Jackson Dahl
@jacksondahl • 41,983 subscribers
@dialecticpod 🟦🎙️
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Dialectic 56: Miles Grimshaw Miles Grimshaw is an investor at Thrive Capital. He has spent his life hunting change: from "adventure racing" to finding and working with the world's most ambitious companies. His favorite part: getting to go back down the mountain and begin again. I talked to Miles about playing infinite games, seeing greatness up close, and the biggest change he's seen so far: After a career of software investing, all of the underlying assumptions for venture-backed software startups are in question. What moats will persist? Is software over? We also discuss: - Impatient patience: flying to Ottawa for dinner with Simon Eskildsen and waiting a year to invest in turbopuffer - Two fundamental questions: "what is it?" and "who cares?" - Software's barbell future: Benioff building "sales city" and "the champagne region of Palantir" - Founder Vision: "you go where you look" and what Michael Truell saw for Cursor - Getting up to speed as a generalist: "I don't know" and "I'll figure it out" - Intuition for great: committing to SpaceX laser engineers (MESH) in 48 hours, with no domain expertise - Humility and conviction: leaving Thrive after a ~decade for Benchmark, and coming back Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:37) Intro: Miles Grimshaw (4:30) Infinite Games, Adventure Racing, and Starting Anew, Over and Over (11:01) Staying Hungry: Proactive Hunting and the Turbopuffer Story (17:35) Impatiently Patient: Courtship, Cursor, Recruiting, and Joining the Team (25:33) Loving Change: London to America, the Himalayas, and Learning New Sports (31:36) The Genetics of Companies: "What Is It?" and "Who Cares?" (38:08) House Cats & Tigers: Where Is the Founder Looking? (47:00) Confidence in Uncertainty and Customers That Pull You Into the Future (54:25) What Remains for Software: Moats, Cities, Wall-Clock Time, and the Barbell of Scale & Luxury (1:04:54) Craft, Trust, and Why Software Isn't Over (1:11:13) Intuition: Gradient Descent and Seeing Greatness Up Close (1:18:07) "I Don't Know" and "I'll Figure It Out" (1:22:12) Commitments, Not Bets: Closing People and Board Work (1:29:06) Joining Thrive, Being a Punk, and Music Studios over Jury Trials (1:36:18) Leaving for Benchmark and Returning to Thrive (1:43:18) Dream Bigger: Lessons from Josh, Teaching Agency to Kids, and Going the Distance Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 56: Miles Grimshaw - Back Down the Mountain - is out now below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl149,739 просмотров • 15 дней назад
Hold jam sessions, not jury trials. Thrive Capital's Miles Grimshaw rejects the investment committee as a jury trial where one person presents, and everyone else looks for guilt. “The best version of investment team conversations… is like being in the music studio making music together.”
Jackson Dahl47,618 просмотров • 12 дней назад
Andrew Reed has quietly become one of the best growth investors of his generation. This is his first long form interview. I talked to Andrew Reed about conviction under pressure, what great founders look like, and how humanity and competitiveness coexist inside Sequoia Capital. Andrew is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital, which he joined at 23. He led his first investment 4 years later into Robinhood, and he has partnered with Figma, Klarna, Phantom, @VantaInc, , MUBI, Strava, and more. We discuss: - People over spreadsheets, every time - Why great companies often have a few metrics screaming red and others screaming bright green - Investing $200M into Robinhood during the first week of COVID - How he developed conviction on Vanta in 14 seconds - Why the hardest round to invest in is the one after you first invest - Craft as a commercial input - Writing memos through the night as a gut check on conviction - why Sequoia's extreme performance culture is empowering - What he's learned from Doug Leone, Mike Moritz, and Pat Grady Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 2:02 - Intro: Andrew Reed 3:50 - Thanks to Notion 5:23 - Start: Humanity, Spotting Weird, and Competitiveness 19:07 - Investing & Great Founders 37:53 - Andrew's Style, Pat Grady, and Continuous Learning 47:31 - Doubling Down and Not Flinching 56:09 - Empathy on Boards, Learning the Real Business, "Expensive" Prices, and Selling 1:07:18 - Managing Ego and Becoming a Leader 1:14:08 - Craft as a Commercial Input, Knowing vs. Feeling, Preparing for Big Days, Becoming a Great Closer 1:28:39 - Sequoia Capital 1:38:57 - Don Valentine, Mike Moritz, and Doug Leone 1:51:29 - Closing Questions Dialectic with Jackson Dahl Ep. 39: Andrew Reed - Don't Flinch - is out now, below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl266,399 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад
Dialectic ep. 50: Tyler Cowen & Nabeel Qureshi! You could talk to tylercowen and Nabeel S. Qureshi about anything and it would be interesting. Nabeel is a former guest and a true polymath who can go wide and deep. He'd long suggested I interview his friend and mentor Tyler: the epitome of that archetype. I wanted to do something special for 50, so I paired them together and hoped for some magic. I think we got some, and a few laughs, too. Despite their day jobs, Tyler and Nabeel are unlikely aesthetes who became friends in part through their shared love of film and art. So I spoke to them about how great art is often strange, aesthetic evolution, and a tour through some of their favorite artists (especially musicians). We also discussed sacred commitments, AI acceleration, good group chats, mentorship, whether Tyler will stop writing books, creating a bat signal for talent, becoming a great interviewer, Twitter's virtues, New York City, and more. Timestamps 0:00 - Opening highlights 1:18 - Intro to Tyler & Nabeel 4:38 - Sacred commitments, AI, markets & acceleration 20:36 - How art moves us 27:22 - Beauty, strangeness, great art & The Beatles 44:35 - Film, critics, learning to appreciate depth & "lowbrow" art 1:02:55 - New aesthetics, inspiration, optimism & pessimism 1:11:52 - The internet & Twitter's virtue, group chats, cities 1:22:06 - Mentors, (maybe quitting) writing books, friendship 1:35:27 - Interviewing, identifying talent & agency 1:47:21 - Closing questions Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 50: Tyler Cowen & Nabeel Qureshi - An Appetite for More - is available below and on all platforms. Links in reply.
Jackson Dahl95,500 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
Dialectic 51: Nan Ransohoff! Nan Ransohoff thinks more of the world's most impressive people should work in philanthropy. And that they needn't sacrifice ambition or upside to do so. Nan leads public goods at Stripe. That includes Frontier (carbon removal) and Intercept (respiratory illness). She's also written about how we need more "general managers" (read: more 'Nan's) and how philanthropy is about to undergo explosive growth thanks to AI money. I talked to Nan about: - GMs and identifying orphaned problems to own end-to-end - coordinating the market to spend billions to suck carbon from the sky and end the common cold - how vision is in short supply - what philanthropy can learn from startups and VCs - the third wave of American philanthropy (driven by billions in OAI/Anthropic philanthropic dollars that will need to be spent) - how many things we may want (good, beauty, meaning) may be harder to quantify and thus require a different philanthropic approach - getting off the "gold star" established path and choosing a life and ambition of her own making Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:15 - Intro to Nan 4:53 - Start: What is a Nan? Nerd-Sniped by Orphaned Problems 12:39 - GMs, Seeing the Chessboard, and Working Backwards from Outcomes 18:55 - Good Taste in Problems, Vision, and Good Finish Lines 35:43 - Advance Market Commitments Tactically Solving Carbon Removal 41:35 - Focus and Sketching Out or Slicing Up Messy Problems 49:39 - Legibility, Public Rallying, and Ambition in Philanthropy 54:38 - Third Wave Philanthropy and Hard to Quantify Problems 1:06:50 - Risk Tolerance in Philanthropy and Scarcity of Funders and Allocators 1:15:22 - The $40B Tidal Wave of New AI-Money and Why Start Now 1:19:53 - Amount of Capital, Government Philanthropy, and Making Philanthropic Founders Rich 1:31:44 - Nan's Mid-Career Inflection Point and Getting Off the Obvious Path 1:39:47 - Grab-bag: Why Stripe Funds Public Goods, Making Things with Friends, Creative Partnership, Iceland Drone, and Scone Heads 1:49:39 - Syllabi for the Squishy Topics & Study vs. Experience 1:57:01 - Inputs & Outputs and GLPs for Attention 2:04:38 - Closing: Interviewing Parents and Imagining an Obituary Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 51: Nan Ransohoff - Power Laws for Philanthropy - is out now below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl77,928 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
![Dialectic 55: Dan Lilienthal & José Chayet - As [untitled] as it Comes Dan and José run untitledinbrackets, a sacred place for work-in-progress music. They aren't trained engineers, designers, or musicians, but have built a platform that hundreds of thousands of artists—from 16-year-olds on their first record deal to Lorde—use to store, listen to, and work with their music. Lorde also recently released XRAYS on [untitled]: 49 demos, the sonic museum behind her album Virgin. Dan & José are also childhood best friends. I talked to them about the adventure so far, empathy as a product strategy, and their quest to build the biggest music company in the world. Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:24) Intro to Dan & José (4:42) Start: Brackets, How Creativity Makes the World Bigger, and Music's Connection to the Divine (20:40) Duchamp, Music as a Set of Choices, and The Museum Behind the Work (27:52) [untitled]: A Medium for Music In-Progress (45:03) From a Better Dropbox to a Creativity Company (52:13) Empathy as a Product Philosophy and The Collaboration's Origins (1:01:04) Scaling the Sacred Place and Product Intuition (1:10:33) Lorde's XRAYS Drop and Designing for a Wide Range of Artists (1:17:26) 10K Unheard Songs and Whether Process Should be Seen (1:24:10) Brand, Trust, Alignment with Artists and the [studio] (1:30:54) The Word "Sacred" and Resisting the Feed (1:40:52) AI as an Instrument: Building Tools Artists Actually Want (1:49:27) Building a Company with Your Best Friend (1:56:31) Closing Questions: Dream Users, Rapid Fire Brackets, and Titles Dialectic with Jackson Dahl with Dancho Jose available below and on all platforms. Links below.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2089749757237367096/media/HQBIjCpXQAAE9hd.jpg)
Dialectic 55: Dan Lilienthal & José Chayet - As [untitled] as it Comes Dan and José run untitledinbrackets, a sacred place for work-in-progress music. They aren't trained engineers, designers, or musicians, but have built a platform that hundreds of thousands of artists—from 16-year-olds on their first record deal to Lorde—use to store, listen to, and work with their music. Lorde also recently released XRAYS on [untitled]: 49 demos, the sonic museum behind her album Virgin. Dan & José are also childhood best friends. I talked to them about the adventure so far, empathy as a product strategy, and their quest to build the biggest music company in the world. Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:24) Intro to Dan & José (4:42) Start: Brackets, How Creativity Makes the World Bigger, and Music's Connection to the Divine (20:40) Duchamp, Music as a Set of Choices, and The Museum Behind the Work (27:52) [untitled]: A Medium for Music In-Progress (45:03) From a Better Dropbox to a Creativity Company (52:13) Empathy as a Product Philosophy and The Collaboration's Origins (1:01:04) Scaling the Sacred Place and Product Intuition (1:10:33) Lorde's XRAYS Drop and Designing for a Wide Range of Artists (1:17:26) 10K Unheard Songs and Whether Process Should be Seen (1:24:10) Brand, Trust, Alignment with Artists and the [studio] (1:30:54) The Word "Sacred" and Resisting the Feed (1:40:52) AI as an Instrument: Building Tools Artists Actually Want (1:49:27) Building a Company with Your Best Friend (1:56:31) Closing Questions: Dream Users, Rapid Fire Brackets, and Titles Dialectic with Jackson Dahl with Dancho Jose available below and on all platforms. Links below.
Jackson Dahl27,217 просмотров • 29 дней назад
Jared Weinstein is deeply trusted and quietly effective. He is a friend to many. This is his first interview. From President Bush, to Thrive's team and founders, to new leaders building in his hometown of Birmingham and globally, Jared Weinstein is an amplifier of people. We discuss: - Cold-calling the Bush campaign in college, joining them in the run up to 2000, and not dropping out - Becoming the President's personal aide (or "body man") in his mid-20s, what the President does, and how little Jared slept - an unlikely partnership with Joshua Kushner that led to over a decade building the now-legendary Thrive Capital - what it was like helping Palantir in the very early days - Bringing seriousness and humanity to work, whether the West Wing or investing - the three-body problem of ego, ambition, and impact - why people trust Jared and how he helps them become their best selves - east vs. west coast ambition, across DC, SF, and NY - how he's investing in Birmingham, why cities change and thrive, and helping people raise their ambition - championing those who champion you Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:40 - Intro to Jared 3:32 - Thanks to Notion 4:39 - Start: Being a "Friend" and Bringing Humanity to Serious Work 10:55 - From Duke to the West Wing 31:45 - Riding Shotgun with President Bush 59:27 - Starting Over Out West: Post-WH, Stanford, and Palantir 1:16:05 - Meeting Josh Kushner and Building Thrive Capital 1:44:37 - Founders, Humility, and the Three-Body Problem of Ego, Ambition, and Impact 2:06:41 - Leaving Thrive, Coming Home to Birmingham, and Overton 2:32:40 - Busier Than Ever: Mentors, Life in Acts, and What You Hope to Be Known For Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 44: Jared Weinstein - Within Earshot, Out of Camera Shot - is available below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl87,786 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Jasmine Sun quit her tech job to tell the world about what she's seeing up close in Silicon Valley. Dialectic 49: jasmine sun! I talked to her about the depth behind SF's memes, why quitting her job wasn't risky, and her "AlphaGo" moment--and why she'll keep writing anyway. Jasmine writes independently on Substack--where she used to lead core product--and for publications like The Atlantic and The New York Times. Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:30 - Intro to Jasmine 3:24 - Start: Being a "Historian of Vibe" and Learning to Look 15:00 - Taste for Questions & The Depth Behind Memes 24:28 - Translating Between Silicon Valley and The World 40:27 - Substack vs. "Serious" Journalism and Integrity as a Writer 47:35 - Integrity when Using AI and the AlphaGo Question 58:42 - Strategy Across Publications & Maximizing an Idea's Reach 1:06:45 - Going Independent, Risk, and Commercial Tradeoffs 1:24:35 - Great Writing: Style, Voice, and Resisting Summary 1:35:35 - Literary Inspirations, Favorite Essays, Writing vs. Thinking, and Getting Better 1:51:09 - Writing to Publish, Authenticity, and Art 2:00:38 - Grab Bag: China, Silicon Valley's Virtues and Problems, AI Transition, The Relational Economy, Parties, Debates, Self Belief, and More Full episode of Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 49: Jasmine Sun - Close Enough to See Clearly - as well as transcript and links to all platforms are available below.
Jackson Dahl56,541 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
More on how early customers shape your business (Cursor early work with Shopify, OpenAI, NVIDIA): "Not all ARR early on is created equal. It's not about just that number. It's about the genetics. I care far more that you've selected and are working with really thoughtful, avant-garde, demanding customers, than just your revenue... those are pressurizing functions for you to adapt your fitness." Miles Grimshaw
Jackson Dahl11,663 просмотров • 15 дней назад
Nicholas Thompson is a disciplined machine (Atlantic CEO, record-holding runner, perpetual achiever) and a wholehearted human (insatiable interviewer, loving father, lifelong student). I talked to nxthompson about what makes words worth reading in an AI world, the discipline of long form, and what compounds when you keep showing up. Nick is the CEO of The Atlantic, the American record holder in the 50K, and the author of The Running Ground—a book about inheritance, pushing oneself, and remembering that life remains richer than we can possibly know. We discuss whether I am a journalist; why The Atlantic matters, great editing and coaching; lessons from David Remnick and the gift of commercial constraints from Laurene Powell Jobs; daily momentum and how tiny tailwinds compound; getting paced to a 5-minute mile by his 15-year-old son; inheritance and Nick's exuberant, chaotic dad; the part of Nick's book that he's never been asked about; and why we are capable of much more than we think. Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:17 - Intro to Nick 3:30 - Start: Words, Reading, and Writing in an Automated World 18:39 - Why Stories Matter and What Makes a Journalist 28:22 - Media Institutions, The Atlantic, Democracy, Tech, and Power 44:21 - Retaining Great Writers and The Virtues of Editors (and Coaches) 57:44 - Magazines and America 1:05:57 - Running, Motivation, Momentum, and Tailwinds 1:16:08 - Aging, Fathers and Sons, Inheritance, and a Mother's Grace 1:31:00 - Merging Machine-like Discipline and Wild Curiosity, The Boat that Never Touched Water, and Who We Might Still Become 1:44:11 - Gratitude, Stalin's Daughter, Scott Thompson's Verve, and Feeling Most Alive Episode 45 of Dialectic with Jackson Dahl: Nicholas Thompson - A Life of Long Form - is available on all platforms and below. This was a special one for me. Please enjoy.
Jackson Dahl72,533 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
One of my favorite podcasts ever is a 2022 conversation between C Thi Nguyen and Ezra Klein. I'm thrilled to continue the conversation in the interviewer seat today. Dialectic with Jackson Dahl Ep. 36: C Thi. Nguyen - Measurement, Meaning, and Play C. Thi Nguyen (C Thi Nguyen) is a professor of philosophy focused on games, values, data, and metrics. I visited him to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else's Game. Thi is focused on a dilemma with scoring systems: 1) in games, they're are great: they allow game designers to sculpt the player's agency. By shaping goals, abilities, and obstacles, action becomes easy, even harmonious. The player can try on different roles, explore different values, and move "lightly between worlds" 2) in the real world, they flatten us: We've quantified our lives, and easily countable metrics produce what Thi calls "value capture." By obsessively measuring what matters, we only value what we can easily measure. We went deep on the personal and societal implications of this: - What are different types of agency? What is the shape of good values? What is the difference between recognition and perception? - How can we be more playful, in and out of games? How can we find more beauty in process, not outcomes? - How can we trust each other, scale progress, keep bad actors in check--all while not extracting nuance out of complex fields by relying too much on legible data? - Are objectivity and truth the same thing? Is technology really value-neutral? Available on all platforms below and here on X. Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:39 - Introduction to C. Thi Nguyen 5:13 - Thanks to Notion 6:31 - Start: What Does it Mean to Be Playful? 13:41 - Starting Local: Agency, Scoring Systems, and Games 23:36 - Value Capture: Incentives, Values, and the Collapse of Meaning 36:28 - What is the Shape of Good Values? 49:45 - Attention, Recognition vs. Perception, and Aesthetic Openness 58:46 - Process vs. Outcome, Striving Play vs. Achievement Play, Recipe vs. Dish 1:10:00 - Aesthetic Value & Autotelic Pursuits in Life 1:16:59 - Metrics, "Measure What Matters," and What We Miss 1:24:16 - Quantitative vs. Qualitative Ways of Knowing and Different Conceptions of Rules 1:38:01 - Scaling Trust, Data, Experts, and Legibility 1:54:37 - Objectivity & Truth, Value-Laden Technology & Decisions, and "Objectivity Laundering" 2:07:57 - Advice for Technologists: Ethics, Maps, Value-Neutrality, and Playfulness 2:18:52 - Closing Thanks to Notion
Jackson Dahl103,336 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад
Dialectic Ep. 46 w/ Nix 🕊! Nicole Seah, aka Nix, thinks reality is more beautiful than fantasy. We talk about what beauty asks of us, the freedom of holding multiple identities, and loving what's real. She writes essays at her newsletter, starting from nix, invests in early-stage startups, and recently launched New Ontologies, where she writes independent field studies of ambitious founders and companies. Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:14 - Intro to Nicole 2:04 - Thanks to Notion 3:48 - Start: Beauty — Effort, Attention, Strangeness 19:59 - Fantasy and Reality 29:41 - Multiple Identities, Intensity, and Lightness 49:08 - New Ontologies: Profiling Founders Building the Future 1:08:57 - Memory, Lineage, and Process 1:18:41 - Appetite and Honesty 1:23:47 - Friendship, Proximity, and The Unknowability of the Other 1:41:18 - Closing Notes: Solitude, Noticing, and Generosity Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 46: Nicole Seah - Loving What is Real - is out below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl56,611 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Paul Scherer wants to create an AI that brings us closer to each other. paul and Eigen are building a "mutual friend" for the world. Critically, the mutual part is more important than the friend part. Imagine the best "connector" you know -- the person who is emotionally intelligent, thoughtful, and always bringing people together. What if they could be friends with a million people, rather than a few hundred? And what if they were entirely focused on creating more belonging in the world? Modern social media--due to hyper-personalization and broken incentives--makes us feel more and more estranged from the people we care about. AI chatbots focus on engagement and can be anti-social. Paul and Eigen are aiming for a pro-social AI friend who is more concerned with helping deepen and widen your relationships than getting you to talk to it for longer. We discuss what all this might look like, the challenges of "growing" a new person that isn't a bad actor, and what it feels like to be a prodigious 22-year-old who Peter Fenton compared to the founders of last generation's great social media companies--all before he’s publicly launched a product. Timestamps: 1:13 - Intro to Paul 3:28 - Start: 'Momo', Presence, Friendship, and Time 11:10 - How the Internet Connects Us and Isolates Us, and Conflating Social and Media 25:12 - A Future Where We Talk to AIs 33:55 - Paul and Eigen are Building a Mutual Friend to Help Us Connect with Other Humans 48:01 - Why Do We Need a Mutual Friend? And Making a Friend We Can Trust 1:16:53 - Belonging, Building the team at Eigen, and Inventor as Outlaw 1:25:38 - Managing the Psychology of Being a Promising Young Founder 1:36:53 - Maintaining a High Bar, Fighting Entropy, and Influences 1:53:50 - Self-belief, Authenticity, Seeing the Water 2:10:30 - Courage, and a Final Question from a Mutual Friend 2:16:27 - Eigen Office Tour with Paul Dialectic with Jackson Dahl 47: Paul Scherer - A Friend That Brings Us Closer - is out now on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl36,349 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Dialectic 53: Zhengdong - Feeling the Wave Zhengdong Wang is an AI researcher who writes annual letters from the frontier. I particularly loved his 2025 letter, in which he describes 'the compute theory of everything' and feeling the wave crash over him as we march up the exponential to AGI. I talked to him about what it will take for the rest of the world to believe, how AGI is a moving target and we might better conceive of progress as simply: "the model does the eval," and where all of this might leave us on the other side. Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:16) Intro to Zhengdong (4:33) Start: Why Research: "I Just Want to Know" (12:25) The Model Does the Eval: AGI as a Moving Target, RSI, and Laser Beams (33:17) The Compute Theory of Everything and Feeling the Wave (53:17) The Myths AI Needs, Competition vs. Power Concentration, and Whether Progress Is Inevitable (1:13:42) "Who Could Possibly Compete?": Post-AGI Meaning, Work, and Questing (1:29:28) Are You Having Fun? Vacations, Mattering, and How to Live (1:47:13) Annual Letters, Economist Obituaries, London, and Burke Dialectic with Jackson Dahl Ep. 53: Zhengdong Wang is out now, below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl17,620 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
Dialectic Ep. 48: Henri Stern Modern technologists--especially in crypto--are often deeply principled or impressively pragmatic. Henri Stern Ꙫ is both. I talked to Henri about digital privacy, the moral weight of building technology, the painful reality of realizing the market doesn't want what you're selling, and crypto's 'boring' era. Henri is co-founder and CEO of Privy, which Stripe acquired last year. Privy focuses on enabling developers to let their users hold crypto, and Henri works across a number of Stripe's efforts to bring more of the financial world onchain (in large part thanks to stablecoins). Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:40 - Intro to Henri 4:51 - Start: Technical Decisions are Moral Decisions 15:41 - Ambition, Startups, and Crypto 23:39 - Why Digital Privacy Matters: Self-Determination, Security, and Identity 41:52 - Embedded Wallets, the Pivot, and Privy's Core Bet 55:18 - Reinventing Around Stablecoins Without Abandoning Crypto-Natives 1:06:42 - Joining Stripe, Privy Today, and What Stripe Is Becoming 1:22:54 - Crypto's Future, Power Laws, Optimism and Pessimism 1:38:14 - Closing: Asta, Stripe's Leaders, Being French, and Never Compromising Available on all platforms below.
Jackson Dahl27,458 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Dialectic 52: Jack Conte! Jack is not an entrepreneur who makes art on the side. He is a lifelong artist and musician who became the unlikely founder and CEO of Patreon, the only company he has ever worked for. At his (musical) peak, Jack was releasing 100 music videos a year between his bands Pomplamoose and scarypockets while building one of the few enduring creator platforms on the web. He started Patreon to solve his own problem as a full-time YouTuber: he wanted fans to pay him directly for his work rather than accepting a dashboard that told him 3 million views were worth $18. Patreon is rare amongst its peers: it's a platform built first and foremost for creators, not consumers. It makes money when creators get paid. Jack believes that incentive alignment has helped Patreon earn creators’ long-term trust, and will help it endure as mediums, technology, and platforms evolve. I talked to Jack about all of this and more: - creative endurance and becoming “post-chaos” - why Silicon Valley undervalues art, brand, and storytelling - why art isn't content and getting paid isn’t selling out - creator-first incentives, trust, and 100 years of Patreon - why Jack is still the right CEO after 13 years - leadership: ambition, obsession, self-reflection, and learning from people better than you - Charlie Kaufman, authenticity, and making fans - lucid dreaming and taking more risks Timestamps: (0:00) - Opening Highlights (1:38) - Intro to Jack & Thanks to Notion (3:44) - Start: Prolific Output, Energy, Juggling, Endurance, and Becoming Post-Chaos (22:04) - Combining Creativity and Business and Art vs. Content (33:21) - Advertising vs. Membership & Patronage vs. Patreon (44:06) - Jack’s First and Only Job, and Silicon Valley’s Undervaluing of Creativity, Brand, and Storytelling (and Patreon) (55:17) - Building for Creators First, Incentive Alignment, Trust, 100 Years of Patreon, and Why Jack Is the Right CEO for Now (1:04:49) - Leadership: Types of Ambition, Obsession, Self-Reflection, Bias to Action, and Learning from Others (1:12:59) - Talent vs. Enthusiasm, Being Proud of What You Make, Making Fans and Being True, Managing Parasociality, and Community (1:28:30) - Filmmaking, Labels and Collectives vs. Individuals, Breaking Patterns, Creative Intimacy, Music, Patreon’s Origin, Persistence, Lucid Dreaming, and Taking Risks (1:49:26) - Thanks Again to Notion Dialectic with Jackson Dahl Ep. 52: Jack Conte - Draw the Next Page - is out now, below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl18,042 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
.tylercowen & Nabeel S. Qureshi on why beauty can be a bit boring, and how good art keeps you on your toes:
Jackson Dahl22,861 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
Molly Mielke McCarthy is on a quest to find exceptional people before the world catches on. I talked to Molly Mielke McCarthy about the art of "peopling", playing your own game, vocation, and why great founders are often the least legible. Today, she runs Moth Fund, where she backs founders at the beginning. In the past, she's worked across design, product, and editorial at Figma, Notion, Stripe Press, The Browser Company, and scouted for Sequoia Capital. Her background in film and design echoes in the people she backs and in the quality of her curation and writing. Molly is people-centric yet fiercely individual, intuitive yet pragmatic, and truth-seeking yet full of care. We discuss: - Why it takes 3 months for her to know someone well enough to invest - Why authenticity is magnetic - The difference between agency and ambition - Why commerciality is a lens you can learn - Illegibility as private confidence, not public uncertainty - How your brand is a bell in other people's heads - Vocation as "stalking your calling" and then yielding to it - Why we should focus on doing something rather than being someone Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:29 - Intro to Molly 3:36 - Thanks to Notion 5:14 - Start: People, Spikeyness, and Discernment 21:36 - Agency and Ambition 34:45 - Commerciality 49:19 - Investing, Feedback Loops, and Creating a Bat Signal 59:46 - Coaching and Working with Young People 1:06:54 - Self-Knowledge, Uncertainty, "Should," Others' Acceptance, Motivations 1:16:38 - Illegibility & Legibility, Principles, Authentic Service 1:29:28 - Friends, Seeing in the Third Person, Femininity in a Masculine World, Love 1:42:07 - Grab Bag: Art, Catholicism, Gratitude, Beauty Dialectic with Jackson Dahl Ep. 38: Molly Mielke McCarthy - The Art of Peopling - is out now, below and on all platforms.
Jackson Dahl46,877 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад
I don't know anyone who is as consistently ahead of culture than Trevor McFedries. I talked to Trev🙃r about culture, markets, technology, curiosity, why selling out is punk now, and why creative people should be rich. Trevor has lived many lives: touring DJ who produced a top 10 album, co-creator of lil miquela, founder of Friends With Benefits... among many others (go watch the last 10 seconds of KATY PERRY's I Kissed a Girl music video). Today, he's the founder of new co runner.rodeo and is 1/2 of electronic dance duo SofTT. He also has a fantastic nose for weird, bridges high and low status worlds across culture, capital, art, and tech, and truly lives natively between the frontiers of tech and culture. We talked about: - Why the only creative people who can "opt out" of the algorithm are trust fund kids - How cultural capital has merged with financial capital - Why speculation is rational - The belief economy: from making → framing → predicting - What he learned working with Kanye for three months - Finding new subcultures in the dark corners of Telegram - Why he's long humanity despite everything Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 1:18 - Intro to Trevor 4:12 - Thanks to Notion 5:21 - Start: Creative People Should Be Rich 12:03 - Creative Ignition, Infrastructure, and Why Selling Out is Punk 21:49 - Authenticity, Honesty, Divine Creativity, and Borrowed Nostalgia 30:15 - Low Status Games and High Culture, Cultural & Financial Capital, and Crypto 42:08 - The Belief Economy: From Making to Framing to Predicting 48:45 - Markets, Power, Consensus, and Truth 58:22 - Speculation is Rational 1:06:34 - Developing a Nose for Weird, Being Early and On Time 1:19:06 - Unfettered Cultural Spaces on the Internet 1:26:33 - FWB, Community, and Exclusivity 1:31:02 - LilMiquela, Online Storytelling and Celebrity, Touring as a Performer 1:45:41 - Softt, Music as a Way In, Music as a Business 1:52:45 - Culture & Business 1:54:38 - Kanye 2:06:20 - Optimism, The Next Generation, Parenting, The Stuff that Counts, and Cerulean Available on all platforms now.
Jackson Dahl40,863 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад