Been Started Otherwise? 42:19 - The Hollywood Model of Startups 45:20 - Future of Incubations 47:47 - Media’s Role in Technology 50:39 - What Media Inspired Varda’s Founding? 52:38 - Talent, Culture, and Cementing Company Trajectory 53:57 - Narratives and Talent Recruitment 55:28 - Traits Delian Looks for in Founders 57:38 - The ‘Why Now’ When Investing 1:00:08 - Bring Non-Consensus and Right 1:02:53 - Is Varda Consensus Yet? 1:03:24 - Identifying Non-Consensus Opportunities 1:05:12 - Lessons from Founding and Investing 1:07:40 - What Skill Do You Wish You’d Developed Earlier? 1:10:11 - Immigrant Mentality 1:11:24 - Less Obvious Reasons for Success 1:12:55 - On Speed 1:14:23 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 16m
11/30/2023

#47 - Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson is a professor at George Mason University and researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. 0:00 - Intro 2:42 - Intelligent Life in the Universe 7:30 - Grabby Aliens: A Primer 15:29 - Elites and the End of Global Coordination 18:59 - 6 Hard Steps for the Emergence of Life 22:11 - The Probability of Aliens 33:05 - Domesticating Humans 38:08 - Signaling and the Elephant in the Brain 42:31 - Conscious and Subconscious Behavior 46:53 - Collective Signaling 49:54 - The Contrarian Economics of Medicine and Lifespan 57:00 - Taste 1:01:18 - Hyper-Rationality and Social Cohesion 1:07:03 - How to Predict the Future 1:12:11 - Brain Emulations 1:21:15 - Artificial General Intelligence 1:27:52 - The Descendants of Humans 1:32:49 - Changing Attitudes Toward Life and Death 1:37:33 - The Future of Inequality 1:42:10 - God and The Sacred 1:57:42 - The Most Surprising Thing Robin’s Learned Recently 1:59:57 - What Should More People be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

2h 2m
11/22/2023

#46 - Chris Mason

Chris Mason is a professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also one of the founding Directors of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He is the author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, and the co-author of The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk. 0:00 - Intro 2:29 - How Long Will Humanity Last? 9:01 - On Societal Pessimism and Long-Term Thinking 13:02 - Aliens! 17:36 - The NASA Twins Study 23:17 - Nature vs Nurture 25:56 - Chris’ Dream Experiments 27:45 - Genomics: Ethics, Opportunities, and the Future 37:38 - Space Race 2.0: Colonization, Regulation and Planetary Liberty 40:36 - Colonizing Mars and Achieving Planetary Liberty 45:46 - The Extreme Microbiome Project 47:14 - The Earth Similarity Index, Generation Ships and Leaving the Solar System 53:10 - Why Do Any of This in The First Place? 56:19 - The Age of Prediction 1:01:19 - On Chris, Science, Academia, and Big Questions 1:08:47 - Synthetic Biology, Cyborgs and the Future of Human Life 1:10:10 - Chris’ Biggest Goal 1:11:06 - What Should More People Be Thinking About? 🎙️More Episodes🎙️ YouTube: https://bit.ly/3QDLQFt Apple: https://apple.co/478Be6M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sfiFiE 📲Socials📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/adlabossiere Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlabossiere/

1h 13m

5

out of 5

5 Ratings

Excellent podcast with interesting people

11/10/2021

blogofjake.com

Alex gets great guests and is a skilled and natural interviewer. His preparation is evident and makes for conversations that are engaging, educational, and entertaining. Listen and learn. I highly recommend it.

The New Narrative

Creator

Alex LaBossiere
Years Active

2021 - 2024
Episodes

53
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Alex LaBossiere
Show Website

LaBossiere Podcast