Speaker 2
Those, I just remember thinking like It was so ridiculous that
Speaker 1
Time period totally and Weinberg so good at that stuff too, man. Yeah, he's he's uniquely talented. Uh, he doesn't care And he's smart and he's opinionated and he's credible And so like all of those things just lead to a perfect storm, which, you know, I rode for some short period of time.
Speaker 2
Yeah, they I mean, they were just great conversations because you when I go back and I've listened to some of those old not not your crypto episodes, like web three podcast, and like the stuff that people were saying, you're like, this may this make no sense. If you're listening well, you're listening to it then, but also listening to it today. You're like, people had no idea what they were talking about. And then when you listen to the, uh, just the episode, especially with, with Zach, he's just like, wait, so, wait. So you're saying like, this already exists. Like you just get a mortgage or like their government does
Speaker 1
this. There's a point, uh, that people back off and they recognize that they're making the situation uncomfortable and that the other person is like stammering for stuff. And he just goes with the chudular. I innately just pull back when that happens. And that like just, Zach goes into heat at that moment. He's just like, he's just like a feral animal ready to go. At that when he sees someone stammering and doesn't know what they're talking about. That's just like his moment to shine.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and it was always so simple. Like it was, it wasn't like he tried to out complicate anything, he was just like, wait, just so
Speaker 2
I'm making sure I get
Speaker 1
this. I will say one of the things I learned from that is like, if you keep asking people why keep probing further and further into stuff, you'll find if people can truly articulate what it is they're saying. I think most people want to be agreeable and keep the conversation going and don't want to acknowledge that they don't understand something. They don't any deeper. It's like they give you a satisfactory answer. And you're like, OK, that makes that makes sense. I got to move down the list. Yeah. Just like, OK, I got to keep going. And I don't want to expose myself for not understanding what was just said. And he's smart enough to know that whether or not what was said was cogent. And if not, just keep asking why over and over again. So. So
Speaker 2
one thing I think you like probe like going deep on history market cycles. Yeah. Yeah. Why is that so important? Like your VC, you think about the future, you should be projecting where the world is going. Why is history and understanding how the market. Yeah. Why is it so important?
Speaker 1
Because because I'm a cynical asshole, I think is the short answer. No, I think that everything has been tried in some form before. Literally, every idea that anyone ever has, someone's already thought of it. We have whatever, 7 billion people on the planet, infinite amounts of venture dollars seemingly at these days, a lot of smart people pursuing ambitious ideas, and there is no novel idea. Literally, I don't think there's a single one. It all comes down to that moment in time and whether or not it's possible in some way that wouldn't have been in the past. And are you the right one that's capable of executing on it? And then you start asking yourself, so okay, so what if it goes right? How big can it be or what the outcome can be? And so I think that if you don't understand history of how things came to be, you're not gonna recognize when there's similarities that maybe you can draw on in some way, shape or form. An example I talked about or thought about recently is with trains when the railroad was being built, a lot of people died. A lot of people died. Yeah. Steam engines would explode, right? And laying the train tracks, there would be stories of hundreds of people that would die with trains and trying to build the infrastructure for the railroads, right? And it was something that as a society, we weren't as well connected and maybe we didn't value human life to the extent we should have. But I think the net benefit of trains were worthwhile. And I don't know how many people died. Let's make up a number. Let's say it was 30,000 people died for trains. That
Speaker 2
sounds horrific, like today.
Speaker 1
Today. By today's standards, it's insane. right? Absolutely insane. But that was worth it. And it sounds very crass to say that, but like the impact trains had on society were amazing. And similar to flight, when flight got going initially, people would crash all the time, right? People just die all the time flying. And we got better and we got safer with it. And now we're at a point that that actually works. And so as we're looking at autonomous vehicles now, it kind of becomes a question of like, well, what are we willing to tolerate as a society to get to some end that is much better 30 40 50,000 people a year, dying car accidents. That's that's insane. Every year, car accidents, mostly healthy people dying car accidents. And we've accepted that as society. If an autonomous vehicle kills, let's say for every, you know, if they can take that number from 30 to 3000, that'd be amazing, right? You know what the headlines would say? It would say autonomous vehicle kills 3000 people. lose their minds. They would absolutely lose their minds. Well, it happens when there's one. Like, there's one like that. 10 people a day dying by autonomous vehicles, people go insane. And so I think that understanding some of these things and like how social behavior plays out, obviously we live in a far more connected world. We value life in a much better way than I think we did during trains and airplanes. But like understanding some of these precedents and stuff and how these markets come to be, I think is helpful. And also understanding where people have failed, why AV wasn't possible 10 years ago or five years ago, why now might be the right time for AI in some way, shape or form, why XYZ company capitalizing on this trend. I think understanding those things is super important and I
Speaker 2
enjoy it. So maybe I just testify it so I can spend time pontificating on it. I mean, it's kind of fun and interesting. Totally. I think I forget the exact stat. This is a podcast so I can make things up. Totally. But it was something like the investment into the UK railroads was like 23% of GDP for a couple of years. I believe that. An absolutely insane. I believe that. And when you go back to or you fast forward to today, it was like how much were we investing in crypto? I don't know if you can compare crypto to like a real. I would say no. But maybe to like AI, maybe it's like maybe more comparable or like data centers or whatever for the cloud. Nuclear. Astronomic. GDP to transform the economy. So it's necessary. What is the percentage of,
Speaker 1
I mean, I'm sure it's small percentage points,
Speaker 1
today? Yeah. Like what we're investing into AI or is it significant?
Speaker 2
Didn't we invest like 600 billion in AI? Is that right? Lasher? Well, yeah, I don't know. Over the past couple
Speaker 2
just like chips. I think it was David Cone at Sequoia. Put out some David Cone. He said that, yeah. I think so. Yeah. It was 600 over like a certain period that we'd invested in AI infrastructure. Sarah Cone, David Cone.
Speaker 1
Although there was a David Cone. David Cone was the pitcher for the Yankees way back then. He was a, I think, a perfect game. We're
Speaker 2
cutting out the mispronunciation.
Speaker 1
No, I think we leave it in. I think we leave it in. Ben, by the way, we look up how many people died. We look up how many people died for train. That's it. But look up, look up how many people died. Uh, leave this in. No, no, no. I'm going to yell that. Look at, look up, look up how many people died in developing trains.
