I'm Sean Delaney and you're listening to what got you there what got you there is a must follow for entrepreneurs creatives High Achievers and changemakers each week. I sit down with some of the world's most influential people and focus on the journey behind their success. We uncover the strategy tactics and routines that help them get there now is your journey so it's time to learn what's going to get you
there but got to there with Sean Delaney. What got you there with Sean Delaney? What got you there with Sean Delaney?
You what got you there? We got to God, I think as a society we want more variety. We want more choice. We want more weirdness. We don't want to live in a world where there's four or five large tech companies. It'd be great to live in the world where there's a thousand small tack up things and I think in order to create that we need to literally create and generate more Founders and I don't think it's that the world is lacking sufficient IQ or people that would be smart enough or people that would be gritty enough. I think it's that the world is lacking in a way to kind of radicalized.
Bolt to pursue their passions
Daniel growth is the founder of pioneer a fully remote accelerator that backs brilliant Founders from all over the world. Pioneer is changing the way that companies are formed and Pioneer has already backed more than 100 Founders Daniels origin story begins in Israel. And when he was 18, he was accepted into y combinator being the youngest founder ever at that time. He founded a company called Q&A, I powered
Search engine that was acquired by Apple when he was just 22 Daniel was a previous guest on episode number 124. And if you haven't heard it go ahead and check that out. So on this episode Shawn and Daniel discuss a wide range of topics from Daniels decision making process his recent marathon in Antarctica what he's seeing most in the most successful entrepreneurs and so much more
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Daniel so it's been about a year since we last talked and we're going to get into Tech startups and what the World 2.0 looks like after covid-19, but I have to hear about the marathon you've recently ran an article. How is that I want to know what that experience was like.
Sure. Thanks again for having me on delighted to talk. I recently finished dryer running. Yeah, a bunch of miles a marathon in Antarctica in all honesty. Most of the credit IND. Well fame or infamy goes should go to my friend Kyle folk who who I was pacing. Kyle was running seven marathons in seven continents and trying to set the record for doing it in 77 hours. He ended up.
Completing the feet in about I think 8485 hours till shattering the record by quite some bit and I paste him for a few of those Marathon certainly not all of them. But the first one that we ran was in Antarctica, very interesting place quite desolate. I think the best way to Envision it is if you have ever been in a desert you can kind of imagine that just with with the you know, with the conditions you'd expect much colder snow wind.
We think fully had pretty nice visibility. Actually. There was a marathon that was around about 48 hours prior to us and we were kind of looking in finishing times there and fastest finishing time this for hours and change and you know for a marathon usually it's just slightly under half of that, you know, two hours 20 minutes for a speedy finish. So for the, you know top finishers finishing it for hours that means conditions are really bad. So we were kind of getting worried ourselves.
Figured we power through regardless, but we had a little bit of wind but it was pretty nice regardless packed snow, you know, you kind of think of the surface being like a kind of a beach style in terms of the impact you get from it. And so that means that it's actually a little bit easier on your knees, but you have to apply a little bit more Force because you're getting less forced back from the ground you're sinking a little bit in each step. So it takes out, you know, sir.
Rising amount of you but it's just a thrilling place to be and you know running I find has this interesting effect where it really encodes things into memory, you know, I find if I'm on vacation and I go run I really remember the area that I ran in and as a result I even though we ran kind of laps around the Airfield that we landed in. I remember it intently intense like
he's running a garment much different. Do your senses are they impacted differently than just a
More run call it out in San Francisco.
Well, I mean certainly it's much colder and and so, you know, I think if any coaster on it would probably be pretty familiar with this running in the snow and the cold so, you know certain parts of you get get numb. I mean surprisingly your chest and torso warm up as long as you keep on moving but you know, you got to have good gloves to keep the the fingers warm and you know, we wore double double.
Your socks just to just to keep the extremities warm the actual you know aspect of writing is not that different. We for all of the marathons we ended up running, you know, either out in backs or laps near the airport. And
so, you know, we're we're kind of just you know,
keeping track of the mileage that we're doing. But other than that, you know, it wasn't two distinct. It's a sea level so, you know, the amount of oxygen you have is is great.
We were just trying to make sure that you know wouldn't go out to strong Kyle had another six marathons after Antarctica. And so we were you know, trying to keep it moderate Pace. But you know, other than that the the only way you'd know you you were in Antarctica I think is well just by the infinite Horizon of snow and again, we caught it on a good day. I think there are days where there's you could.
Really experience the full scope of Nature's wrath and Antarctica and it's you know, as I understand it conditions can get quite tough. But but for us on a beautiful day it was it was like a windy Snowden day, maybe on the East
Coast how that opportunity even come to you.
I've known Kyle for quite some time as an investor in his company's called Cruz got acquired by General Motors for about a billion dollars the building self-driving cars and do maybe one of the first to Market and I've known him for quite some time prior to that while he was running his earlier company which would turn into Justin dot TV which would turn into of course in to switch into twitch and we've kind of been old friends and I think he knows I'm up.
Our adventures in particular running adventures and so at some point around Christmas, he told me he was going to do this and you know, it's I find it kind of interesting. I don't know why I said, yes, but it was very clear to me that I had to do it. Once the opportunity was available.
Yeah. I that's what I'm curious about those Adventures you're going after and I'm even intrigued do you learn new things about yourself after taking on something like that?
Yeah, I mean I enjoy finding me and I don't think I'm alone. I think a lot of people enjoyed, you know, finding the limits of my body and my mind, you know,
it's I think
you learn maybe a little bit less, you know something specific about yourself and more. I think you just gain confidence knowing that you know, you did that really hard thing. And so whatever you're staring at you can probably you know, get over.
And I that does that's why I started running in the first place.
Yeah, I'm wondering even how you assess that I know for me internally when I take on one of those challenges. It's almost like a new bar has been raised and set we're now that confidence that I was able to tackle that you can go on to more intense challenging thing. So I'm wondering finding the limits for you when you think about that that phrase what comes to mind both internally in terms of difficulty with your mind and then also physical challenges.
well, I mean I
For me, I'll be honest with you. You know, I'm I'm the by no means perfect in this regard. I also am very close to and mostly do this this sport that I happened to love which is running and you know, and as you know, once you kind of get into running it's not as hard as it seems but it's it does seem to the outside or very crazy. I think when you tell them even though I just you know, I ran 13 or 14 miles today, you know to the to an outsider that seems very crazy and hard but you know for me
it's it's not easy, but it's a thrill and it's certainly something I enjoy so, you know, I'm not as good as others about constantly kind of stretching and driving different sports. Although I am interested in it running for me has also a very nice efficiency to it. There's only so much you can do with it. It's it's quite dumb, you know takes quite a toll on your body could go out and you could bike ride for five hours and be fine. You can't really run for five hours. I mean you can but EEE
You're not going to be able to work afterwards or run the next day. So for me, it's very nice in the sense that it's very, you know, it's very efficient. You know, I'm going to go writing at some point later today and you know, it'll be about 50 minutes of my time, but it will yield dividends greater than 50 minutes in terms of my productivity for the rest of the day and and it's still kind of stresses my body there. I don't think there's actually a better way probably just in just in terms of minutes.
And maybe overall longevity benefits. I don't think there's something much better than running. But but that being said, you know, I enjoy within within that sport enjoy trying to find the limits, you know at the trying to get faster or trying just, you know, a distance. I haven't tried I kind of like the novelty of it and and and I think it's quite I mean for me it's very helpful to have something other than work. That's kind of a game. I can work on something I can think about and something
Can win and maybe lose it and but it's very helpful, you know work has its ups and downs not all of which I could control and it's quite nice to you know, even during a day that you know might be quite intense from a work perspective have the just another different thing to work on. I think other people have you know other forms of these Outlets, you know one day if I'm lucky enough maybe you'll have children maybe that will become that and or or you know, sometimes people play video games. I kind of get it. It's nice to be
able to escape almost to a different universe. And so that's that's really maybe another thing that I get out of it. But you know, I look I love challenge adventure and I think if I had a little bit more more free time, I would think about more creative things to do. Kyle was very inspiring to me in that regard. I mean, here's a fairly busy individual running a very large unit within a very large company working on one of the most important software Hardware projects of the 21st century arguably and yet you know,
He thought of this he made the time and he actually did it very much kind of, you know, made me think gosh, you know, I'd love to do some style of particular Adventure like that in the future, you know something at the intersection of running Logistics software. I should say Kyle actually wrote an open-source actual software. He had to write to do this because you know, you have the traditional the quite famous software problem called a
Going salesman problem. When you ask yourself the question, you know, if I want to run in seven continents in the shortest period of time, you know, given everything, you know about, you know, airports and flights. What is the most efficient way to do that in the software actually answer that question. So it's a very very cool project truly at the intersection of that man's interest in.
Yeah, maybe one day I'll grow up and I'll do something
similar. Do you have anything in mind in terms of what you'd like to tackle there? Well, you know,
hopefully at some point in the far-fetched future where there was a vaccine in this thing is behind us that you think traveling to kind of interesting new desolate places is is very interesting, you know so much of our memory is humans is spatial. We remember things based on place. I certainly am experiencing now. I don't know if
You are but you know now that we're all kind of in lockdown and we're not moving around. Although the day to day of my life hasn't changed that much in terms of what I do. I find I remember much less of it just because it's all blurry, you know, I think it turned out that afternoon coffee you were getting half of the value was a cup of coffee half of it was just going to another place and breaking up the day a little bit. And so that's kind of making me yearn for God should be it'd be great to do some type of travel to you know, really remote places where you're constantly changing locations all the time. Look I've
I've stared down at a lot of weird records. And again, it's so funny. I don't even understand why I would go do it, you know everything from longest time. Someone's you know ran on a treadmill to you know, the longest set of contiguous marathons to all sorts of weird stuff. And yeah, it's we were kind of kidding to ourselves as we were running the second Marathon which was in Argentina that we don't
Didn't even really know why we were doing that, you know at a deep level just felt like it had to happen. So I don't know anything specific yet. But but I am excited by the thrill of it. I think it'd be really interesting to Traverse more of Antarctica. I think that that continent not only is it the only continent without coronavirus but it's I mean, it's very underrated and it's a very interesting place. There are fractions of Antarctica that are unclaimed By Any Other Nation and yet
Larger than you know California state and so that's that's a pretty fascinating thing when you think about it. I mean, there's land that is larger than countries that no one's really claiming and you know, the eye of the of the world is really towards the you know, Mars maybe rightfully, so it's very interesting but he right right here on Earth. We have a lot of undiscovered stuff, you know, the other thing that I'm super fascinated by the ocean just the
Underwater life super undiscovered and they're all sorts of interesting Treasures underwater used to have a culture of going after, you know, people looking for Sunken booty and ships and you know that all kind of faded at some point, but you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff there. Jeff Bezos plucked out of the water Apollo 11s original Saturn 5 engine and that now sits somewhere in his one.
His homes, I mean that's incredible what a piece of art to have and there's plenty more of that interesting stuff, you know at the bottom of the ocean. We don't really know how to Traverse it but that's another form of event or that I think would be incredibly interesting to go and
explore. Yeah, interesting people doing interesting things and you're certainly at the intersection of that and you're bringing up some of these things that that you're intrigued by that your curiosity is being peaked with. What are those moments like when your curiosity is piqued when you talk about
Underwater discoveries and things like that what our next steps for you when you get intrigued by something?
Yeah, it's funny. I I'm smiling because I think the broader topic of motivation what pulls one in different directions is very interesting and it's something I well I mean collectively the whole team and Pioneer spend a huge amount of time thinking on because let's imagine we could crack this. Let's imagine I could tell you.
I kind of know I've reverse-engineered motivation and here's like a script we can write where we can kind of motivate anyone to do anything boy. I mean, that would be incredible we could fix so much of the world problems. I think we could create many more startups as a result like my dream for Pioneer isn't it for it to be a startup accelerator it is for it to be a setup in generator to create more companies that were not have been possible before and I think the way we would go about doing that is we would kind of buy into the assumption that there are
And of a mating companies, you know your next stripe Facebook Pinterest Snapchat, whatever that are, you know GitHub repos with 10 commits in them where the person then gave up because they lost motivation and and and I understand and I think everyone can understand this right you you working on anything. There's a kind of an ebb and flow to it and I feel like the world broadly speaking all of the jobs in the world could be separated into maybe one of two buckets.
The first we could kind of think of as you know clear we could kind of call them clear jobs where it's very clear what to do next. So this would be anything from working in the military to working at Starbucks. It's very clear how to advance in the career. It's very clear what the next mission is. It's very clear what the you know, the next thing to do working in a large companies the same you have a boss the boss gives you work you do the work the boss gives you a raise great, but then there are opaque jobs and opaque jobs, unlike clear jobs. It's not really clear what to do next.
It's not really clear where the motivation should come from. It's not really clear. What success would look like, you know, we can kind of think of an opaque job as the job of someone working as an early stage founder. I actually think investors are somewhat similar. It's not always clear what to invest in what to do and in an opaque job and you know, I feel like there are a lot of casualties of motivation where you kind of are working on something and because there's no external validation. You just stop doing it for you know at some point
and so motivation comes in these, you know fits and starts and and and it's very unclear to anyone really what drives it what causes it and and the role of pioneer is at least for the world of kind of early-stage startup and Company building to try to take people that have otherwise would have given up and to propel them into this treadmill of productivity to get them going and and to get them to work on it a little bit more harder, you know for every time you know, when I was 18 years old for every time I thought of applying to y combinator
Or trying to you know email someone at Sequoia for money then maybe 20 times where I just kind of self added it out of that. Well, you know doesn't seem like a real thing why bother move on and then at some point I kind of did it and you know to our earlier conversation, I expect a lot of parallels here with running where
I didn't take running seriously for a very long time and then I accidentally signed up for a marathon. I don't know maybe a half a decade or longer ago. And then I accidentally told people I signed up for a marathon and one thing leads to the next and suddenly I'm running intervals and attract so, you know, they're all these ways to kind of propel yourself or force yourself to do things and we want to instrument that in software in what Pioneer does and so we have this whole mechanic around, you know, a leaderboard and
Instant all that gamification is really in service of getting people to go the extra mile for themselves really it's very much how like the the whole Peloton platform, you know, the bike the treadmill they have gets people to work out a little bit more and and so, you know for me the whole lot, you know story around curiosity and motivation. It really is the sexting that and and solving that and breaking that apart is is
I think the key to creating kind of more startups in the world, which I should mention is something we want like I think as a society we want more variety. We want more choice. We want more weirdness. We don't want to live in a world where there's four or five large tech companies. It'd be great to live in the world where there's a thousand small tech companies and I think in order to create that we need to literally create and generate more Founders and I don't think it's that the world is lacking sufficient IQ or people that would be smart enough or people that would be gritty enough. I think it's that the world is lacking in a way to kind of
Radicalized people to pursue their passions and that's the purpose of pioneer.
Yeah, that's just such an interesting hypothesis. It makes me even think back I grew up playing sports. So I had a sports background and not even just think about some of those little motivations those little nudges that a certain coach maybe gave me at one of those inflection points and that little bit of motivation just helped me go so much further along my own progress and you're talking about doing this in terms of companies and Founders and you're assessing hundreds if not thousands of Founders per
Year, and I'm wondering do you believe that you really can dissect what motivates them and what what that Curiosity looks
like.
It's interesting because I think you kind of answered the question with your earlier point. So, you know when the coach when you're running.
or doing any sport and and if you have the right psychology of kind of
You know kind of an insecure overachiever, what's going to happen is you are going to be your largest critic and your largest kind of enemy the voice inside your head, you know that says this wasn't good enough, you know, I bet this was bad. You should try harder and and so you tend to push yourself, you know to to to extremes pretty quickly and it's just when you were kind of going to give up on the whole thing because why bother
maybe you know everything you do is just not great enough where the coach says that was a great set and that really changes things inside you and we see this kind of on the internet if I'm very tickled by it, you know, someone will get just a like on Twitter or Facebook from someone they admire and that will change them for the day maybe the week and so, you know, I think as humans
I think it's actually a fairly healthy that we look for a sense of accomplishment from other humans. I mean if we didn't have that we would all off be doing crazy things maybe bad things. I think in many ways. That's that's kind of what morality is the sense that if I did this other humans perceive that badly so I shouldn't do that and that kind of makes sense that a global scale now like everything taken to an extreme. I think it's bad, you know, you don't want to be entirely driven by what other people think because I think then
Then you get stuck in the cycle of conventionalism. But having the you know, the right people be ones that you kind of you perform for and you admire I think is is both do you know true and important? So what I think we can do is I think we can and try to engineer mechanics where you know, one of two things happens, either you get a sense of approval from like say a coach that what you're doing is great and you should move on and you should take that a little bit more seriously and you
Oh and that for us can be the you know, Pioneer is an opaque thing to be one of our experts and then of course the other thing is just this this element of the other thing that's very pleasant and sports is you know, kind of when you're playing and you know, where you rank and you're kind of not winning all the time nor you losing all the time and you get a sense of how you're improving and that's one of the in one of the ways where I think you know, Pioneers kind of leaderboard mechanic is quite effective. You constantly getting
Sense kind of where you are and how you're improving and some people love competing against others other people really love just competing against themselves and just you know, everyone wants to kind of get better every day. And so I think with those kind of two mechanics, you know nudges from kind of coaches to your point as well as a constant sense of improvement we can you know, get people to trip into building their kind of next great thing and let's not forget. This is not too far-fetched of a claim because if we look a little bit closer,
The earlier versions of say Facebook where you can have you can watch interviews with Mark Zuckerberg from 2005 where you know, he very much decries the platform ever growing Beyond, you know Harvard just a small Harvard photo directory or I mean in all honesty even Elon Musk where you know SpaceX was set up as basically a giant photo op on on Mars. That was the plan. Let's buy some Russian rockets launched a bunch of them on to Mars get it to take a photo of what life is like on Mars and then
Down the company, you know lo and behold Facebook, of course tort turns into the largest not even social network, but maybe you know, you kind of kind of human directory service in the world and SpaceX is the largest private space company, you know far more successful than many nation states. There were not started in that way. They were started as fairly dumb simple projects and things really evolved over time.
So so so if you if if you inspect closely that and I get a lot of Joy by looking at early versions of you know, Facebook or Amazon or Google by the way, Google university project called backrub for Christ's sake you your kind of reminded that everything big start small and that is I think really important to remember because if you if you if you believe that then I think you automatically believe that more small things could
Come back. You bring up another really interesting Thread about how some of these gigantic organizations have started small with a simple idea. And I know you've kind of seen behind closed doors of some of the world's leaders in terms of technology and I would love to know what it's like behind those doors. Are they just like everyone else because I think young entrepreneurs are people interested in starting a company. They look up to a Bezos and they think he's just operating at such a different level and that might be a bad example because he might be but I'm wondering the majority of people
are are there enough people who can emulate them to some degree with enough time and experience?
Yeah, I mean.
For me, I grew up adoring Apple just a during it. I didn't have all the Apple products, but I certainly knew about every single one of them and I was very much I thought myself a disciple of Steve Jobs, you know watching there was a YouTube channel. I think it shut down called every Steve Jobs video and this is back in the day where you could like watch the entirety of YouTube, but I think I watch
Every video on every Steve Jobs video and never properly met the man. My only run-in with him was a literal running where he almost ran me over once but when once we got acquired by Apple Steve was had unfortunately already passed but I was very curious to meet the rest of the leadership of at the time the world's largest company.
And and really get a sense for you know for what these inhuman gods were like and of course you go and you meet folks and you know, I don't know if you've ever had the experience of like meeting rock stars or people you grew up admiring, but you meet them and you constantly have the same reflection which is gosh. They're human. They're human just like me and you know, I don't mean to demean them. They're much smarter than me and you know,
Our is a real intelligence to some of apples leadership is the main thing I can I can speak about just at that large, you know Fortune 50 list having spent a lot of time with those guys. I mean every Apple leader themselves could and is running actually a Fortune 50 company in terms of Revenue. They're very smart, but they're very human to and you know, they have their you know, their eccentric disease and their flaws.
And it's a real reminder that that you know, you're not that different from them for me. One of the biggest moments in in my life where I kind of realized I could do it is I remember when I came out here Mark Zuckerberg came to give a talk and in all honesty, you know at the time Facebook was you know, weirdly even more hype than it is now it was kind of before it was it was on the ascendancy in the S curve, but just seeing him talk and and seeing him it, you know in the flesh made me realize well, you know.
He's human. I'm human. So I'm sure I can figure something out and you know, maybe it won't become Facebook, but it'll be something and I think that's the thing for people to realize is you see all of these people through screens and you see them in their fully manicured form, you know, don't forget when you watch someone like even Mark Zuckerberg or even Elan, you know both who are you know, certainly no Churchill's in terms of their alteration ability. These are people that have gone through hours of me.
Dia training hours staring at themselves on video and just trying to figure out how to perfect how to improve and you know, maybe they don't give a damn but certainly they have media teams just working on polishing the image over and over and over and and they're meant to project Force Power and pride. It's obviously in their best interest to do that given where they are but you know, but behind that is someone who you know.
It's very similar if not identical to any kind of early stage founder. So.
Look, there is something something smart unique. Oh, wow, Siri just turned on my computer. Sorry about that. Um, there's something smart and unique about those people but you know, I don't think it's a one-in-a-million thing. I think it's a one in a thousand think
I'm somewhat interested. How you view that now when you have young entrepreneurs young Founders come up to you who are viewing you in that light as well. I mean here you came from another country.
Got acquired for tens of millions are building some incredible things out there in the world. So, how do you think about that now since you're still so close to that when you have young people reach out to you?
Yeah.
You know II try to make my set up my time in the kind of this barbell to approach her arm, but, you know, very interested in meeting other people that have been underrated by the world, you know Outsiders people that dumb.
You know feel like they don't belong wherever they are, but they also aren't you know quite Dem?
You know at their Peak moment of Fame here in Silicon Valley, you know on the Other Extreme I try to spend a lot of time with kind of existing close friends and you know, it's important for me to you know, to communicate, you know to everyone that I meet that's kind of just getting started that you know that they can do it. I mean, it's that that's the biggest message. I try to deliver to people it's very interesting to think.
and to wonder, you know at the end of the day a lot of people asked me the following question, you know when they reach out is like
what
you so what will I learn by coming out to say Silicon Valley that I you know that I can't learn online or what is it at the end of the day that you know investors or places like y combinator are teaching people and and you know, the funny thing is a lot of people think, you know, they're they're going to they're going to be learning a like a like some secret rule, you know and formula that's really kept here like that. You know, it's like the coke formula or something. The reality of it is and the thing I try to convey people too.
But when I meet them is the main thing of Silicon Valley like the big idea here is that in certain properties in the world the internet being one of those worlds. You can grow much faster than you anticipate. That is the big thing people don't realize you know, they're sending ten emails a week not a hundred thousand emails a week. They're trying to grow Revenue $1,000 a month not a million dollars a month and and people kind of forget the math of kakkar of the
Compounding annual growth rate or weekly growth rate, you know five percent week over week starts to add up really quickly a highly would encourage everyone. I mean, I, you know, I guess now with Google coronavirus for a little bit more aware of what 33% every week means but you can open a spreadsheet and you can just do the math of 5% week over week and put in any number that you care about the number of users. You have the number of Revenue you're chasing and and things start stacking in this weird way where it's as
It's very kind of non-intuitive to the human mind and it's really teaching that to people it's teaching to people that you can get big and you can grow big that I think is the main lesson of Silicon Valley you can kind of think of here's a fun analogy like the world basically has all of these computers that could do amazing things, but they've all been under clocked by the manufacturer and and what Silicon Valley really tries to do is I don't know if it's overclocking or getting them to the correct.
Clock speed but it is certainly increasing the kind of strength and the speed of the processor itself in people.
When did you learn that lesson? Was it after coming to Silicon Valley or were you aware of that before?
No, I wasn't. I mean I grew up in his room and I would read articles about tech crunch about Silicon Valley and it seemed to me as as as as foreign as Middle-earth. I mean it's obviously a place might be fictional amazing things happening there, you know, elrond and Gandalf walking around.
But certainly not a place I can access and then I came out here and then I suddenly I was here and I remember, you know, all these companies some of them would go under over time. But I you know, I was walking around kind of the Bay Area and I see the offices of you know, Foursquare and gowalla, you know, the time location-based social networks were all the hype 2009 2010 and I'm like I felt like I was on a movie set.
And and I have no idea. I think I had no idea that things could get big but then you know, you meet people you have friends and then what happens is your friends occasionally some of them in their companies, you know start to do really well and they start grossing millions of dollars in revenue and you're looking around and you're staring at your hands and you're staring at their hands and then you're staring at your hands and you're saying well, we both have 10 fingers. So obviously I could be doing more and so there's this interesting.
Positive form of competition where it's not I'm trying to eat away at their success is their success is motivating me to realize I can do much more. So again, so like humans aren't born with the sense that they can start a company that turns into Amazon and you know what statistically the odds are that it won't happen. But when it does happen to someone it'll it'll be started by the same person as you as the person listening to this and that's a super important lesson and I didn't I mean I certainly didn't know that in it and it took me, you know quite
Time to internalize but it's funny. Now that I have that I find I find there's a certain element of confidence in it that you know that I know that I'll figure it out and I'll get there and it's very similar going back to how we open the conversation for me. I found it very helpful, you know many years ago to finish a marathon my first marathon.
Because I know then knew I could do that and that you know that makes running two miles seem like a joke. So yeah, I mean, I don't think you're born with this. Some people are born with this knowledge Churchill famously was basically, you know from birth. He was there to save the world but most of us aren't born with it and it's something you discover over time.
Yeah, Daniel one of the things I appreciate most about you especially during our conversations is just your ability to synthesize your ideas and your thinking too.
Clear and concise way and I mean that's just an excellent framework for someone who doesn't have this experience and I'm just wondering some of the other main Frameworks and models that you found most helpful overall.
Yeah, it's funny. I've had I got a lot of the kind of mental model questions, you know, I
I don't have them. I'm a bit more of an edge as improviser a bad one. Probably then classical musician, you know, I don't have like the particular scripture I subscribe to I do think there are there are a bunch of
You know mental kind of tricks or fallacies that people fall into plenty to be read about this online. You know, I think famously Charlie Munger has this book for Charlie's Almanac which discusses this in quite length. And if you don't want to read the book or buy it it's actually an expensive book oddly great summaries of it online, but one that's been very topical for me of late with with coronavirus is just the law of exponents and exponential growth doubling every week.
And again, it's super easy to talk about these numbers, but it they're real brain-busters doubling every week seems very fine until you go from a thousand to 2,000 to 4,000 to 8,000 to 16 thousand to thirty two thousand and and that that is you know, it's funny you ask for mental Frameworks I use but that's like a mental framework. No one can really grasp their head around one of the reasons why I actually think the Bay Area was a little bit more better prepared to the Coronavirus.
Than anywhere else is.
Staring at exponential growth and dreaming of exponential growth in good forms is something we do while day and so we were quite aware of, you know, well might be going from four to eight deaths but if it's doubling every week, you know, I think we were quite aware of how bad it can get because those charts that those the shape of those charts is very familiar to us, but I think most people don't understand that most people don't understand the math of compounding. I think that it's like a that's another weird secret.
You know, it's it's you can really take yet for whatever for whatever you want to be in terms of Revenue. You have how much money you have? How many users you have you could take wherever you know, whatever number that is and plug it into a spreadsheet and just set five percent growth as your Target weekly and it starts out really easy and but if you manage to keep the pace you get two large numbers very quickly. So that's another thing to flag for people.
And
you were mentioning your more like a jazz musician. I'm wondering have you ever read the book effortless effortless mastery?
I've lived through it. I wouldn't call it a red one. But yeah, I own it.
Okay. Yeah, no just talking about the improvisation and and how you go about things it just seems similar to that framework. So I just wondering if you had had checked that out at all. You did bring up an interesting thing though and and understanding the limits of your knowledge and what you're not capable of so are there certain things over the past year with with Pioneer? You guys have come across and we can call them just blind spots and I'm wondering if
If you've changed anything, even at the margin and what that process has look like for you.
Yes constantly adjusting and learning. You know, I think the I think it's fairly. Well, I think it's impossible for a mortal to build a product and have it be successful with literally no edits, you know kind of had shot situation. I think it's very possible for someone to build something of this directionally good and try to get feedback from customers. The only amount of goodness you need in your product is you need sufficient goodness, so that people will use it.
They will give you feedback. That is it and so thankfully we have that with Pioneer. And so we get copious amounts of feedback and you know one particular thing, you know that that we improved on recently as you know people I think wanted as structured way to understand, you know, how they would get funding from Pioneer in our you know, our original kind of funding offer was
just complicated and in specific and one of the things I'm trying to fix in the Venture world is negotiation, which I think no founder wants because negotiating against a VC is I think flat out on Fair you're doing a negotiation for the fourth time probably in your life and they are doing it for the fourth time, you know this week, so it sucks. No one wants to you don't want to run your first marathon against Elliot kipchoge
so
no, one thing we adjusted as a result as we made our terms incredibly transparent clear and it's actually we're going to do a another step of this soon, but you could literally go to the website and and and you could see what our terms are and we try to pretty much we always stick to them and so like that that was a big thing for us just because you know for me removing confusion from The Venture game is incredibly important the
Real situation haven't quite arrived there yet. But of course, the ideal situation is, you know, you can Envision like a Windows 98 UI or the, you know, get money button is grayed out and then at some point it turns green, you know black and you can click it and then you just get money. That's it. That's would be obviously how this works. It's like so clear when you think of it, but there shouldn't be any of this weird kind of negotiation talking to different people that get money button should just turn the right color and you press it and you're done and we'll get there.
Not quite there, but that's good a big thing. We've been working on. Another thing we're constantly working on is improving the elements of feedback in the tournament. So the way Pioneer works is you play this thing and you try to get some points and improve kind of your score week over week. And one of the things that drives your score is other people kind of commenting on the progress we've made over the course of a particular week and they have the ability to leave feedback for you and I must say, you know part of a lot of this is due to the, you know work that the engineering team is done notably are
Star copilot Rishi and a lot of its I think do to maybe Community luck Dynamics, but the feedback on Pioneer is really good. And this is a big deal because as you know, pseudo Anonymous communities on the internet people are rarely nice to each other but for some reason it works and so just to kind of improving the quality of the feedback in terms of you know, how we show who and what is another really important thing for us because you know going back to your point about the coach.
That nudge where someone says, you know, hey, this is really good or even constructive criticism. You know. Hey, have you considered X or Y is really important to people because I think that can really make the difference of you know, a good
weekend in a bad week one.
So go
ahead. Oh no one thing you brought up a little while ago that I should've Dove deeper into now, but this is kind of circling back is you're mentioning the leaderboard and I'd love to know how you assess this through when you're talking about certain people don't like being up.
Leaderboard and they prefer to compete against themselves. So how do you balance that?
It's true. I took we take I mean we can take a lot of inspiration from existing games that you know have multiple modes. You can play in single player and play against yourself or you could play in multiplayer with other people now unlike a game we have this interesting problem, which is the reason single player works as you can play against Lots imagine it's you know, some type of strategy game or whatever you can play against an AI you can play against a computer in the computer can simulate people there's something very beautiful on
Because the computer will never see you in your nakedness, you know, you could have a totally abysmal game and no one will know now. We don't have that like we don't have if we know how to write software that would act like the way Founders do then we'd have a whole other business in front of us. So we don't know how to write software that runs businesses quite yet.
And it may be some time before that happens. And so we don't have doing single player for us as a little bit more difficult. But one thing we can do is that we're adding into our product is the ability to kind of see where you rank on the leaderboard without appearing or yourself if you like which is which gives you a sense of kind of where you stand but again, it's, you know, not something you need to be public about. The other thing. I should mention is there's a reason Pioneer is mostly pseudonyms and out.
Names, I mean at some point we need to know people's names because we need to know where to send the money, but you can go through the entire experience making up a fake username. No one will know who you are. And that is in many ways to afford people the ability to really experiment and be themselves without having to
Put profile pictures everywhere. And and I think that again that allows you to compete against yourself without really worrying about the rest of the world. So so, you know, I think both but I think you're right both modes exist. And and I think you know, we're kind of working to serve both of them. Well
now I preheat so much you being willing to talk about some of the things you're trying to change overcome and have dealt with because so many times we get to look up to people like you
And it's almost like you were talking about have been so coached and what to say so it's just such a great perspective. And I know we received a lot of questions just everyone with this uncertainty there want to know what's going to change coming out of this and you did an amazing blog post which will have linked up about the World 2.0 and I'm wondering for you guys internally. Are you assessing things differently? Are there new opportunities you're looking at because everything's around covid.
Well,
I think the right strategy for us is as much as my blog posts actually try to be in the game of prediction the right strategy for Pioneers to react and not to predict and so we're going to follow, you know engineers and and Founders, you know to wherever markets they think are interesting because you know, I think once the spirit of human Ingenuity manages to sink its teeth into a market something happens at some point and it is true things have shifted a little bit, you know, like
His seemingly there's a little bit less activity and people building kind of next-generation SASS and a little bit more activity and people building kind of new social networks ways to stay connected at home that type of thing. I think this beckons an interesting question, which I tried to address in that post which I've been thinking about which is one like is covid-19 a thesis for investment or is it temporary and to if it's if the current way of
Life isn't a thesis for investment because it will change you know, what things are permanent and what things are temporary just in terms of human behavior shifts. And so to the first point, I think the current lifestyle is temporary, but I think the vaccine is very far away. And so we can kind of view ourselves and social distancing Purgatory for quite some time. We're going to be in Between Worlds and and that will be for a while, you know my information on this changes daily, you know the time to
scene trying to speak to different experts and understand you know is it going to be a year or five years but you know call me tomorrow but right now I'm sensing it'll be more like five years they don't all have the novel Spike protein shape but you know let's not forget there are four other coronaviruses called the common cold that we don't have a vaccine for so this it's not as easy as it seems It's you know it's not like falchi is going to dr. Fouch he's going to just pull this up because Trump asked him to
do you know from from his Dusty old cabinet where he's been hiding it so in in this world you know what changes and what doesn't and I think the way to think of that is so there are things we can't do and if there's a if if not having them or if there's a if there's alternative to not having them then the behavior might permanently stick if not a new company will get created so I'll give you an example handshakes handshakes will go away
Because not doing handshakes is fine, you know, they're not a requirement for humans. Then it's not oxygen on the other side concerts won't be here for quite some time humans really like Mass gatherings. I mean look at what religions have you can go back thousands of years. We've been doing this for quite some time. It's not just a the invention of Avicii and so as a result, I think they'll be some really interesting software to be built around kind of mimicking that experience of presence and
You know the way it's going to look is this I can tell you I mean this is the way this unfolds time and time again, every time there's a new medium the first few examples of it are superposition superimpositions of the old medium on the news. So just like the first TV shows are cameras pointed at radio shows and the first mobile apps. Are you very much look like web apps, you know, and then someone builds in terms of TV shows Westworld and then someone built in terms of mobile apps Uber. So it takes quite some time.
As we go from kind of the world 1.0 to the World 2.0 to get the like the real technology out of it, you know, the first digital encyclopedias. We're not Wikipedia. It was Britannica on a CD. And so I think you know, we'll get things like online concerts over Zoom, but then I think they'll be some weird 2.0 that someone will creative that education's and another great example School of resume is going to be the Horseless Carriage.
It's not an end and there's going to be something else. I don't know exactly what it'll be, you know, some element of a game and education all merged in one where I suspect video is not the dominant medium audio is not video something like that. I think will get created because the alternative
It's just not it's good. So that's kind of my rough framework for thinking about this. But we're quite reactionary at Pioneer, you know will follow whatever people build and Chase Chase what other dreams people have helped them. Maybe catch those dreams.
Yeah, you're so your mode of thinking makes me think of that quote. It's something along the lines of adapt to the present as opposed to trying to predict the future. And so it sounds like that's that's what you guys are working on.
You mentioned some of the things that are just catching your attention or where you think things may be leading to and I'd love to know how do you think work and hiring changes during all of this?
Yeah. I think the simplest mental model for that is a separation of the strong from the weak. So I think what happens is if you're a good company that has a durable business model. I think you're basically eat up the best talent of the small companies.
Go under so that's one way hiring changes. A lot of companies will go under and the best talent will concentrate within the better companies. This will be painful but actually not totally bad because let's not forget
you often need
a recession for super-talent to concentrate and for real great outcomes to happen. So PayPal was the combined might of Max levchin Peter teal Elon Musk David Sachs. He threw boy roelof Botha.
Others Jeremy stoppelman who is the founder of Yelp? All of these people would have had their own companies in a boom Market, but in a bear Market, you know, they all concentrate together and I believe it was x.com and can finiti that merged to create PayPal. So I think we'll see stuff like that in terms of hiring, you know in terms of how work changes, you know,
There's there's one side of the story which people tell you, you know humans are going to snap back to offices and it's all going to go back to normal even prior to having a vaccine. There's the other side of it, which is people will tell you remotes now here forever and I think the truth will be somewhere in the middle. Obviously, I think companies will have proven to themselves those that those that can Will have proven to themselves that they can stay productive remote and so the opportunity to work remote I think will go from being seen as a perk to being seen as an alternative.
But you know, but I think offices there's just too much goodness in the real world for us to give up on that entirely. Do you think I think in particular just one final thought a lot of that goodness is Serendipity and we don't know how to do that on the internet yet, but maybe we will but there's a lot of there's a lot of interestingness around Serendipity of just being able to stumble into someone at the water cooler and have a conversation with them that you don't quite get in the structured, you know.
them world
I'm wondering then if this opens up more Serendipity I guess my mode of thinking there is if a company is trying to hire someone they might now eliminate some of those additional costs in terms of flying people in and they're more likely to hire someone who wouldn't move to that City do you think that opens up at all
yeah I mean I think that's right I think to two things will drive that one will be the fact that everyone is now fully experimented with remote work and then I think the other is you know the cooling Winds of a recession will happen and so I think people will be more sensitive to
cost
Got you. One thing you're talking about is just now this talent coming and something that I admire about you is just your ability to detect how and I'm wondering when you're meeting will call it a Founder. What are your Spidey senses going off when you come around someone who's incredibly talented are there certain things that you just see continue to pop up over and
over again?
You know, it's funny this question in many ways has been one that has been in the back of my mind for decade and I think about it constantly and I've spoken to other Talent assessors about it endlessly and you know one day maybe if I'm brave enough, I'll write a book about it because I think is a very interesting topic and I feel like I'm still learning in this area. So I'm not quite ready for the Capstone project of a book
but
Here's the thing. I mean having gone back and forth on psychometrics read every single Paper there is on that stuff. I haven't gone back and forth on, you know, the role of IQ and intellect ever read most papers on that material. There's something that's not captured by any of these Frameworks, which I think is much more important which is kind of just the raw energy and vitality you get from someone and I think I'd much rather take a bet on someone who
who will be able to play a thousand chess games then take a bet on someone who seems like they have merely the energy to play one and but you know statistically maybe they have high odds of winning that one game the reason is there's so much Randomness in what is required to kind of become successful the the game has many more layers of dimensionality than chest does you really want someone who's just going to have the energy to take multiple shots on goal until they succeed
and and that's the big thing to focus on if like the world is a simulation game you want someone who you can say no matter what they do no matter what the initial parameters are if you ran the simulation 10,000 times they'll probably come up just constantly giving it a shot and you know on their feet you know a relatively high percentage of the times I think that is the big thing to look for you know Paul Graham talks about being looking for wanting
Feel intimidated while he's in the room with the other founder that being the emotion he seeks. I think that that's kind of related to this form of energy if the person is dynamic if the person is driven if the person believes then then I think they become very interesting and I think that matters more than we write intellect and I think that matters more than any particular psychometric attribute, so I would say, you know, mostly that's that's what's on my mind.
And I'm surprised I'm surprised because what I'm talking about seems pretty plain and it seems like a lot or if all people should have it but it's certainly not the case
and I think even at an
early level you can look at someone who's not even certain about what they're working on. But if they have the energy they will
succeed.
You got me really intrigued Now by a problem that you haven't solved yet. And I almost view this as a creative type process for you trying to uncover that and I'm just really intrigued about your overall creative process. It's something I've never heard you talk about before. So when you have a new idea like that you can even just call it something you want to do a blog post around what's your creative process? Like it seems like you may do multiple thought experiments and run scenarios through your head.
Yeah, I mean the interesting thing I've been
thinking about with with all of this is when you want to start writing something down. I find that I think this is true for many people the idea jumbles around in my head like a rock tumbler refining or finding or finding we're finding until I start writing it down. And then once I started writing it down this like a pressure release, it's like a
Like a pressure cooker that has you know was letting off steam and it and it tumbles around my head a little bit less. So there's a little bit of a counterintuitive crazy idea that works well for me and I've had I've spoken to people that have the opposite strategy, but mine is to let it jumbled around in my head until I'm kind of I feel like I'm ready and then and then once I write I usually write it, you know once fairly quickly and kind of get it out the door.
While the topic is kind of germinating or hopefully we're finding I'll definitely talk about it with other people and and think about it, but I find you know, I don't exactly know what it is. But at some point I think my mind feel like the task has been done if I start writing and and the idea has kind of left my mind. So I'm you know, I'm realizing this as I tell you my creative process is quite chaotic.
in that sense that I will let something just jumbled around endlessly let the idea jumbled around endlessly until until I feel like it's gotten to a point where it's worthwhile
yeah rumination process is always one that intrigues me I'm wondering though when something's been germinating in your head and you decide to take next steps how do you decide on an it's something that's going to be worth the next steps for you
I don't really and I never know I never know you know this is kind of what I'm trying to convey to people at scale but I never really know I'm and I'm often surprised you going to give you these the surface area of just writing posts on the internet I'm very bad predictor and which post would popular and it's certainly not correlated to the time I spend on it you know sometimes people really seem to enjoy something that took me 20 minutes to write and no one seems to care about the thing that I spent hours thinking about
and so as a result I don't overthink it too much and I think I ride a lot of things in we're in hindsight of course as I've read them the my Dynamic is just wondering why I even bother publishing such a terrible idea but I think that's just my own psyche but I think it's important not to really overthink it and to try to get out there there is the psychometric property of industriousness people talk about which is not you know
really an assessment on say the quality or the would you say the Finesse of anyone's worked but just their raw output and you know someone high and industriousness we'll just have raw hi we're all output they'll just be producing a lot often not even aware of why or how or how much they're producing they're just doing it kind of on autopilot and I think that's an interesting thing to shoot for because again I think you know whether it's a company a blog post you know
Piece of music. I don't know that you know when it's so small whether it's going to be good or not. So, you know, I do think it's useful to to kind of just get something out there and then try to get feedback and then you know urge show it to customers in many ways earlier rather than later and and the process of showing it to customers is not always pleasant. But but that's fine. It kind of makes you better. It's not always Pleasant, of course because in a you know, and you worry in the back of your
My mind that you know, they're not going to love it. So I understand, you know, the quote great artist ship its it it takes a certain element of fearlessness to do that
putting yourself out. There is never easy you're talking about all of these things that you might not necessarily know the answer to I'm hoping you might have an answer to this one just in what area of your life. Do you think you have the best taste for?
yo that's a fun question
I think I have a pretty good
I wish I could tell you it's certainly not in in wine or fashion but I have a think I have a pretty good taste for
kind of General markets and I don't think it's that much of an achievement it's just you look at stuff enough you kind of develop a sense forward and back and of course an interesting question which is this great taste often mean that you're the worst person to talk to about a certain topic
because you know taste in many ways is just kind of pattern recognition and so I think I
can pattern recognize a great Market in a bad Market but the world is so volatile you know maybe for example I'll miss the next great Healthcare Company because that's just generally a bad Market
Um, it's kind of an interesting question whether well, what is the correct amount of taste and and maybe there are areas where you have kind of too much tasted because there's a bit of an explore exploit thing going on. I think where you collect more information about a certain field,
And then you become trapped. I mean this happens to machine learning algorithms all the time. You become trapped in kind of a local Maxima and and you missed the fact that you know, had you been a little bit more
explorative, you know, two
spaces to your left as is a much higher Hill or
Peak.
So I think it's a very interesting question to think about maybe over the weekend. I wouldn't spend too many hours cycling through this on a Thursday. But as to as to what the correct amount of taste is
but it's clear to me that the kind of dose response curve there is kind of an inverse U shape where you want some amount of it but not all of it
I love how you reframe that now you have me thinking through this differently because when I asked the question of most intriguing next about his do you work in that area and then kind of like why or why not so I like how you re shifted that for me what about just in terms of you've been around a lot of people you've self-assess a lot what a most people just not paying attention to but if they did you think they would just dramatically
increase their overall success in life and life happiness and defined that how you met
I think people are not I mean I found myself. I think there's a so there's a strong desire now, I think from the entire world to kind of
get
Very much focused. I don't know on on you know taking.
Care of yourself and you know trying to be mindful and all that kind of stuff but I feel like that is, you know grossly overrated in comparison to managing the inputs in your life, you know, the people you're surrounded by the food you eat the information that you read. I think it's much easier to just try to optimize those things instead of trying to optimize what your brain does with everything you throw it if that makes sense. Like I think if you have bad voltage, you know in
in your
in terms of what you plug yourself into I think you'll have you know spiky output you know you don't want to try to assume that you're going to have a you know
Transformer in your body so feel like
that's a pretty large underrated thing of course back into the question well
like you know how do you change those inputs if you don't really have control over them if you're kind of just stuck somewhere
the good news is the internet is this vast equalizing landscape I mean it's really incredible when you think about it my internet is the same
as a Billionaire's internet which is the same as the internet if someone in India right now for the most part pretty identical sure maybe slightly faster upload speeds whatever but for the most part it's the same and that's really beautiful that means you can kind of get in touch with anyone find a community for yourself and I think that's that's a that's a
very big thing to pay attention to you know we
We are the average of the people we spend time with and you want to
figure out ways to spend time with great people to increase your
average.
So it's a pretty big thing. I think.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think just the whole debate
on kind of in my eye and this is a little bit controversial but the whole mental health debate I think pales in comparison to say the debate around proper sleep and I often wonder how many hours have had spacer meditation you accomplished in literally an hour of REM
sleep and I think a lot of
people early on in life have a strong desire to perform through output that is to say they want to be seen as cycling the bicycle as a
Simply as possible, but the world really doesn't care. Sorry about input. The world really doesn't care about you know, how much effort you put in the world. Are you cares about how much
output you have
and you want to be working hard and smart, you know not just
hard. Yeah. So I've got a question around that and then so I'm really curious then how you spend the majority of your time and what are you using as a barometer for your return on that invested time?
It's a good question. I spend the majority of my time working in interfacing with you know, Pioneers Founders people would say, you know, early stage companies working on Pioneer itself. Of course, just trying to figure out what to improve what to fix. We just launched this new thing called Frontier just kind of like a an interesting directory of cool projects kind of built on line. It's too kind of takes the shape of a subreddit. So, you know thinking about that working through that how to make it grow how to make
Popular had to also make sure that it
you know has kind of a good Community driving behind it something that's top of mind for me and you know the way I view the return on time. There is it's pretty I mean, it's pretty chaotic in the sense that we have metrics we look at for say the company of pioneer, you know, the people were
finding the quality of the people were funding our other people funding the people that were funding that type of thing.
I'm
the kind of obvious stuff you would be looking at I think if if you were in the organization, you know, and and for me personally so much of my personal,
you know, kind of
personal and social capital is equity used in that thing. I spent a lot of time they mean if that were successful, I would be happily successful, but I think the other thing that's
important is, you know, even the outside of the main game, you know, just being helpful to close friends being helpful to family.
other people perceiving you as useful I think is the is the main thing I'd like
and I feel like I often need maybe it's a flaw of mine to be dependent
on and so you know for me being able to produce
something that other people find worthwhile that other people find useful you know be that an email a piece of software anything really that for me is joy
well to be honest you're certainly checking the box there for me you've been incredibly helpful over the last year with your writing conversations just overall Lessons Learned so thanks for that I know you've got a lot going on today so I just want to want to finish up with two quick ones here and if we're just going to be sitting down having this conversation in three years from now what do you need to have happened that you just feel overall happy with the progress of Pioneer in yourself
yeah, I mean
success for us and success from for for Pioneer
is
to be we want to be
Equity holders in hundreds of great businesses that
are obviously valued as great themselves.
You know, I think if the aggregate market cap of a Pioneer companies, there's a hundred billion dollars. We consider ourselves certainly on the path to success. And like I said, I think the world could stand to have significantly more small companies,
you know in trade of, you know, four or five large
Tech Giants and so if we could help increase the amount of variety
the amount of kind of novelty in the world that way
I think we'd be hugely successful so that's the
trick for us you know it's it's not about having a billion users Pioneer is not really a tool for the masses it's a tool for the elite for the top one percent the don't even realize they're the one percent this isn't you know the net worth one percent this is kind of the weird one percent The Outsiders the top 1% Outsiders if we can find a way to find those limited number
of people and to be clear I think their millions of them but again not billions and get be at the ground floor as they start their business and propel them into success you know I think I think we feel pretty happy with our Tombstone so that's the main thing we're shooting
for is kind of being Equity
holders in hundreds of successful businesses doing you know
a whole eclectic mix of things Daniel I love it it's inspiring it's truly great work that you guys are helping
so many people across the globe so final one here I'm always intrigued about what's coming through your brain in terms of what you're reading and then who you're just favorite thinkers of all time are I know you've mentioned Churchill a few times in this conversation would jump just love to get most updated new books or things that you've enjoyed reading and then who you just admire as a thinker
sure yeah I mean there is actually a neutral book that came out this year so that that's been an enjoyable one to read
there's a really great book I only would recommend it to someone who runs it's an old book but it's a really great book possibly the greatest running book of all time
let's see if I can pull up the name here you know it's funny a
by-product
Of reading on Kindle is almost familiar with the title of things
II that question someone asked me that last night and I couldn't remember probably five the last 10 based on that.
So the book is called once a runner and its really good. If you're into running if you're not, you know, what hang of the waters was a book that was recommended to me is about the construction of the Erie Canal. I found that incredibly fascinating one that
I'm just finishing now that I picked up recently is a book titled chaos is the Charles Manson book, you know, it's it's if if you like the intellectual thrill of a conspiracy theory, I think it's very interesting. You know, I don't know how knowledgeable or are how informational it is just finishing Robert Caro's latest on Lyndon Johnson. That's that's a kind of an endless song. You start reading that and you never had a belief a straw City. Yeah.
that's a bit of a Capstone project maybe one final one I'd recommend I kind of really enjoyed was coke land the secret history of the quote unquote secret history of Koch Industries I found that very interesting book paints a mixed picture and I think that's important I think it would have been very easy for the author to write the negative story but it's mixed positive and negative and yeah so so that was interesting
me too I mean sorry you've now tripped me the man who sought the market I thought was super fascinating this is a book about Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies is very interesting book about about the company and then maybe one final one is leadership and more Andrew Roberts book Andrew Roberts has written a tremendous amount of biographies about leaders during including Churchill this one is kind of how would you say Snippets of
As of leadership, you know from different leaders around the world. So it's kind of a compressed way of reading his book. Some of the chapters are great. Some of the chapters are bad. I'd encourage the reader to kind of leaf through it in non-sequential order to from we knew you know, whatever they find most
interesting. It's funny you and I must be thinking through the same lens because those last three Coke land what did a deep dive on him reading Roberts right now and then Jim Simons we had on the author Greg Zuckerman about a month or two ago, but those first few I
never heard of sump pump to dive into those.
great awesome what Daniel this is always fun I always walk away from these conversations thinking differently for the listeners who are unfamiliar with you everything that's going on at Pioneer we're going to have it all linked up but anywhere else you want them checking out staying connected with you
now that's great I mean my email is on my Twitter bio so you should feel free to email me and that's kind of it I mean people I think I think if you feel like you shouldn't check out Pioneer that is the exact type of person that should check out Pioneer so give it a gander and
we're of course always
very curious about the experience people go through not just learning about what they're working on so please send
any feedback you have our way yeah highly recommend you guys check it out it's fascinating and all of you Builders out there make sure you guys get on there and and and see if you can get some funding through Pioneer but Daniel gross once again I can't thank you enough for joining us on what got you there thank you so much for having me this was the like you guys made it to the end of another episode of what got you there I hope you guys enjoyed it I really do appreciate you taking the time to listen all the way through if you found value in this the best way you can support
Port the show is giving us a review rating It sharing it with your friends and also sharing on social I can't tell you how much I appreciate it looking forward to you guys listening to another episode
