India, Silicon Valley & Globalization | Balaji Srinivasan

There are two places in the world I kind of feel like the founder energy, almost the founder mode, kind of dripping. San Francisco, I think, is still the epicenter in many ways, but the second place is Bangalore. My God. Everyone's kind of pushing, everyone's hustling, and everyone is dreaming a lot bigger.

I am moderately bullish on India, but extremely bullish on Indians. I think India will become a launchpad for the world. On many graphs, for example, the number of new nuclear reactors or steel production. India is a distant but real number two to China.

When I think about why Russia did so well in kind of the mid 20th century, part of it is because they kind of got the balance right between creativity and also, I think, more traditional academics.

There was something called Russian cosmos, and so those amazing Russian technologies of which we can see was submerged in the Soviet system. And also they had to do things with extremely limited resources. In the US for example, it's similar where you can't build in the physical world very easily. So a similar kind of thing where you have an artificial censoring and people are pushed into one vertical or another.

Welcome, everyone, to the Minus One podcast, where we interview the world's most interesting people about their Minus One journeys, where we talk to them about the moments in their life when they've had to figure out the big questions, like what to do next. And I couldn't be more excited to welcome Balaji to this podcast. He's a dear friend, a renowned kind of authority, but most importantly, just kind of a contrarian thinker that I think has very interesting thoughts about where the world is going. Balaji, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Thank you for having me out.

Amazing, Balaji, you're famous for many things. When I think about someone who has really in some ways embodied and epitomized kind of the Minus One philosophy, I can't think of too many people that I think have kind of played the polymath, I would say, to the polymath role, as you have in our kind of, I would say, modern intellectual age. When I think about the Minus one, stuff like you having to kind of reinvent yourself every two or three years is so apropos, particularly in a super fast moving kind of world that we are in right now. But Balaji, take me to the early days, like, how did you figure out that you wanted to build counsel? Like, what were the series of kind of questions that were going through your head that led to that decision?

I grew up in the 80s and the 90s so, you know, it wasn't thought of as something that you could do to start a business. It was considered something that was so expensive and there is so foreign to you. There was just guys in suits and towers. You didn't know what they did. But I knew how to study. So I did math and I did computer science and I did engineering. I was into applied math. And actually the moment that I decided to go and start a company, it was actually in the mid 2000s. There was a lot of work in genome sequencing and genotyping, really, genotyping and then genome sequencing. The distinction is whether you're assessing just individual alleles and individual variants, whether you're just sequencing the whole thing. Okay. And essentially what seemed to be the bottleneck was getting enough patient samples in order to tease out correlations of what genes predicted or what variants predicted, what disease. And academia had only fixed budgets. And so if you had to spend $1,000 per sample, then a million dollar budget would only get you 1,000 samples. And I realized something completely obvious, which is I was like, oh, you know what, if you can make a profit on each sample, right, Then you have no limit to the scale of your data set. You could get millions and millions and millions of people. I was like, oh, okay. So actually putting a dollar sign into the equations made them converge.

Interesting.

So that's actually what got me going, right? That's one big part of it.

And it's kind of interesting that you say that. I have two follow up questions. The first one is unrelated, but I'm just going to go here. Do you think that Indians are just better at studying? Because I look back on this and I'm like, I was good at school, but I actually just think I was good at studying, I was good at taking tests and I've been trying to think about how to coach my kids and I'm just like, maybe it's just good to be good at studying, you know.

Well, okay, so first of all, you know, this will get us into Vivek's 125 million view tweet or what have you, right? Where when Vivek put that thing out there, do you know what I'm talking about? The tweet that, right? There's very few tweets that you remember, you know, months later. But I've seen calls to murder that got much less opprobrium than Vivek's call to study. Right? Yeah, exactly. People lost their minds over this. Right? And you know, of course there's Things you could say, oh, he used Saved by the Bell as the calibration error rather than the current era of Me Too onlyfans, whatever. Which might be the better error to calibrate off in terms of what you'd want to improve from. But I don't think there's something genetic or anything. But I do think culturally it is certainly true that the Indian diaspora is selected for studying. And certainly within India itself, the topper, the joint entrance exam winner, that's culturally know a big thing. And really Russia, India, China, the RIC of brics all have this right in different ways. There's an exam culture that's there and that's got both good and bad aspects. Right. So the good aspect of it is that you actually nailed the numbers. Right?

Right.

This is something where there's a right and a wrong answer and there's many ways to get something wrong. There's really only one way to get something right. And if you get the mass wrong, your rocket doesn't take off. And if you get the calculation wrong, your program doesn't work. And that's really important. Objective, correct, right and wrong answers. Very, very, very, very important. But then once you have that base, then you can layer on top of it the soft skills and so on and so forth. I don't think you can go in reverse. Right. But I think if you've got that base of just, you know, the technical strength, then on top of that you can layer all the soft skills of being tech CEO or what have you. Right. I think in the west it's overcorrected in the other direction, where it's all vibes and content and being told to study and buckle down is like a bad thing or what have you. It's funny, in an interesting way, they've gotten much more discipline in the physical world about working out and nutrition and so on as they become much less disciplined in the intellectual world. Like they're monitoring their diet, but not their information diet.

It's so interesting that you say that, but let me, Let me kind of continue pulling on the tangent thread. So my kid is actually taking Russian math right now, right. It's kind of like a common, kind of like extracurricular math program. And as I dug deeper into it, I realized that actually the Russian ecosystem, I'm thinking historically, tends to. Doesn't like, doesn't get enough recognition for the fact that they were actually really good at your academics, but also layering it with creativity. When I think about why Russia did so well in kind of the mid 20th century. I think part of it is because they kind of got the balance right between creativity and also, I think, more traditional academics. This is why Russia had it. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Well, so the reason for that is there was something called Russian cosmism. Okay. In the early 20th century. And that's basically what we would call technical optimism in the US that was a whole strain of, like, Russian thought. And actually Russia had stock markets. Russia was not a backwards Bolshevik country until after the 1917 revolution. And so those amazing Russian technologies of which we can see Vitalik or Sergey Brin or others as a modern kind of versions of that Russian Russophones that was submerged in the Soviet system, and they couldn't start businesses. They couldn't do any of that stuff. So the one area in the Soviet Union that was allowed for them to kind of push and not be completely consensus. Science and math. Exactly. Right. So that's where, like, you had these. And also they had to do things with extremely limited resources. As, you know, there's this famous thing where, you know, supposedly the Americans spent whatever amount of money to make a ballpoint pen work in space, and the Russians just use pencils. Right. Or the AK47 is a gun that is optimized to work in, you know, just really onerous conditions. Mud. This. That doesn't jam. Right. So a lot of the. So those two things, the Soviet. I mean, these weren't, by the way, Soviet Union was terrible. Right. But these two pieces of it, the resource constraints of the Soviet Union and the fact that all the IQ went into science and math. Right. And it's kind of like in the U.S. for example, it's similar where in a different way, where you can't build in the physical world very easily. So so much of the IQ has gone into the cloud in terms of tech and so and so forth. And it's been sort of drained out of other areas, arguably. Right. Maybe that's changing, but that's. That's something that happened for a long time. So similar kind of thing where you have an artificial censoring, in a sense, and people are pushed into one vertical or another.

Yeah. You know, I was just in India last week, Balaji, just to kind of visit Bangalore. Yes. And one of the things that struck me was the amount of, I would say, entrepreneurial activity.

Absolutely.

Energy. And, you know, when I was speaking to kind of people about Bangalore, I told them that I think that there are two places in the world where when I land, I kind of feel like the founder energy, almost the founder mode Kind of dripping. San Francisco, I think, is, you know, is still the epicenter in many ways in terms of the density. And I know you have thoughts on that.

Sure, sure, sure.

But the second place is Bangalore. My God. Everyone's kind of pushing, everyone's hustling, and everyone is dreaming a lot bigger. And I know you have recently spent a bunch of time in India, so curious to kind of get your point of view on this. And then maybe we can kind of take a deep dive into India and kind of like where that's going.

Absolutely, yeah. No, I am moderately bullish on India, but extremely bullish on Indians. And the reason I say that is moderately bullish on India. I'm like a six or a seven bullish in India. I think India will become a launchpad for the world. On many graphs, for example, the number of new nuclear reactors or steel production, India is a distant but real number two to China. So, for example, steel production, China just dominates everybody. But you can subtract that out. India is actually going up and to the right. And on other things like UPI and Reliance Geo, India's shown something very new, which is the ability to build pretty good public goods. Or even if it's a privatized, and it's done in a very Indian way, it works. Right. What that means is I think India will be, at a minimum, a launchpad for the world. It's a place that I could live. That you could live. It's actually pretty good. I mean, the quality of life is radically increased. There's certain things, air pollution stuff they have to tackle. What that means, the consequence is an interesting thing about a country is when it's either really poor or really rich, then its citizens don't travel or emigrate as much. It's actually in the middle. The reason is once it gets to a median income, they have broader ambitions. They see the world and the country is growing, but their personal growth rate could be even higher if they went abroad. Right. So paradoxically, for a while at least, the wealthier India gets, the more Indians will emigrate. Not because it's bad, but because it's getting good. Right. They have the funds to play for a plane flight. They have the funds to get a phone and see the world. They have the linguistic skills to get a job abroad, and so on and so forth. Right. And that's a. That's the trajectory of many countries through history, and that's India's position right now. I think it's roughly China 2010, if you. If you want to make A historical analogy. I think people underestimated China. I think they're going to probably. I think they're underestimating Indians.

It's a really good observation that like, it's actually when the country is on a steep upward slope, but maybe starting from a low Y intercept, that in some ways the ambitions of the country people kind of like outpaces the country's growth. And that's when you see a lot of emigration and kind of desire for greatness and what the country affords. One of the other. When you talked about small kind of nuclear reactors in India, one of the most fascinating conversations I had in India with a bunch of founders was like, why can't we build SMRs in India? There's a ton of kind of organic demand. There's a bunch of essentially everything from data centers to modern power generation, kind of the solar outputs of India is kind of increasing rapidly. So you see these pockets of outsized ambition which interestingly enough, you don't even see that much often, like places like, you know, the United States. Right. There's only a small set of people who have that kind of broad based ambition. So I'm, I'm bullish on kind of the local ecosystem. But you're right, I am bullish on India, but also even more bullish on Indians. Right?

Yes. So that's right.

Yeah. So I guess, Babaji, are you translating this into an ability to, I would say, fund kind of like, you know, interesting opportunities coming out of that ecosystem? How are you supporting these folks?

That's right. So, okay. Yes, I am. So first is, I've launched something like. Let me put this on screen, please. So this is something that is complementary to South Park Commons and for people seeing this on the other side of the world. So, yeah, global meritocracy is here and, you know, it's a nice little thing. So basically we have people from all around the world coming to this, you know, place in Singapore and we're just starting it with a hundred fellows. Okay. And in a sense, if the Till Fellowship was proving you don't need to go to college, the Network School Fellowship is proving you don't need to go to America. And I think that for lots of immigrants, especially Indian immigrants, who are like, you know, the 50 Cent meme where he's like, f me. Why are you saying F me? Right? Like after the election, suddenly everybody's like beating up Indians on X. And I'm like, yeah, exactly.

What did we do?

Yeah, exactly. It's like we're just coding. Right? So Essentially, but you have to just kind of roll with the realities of it. And so the administration, while not actually canceling the H1B program, has actually put lots of caltrops in it that have made it much, much, much, much worse. For example, if I'm not mistaken, it was something where you had to travel back to renew every four years. And now it's like every one year. This alone changes everything because having to fly back an international flight every year and everybody having to, that means the queues get longer. It means your wait time in India or whatever is longer means, and your uncertainty to get back is higher. So it radically makes the program worse. And many of these things are a, they are a manifestation of hostility in the bureaucratic process where it's ostensibly rule of law, but it's similar to how Elizabeth Warren just didn't want crypto to exist. And so with the mask of rule of law, there's just a constant assault on this. Right? And so basically, I mean, I just gotta be super clear for your audience. Indian immigrants and tech immigrants, skilled workers, tourist work, tourists, you know, researcher scientists are not welcome in the United States of America anymore. Like, they're like, if you're doing that, it's just, it was always a pain in the ass from an immigration standpoint. It's a Kafka esque process now. And it's something where it's like, you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this again? It's like there's all this violence and there's, you know, polarization and people yelling at me online. Why aren't there other places in the world? Like Dubai is pretty good, Singapore is pretty good, lots of other places I can go. And of course you can build in India itself if you're of Indian descent. Right. So of course, to be clear, by the way, there's lots of people at network school, you know, like, we have, it's not, I don't know, maybe it's 20% Indians. 20, 25% Indians are about 27% of the world, right? So we have people, we have Europeans, we have Canadians, we have Australians, obviously Americans, et cetera, everyone from all over. We have people from 100 plus countries. However, just specifically given that's been in the news, if you're of Indian descent or if you're, you know, technological immigrant, then like, don't go to the US anymore. I think, I think it's time to, to reallocate resources certainly for the next 10 years. If you're just basing at the beginning of your Career, you're different because you're already there, you're established or what have you. But for someone who's just starting out. Go ahead.

You know, it's interesting, Balaji, you say this because I think one of the things that is hard for people who have held, frankly, an American passport for their whole life to deeply appreciate.

Yes.

Is that there is the official policy to your point. Like, you know, we have a bunch of like, you know, kind of the visa policy, the number of years, this and that. That is very different than the experience you have with like, essentially like an immigration official or a border control official on the way in.

One guy in a bad mood can just ruin your life.

Correct, Right. And it's unfortunate because, I mean, just to lay out my priors, America has been very kind to me. I'm a proud American. But I see a bunch of people.

You and your wife have contributed a lot. You and Richie have contributed a lot to you.

I'm saying that.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, so I'm a very proud American and what America stands for. But it makes me sad, right? Like, when I see world class, incredible talent, kind of like getting pulled through the grill just like, you know, on the way in and all they want to do, they want to come here, they want to work and create economic value. Right?

Yeah.

No, no.

But our success is our failure. You see, we're taking the jobs, you know, blah, blah. Right. So, by the way, I want to say we're also creating the jobs. If you go to ns.com jobs, we're also creating the jobs. So we're hiring, hiring people from around the world, through the Midwest or Middle East. Happy to hire you. I want to level people up. I want win and help win. Right. I actually do believe in that. Right.

Oh, by the way, another place in the world that I have been incredibly bullish on, slash, just like, I've really enjoyed my time here is the Middle East. That's the place that you go there and you feel the energy. You kind of feel that this desire of people to uplevel themselves, to build the next generation of infrastructure of companies, it's inspiring. Like, if you go to, like, all of the states there, I feel inspired leaving those areas.

That's right. I think especially UAE and Saudi Arabia. Right. Those two are just doing so well and it's just so surprising. And the thing is, like, that is something where as somebody of Hindu descent or, you know, like, it was just totally different 25, 30 years ago or what have you. Right. Like, you know, and Now, I mean, there's like a large Hindu temple in, in the UAE and what have you. Right. So it's just radically, radically, radically improved. Well, the UAE was actually always good. Right, but Saudi is radically improved. Right, correct. And. And go ahead.

No, not for you.

No, I think many people. You know, it's funny, I've wondered why people have such an outdated. A lot of Americans in particular have a very outdated view of the world. And I actually, I attribute it to one thing which is there's very few portrayals of what the rest of the world is and has become, other than for example, crazy rich Asians. That's like one of the very few things I can think of that is sort of broken out. And the reason is that Americans don't want to see movies of people in other countries doing well.

I mean, you're totally right. Yeah. Which is that like the priors on all of these areas, India, the Middle east, kind of like Southeast Asia, just haven't been updated. And in funny ways, like the, the prediction is arbitrage and the pre existing priors that are no longer accurate. Like Europe, kind of like this, this old school place where you go for these European vacations. Dude, if you go to Europe, it is crumbling. It kind of feels just like decrepit. Right. And you go there and you're like.

This is an Europe. Yeah, Eastern Europe has some things going for it. That's right. But go ahead. Yes.

Yeah, I mean, so I kind of feel as though, especially Saudi Arabia, that's a great example. I went for an incredible conference in Riyadh like last year. And my takeaway from it is that this is a vibrant metropolis. Right. Like that is up there with any other place in the world. The energy, the people, they're all dripping warmth and they're happy to kind of like see it. And that is very far from like the average, even American elite's point of view of that part of the world.

Yeah, exactly. That's right. And the thing is, that's a very good point. Even the American, it's very similar in my ways. The USA is similar to where the USSR was towards the end of the Soviet Union, where they had been so captured by ideology that when Boris Yeltsin saw that famous photo of him in the supermarket and he throws his hands up like this, what had actually happened is even the elites who had, in theory, access to intelligence and so on and so forth, they were in a mental box of their own and didn't really understand the other society had gotten ahead in many Material ways. Right. And they thought it was a fake supermarket at first that was set up, you know, because they had seen space stations and stuff like that. That wasn't impressive to the mission control, was impressive with the consumer goods. Right. And I think that if you aren't actually traveling, you're not calibrated. Right. I wasn't calibrated on Saudi Arabia until there's like something called FII that's like a.

That's the one I went to. It was amazing.

Yes, that's right. And I was just like, wow. And, you know, I actually also like, like you. I felt sad for a second because I was like, this could have been Stanford, right? This was Stanford's for the taking. What FII is, is just for people who don't know, it is the. You know, it is the fanciest conference I've ever been to. And. And when I say that is, you know, with. With fancy, you can get to a. What's the thing with the intermediate. That. That's. That's bad. What's it called? Huh?

Midwid.

Midwid, not midwid. It's something like that, but it's like there's a. The uncanny valley, right?

Oh, the uncanny valley. Yeah, sure, yeah.

Like you can get to an uncanny valley of fanciness where it's just garish and gauche, but this punches through that to the other extreme of like a royal welcome for tech and finance. Right?

That's a good way of putting it.

Yeah, it's a royal welcome. And you're like, wow. Like Stanford with University Avenue, could absolutely have held this kind of forum to honor all the people who built tech, who are all alumni of Stanford and so on, but something about whether it was tech guys being heads down and not building the political connections or the envy of the east coast establishment, or the fact that we're demographically and psychologically different, like we're much more Asian, much more gay, et cetera, whatever, than the East Coast. All of these things combined essentially meant that just tech was kind of its own thing, and the establishment was never happy that we were around. Also, we were economically disrupting them. So what that means is lots of other people are welcoming us. Yeah, right. And so, you know, a stranger in one's own land. Right. Like, what's that saying? A prophet without honor in his own home. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Familiarity breeds contempt. Blah, blah, blah. Right. So all these other countries, they do not take tech for granted. They're rolling out the red carpet. Special economic zones, digital nomad visas, Go, go, go. And, you know, it's funny, I'm also actually one of the few people in our circle of tech who is actively working on that. When you talk about how, in a sense, I think I'm a leading. We'll see, but I think I'm a leading indicator for where a lot of our folks will be going. They'll be doing more and more and more and more there, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's a really good point. One point I'll make is that this is a simple thing, but part of the reason why it's been so hard, I think, for tech to break through is because San Francisco and Silicon Valley is literally far away from everywhere else in the world. Right? Like, it takes a very long time to fly anywhere, whether it be India, the Middle east, even to Europe. Like, it's just far. It's just geographically so remote. And, you know, to your second point, I do think you're leading the charge here in terms of, like, building the connectivity for founders and entrepreneurship around the world. You know, one of the things that I had underappreciated as we started South Park Commons in Bangalore is the desire for essentially the founders in kind of like that region to want to connect with more parts of the world, right? Like, they want to find connectivity. They want to essentially not just be in their ecosystem. A lot of them want to come and spend time in San Francisco. I think they're kind of building that corridor between Bangalore and SF has been pretty cool. But I suspect that what they really want is exposure.

To your point, it's interesting because people who live in California don't think of it as remote. Maybe people who live in Argentina think of it as remote. Right. Because there's pretty good airplane connectivity or whatever. But I think one way of making your point is exactly this thing, right? And so I live close to the center of this thing. And so that means we can bring in India, we can bring in people from China, like people from Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, and actually even Australia and others are actually pretty close. Right. Middle east is not too far. Right. It's a very central location. And in a sense, you're just arbitraging the fact that, I mean, it's not only this, of course, I think we're actually building a version 2.0, version 3.0, but the US is just kind of turning its back on what made it great. And it's less capitalist, it's much less internationalist. You have shooting CEOs and blowing up things, and you also have the Immigration. So there's definitely an opportunity to recentralize tech and to actually. What if Silicon Valley were a startup itself?

Yep, I agree. What if Stanford were a startup itself? How do you duplicate it in other places?

Yes, that's right.

That's a great graphic. It reminds me, I think you know this balaji. But growing up, I actually spent time. I spent four years in Singapore, three years in Malaysia, four years in Indonesia.

Yeah. What was your path? I mean, you grew up in India and you. Go ahead.

I was born in India. I was born in India, but I grew up mostly, my first three years of my life in Cameroon, in Africa, and then after that. Yeah, mostly in Southeast Asia. So I spent time in Malaysia, Singapore. I went to boarding school in Singapore. Stayed there for five years. Loved it.

Okay. Yeah.

And then I went to. Yeah, and then I went to high school in Indonesia before I came to the United States to go to Carnegie Mellon. I mean, I can still speak Bahasa, right? You know, I can still speak Malay.

So you know this region of the world very well. Yeah.

Oh, super well. And I have a deep appreciation for what makes it such a. Such an awesome place both to live and to do work. Right. And don't get me wrong, it still has work to do to kind of, I think, improve some of its infrastructure. But my God, like, the average kind of experience is fantastic, right?

It's radically improved. Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Go ahead then. After you.

I think actually this is the biggest thing where I feel those, the large percentage of tech people who are first generation or second generation immigrants who have some connection to the old country, whether that's, you know, Korea or Vietnam, India, China, you know, sometimes Eastern Europe or Middle east or, you know, sometimes Latin America, et cetera, they I think, just have a broader view of things. Whereas folks in our space who I like very much, who just had many generations in the US have gotten into their head that everywhere else is like a total shithole. And, you know, like, they're equating, they're just not properly calibrated on how much the rest of the world has caught up or even exceeded in many ways the standard of living. And it's certainly for the same price. The prices in the US are very high relative to the rest. So I think there's a lot that can be done. I'll say one other thing and then give you the bulk. Have you seen the millionaire migration map?

No. That's a good. I mean, show it to me.

Let me show you this because this is another piece of where things are going. So since before 2019, the US was the number one destination net for millionaires in the world. Okay. But then after 2022, after the lockdowns and Covid, what is it?

Singapore and Dubai.

Yes, it's Singapore and Dubai. That's exactly right. Look at this. Ready? Look at this. So you see that? So Basically starting in 2022, the US used to have plus 10,900 millionaires going in. Right. And then what happened was it just dropped off a cliff and basically it just radically, radically changed here actually, let me show you the first map. This is 2019. Do you see the 2019 map on screen?

Wow, crazy.

So it was plus 10,000, 10,000 high net worth individuals, all that influence. Right. So this was. The US was still the source. Interestingly, Australia was also a really big deal. Right.

Which is why the property market in Australia blew up. Right. And then kind of like had all those issues. Shoes.

Okay, that's right, that's right. So okay, so you had plus 10,000 mil. Then after Covid and all of that stuff, the US dropped 85% down to plus 1500 millionaires and global capital started going. So it's some to Israel, Portugal, Greece, but the UAE, Singapore and Australia. And then also over here, by 2024, the US had recovered somewhat, but it was still way down from what it was. But number one is UAE, then Singapore. And obviously these are like 150th, 1/60 the size of the U.S. right. So the per capita is very, very high.

It's insane.

That's right. Now Australia is actually the sleeper hit. If you're interested in the Anglo world. Australia is where the Anglo world continues. That's probably the best managed country in the Anglo world, Australia and then New Zealand.

That's.

That in my view is to the Anglo world what Hong Kong and Taiwan and Singapore were to the Chinese world in the 20th century. Like the island of relative sanity, when the rest was kind of melting space.

With a lot of space and kind of like. And so on.

Right, Space, yes, space. But also their government is better managed. For example, Australia has a huge mining industry because they dig stuff out of the ground and sell it to China. Right. And that means that their equivalent of red American factory worker types, they feel happy because. Or more happy because they've actually.

Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, right.

And then also because they don't have. They don't feel that they've got the strongest military in the world. They don't feel they've got the reserve currency, their Ego is less caught up in being global number one. And they're actually more realistic about what China is and the growth of Asia. They're actually also making money from it. And also because they're 12 hours away from the North American time zone, there's just a time sink where they're not in the fight in the same way. I think that's underappreciated. Whereas Canada is just drawn into the same conflicts and so on. And the UK also is close enough to New York. Right. But 12 hours distance, there's no one to fight with by the time you're waking up, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think this is a very real thing. I think this like time sync actually makes a huge difference. Yeah, yeah.

In fact, I think there's three locations, same office, same time zone, and around the world. Right, exactly. Same time zone basically means we can actually align a lot of people in Singapore and Malaysia and so forth. Let me give you the ball. Go ahead.

No, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, I think that map is underappreciated because what that really is is like an elite migration map.

Right, Exactly.

Where are the world's elites going? And kind of like what is their inflow? Outflow? And I think that's super. That map is under referenced.

I think it's under reference. And here's the thing, that's distributed diligence, right? That's a lot of. That's people from mining, from tech, real estate, all these different sectors who've all said, let me do. And these are people who are good at global optimizing. Right, right. They said, you know what, the US is over. Let me reallocate to elsewhere in the world. And so first the capital has migrated and my thesis is now the talent will follow the capital 100%.

I mean, like, because all these people are not going to sit on their ass and do nothing. Like they're all essentially trying to. They're going to. They're going to build stuff, right?

That's exactly right. That's right. Huh.

Interesting. And I think what's also probably underappreciated is that even within the spectrum of elites, the people who are willing to make the move are the most entrepreneurial of the elites.

Correct? That's right.

So it's an even better leading indicator of kind of like where the world might be going.

That's right. Because the thing is, it's very easy when you've accumulated a big chunk and done well in your career. And I completely understand. So I'm not Saying anything negative about. But people will. Then they'll get comfortable, you know, hey, everyone, take my calls. Hey, I'm into cool parties. Hey, this. Right. And I completely understand where that comes from and more power to those people and so on and so forth. But at least for me and for a lot of people like that, it's like money or whatever. It's a stick of dynamite to go and blow up the next obstacle 100%.

It's like the whole point of having resources is so that you can in some ways continue to lever up more risk and kind of do more interesting things. Right?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Without in some ways feeling like. Yeah. It's like the whole point of actually, like, getting more access to more resources and capital is so you can take on more ambiguous, risky projects. Right. Like, this is the whole point. And I get it. Like, I'm probably. We are probably weirdly wired that that's what we are drawn to. Not everybody has to be drawn to that. But the kind of people who I think end up in some ways creating outsize impact and change are the ones who are wired that way, Right?

That's right. Yes.

So maybe Balaji, we have maybe five minutes left. Maybe walk us back to what does outsize success, maybe to kind of pull on that for the Network Fellowship. Yeah, Network State and Network Fellowship look like, right?

Sure. Yeah, sure. So let me. Let me just put this on screen, just so please, people can see V1 of this book, right?

It's a great book. I cannot recommend it highly enough to everyone.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and so on. But what is more gratifying to me is it did start a movement. This is a dashboard of aspiring network states. And look at all of the things that are out there. Right. These are all people who are. That's the thing about writing, is it scales, content scales, like code. So I couldn't. I actually have invested in a bunch of these things. I'm sorry. But this is something which is at the beginning, it's similar to, you know, like. Like crypto at the beginning. Right. Is Network school. Because I wrote this book and I was going to. I said, oh, you know, Let me write V2 of the book. And, you know, I was like, it's going to be much more convincing if I take theory and I put it into practice than if I just write another version of how to maybe do it. Right. And so that's hard, but it's also gratifying, and that's Network School over here. Right. And you know, we built, See, we actually built physical stuff, right? It's time to build jpg, right? This is, you know, we've taken over things, we've retrofitted buildings, we built gyms, we've built all kinds of crazy stuff. Right? And so, you know, we built our own cafe. People are doing VR. Can you see the video here? Right?

Yeah, you can. It's awesome here.

So there's Vitalik and Brian Johnson, right? Oh yeah, it was funny, right? We've got, basically we just take, you know, Bitcoin and you know, flags content studio. We've just. What if, what if like tech actually ran Silicon Valley? Or like what if Stanford were a startup itself? We're exploring that branch of the tree where suddenly the environment is working with you rather than against you. We have the drones, we have the robots, we have, you know, the 247 gym, right. We've got.

Is this in Singapore, by the way?

Malaysia right across. So it's basically in the Singapore Johor Special Economic Zone, right across from Malaysia, right.

By the way. Can we just talk about.

We have kids there. Go ahead.

I'm just surprised. Like I went on a deep rabbit hole man over the weekend, just learning about special economic zones across the world and I'm just like, why aren't we doing more of that in the United States? It feels like, yes, it's like such an, in some ways easy hack against the regulatory system to kind of be like, you don't want to like make change everywhere, that's fine. You just give it like 10 miles by 10 miles and just put in the SCZ there. Every country does this, whether it be China or India or every like, this is such an easy hack, it's just not that hard.

So here's the Western version of that that I wrote up and I call it the Special Elon Zone.

Oh yeah, sure. Yeah.

Okay. So the big. Okay, that's. So the thing is, for the Western version, this is Dengism with American characteristics. Yeah. So the way that Deng Xiaoping reformed China and how did they actually get rich, right, Is he couldn't turn the entire country capitalist at once. Right. Instead what he did was basically, wasn't Shenzhen Sec.

Wasn't Shenzhen one of the big first secs?

That's exactly right. That's right. So basically that is the key thing, right? It was something where he, he had inherited this country full of all of these brainwashed Maoists. Right. And so how could you possibly, you know, fix that? Right? It's not that there's no regulations it's that you have somebody who has the authority. So first it's an opt in zone. Okay? Yeah.

Okay.

So everybody who is in there has chosen to be there. Right. Number one, and number two is it is something where you take the existing code base and then you just have a bunch of scoped edits to it. Right. And the reason I say that is, for example, like one line that just changes whether, you know, for example, you can use pharmaceuticals, you know, with or without FDA approval, actually changes the entire region. You can keep the laws on police and the laws on assault and all these other things. Right. So it's like, think about with software, one of the things that you and I know from all the stuff we've done in software is you don't want to do the full rewrite. Usually you want to have the most incremental version. So let me just show you two things on screen. Do you see the screen where it says, how did China go from Maoist to capitalist? So what he did was he basically started with one spot, which was Shenzhen, right across from Hong Kong. Right. And then that was like the four initial Sazs, 1980. And then he did 14 more, then three, and then this. So the political capital that he gained from that allowed him to open up a bunch of other ones. Right. Now, the Western version of that, to your point, I think the west has to have an individual associated with something. China's maybe more about collectives and so on. The west is more about individuals. So special Elon zone is you could have the Palmer Lucky Zone, you could.

Have.

The Jeff Bezos Berg and so on and so forth. And this would be something where you have control of a huge swath of land, can be bare land and you fence it off and you have an admissions policy for it. And actually that's another big thing. The Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen was something where Deng selected people for that zone that were not crazy Maoists and communists. There's more to it than just the regulation. There's a whole process which is very similar to what we're doing with startup societies.

That's true. I mean, for what it was, Walt Disney got this with Epcot. Right. If you think about it, Epcot was basically kind of like a special zone that Walt Disney could do whatever he wanted in, like in Florida. And, you know, that's turned out pretty well.

Yes.

Balaji, you know what the best part about this conversation says? Like, I feel as though I could talk to you for multiple hours.

Great. We can wrap if you want. Yes.

Yeah. What an incredible, prodigious, and kind of like fertile mind you have. We do have a short podcast here, so it's only 45 minutes. But listen, I would love to have you back any day. I wanted to personally thank you for all the work you're doing. I think that history will remember you as kind of like being early to a lot of things. Right. And I think you've already proved this. But I think on the network stuff, I think we'll look back 10 years from now and be like, I wish we had done it earlier.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that, Adya. And send any south park people and other people to Network School. I'm happy to host them. Everybody at South Park Commons, welcome. So come to ns.com okay, cool.

I might take you up on that. Thank you so much. And with that, thank you for coming on the podcast. That was another episode of Minus one from the team at South Park Commons. Make sure to subscribe to our show wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on social at South Park Commons. And thanks to our friends at Atomic Growth for their support in bringing this episode to life.