The Ultimate Advice For Startup Founders (feat. Adam Draper)

There are a couple of key things that I think differentiate like really long-term great investors and short-term not great investors. And one of them is just asking the very simple question, but what if it works?

Hey everybody, welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at filipinpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. In today's episode, you'll meet Adam Draper. Adam is the founder and managing director of Boost VC, which is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $200 million in assets under management. Boost VC's tagline is the first check in sci-fi, which means they invest $500K in pre-seed startups accelerating the sci-fi future. Think sectors like aerospace, VR/AR, energy, climate, AI, ML, deep tech, and more. Their portfolio includes huge companies like Coinbase, Etherscan, and Amplitude. Adam is a 2x entrepreneur and a 4th generation venture capitalist who comes from a family of highly influential leaders, including his dad, Tim Draper, who made investments in Skype, Tesla, Bitcoin, and more. On this episode, we went into the backstory of how we both met on Twitter many years ago, Adam's belief in the power of building in public, how he met the iconic Stan Lee for lunch, and how he wants to pay it forward now. Unlike in any other episode, we also had a fun brainstorming session about the future of tech and tossed a few moonshot ideas around. Some ideas may sound crazy, but you'll see that we're both dreamers. I had a ton of fun on this interview and hope you'll find value in it too. With that said, I bring you Adam. Enjoy. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast, Adam. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, KP. This is great.

So, um, for the listeners and the folks who are watching this, um, we went into a little bit of backstory, which I want to recreate because it speaks— I think it speaks to a lot about Silicon Valley's paid-forward culture, but specifically the way I first interfaced you, I think 5 years ago, as I said earlier, which I don't even know if you remember that, like 5 years ago in a random casual Twitter interaction. So, the long story— the short story is somebody posted that, name one person you'd love to meet in your life and that would make, you know, would be an amazing, you know, opportunity or whatever. Or who would you have to— who would you love to have lunch with or whatever? It's one of those Twitter open prompts. And I responded, and this is at the time I had like 400 followers. I was nobody. Nobody knew me. I didn't have a podcast or anything. I responded saying, Naval Ravikant, right? And Adam saw that thread and DM'd me unprompted and offered to simply make that intro, which blew my mind. Adam being Adam, and I Googled him and I was like, who's this guy who wants to help me? And he's like, actually legit. This is five years ago. This is when you were already an investor. I think you were still you're already running Boost five years ago, right?

Yeah, twelve, eleven years ago. So yeah, yeah, dude.

So you were like, what is this? You know, and but and you made that intro and you checked in with Naval, and eventually, of course, you know, Naval being Naval, it he was like, sorry, but no. You know, I can't meet with every person on the you know on Twitter. It's gonna you know, but that's him. I was not fully expecting him to like jump at it, but. I was so graciously touched by your act and your willingness to just come out and help Adam. So, thank you so much. And here we are 5 years later on the podcast.

So, that was awesome. You can hold me to eventually getting in front of Naval over later, but the— and you should. So, the reason, and I don't think I— the reason that I did that Is there are a couple, but one is like something that we sort of talked about is like paying it forward is very, very important to the job. Finding opportunities to be able to help people is very important to being a venture capitalist and an investor and identifying where that could be. But one of the reasons is recently around that time I met an investor and I was pitching them. Her name was Holly Cow on my fund. Right. And she was on the foundation of Stan Lee's— Stan Lee Foundation, which is— I love comic books. And so, I said, you know, Stan Lee is one of 2 people I ever want to meet in the world.

Yeah.

There are 2 people and one is Stan Lee. Stan Lee, and she said, well, you better hurry up. He's he's ninety-four, and I I was I was like, you're right. I should. Can you make that happen? And she did, and it was the most amazing thing where I genuinely had a list of two people, and the universe provided. And I was like, if there's one person that someone wants to meet. That's amazing that like if you just ask for it sometimes it— she wasn't the first person I ever told about this, so she was the first person who could make it happen. She followed through and I had this amazing lunch with Stan Lee. It was a 2-hour lunch and I invited my dad and we sat around and I asked him a bunch, every geeky comic book question. He's the creator of all the Marvel superheroes everyone knows. Right. I realized the power of paying it forward was like, and asking for it. I had a debt to the universe where I have to pay it forward. So I, uh, so that's sort of a fun thing where it's like, it does happen. Like, I mean, if you know what you want, I always say like, the universe generally provides if you know what you want and you ask for what you want. Correct. The issue is that I think a lot of people don't know what they want. And so I think that, that once you figure it out though, if you just ask everyone for it, People like helping.

Yeah, I

think that's that's another thing that might be counterintuitive. People want to help; they want to be useful. I want to be useful. So yeah, that's how thank you.

And I'm I'm so glad you sort of opened with that anecdote, which is by the way, I didn't know the backstory, but it makes a lot of sense, and it reminds me of you know sort of we were riffing about building in public before going on going on the air as well, where. I saw the taste of this. By the way, I kept thinking what you did for me was a fluke, Adam, for a long time. I was like, what? This is, you know, this is maybe Adam just being extra generous. This is— And then after a while, fast forward 3, 4 years into this sort of Twitter game and building in public, being open game. I started my podcast in 2021, January. I had, again, quite serendipitously, I posted in one of the threads, I just pitched Alex Lieberman, CEO at the time of Morning Brew. He was talking nonstop about building in public that whole day. And I thought, wait, this guy's obsessed about this. I'm obsessed about this. Would it make sense for us to be on a pod? And by the way, I've never done a podcast my whole life before that, right? He has done hundreds by then because he was the CEO of Morning Brew. I just shot my shot, you know, and he said instantaneously, yes, which shocked me. I was like, whoa. And that happened in a way that didn't happen in public. It happened in DMs, like how you and I, our interaction happened in DMs. But I finally mustered up a little bit courage that May. And one Sunday morning I thought, what if I just asked Gary Vee? Because I love Gary Vee and I'm an immigrant from India for about, I don't know, 6, 7 years. I watched his content coming from the bottom to the top kind of thing. And I thought, I think he's the kind of person who would resonate with this. Build in public or document, don't create this philosophy. Um, and so I just shot my shot. And within 28 minutes, he said yes in public. I put it on Twitter, you know, pitched him on Twitter. I made him— made it easy for him to say no with an opening statement that said 100% ready if you say no. Like, you know, don't make it ob— like, don't obligate them kind of thing. And he showed up a month later on the podcast, literally changed my life. And I got to work with him 6 months down the line, right? So it's, it's weird how Like you said, sometimes we don't know what we exactly want. And second thing, second thing, when we know what we want, we would probably share that with a spouse, maybe with your best friend, but you would never put it on the public forum. But there's something magical about that.

To this building in public, like, I think there's that unquantifiable piece of building in public where you're really telling people in the world what you want. Right. Yeah. You're sort of just saying very clearly, this is how things are going. This is what we need right now. Um, these are the things that are going poorly. And then it gives people the opportunity to be useful. And like, that's, that's exciting. It reduces the cost of labor in a lot of ways, right? Like it reduces the cost of ideas, solutions, like all that stuff. So I, first off, I love that I was some small part of this amazing podcast. And the— I am a huge promoter of building in public generally because I think— I think

I've seen you do that. I've seen you do that. I've seen you, you know, especially the way you handle your Twitter. I mean, I think we all have ebbs and flows. We all have moments. I mean, periods where we're like, you know, we put out a lot of content, then we like sometimes we go like go back to recharge. I've seen you, I've been following you for a while and I've seen you kind of be very open and bold. And going back to one other thing, Adam, which you touched on briefly, I feel like, you know, there's literally no downside as long as you're not— Use common sense and build in public, I guess is the point. It's like, don't like completely, you know, disclose, you know, strategic advantages that you may need or like, you know, names of your customers and all those things, which I think is common sense, 101 shit, doesn't need to be even mentioned. But apart from that,

I also think like even those things.

Yeah. I mean,

I think 90% of the time people won't, like if people are planning to imitate you, they won't know the why you're doing what you're doing.

Yes.

And so it eventually sort of fails on this copycat I'm not gonna say that never happens, but if you're the one genuinely coming up with your own ideas, like, share it. This is something my family is really notoriously good at, and I will say that it is not me. Like, what is it? Coached by a very amazing— I've been lucky to be related to a bunch of venture capitalists. No, my dad just notoriously is like, ideas are free, right? Talk about it. Go. Yes. Like, see how the world believes about it. Like, don't—

yes,

I have yet to see a stealth company pull it off. So like, which is the opposite. That's the opposing force to the idea of building in public, right? Like the opposing force. Exactly. Build in public, some sliding scale of building in public, and then I'm stealth, not talking to anyone because we're super secretive and awesome. Right. And even our— so Boost VC, we lead pre-seed rounds of deep tech. And one of the categories we've gone pretty hard after was aerospace. Even our aerospace companies build in public. Like, yes, there's intellectual property. Yes, there's government relationships. Yes, there's all these things. But like, have you ever seen a rocket video? It's pretty awesome. And like, right, they realized how awesome it is. And so like— Our nuclear fusion company, Radiant, Doug Bernauer, he gave a presentation to our group of Boost VC and all of our portfolio companies. And he was like, I think you're doing a disservice to your company if you are not building in public. And he's building a nuclear reactor. Like, it's not like there's a lot of probably like novel things there that he doesn't— he won't want out in the world. And he's still saying, we've seen nuclear not work for 50 years because everyone's keeping it behind closed doors. We're just going to make all the mistakes. We're going to do it.

Yes.

You know, like, we'll show you. Check it out.

Yes. And I think that's, you know, oddly enough, that's it. It reminds me of all the SpaceX launches, you know, including the ones that failed. I mean, I think people, people don't appreciate the level of impact watching a giant rocket land itself back on the ground from space. Imagine how many future astronauts and architects and like engineers and mechanical engineers and like All sorts of people were inspired. How many kids were inspired by that video of a rocket launching, you know, and coming back to a— To the ground and like landing itself perfectly okay.

I mean, during COVID that one launch where they launched astronauts into space, like the 4 crew, 4 astronauts.

Right.

Like that was something that the entire American people were able to connect over. Like, I think—

Yeah.

I think people undervalue that, like, okay, yes, there are trolls on the internet, right? Like, there are people who are gonna say no, that it's impossible, it won't work. And sometimes they're right. Like, sometimes they're right about certain concepts of it. But if you have enough endurance, you get to prove them wrong. So they get to be your fuel. But people undervalue, like, the moment where everyone gets to share in the success of some human endeavor. And

yeah,

that's, that's something that I talk— like, if I were to summarize what Boost VC really is all about, it's like, I want to be supportive of and invest in the peak of human endeavor. And endeavor, I believe, unites everyone. I think that that's why I continue to do what I'm doing, is like, I want humans to feel a shared moment Of when we break barriers. Of whatever kind. Yes. It's, you know.

Yes.

Everyone goes, it's impossible, it's impossible, it's impossible, until it's not. Until it did it. And then you're like, okay.

Yes.

I can't say it's impossible anymore. So what do I call it? Like, done? Boring? You know, like, it's, it's a, you know, and then the next thing. Like, the normalization of space is insane. Insane.

I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I mean, growing up, like, we were imagining and wondering exactly these kind of things. Like, would we go to Mars, right? Would we do even more inter— you know, planetary travel? And like, and now they're like, it's just another YouTube video. Like, literally, like, you know, it's just another YouTube video. What? You know, take a second to really soak it in.

I dare you to find someone who doesn't believe he Elon will be able to get SpaceX to Mars now. Like,

yeah,

at the beginning that was insane, that concept. Like, that was an insanity. But now we're getting 200 launches a year or whatever, and like, yeah, I'm not gonna be the person doubting Elon on this. Like, I think he's probably like— And I'm— we say Elon, and Elon really represents like thousands of people who are incredibly talented operating for like this, this crucible of incredible technical talent, right? Like, uh, and, and I mean, yeah, it's, it's pretty remarkable. So,

so

you've invested— fascinating.

Now, I was going to ask you, you, you've invested in, in, in a bunch of founders and, and startups whose sole focus was to break through some kind of a limiting belief or a barrier that was initially believed to be impossible. So you're probably the right person to ask, ask this question. What do you think differentiates these founders from, let's say, a bunch of random assortment of like, you know, a bunch of YC founders, a bunch of On Deck founders, whatever? Like you just take a random collection of founders versus the ones who you see as the top 1% who are so driven to make the impossible possible. Like what are some unique Traits that you think they possess?

You know, a lot of people say like everyone has a book in them, you know. I truly believe that everyone has a good company in them. Like, I believe— I don't think it's like— and don't get me wrong, it like there's differences across the board. No great founder looks like another great founder. Like, they don't think the same, they don't operate the same. And over enough, I don't believe that it's about linear time-based experience. I think it's about the reason that obsessing over something increases your likelihood that you're gonna outperform is that you're getting reps in order to create epiphanies for yourself. So like, yeah, you like, no one's one idea stayed the same, exactly the same. It wasn't like they were right. Like they didn't start the company and they were right. You have to have a good combination of like a learning mind where you're flexible and a like momentum, we call it default to movement, like a momentum-driven like company. Like you need to be willing to say yes and do things. So saying all that, what I would say the 2 Yeah, I'm gonna write down one more. Um, 3 things that I think end up happening. There's only one thing that's driven every single massive success I've had, okay? So for as far as investments are concerned, um, the, the first one is, uh, I mean, the only one is commitment. And it's commitment to either the mission So, for Elon, it's, you know, going to Mars, or for Brian Armstrong, it was one financial infrastructure for the planet, or for—

Right.

Like, basically, like, there's this mission that's driving the decisions that everyone's making. The other commitment is commitment to your team and your partnership. And of that team, like I backed Amplitude and Curtis Liu and Spencer Skates. They could have been working on literally anything. They would have succeeded at some point over time. And like they picked something they were like asymmetrically great at. Another company called Wave Mobile Money. They went through four different ideas and then ended up on this other one on remittance, which turned into mobile money in Africa and absolutely. Annihilated it. So generally my answer ends up being sort of this: that is the thing. It's commitment to the project. It's commitment to this idea of you. So you need— think about what you need in order to make that work. You need enough self-confidence. You need to know where you're right and where you're wrong. And then you need to be able to inspire people around you to go on this mission. So the reason mission-driven founders probably are the largest successes at the end of the day, like when it works, it's like massive, massive, is because the cost of attracting talent is reduced so much. So what that— what by that what I mean is Building in Public is a good example, but What I mean is, if I'm building a space company, it's self-fulfilling prophecy that all these space, very talented, amazing space obsessors are gonna— I don't need to sell them on the mission.

Right.

There's no mission sale. It's just like, hey, we're gonna be throwing stuff into space. Like, I don't— there's no— it's so easy, right, to sell someone on that. Hey, we're gonna electrify the world. Hey, we're gonna change the way that money works. Hey, we're gonna Being able to reduce the cost of capturing that talent is really what this is because— sorry, these are the things I think about a lot. Because a company, all it is is an organism to attract all the most brilliant people to work on your problem, right? Yeah. That's what a company is. A company is in order that you have to— it's just a vehicle in which you have a concept, you want to build a product, and you want to solve a problem. And you just attract all the best people that you can into that orb. And that's what it is. So my— the common things, it's really the one thing. I talked about a lot of things, but really it's the one thing, it's commitment. So I, I've not seen anything else. Like, it's definitely not intelligence, and I'm not saying that as a negative. Like, you probably have some level of intelligence, but Is it intelligent to run your head into a wall every day, 5 times a day for like 20 years? I don't know. Like, that's basically what founding a startup is. It's eating glass every day for 20 years. And the, uh—

Right.

There's some combination of commitment and having an iron gut. Like, like just to like always trying to improve yourself, but your gut is just like, You are able to just—

Stomach the punches.

You hold all the punches. You, you,

yeah,

like you let the rest of the team solve everything and you hold all the stress, right? Like you're the, you get to be like the buck stops here. All the decisions you take some responsibility for. You're the, yeah, the founders, they, they have a, they have an iron gut. So commitment, iron gut. There. Got there.

Love it. You know, so as you were talking about these traits and as you were kind of, you know, talking about the mission-driven companies and how powerful having a strong, compelling mission is, it reminded me of this thing that I've been thinking about lately, that ambition, you know, is one of those things that school can't teach you. You know, your family can't teach you. It's only other founders or other ambitious people can pass on to you. So it's kind of like, it's an infectious thing that you can only soak in when you are around other people or somebody believes in you and like they raise the floor, raise the ceiling of your ambition. And it's something I found myself, Adam, because I went from low-income family in India to like, you know, to being a student, grad student in America. Yeah. And at every step of my journey, I feel like somebody believed in me and saw a bigger floor, a bigger ceiling for me, like ambition-wise. And I latched onto that and then tried to like grow into, you know, that the next thing and then kept going on and on. And first of all, would you agree with that framework, ambition being a thing that you learn from watching other people around you and be inspired by that? And number 2, if that's a yes, number 2 is who raised your ceiling of ambition in your life?

It's a great question. So for— I don't know if my answer would have been different even weeks ago or months ago. I think it would still be the same. Like, I love the idea of the ambition being sort of this infectious disease where you surround yourself with people who— so I look at it slightly differently though. I don't look at it as someone's believing in me to raise my ceiling. It's I see someone else who has it, and I realize I can raise my ceiling. So it's like, rather than thinking like the— where it's like someone is sort of saying like, you could go bigger, it's I can go bigger. It's like—

You're reflecting, you're reflecting for yourself that I could go bigger. When you look at someone taking a bigger shot.

I see something in myself where I'm like, hey, it's okay to go bigger, right? Um, so I'll answer this 2 different ways. One is, um, look, I was raised by my dad and, uh, and my mom, obviously. And, uh, my dad is a go-bigger person. Like, nothing is going bigger. Like, so it's just a big, uh, aura of bigness. And like, so there's all it is is like, hey, we're— if you have a conversation with my dad, who's in my opinion the greatest seed stage investor inventor ever, it's all about how much bigger you can go. So the whole conversation is not what you're doing, it's if this succeeds, this is how big your idea is. And if he sees no limit, like, he'll probably invest because it's just, that's what, like, he wants to be in that world where it's like a limitless above. The other way is like recently, I think this is one of the greatest things about running a program. So we run a program twice a year, all the companies we invested in in the last 6 months. We invest $500K into pre-seed deals, um, but all the deals that we do every 6 months goes through our go-to-market program. We find that go-to-market is the, uh, thing that deep tech companies need more than almost anything else. Like, they have the technical talent, they need go-to-market strategy, correct? And so we run this program. But the coolest thing about running a program, um, and bringing in speakers in person is I get to talk to them all. And I— it's the same thing with the podcast or whatever. Like, and you start to realize, like, some of them you're like, okay, like, I understand their ambition or whatever. And sometimes you meet someone and you just— you're like, this is, this is the next level, right?

Yeah, right.

Like, I was— I'm sort of like settling in for a marathon. This person is like turning up the heat. And they've been doing it longer than me and pushing harder than me. And you're like, okay, okay. And then all of a sudden you try to rise to the challenge. You have to— you can't look at it like, I can't do that, right? Like, yeah, that way all of a sudden you're settling and you just stay running. You, you, you settle and you go, wait a second, someone was able to do this. I can, I can figure this out. And you start doing more reps and you start working harder and you start— it's not— yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of people think working harder is like Doing more emails or like whatever, like beep beep bop bop bop. But like working hard is like obsessing over the strategic decisions. I find my job is more and more making important decisions, right? Like it's yes, it's like and making sure that I have all of the information at around me to be able to make the best of those decisions.

Yes, I get

paid to make decisions, and and so like you do all the work, you write all the blog posts, you. Like that, you talk to all the people and you do all those things literally just for you to make 3 decisions a year, right? Like, and like, that's a fascinating thing. Like, we're— I mean, I make a lot of investment decisions a year, but like most of that's driven by like 3 harder, more strategic for Boost VC decisions a year. And so like, that's what I think about. I think about like, how much am I doing In order to get those things out there. And that's, you know, that's the crucible of starting a startup, right? Like, that's the—

Right.

The trials. That's the— I also should take a step back and be like, I founded Boost VC. I founded a company before. I— and I think of myself as a founder, okay? But when I meet founders, I sometimes think Well, maybe I'm not a founder. Maybe I'm just an investor because this person's like an assassin. This is like, I'm looking at John Wick in like part 4 and like it just, they just unveiled like how much of an assassin they are, right? So that's the—

You know, in Jay-Z's terms, right? Like all of life is really about Rising up to the highest elevation of the self, right? And I think this is like, by the way, reference to one of his recent songs called God Did, which I highly recommend you check out because it's mind-blowing. I feel like a startup founder—

What's it called?

You know, right? It's called God Did. And Jay-Z has a guest appearance on that one. And his verse comes third. Mind-blowing. Like, it felt like a startup founder wrote that verse, you know, because there were so many sort of the hero's journey story, sort of, you know, parts of

that. I see no difference between a founder and Jay-Z, right? Like Jay-Z is a founder. Jay-Z, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar. Yeah. Turning. Yeah. Like, yes, I see no— they tell those stories at the beginning where they're trying to get people to believe. And it's the exact same. It's the creator aspect of it. The product's a little different.

Yes. You know what's funny though? What I thought was interesting is because growing up in India, like hip-hop was not big, right? I mean, even in the '90s when I grew up in, it was like not big. I mean, it was like, I guess pop was more big, you know? So I didn't really listen to much of Jay-Z or any of these guys. When I moved to America in 2011, I started listening to this stuff and this was like, you know, peak Jay-Z has passed. I think 2008 or '09 was peak Jay-Z or something. Yeah. But I was listening to some of the stuff in 2011, 12, 13, and this by that that time Jay-Z was 41, and he was talking about his mission and his journey from you know from you know the Marcy projects to like you know where he's where he was now, and he was you know all the journey and ups and highs and lows. And then this this the other song which is I'm talking about called God Did that came came in last year, and he's 51, and he's still singing the same thing, and I'm like. Dude, this guy has been singing the same sort of mission for 30 years, right? I'm like, it's crazy how consistent and prolific and like applied to the mission you have to be, you know, about telling your story, telling a story for it to resonate.

They always say CEOs don't realize how your job just becomes repeating the exact same thing over and over and over.

Over and over again, right? And so, I was blown away by that. I was like, wow, it's sometimes— so, my sister and I, we talk about this and we're— I feel like we both are at the inflection point of our careers. And we always tell her, I always remind her, like, you got to be patient. You got to play the 30-year game, you know, for us to be relevant in the industries. You can't just like come in 2 years and like, you know, I'm a young buck, take a shot on me. You got to play the long-ass game, you know. So, switching back, you just talked about being sort of thinking big, Adam. Which, by the way, I think in all of your attempts, in all your investments, in the way you sort of carry yourself, I feel like that to me has been very apparent and consistent that you're the kind of person who loves to think big or challenge one themselves to think big. But I want to ask this sort of backstory question. When was the time maybe you saw, you were part of your dad's decision-making engine, or you saw him operate? You know, or make some decisions, et cetera. And you really like thought, okay, this is unbelievable. Like, this is like the biggest thing. My dad's already crazy. He already is a big thinker, but this is nuts. What was that for you?

So first off, I don't know if I've ever been a part of his decision-making, but I will here. This is what I'll say. Misunderstood, I think my dad's one of the most misunderstood people in venture capital. Like when people read the articles about him or whatever, like I think, His whole thing is like, he's incredibly brilliant. Like, people reflect on the decisions of investments he's made, but his general strategic thinking is better than almost anyone. I mean, I'll say like, he is— his biggest swings that he has personally taken that people don't really realize he took because people have like, you know, he tried to break California into 3 states. He tried to break California into 6 states and then 3. So talk about disruptive big ideas, right? Like he went for it.

Right.

He tried to bring school charters to California in 1999, Prop 38, and he lost to the unions. He was on the State Board of Education. So he went for education. Like that was everything to him was making sure that the education of California stayed at the top and he lost. A lot. He kept losing and he, but he kept learning these really valuable lessons. So my, my answer is like, I don't know, breaking California 6 parts and seeing a road to how to do that was pretty insane. Like,

yeah,

I like, I wouldn't, wasn't on that level when he was doing that. I wasn't like, I mean, I loved and knew he was doing it and I actually loved the idea. Like, I'm all about competitive governance. I think it would have— it would make— I think we're gonna head in that direction anyway. The craziest thing about all this, the thing that is misleading about my dad, I think more than anything else, is he's always effing right, but he is wrong. He might be wrong on time frame of people realizing it's the right move. And like, that distance is where, you know, you miss things. And like, the And so my— so I would say that's, that's probably— I could have answered that very quickly just by saying break California into 6 states. But I want to say, like, that wasn't his only thing that he's attempted in that space. Like, he's attempted multiple things. He was thrown off the School Board of Education in California and because he had too many not new ideas, basically, like they just wanted to like keep doing the same thing.

Back to one other thing you touched on, self-sovereignty. What does that mean? And what's a big idea in that realm?

So, I think, I believe what technology is leading us towards is like sovereign alternatives to what the government provides. So, good example of this is banking. So, crypto is exactly finance. But it doesn't look the same, but it gives you a choice. It gives you a choice. Do I want to opt in to government-run funded systems? Right. Or do I want to opt out and own my own money? And that's, that's the decision. It's not easier, by the way. I don't believe crypto is easier. I don't believe it, like, but I do believe having that choice will lead to a competitive space that makes better services for everyone.

So, so it's, it's different. It may not be easier. Yeah,

different. Think about healthcare. So in self-sovereignty, like healthcare, there's the classic hospital system. And I'm not sure if you've been to the hospital recently, but it's all about liability and not about helping the customer or the patient.

Yeah.

So there's all these services that have started that are alternatives. So You can think about, you can think of yoga. Yoga is helping people, right? Like it's helping people in the same way that a doctor used to. It's helping people in the same way, like get fit, do all the— it's like the proactive direct-to-consumer stuff. So, there's a ton of services where you're starting to be in control of your data, your blood, yourself. And like that to me is sovereign.

I see you. I think there's a bunch of studios that are coming out, right? Like the health studios. Yeah. And they're like, you'll pay a SaaS member, almost like a monthly membership to them. And then you get your blood work done there and you're treated more like a DTC customer, unlike the healthcare, which has layers and layers and layers.

Get peer-to-peer, get to peer-to-peer is sort of the thesis, but it allows you to have the choice of whether or not you want someone else completely dictating all of the things, which I think in a lot of ways is gonna be better in certain capacities. Yeah. I think there are gonna be a lot of ways that's important. But knowing that there's a choice will lead you to make the choice, right? Like knowing there's an alternative. So health education is a good example. So I believe that we're in this transition, this transition phase of choice. And if you invest towards the alternatives, you'll perform very well.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You know, you know, the thing about earlier. When you shared something about sovereignty made me think about this other idea that I've been sitting on for a while. And I thought maybe that's interesting, which is I believe in the future, I believe that, I don't know if this will happen, but I wish it happens where every person on planet Earth has an LLC, like has some version of a company. I don't know. I just feel like the 300-year-old industrial job, like machine, I feel like is archaic. You know, today you are a one-person media company. I'm a one-person media company. I have the podcast. You could do the same thing. I'm a one-person media company. I have a newsletter. You have the same thing. So everybody can have the sort of full stack of a company where you have marketing and you have sales, which is through trust, which is part podcasting. And then you have some kind of a service that you can offer to the free market. And where are the customers? I mean, they're global, right? My fellowship, just like how you guys run the Boost VC thing, your customers are not all in Bay Area, right? There are a bunch of people all around, I bet. Yeah. So all my customers of Building Public Fellowship are from 8 countries and many, many cities. So I don't even have to step in those countries to get them as customers, which tells me there's something here in the next 40 years. If you project it out,

so, you know, whoever solves for the universal LLC is gonna,

yeah,

do pretty well probably, or some interface of that.

Because think about that, because do you, you know, Deal, right? Deal.com, D-E-A-L. You're solving for universal HR, which by the way, I use that for my, you know, building public LLC, which I'm so grateful for that they took all the headaches of Tax compliance across so many countries that I don't care for, right? So wondering what's the, like, that's the HR layer solved for. What would be the universal LLC service? You know, and it's also partly you got to ignite that interest in other people to start an LLC. Otherwise they're not gonna, right? They're just happy with their own steady jobs. So I feel like you have to make it, you have to kindle that a little bit in them.

Yeah, it's the unbundling and rebundling, right? Like we're in the state of unbundling the company, the LLC a little bit where it's like you have enough technology that you can sort of not have to deal with back office and you can, and you're sort of, you'll start to have your own intellectual property that partners with other people. So you start to borrow revenue from other people. Yes.

You could do affiliations, right? So I think you could do like help each other out. Like if I send 4 leads to an agency that 'Cause I ran the no-code program, for example, if SN4 leads to the agencies that were doing no-code agencies, you know, that's like revenue share, for example. Right. So I think, I don't know, I was just thinking about that. I have never really thought— I love that.

That's a, that's a 100x idea. That's, yeah, that's, that's a big, a universal company. I mean, in crypto, people have attempted a couple different varieties. Right. So here, this is, we'll, we'll get to The problem of extremes is no one, you've already gone through the process of making the leaps and the epiphanies you've had to be able to get there, right? The most expensive thing about extreme solutions is the education to get people to see that.

Yes, 100%. And that's why I said you gotta make them desire this because that's the hard part.

That's why Deal is such a good example, right? Like Deal is taking HR, but like, It's solving a problem. You just want to pay people. And there happen to be a lot of people all over the world and you're like, I don't want to deal with the logistics of like formulating how they get paid. I just want to click a button and say they get paid. So for this case, someone has to create sort of the, uh, not to brainstorm ideas, but I hope someone does this, is like really what we're talking about is The text there and the legal regulations there for becoming an LLC all the way up the stack. What's not there is the translation of every country to one standard, right? Like, not caring that you're in Switzerland and figuring out the way in which you interact with a, you know, US-based LLC. Right. No, I think about it. It's a great idea.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Coming to the end of our segment here. So I got one last question. Tell us about what's super exciting right now at Boost and give a bat signal, give a bat signal to the kind of founders you wanna attract.

What's exciting about Boost? We just finished our program. So like relevant topically, like today, we just ended our in-person week. Which gives me and my team like an insane amount of energy. Gives a ton of like, it's so exciting to be able to see everyone and like vibe on everyone's energy and you realize how talented all the people you've invested in are and like that's really exciting. And so like topically what's really been the energy feeder for me in the last like week was that where we had great speakers, we had great mentors, We had a bunch of events and then we also just got to like have mutual experiences. I think the thing that Zoom doesn't have is that you have random mutual experiences with people. Right. Friendship. And so friendship is really what we're going for. Trust is what we're going for. The bad signal for founders, you know, my job is to try to find people who are trying to accomplish the I said it earlier, but I try to spend all my time figuring out where people are trying to solve the hardest problems with the latest technology. And what that description is, the peak of human endeavor. And so I just— what we specialize really hard in is like trying to translate those very deep technologies to different markets and we spend a lot of time with the founders figuring that out and that's sort of what we enjoy and that's what we love is like you have a very, very difficult, you believe it's for a specific problem, you are able to build all the technology. What we do is we try to translate what a business is. We are the difference between tinkerer and entrepreneur and like, I'm sorry, tinkerer is not the right way to think of it but like— Inventor.

Right.

And we want to be able to own that problem and translate that problem to the world. And I think we've done it for, you know, we've done it for a long time. And sometimes we're too early. Sometimes, you know, we try to back just good people solving hard problems.

I love that. I love the focus on sort of expanding the human endeavor, right? The number of times you mentioned that phrase, Human endeavor has been super refreshing to hear.

Human endeavor is, I believe, so get dive deep into my, the evil workings of my brain. But like the, look, if you think about everyone always tries to compare the differences between like value investing, like Warren Buffett, and venture investing, like it's some sort of Risk. Like trading thing, like a gamble. And I believe that they're all the same, and it's really about figuring out what people in the market undervalue or overvalue. And human endeavor is the one thing that humans themselves are very bad at about estimating the impact of. And if that's true, and you're actually selecting the right problems and big ideas, then those companies are always undervalued, in which case it is a good investment. And that's my job. My job at the end of the day is to invest and find— Yeah. And make impact. And so that, that's, that's my thesis. My thesis is human endeavor is the one thing that's always undervalued because people can't fathom what scale is. Right.

It's very hard to. It's very hard to fathom that. Yeah. Adam, well, it was a pleasure having you here. I cannot believe how quickly time passed, which is usually a great indication of a fantastic time.

We brainstormed insane ideas for like 30 minutes. So I don't know. Isn't that crazy? You're a bad idea.

It's, I mean, look, look, I think, you know, like we, I think we put some skin in the game, right? It's like back to what we were talking about. Like

it's genuinely building in public. Actually, I could do that, that property ownership of the ocean thing. Like, call me. Right.

Right?

Yeah. I think LLCs everywhere, like, call us, right? Like, yes.

Agreed. And I think, you know, to be honest though, I feel like a lot of the times, a lot of the, even the podcasts or even just like the threads or whatever, I feel like people are trying to regurgitate Wikipedia articles and shit that's already happened. Like, because this takes a little bit of skin, a little bit of boldness to kind of look a little bit foolish on air and think a little, stretch your brain because it's hard, right? And both of you, both of you have, both of us have.

I love the idea that the new age of podcasting is brainstorming.

Yeah.

Because I mean, like everyone, if I see another Creator who's— I don't know, creators talk about how much money they're making a lot now, right? Like when you watch all these things and you don't— I don't think that I'm like, great, that's fantastic. Like, yeah. But like, that's not helping me make better decisions, right? Like, that's not—

Exactly. I think the other thing too is like, we in the sea of information, Adam, I feel like we're losing, we're losing The sight of wonder. And right now, there's so many podcasts, so many tweets, so many whatever. They're all about information, overloading you, overloading you. But I think like you can't spend your whole life just consuming tons and tons of information. I think what was brilliant about your dad, and I'm really soaking it in, I'm genuinely soaking it in. I wish one day I'd get a chance to meet him because at every turn, like no matter how silly or big or crazy or disruptive the ideas sounded, He just followed his wonder, which is something I'm leaning into as I'm getting older. Like, I'm 34, 35 now. I'm like, fuck what people think. I just want to lean into what feels wondrous to me.

My grandpa's 95, and if anyone— he'll ask people their age, and he'd be— he'd say, oh, to be 34.

Right?

So, but you know, No, leaning into the wonder. The best, look, I think that one of the things that differentiates, like, there are a couple of key things that I think differentiate like really long-term great investors and short-term not great investors. And one of them is just asking the very simple question, but what if it works?

Yeah.

Like, that's it. Like, what if it works? And I think my dad's the king of asking that question. Like, I think he's the best at it. And, and it's, you know, everyone gets hampered down because everyone's trying to measure everything. They're all trying to do like metrics, drive, think, answers and stuff. Yeah. And I believe that we've over— we've oversaturated on, on, uh, certainty around data. And it's coming back the other— it's going to come back the other way where it's just like, I like the person and it's a big idea, right? Like there's wisdom in like those being the edges. I'm— and data's good. Everyone wants as much data as possible, but when you use it as the only driver of decisions, right, you're actually not using your brain.

Right. You know, so this is true. When I ask some of the smart people that I interview on the podcast, or like when I got to talk to them for coffee, at first I just throw in, a bunch of like normal questions about, hey, what do you think is the trends of this industry, whatever? And then they usually tell me what's on Wall Street Journal, what they read like yesterday night. It's all the stuff. Then I say, let's go crazy. What's something that you wish existed, doesn't exist? And then they start becoming the inner child that they all, we all have. Yeah. And then they toss out the stuff that they're afraid to say because that may look dumb or foolish or whatever. But it blows my mind that that's what they're obsessed about. So if I, if we, if you ever want to start a company, You want to start a company on something that sounds so dumb to your wife or to your spouse or to your best friend, but you're obsessed about it. It's something about it that's gnawing at you, you know?

Yeah. And 100%, I think this is so good. And it needs to be familiar but insane.

Yes. Yes. That's it. That's— dude, that's the sound clip. That's the sound clip for this episode. Literally, because this, by the way, this broke so many rules about my podcast. Like, there's— this is a very completely Off tangent way of interview, the way you've done it, the way you've answered everything was completely insane. So I want to say thank you once again. And if you're ever in Atlanta, please let me know because I would love to grab coffee with you or lunch with you.

Atlanta. Okay, that's good to know.

Yes. And vice versa. If I'm ever in Bay Area, I would love to drop by.

If you're in Bay Area, look me up. I'm here most of the time. I'm doing an East Coast trip. It's almost solidified, but I might be able to add a stop if this doesn't work. And then

please do. I'll even throw in— if not, you can even probably plan it.

My goal would be early next year. I need to do a trip sort of in that area anyway.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, and, and I, I could probably even throw in a meetup or an event where we can sort of bat signal some, you know, ambitious founders in Atlanta, you know, and I can have you as a, as a speaker, you know.

Calendly's in Atlanta.

Yeah, Calendly's in Atlanta. But there's so many— I feel like there's so many that are in the— I feel like in the fringes a little bit in the city because the mainstream focus in the conversation is about B2B fintech or B2B SaaS. I feel like the, you know, the crazies need a little bit of a celebration. Like you need to kind of draw them in a little bit, you know? And, but the way you do that is by saying it's okay, think big, think mega big.

If you have any ideas for me on how to do that, not specifically going to Atlanta, but like how to draw in The inner crazy wonder as you're talking about it of, and throw up a bad signal because I mean, that's, if there's an equation for it, I would like to know what that equation is.

But think about like, what is the catnip for the crazy person? The catnip, the catnip is literally, that's what, by the way, I'm crazy myself, right? I think growing up in India and that poverty, I'm like, I don't think I would be half here, right? But when I hear about your dad, you're about you know what he's like the California story. Like how the f did one person intend to break up a state into six pieces? Now I'm thinking I had a call the other day with someone one of my friends. He said KP should run for mayor. Nobody ever said that. And he said I said what the f and I'm like he's like because you know you have the service thing you want to help people like you why why don't you run? I'm like so when you this is catnip by the way. Right? Like, why don't we, why can't we? What if it exists? That's literally it. If we talk about this over and over again, instead of here's the breakdown of how Webflow made money, like, who cares? It's over. Webflow story is out, right? Like, it's not about making money. It's about like drawing these people in.

I would rather know how they're gonna make the next $10 bill, right? Like, right. That's the smart— with the founder of Webflow, I would love to be able to talk

through what

that strategy

looks like and what I'm sure even he would appreciate it because he's constantly probably fielded by all these growth stage investors who are hounding him about going to IPO and what's the, you know, dollar figure and all that bullshit. But this is what I'm talking about. I think a lot of us, and that's why, like, even for you, like a lot of this podcasting, what I'm trying to do is like, we have to normalize ambitious behavior, ambitious thinking. And of course, it comes with a healthy dose of failure, right? So, you have to also normalize that. Yeah. I thought what these guys with the Avarda team, right, the LK99, that was really ambitious. You know, I thought that was cool. But we just gotta, you know, put this out there. So, Adam, it was a pleasure. It was great. I know we're— I don't want to overstay my welcome, but thanks and let's keep in touch.