Bradley Tusk is a political fixer-turned-venture capitalist who specializes in working with startups like Bird, Coinbase, Eaze, FanDuel, and Wheel to break through in highly regulated markets. He was formerly the campaign manager of Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 NYC mayoral bid, the Deputy Governor of Illinois, and the first political advisor at Uber. In addition to his firms, Tusk Strategies and Tusk Ventures, Bradley is currently exploring mobile voting technology and blockchain solutions to help fix political polarization.
Specifically they tackle:
- Bradley’s most prominent experience of rapidly changing technology squaring with cities, their governance and their citizens was Uber. Bradley talks through that story.
- Bradley has built your career on this trend of politics intersecting with tech, but when did the penny drop for him that this was going to be a thing?
- How does he think think about derisking investments and the need for appropriate regulation with Tusk Venture investments?
- Specifically with micromobility, the equilibrium we’ve reached feels sub-optimal - there is more demand vs. the supply that could be enabled. How did that happen? What will change it going forward?
- Does he believe that there are instances in which tech can transcend politics?
- Bradley talks through his project for mobile voting that he’s driving through Tusk Philantrophies.
- What is the attraction to crypto for Bradley and how he thinks that that squares with local regulations.
- The No1 thing that gov regulators don’t understand about the tech coming down the pipe and vice versa for tech folks about how government works.
This is a syndication of the podcast that was originally launched on Infinite Block. If you like the Micromobility Podcast, you’re also likely to enjoy our new project, Infinite Block. As we’ve gone deeper into micromobility we can see that it’s connected to everything that we have in cities - zoning decisions and urban form, tech platforms, infrastructure funding, governance and at it’s core, the social contract. We’ve long wanted to be able to talk about some of the other disruptive innovation developments that we are seeing that are relevant to cities but aren’t quite the right fit for the Micrombility Podcast. So, if you like what we do here and ask in the age of accelerating innnovation, where and what is the city to be and do please come and join us by signing up to the Infinite Block Substack email and the Infinite Block podcast.
Check out Bradley’s Firewall podcast: https://www.firewall.media
