Emergent Ventures & Cultivating Talent with Tyler Cowen

Welcome everyone to the Minus One podcast where we talk to the most interesting people in the world about the times in their lives where they've had to figure out how and why to go from minus one to zero and to figure out one of the hardest questions there is, which is what's next? And we are particularly excited today because our guest today, whether he would claim it or not, is likely to be one of the top experts in the world in going from -1 to 0. We're excited to be joined by none other than Tyler Cowen. He is a world-renowned economist, a professor at George Mason University, a prolific author, blogger, podcaster, and perhaps most relevant to the conversation today, also an investor through, uh, his work at Emergent Ventures. So welcome, Tyler. We're super excited to have you on the podcast.

Happy to be here. Hello everyone.

Why don't we actually start the conversation with that last bit about Emergent, because it's probably the most relevant, uh, to what we do at South Park Commons as well. Um, and there seems to be kind of a lot of crossover in the philosophy of the sort of investing that you do, so I'd love to actually start with a question that you pose on the application, which is, what is the mainstream or consensus view that you absolutely agree with?

When people board airplanes, there's a lot of security at the airport, and most people think this is terribly inefficient, that there's some much quicker way to do it that's still safe. But I actually think established practice in the United States is not so bad, that you need to put up some safeguards after 9/11. You can get PreCheck, you can get CLEAR. I wouldn't say it's perfect, and I know people still sneak things through, but I actually think the system's fine. Now, that's mainstream in the sense that the whole country is arranged around it. It's not mainstream in the sense that everyone hates me for saying it.

Yeah, I was gonna say, um, I don't know if defending the TSA is typically considered a mainstream position, but I, I take your point, uh, regarding the distinction.

No political candidate runs on a platform to take down airport security. In part, people like to complain. I guess it actually is a problem for people who don't have PreCheck.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's talk then a little bit more about the program that uses that application and uses that question, Emergent Ventures. I'd love to first just get a little background on how you decided to start this. Start Emergent Ventures, what the reasoning was, uh, like what the— what was the minus one to zero process for, uh, that initiative?

Well, like many new ideas, it started with me being pissed off. So that was the minus one. So I've been in the world of philanthropy for, you know, at least 25 years, and I was asking someone for money. This was a very well-known foundation And I had to go through so many hoops. Then finally I got some positive feedback. The foundation wanted a revision of the proposal. And I just sat down and mentally calculated it would take me less time to earn that money than to revise the proposal. So I thought, well, clearly something is wrong here. Should not someone sit down and redesign at least one part of philanthropy from the ground up and think, how should it be? And that should be, there's a simple form, you get a rapid answer, there's very little consumed through overhead. For us, it's typically 2%, sometimes 5%. And, uh, there's not a risk-averse committee making bureaucratic decisions trying to please, you know, other committees above it. There's just one person who gives you a fair chance and says yes or no. So that's Emergent Ventures. We've now been doing it a bit over 6 years, and there's over 500 winners all around the world.

Did you think about it almost as a philanthropic corollary to, uh, traditional early-stage venture capital investment? Because it sounds much more like—

I thought, well, venture capital is getting a lot right these days, and indeed for a while. Shouldn't at least part of philanthropy be more like venture capital, where you make a lot of grants? Some can be quite small grants, just to be in touch with people, you're quite comfortable with not all of them paying off. You don't have to treat every grant as entirely defensible to an outside interlocutor.

Were there specific types of grantees that you knew from the beginning that you would be most interested in funding, or did that develop over time?

That evolved fairly quickly because you see where quality applications are coming in. So for instance, at the very beginning, I had no idea that Ontario, Canada was a gold mine for teenagers doing computational biology. But now I know that. I've known it for quite a while.

I didn't know that either.

Wow.

You should know this. This is important. They are amazing. And suburbs of Ontario, like first I would get on these calls, I'd say, oh, where are you from? They'd say Toronto. But it turns out they're never from Toronto, they're from Brampton or, you know, Scarborough. The parents usually are immigrants. There's a lot of aspiration and ambition. There's excellent science education, like starting ages 13 and 14, and they all know each other through the internet. So this is a fantastic community. But I learned that quickly. So a lot of what I learned, I learned fairly quickly. Now I'm seeing, like in say the last 4 months, more very smart young people doing robotics. We'll see how that goes. But I feel I can track where very young talent is going and make inferences about areas that I don't even necessarily understand at all.

We just let in a couple of robotics kind of teams into South Park Commons. And you're absolutely right that the interest level in robotics has just kind of shot through the roof. And I think a lot of these foundation models are really kind of helping people I would say, imagine things that they just said people had discounted, like, over the last kind of decade. So I think it's incredibly exciting, the, the robotics kind of, I would say, groundswell of interest right now.

Yeah, and I figure if the idea can convince a very smart 16-year-old, it should convince me.

That's an interesting, uh, kind of a way of validating an idea, which is if it convinces someone who could kind of just go and choose to do anything by nature of, of being so young, uh, that, that, that is, uh, in principle something that should be at least examined.

And most of these people have higher IQs than I do, uh, they're, they're full of passion. And, you know, just one person doing it isn't enough, but you start seeing these waves. So right now I'm trying to figure out, am I seeing a wave in integration of like AI in human brains, Neuralink. And I'm not sure, but I'm at least, you know, I'm starting to wonder if I'm seeing that wave. I certainly see a lot of applications. I'm not at the moment sure how good they all are.

Do you, when you fund these incredibly talented, I would say younger folks, what kind of better advice are you giving them as they get into emerging ventures? Are you trying to tell them to essentially go slow to go fast, to maybe not commit to essentially the first instantiation of their idea but really take their time to figure out the largest version of it? Because that's how we tend to think about it at SPC when we talk about the Maybes One, the Maybes One almost like essentially philosophy, which is that it's it's probably better to take a little bit of time to not go after the first manifestation of the idea, but to try to take some time to let it bake. I'm curious if you do the same at Emergent.

Well, it depends what the person does. So if the person is a writer or a podcaster, and I am both, I give them very direct advice, like much more specific than what you said, like, oh, page 7 is no good, or in the podcast, you need to introduce the guest more clearly, or whatever it would be. But if it's not something that I do, I mostly give meta advice. So I'll ask them questions like, how good is your group of friends? What can you do to make it better? And to tell, you know, whether the idea should be bigger or smaller, I know that I don't know. I might tell them to go ask you, say.

Sure.

I'll ask them, what are you doing to expand your portfolio of mentors? How do you think about mentorship? How do you think about what you should do to be a worthy mentee. So, I give a lot of advice in those directions.

I love that particular part. I mean, I've never heard somebody quite phrase it so directly, which is like, how good is your group of friends? You know, to maybe kind of like take a small aside, you know, at South Park Commons, one of the big, I would say, mythologies that we try to bust, if you will, about startup founding is that I think historically, Tyler, like the mental model that we have of these iconic founders, you know, like a Mark, or like even Larry and Sergey is that, you know, they kind of go up onto the top of the mountain, they have a flash of inspiration, they build a product, and then they come back and kind of give it to the world. And our take is actually that most interesting innovation, even in technology and in startups, tends to happen in these essentially like small groups of highly elite competitive people who are all essentially like pushing each other in a competitive collaborative way, right? And I think it's—

That's the Beatles, right? The Beatles.

Yes.

I'll say to them, who's your John Lennon? Who's your Paul McCartney?

Absolutely. And I think that it's one of the things that we have tried to inculcate at SPC, which is that, hey, the biggest value that we provide is kind of like essentially community curation. Like we have a bunch of really smart people who are all going to challenge you, push you, collaborate with you. So I love how you ask people directly, which is like, how smart are your friends? If you don't have a convincing answer, do you tell them to actually go and find smarter friends?

Yes. And I tell them every day of your life, you should be thinking about how can I improve the quality of my friends and my circle, my work circle, not just every now and then, but every day. It doesn't mean you're going to make progress every day, but if you're asking every day, uh, probably you will make progress.

Is this, uh, part of the thesis of like you are the average of the, uh, the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Sure, but you know, I think it can be more than 5. So you need different circles of people you work with or are friends with for different part of what— parts of what you do. There can be people who are great at marketing and don't understand your tech work at all, for instance. Or there can be people who give you great advice about friends but nothing else. So it's like you have these concentric circles of groups of 5 people. Maybe they overlap somewhere.

I mean, maybe that's a really— I mean, one of the things that's fascinated me, Tyler, is that you're, uh, in some ways, your immediate network, your collaborators, and, you know, we share a bunch of people that we know in common, like Patrick, uh, Patrick Collison or Daniel Gross. Um, like, it feels as though that you have rejuvenated in some ways your friends and the people that you collaborate and interact with over the course of your career. I'm curious, like, is that something that came about organically, or were you pretty, uh, systematic structured about it?

Well, I think to be structured is to be organic. But I think about it very consciously. Some of the people you mentioned, they're much younger than I am. I think of them as my mentors. Every day I ask myself, I'm age 62. How can I get better mentors? I just did an interview this morning and someone said, well, let's assume that you're young and ambitious. And I interrupted and I said, I am young and ambitious.

I love it.

And I think that's the right mentality, no matter what you're doing at what age.

How do you think about navigating that consistent ambition? That's very much what, like, we think about Minus One being the point of, right, is essentially learning where to direct that ambition. And you've done a lot of different things, right? You've had a very diverse career and you've channeled your ambition and your interests into different formats, right? You've, uh, worked as an economist, a professor, a writer, investor. Um, do you think there's something besides discovering something that pisses you off, uh, that tends to guide, uh, where your ambition takes you next, or how, how you think about, uh, developing an idea?

Well, something that excites you, but I think the best thing you can do is to keep on meeting people. So, I recall when I was a kid, I think I was 14 then, just accidentally, I had a dinner with my father and some guy named George Coether. And George Coether knew Milton Friedman. He knew— he had known Hayek. I don't think Coether said anything interesting to me that dinner, but just to meet an actual human being who had known famous economists, it somehow brought it all to life to me. And it had a big impact. I don't think he was persuasive necessarily. So you'll get ideas if you meet people. They sort of force the emotional vividness of the ideas upon you.

Do you think that that is something that enough people deeply appreciate? Just like the value of like putting yourself out there even 10% more than what your default baseline comfort level is. It's like take that extra meeting, go to that extra kind of like meetup conference. Like, do you think that that's done enough? Because my take is that it's still— people still don't feel comfortable putting themselves out there to the degree that they should. I think Silicon Valley does a good job of it. I think this is one of the things that makes, you know, the Bay Area special, which is that we're constantly putting ourselves out there and we are welcoming of that. But I don't think the world does it enough.

Everyone should do 10% more. Even if you had been at an optimum, I think with AI, the value of networking will go up a lot. The value of your physical presence, your charisma, a kind of prudence in evaluating other people, uh, all those values go up a lot. So even if you felt you've been getting it right, no, you need to do more because those are things the AI really cannot copy at all.

And this is so true.

I guess that's— it's another, uh, manifestation of the idea that taste becomes a lot more important, uh, when production becomes a lot cheaper.

Absolutely.

How do you think about, I guess, applying a lot of the principles that you write about, that you've studied, um, professionally, and, and that you care about as, I guess, as more of an intellectual or political movement? And I'm referring here to kind of the progress studies idea your commentary and work about politics and policy as well. Do you think about it as something that needs to be more structured and movement-like, or do you just look for opportunities to influence people that you think, you know, have an impact in the culture and in policy generally? Or how do you go about that?

I think I just look for opportunities So there's several groups that do formal work on progress and progress studies. There's Roots of Progress, there's Institute for Progress. Those are great, fantastic groups run by great people. Emergent Ventures has helped to fund them. But at the end of the day, I feel they should own that, not I, because they'll be the ones seeing it through. So I'm not micromanaging or even managing it in any way. I think it's important that no one be seen as owning those ideas. They are universal.

As one of the writers on our team, I'm interested in your take on the value of funding thinking in the form of content. And you've done this through Emergent Ventures, right? You actively will fund people who are writing blogs, creating various forms of doing a podcast like you referred to earlier. Earlier. Why do you choose to fund those particular efforts?

You have to think about it as funding charisma, not content. If you're funding content, GPT-5, 6, 7, whatever— probably 5— it's going to beat you. Uh, it's not worth doing. But individuals will always speak to other humans in a very real way, which again, GPT is not in any way coming close to. So you need to ask not, is this person a good writer? Like, yes, you need to ask that, but can they as an individual with their presence carry this forward and keep on building out these circles of friends and in a sense influence the whole world? And if it's a yes, you fund them. If it's a no, you pat them on the back and it's like, oh, that's a great thing you wrote, but Tyler, I'm curious.

I mean, let's, let's actually double-click on this because I think this is a really important point for the world to understand. Like, how do you think about charisma? Like, what are the— how would you maybe like in some ways break it down? Like, are there like particular components that you think of it, and how does one work? Like, is it charism— is charisma intrinsic? Because we often talk about like, oh yeah, that person has a great presence, a great charisma. They're able to draw— they're able to like hold the room, or is that something that, um, people can essentially get a lot better at?

Well, both. So almost anyone can get better at it, but you could 3x your charisma and maybe it still doesn't matter. I think like most other traits, it's at least 60% heritable. You can then take people who've been born with it and they can become much better, mostly just through practice. Uh, so yeah, it's mostly heritable. You can improve everyone, but it's like saying, well, you could make me a 3 times better basketball player. Like, maybe you could, but I still can't be in the NBA.

Yeah, you still gotta dunk the ball.

Yeah. Uh, are there ways that you, that you practiced your charisma?

Well, just by doing things. I don't sit in front of the mirror and smile. I would just feel like an idiot. But I give talks, I go around, I meet people, I do podcasts, and they're all practice, right?

I mean, you know, it seems as though like the recurring theme in what you're saying, Tyler, is that, you know, a lot of your themes, the two themes I'm picking away so far is that number one, have a great network of friends, mentors, mentees that are constantly forcing you to get better, that you're learning from. And number 2 is just get out there and do it. Like, you know, don't worry too much, don't overplan it, don't overthink it in some ways. Just get out there and start doing things and taking shots on goal. And do you think that you are 2 or 3 standard deviations away in your ability to in some ways like take new shots on goal and not worry too much about whether or not it's going to work?

I think I have a very calm temperament, so I'm not in that sense a worrier, and life has been kind to me. So if I did a bunch of things that didn't go well, my life still would be excellent for a number of reasons. So it's easy for me. I don't want to pretend it's easy for everyone, especially people coming from poorer countries or with stressful family situations. But I just think if you're born pretty talented, and you follow those two things you said, like build out the friends and mentor networks, and then just do things, your chances to do well have never ever been better than today. And most people on those paths, they're just going to do very, very well.

I think that people generally as a baseline are way too conservative with their kind of like careers, with their journeys. Like people are afraid to kind of like jog themselves out of whatever assumptions and paths they have kind of set for themselves. And I guess I'm trying to understand like what is the root cause of that? Is the root cause a lack of a network? Is the root cause a lack of like understanding that hey, even if you fail, your life is still pretty good, right? Like how can we get more people to take on these new, in some ways, efforts to enter the -1 phase, right? I think stuff like Emergent Ventures helps, stuff like South Park Commons like helps, but like how do we make it a more well understood and, you know, I would say almost like celebrated thing?

Well, just by you doing it and succeeding. But I would flip it a bit. I mean, they're the normal people. We're the weirdos. We have these compulsions. Given how we are, it makes us happier to do it. But is it better to have that compulsion? That's a difficult question. A lot of people are pretty happy. They're just not that ambitious. They probably shouldn't be nudged into all this risk-taking. But that said, I think especially with immigrants and with poorer countries, there are so many people who have what it takes but haven't gotten the opportunity or haven't met the role model. And with those individuals, you can make a huge difference. With often quite modest investments of your time and energy and money.

It brings up an interesting, um, point. You've written a lot about how, uh, globalization has kind of opened up talent markets. Um, do you think there are structural changes that can be made to— I mean, beyond the, the more obvious ones of, uh, greater freedom of movement, uh, to give more people who have that kind of drive and ambition the ability to capitalize on it?

Well, I call it the AI teddy bear. You know, actually, we have an Emergent Ventures winner, and just today she's putting on the market an AI teddy bear she built, and it talks to your kid. Or maybe— I guess adults are allowed to buy it too. So the notion of an AI device that from age whatever will teach the kid whatever the kid is willing to learn I think will be an enormous breakthrough, and we're on the verge of having it. So how many parents will let their kids have it? Will it be sometimes misused? It's very complex, right? But a lot of kids will have it. They'll use it to learn amazing things by the time they're quite young. And we are still underestimating teenagers, including young teenagers, I would say.

So you think the availability of more kind direct tutoring and development through AI systems and products is, is a big unlock.

Sure. Again, especially for poorer places. So if you grew up in Cupertino, you know, near Apple, the idea of doing something big maybe has already occurred to you. But if you're in Kenya and you're the best in your class, but it's not clear what your opportunities are or who your mentor should be, that's when you really need the AI teddy bear.

Do you think there are other, um, are there policy changes that could be made, uh, to, to better develop talent or, or to unlock talent, uh, to, like, you know, to the benefit of, uh, of everyone?

Well, I would make it easier for talented immigrants to get into the United States and other countries. That's a very simple one. We know how to do it. Fortunately, the number of O-1 visas has been going up, but I would still increase that quite a bit more. The basic method I think works, and let's just do it.

Yeah, I think that the part— I mean, I am an immigrant, you know, obviously I've kind of immigrated to the United States about 20 years ago. Most of my— a lot of my friends are immigrants, and I think that the part about, you know, immigrants that we don't— are just not don't talk directly enough about is that it is the best filter that we have for people who are in some ways insanely kind of like ambitious slash are willing to put themselves into like difficult positions to further their own and their family's life, right? Like in a way, as a pre-filtering mechanism, it is like a fantastic filter for like ambition and probably tolerance for pain and tolerance for change. And I think that just as a, you know, apart from like obviously increasing the labor pool or increasing a particular like skilled or unskilled part of like the labor pool, just like filtering for like those personality traits, it's a fantastic filter.

Yes, it should be a bit hard. And also the US uses Canada very effectively. So they take in, I think per capita, 3 times as many people. They're a kind of farm team. I know this sounds condescending, but it's true., and then the most talented ones have a chance to come to the U.S. So our effective immigration policy, because of Canada, it's actually a bit more liberal than it looks.

I mean, we kind of effectively see this in the software industry, which is like, you know, a ton of the immigration that we see from Canada, those are often people who have immigrated to Canada in the first place, right? Like using the points-based system. So that's a good observation.

Um, so we should have more kind of farm teams like that. So UK somewhat is one, right? Ireland a bit is one, but there could be more, you know, in the future. Could it be, say, Kenya? We'll see, but it's worth thinking about.

Yeah, I mean, I'd love to see, again, you know, at the risk of being too direct about this, I'd love to kind of see the philosophy even more with India, right? Like India has such immense amount of like talent pools, and I think that giving kind of making the pathways and the corridors easier would go a super long way there.

India is the number one place in the world right now for talent, in my opinion.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is why we're actually opening up South Park Commons in Bangalore. We— this is our third loca— well, this is our first location outside of the United States. We have one in SF, we have one in New York, and we're opening up Bangalore on June 13th simply because the level of ambition and the level of like talent, the density there is incredible. So we're very excited about that.

We had so many good Emergent Ventures applications from India, I had to hire Shruti, a woman from India, to run that part of the program. Obviously, she knows India much better than I do, and she's great at it, and it was too much for me. So absolutely India, it's mind-blowing.

Yeah, we are seeing a lot of applicants from India right now, and we are trying to hire our version of Shruti as well on the ground there.

Yeah, it's also been interesting. I've been pretty involved with the process of getting that office started and set up and— but there are definitely differences in like the culture around how to go and do something new. One of the reasons that SBC started where it did and when it did is that there was a culture in Silicon Valley of taking time. Right? You had some runway, you could take some time, you could call it a sabbatical to figure out what it is that you wanted to do next, uh, to gather at a place like SBC or with a group of friends. And that's harder if you don't have runway or if there's not a culture that embraces the idea of a career sabbatical to go and start something new. Um, and developing the, I guess, permission structure, uh, both in terms of the actual practical operational support for that motion, and also just like the cultural embrace of it has been very interesting.

I think also talent at any point in historical time, it's extremely clustered. So there's the Renaissance in Florence, right? There's the 18th century Enlightenment in Paris. There's late 19th century science in Germany. You've got to lean into that. It's not that it stays there forever, but you know, it's only going to be in some places, and you can't be ashamed to just double, triple down on those places and say, we're going to work with people in these places or from these places.

Maybe in that, in that same vein, uh, but to kind of like, uh, plug into some part, you know, I know that Tyler, you're a prolific traveler. Right, and you've kind of essentially traveled all across the globe and you've essentially taken a lot of, I would say, the, the learnings from your travels and I think integrated it into your projects. I'm curious if different ecosystems, different cultures have ways of approaching the minus one uncertainty that's pretty different from at least the Silicon Valley or the American way. I'm curious if you seen ways that either people motivate themselves or ask themselves maybe different questions? Like, is it— like, I'm just curious to learn whether you have seen differences across the globe on that.

Well, a lot of foreign cultures, you know, parts of India, the parents just kick your butt across the room when you're done, and it seems that works. I don't observe this close up, but it's very different from people who were born in North America to say, you know, upper middle class white parents. So I don't know how many generations that lasts, but let's hope we don't deplete the pool of butt kicking.

Yeah, it's a good, it's a good observation, which is that not all ambition needs to necessarily be bottoms up, like organic. Like sometimes you can actually inject that through like an authority figure who's trying to like, you know, get you to do more than you might otherwise like want to do, like literally kick your butt to be like, Hey, don't just settle for like the local college, apply to the IIT, apply to the IIM, go spend 2 years like, you know, becoming really good at something in a way that maybe you otherwise wouldn't push yourself. Any other cultures that you might be able to refer to?

Well, China, Korea, Taiwan, I mean, nowhere that's going to surprise you, but it's striking to me how much guilt and shame can be effective. The notion that if you don't do well, you bring shame on your entire family.

Oh yeah.

Which is not something I grew up with. And I was quite self-motivated early on. Again, it's surprising to me how well it works.

It is surprising.

You're laughing because maybe you've heard this in your life.

No, no, no. It's, it's, I've heard this and you know, I say this sometimes in jest, you know, to my children. I have young children. So I say this in jest, which is, wait, you did not win the, 'You did not win the surfing competition. You have brought shame on our family.' You know, I say it in jest.

They know you're not joking.

Kidding, not kidding. But it is a very different mental model of the world than the Western model, which is very like, you know, individual. I mean, it is very much more individualistic, which is that you succeed and you fail in some ways as you're in your single hero story. Uh, but you're right that the societal pressure to do more can actually be very effective.

Yeah, both can work. And ideally you want people with both backgrounds working together because they'll have different strengths.

Do you, do you think you can create structures that actually simulate that sort of pressure? Um, or, or is that something that's just very deeply baked into culture and, and difficult to—

I mean, yeah, you know, companies can do it. That's true. Companies do this all the time. They set up these kind of competitive games, tournaments within them for like, you know, kind of who is, who's going to get the promotion, who's going to like win in that setup. Absolutely.

But you need a lot of pre-existing support in the company. It's like the Chicago Bulls needed Michael Jordan as the enforcer and he was the best player. So, you can't wave a magic wand and inject it into your company. But clearly it happens and you see, it having happened, say, in the major AI companies.

But I think your point is a good one, which is that ultimately, like, it is like the level of ambition and competitiveness in the company is often going to be a function of like how competitive and driven the CEO is, right? Like, is that the culture that they're going to set?

Absolutely, very much agree.

Do you set up these competitive scenarios within Emergent Ventures? Like, are you trying to like get people to in some ways, you know, compete with each other also?

Well, we have a large WhatsApp group and many of the winners belong to it. And if someone does something good, I put, which is all the time, like say 4 times a week this happens, I put notice of it in the group.

Yeah, yeah, amazing.

And it's partly like I'm just being nice, but I'm not just being nice. I'm kind of like sticking it to the whole lot of them. Like, look at what he or she did.

What's the most recent one that popped up? Take this opportunity.

The AI teddy bear.

Ah, yeah.

Oh, that's a good one.

That was today. It's almost, you know, at the pace of at least one, like one a weekday is not so far away from happening.

How many grants have you made again at this point?

It's over 500. I couldn't tell you the exact number. And you know, like when Shruti makes a bunch, I don't know right away and so on, but it's quite a few.

Have there been any kind of core learnings? That's, that's a pretty big sample at this point— 6 years, 500. Um, has there been a way that your thinking about that investing has changed?

Well, I have quite a few core learnings, but maybe the most important one is it's how you manage deal flow that matters. Who is attracted to you? If the game is how do I find the good people, you kind of lose no matter what because it's It's a big world. If the game is, are there good people looking to find me? Your chance of winning is excellent. So what are the bat signals you're sending out to attract the right people to you would be the number one core lesson. Now, I might have mouthed that before I did all this work, but now I feel I really understand it.

How have your bat signals changed?

Well, the program itself, I wouldn't say it's a secret in the sense that we hide it. But we don't advertise it. So the first puzzle you need to solve is knowing to apply. And then there's a norm of people recommending people they know, but I never ask for recommendations. It's a mistake. If you ask for recommendations, you'll get them because people want to please you. And, um, there'll be sincere recommendations. I don't mean that it's corrupt, but they won't really quite be urgently good recommendations. So you just say nothing and wait to get some urgently good recommendations and then probably act on them. And the role model you set yourself and just people seeing that the others are doing well and having very good word of mouth is what has worked for us. And we're deliberately not political. That's very helpful. You know, the project is about the winners. Not about me or not about Mercatus Center. And they feel they own it, and they do in that sense. When we have meetups, they're run as a nun conference, so there's no lecture where we give them blah blah blah about who we are and what we do. We just tell them, talk to each other, that's what matters. And then they know we believe in that.

It's very much in line with, um, a lot of the thinking at SPC where I mean, we, the line I use is that really the only moat we have is the curation of the members. And then that's where all the value comes from, right?

Exactly.

They're going to be surrounded by other people who are of a similar caliber of talent and that's going to accelerate them more than anything else.

I actually think that, Tyler, one of the things that this is really motivating me to do is I actually want to ask in our application going forward, Like, I want to ask people's assessment of their friends. Like, do you think that, you know, list out two people who are in your immediate network who are smarter than you? Like, or who you think are. And I think that would actually be a really interesting signal whether or not somebody would be able to, uh, would be able to kind of answer that. Or even in our interviews, we should just ask people like, who is the smartest? Like, who is— who are two people who are smarter than you that you regularly interact with and why? Actually, that's really interesting.

Someone gave the answer I'm the smartest of my group of friends, but 3 of them are much better at dealing with the establishment than I am, and I know I need to learn that from them. I would be impressed by that answer if delivered sincerely.

Correct. No, I agree, because I think that— I think you can still have a high opinion of yourself on most dimensions as long as you're aware that, you know, if you're not, you know, top on every dimension, hopefully.

Are there anti-signals?

Oh yeah, you see in, uh, so many. A lot of them are intangible, but people who talk about themselves in the wrong way, people who iterate on their own grudges, people who are too much like fanboys— there's so many anti-signals. Maybe I should write a book about that. But like, I don't enjoy being critical of people, but you see them a lot.

Yeah, you see the same, you see the same failure modes. I, I agree. It's like when people especially hold on, like when they're relitigating in some ways, like parts of their life that they keep on relitigating. And I'm just always kind of blown away by that was one data point, let's move on. And like, let's— there's a lot of life, you know, to like live again, to kind of like litigate in the future, as opposed to keep on coming back to the old things.

Yeah, and how much people are not trying to hide it always amazes me.

Do you think there are any of these anti-signals that are often characterized as like positive things that people should develop, like, and, and you would encourage people to understand that that is wrong?

Well, I don't know, everyone has their own subjective views. So if I'm talking with someone and they smile too much Maybe I get a little worried. I'm not sure it's bad. Like, it might be my idiosyncrasy. I get that. But maybe, like, they should then work with someone other than me. And if they're kind of grumpy, it's like, well, like, maybe you're a good match for me. I don't think I'm grumpy, but I get on with grumpy people pretty often, and I'm fine with that. Uh, I think articulateness can be overvalued. Again, depends on the area. Some areas Clearly you need it, but don't always assume the articulate person is so great. So question your intuition, especially things like smiles. We're all programmed to enjoy a smile, lookism. So, you know, be critical of yourself. You're your own worst enemy in this process.

We have two questions to end here. The first one is, if you could, through a magic wand or dictatorial powers, change anything in the world, one thing, what would it be?

Be?

I guess I would make people kinder and make other people more ambitious, but it depends how much power you're really going to give me. Like, can I abolish scarcity, or even should I? I don't know. Uh, I think first thing I would do is take the wand away from me.

Honestly, I think that's my favorite answer to that question I've heard. Um, Questioning the power itself. Good instinct. Okay, and the last is, if you had to go and decide what is next for yourself right now, if you had to stop what you're currently doing and go and do something else, what would it be?

Well, I can tell you what I'm going to do this weekend. I'm flying with my sister to Northern Colombia for a 5.5-day birdwatching trip. She and I have not taken a trip together since we were kids. And at some point, like, now is the time to do it. And it's a rare trip for me that's not at all a work trip. So I think it will be fantastic. I did take the time to do that. If you mean like some other profession, I feel I'm doing multiple things now, so I don't know what it would mean. I mean, I can just shift the balance over time as I see fit, and I'm sure I will. But next on the agenda is birdwatching with my sister. I'm not a birdwatcher. She is. But I will show her around Northern Colombia.

Wow. Well, have a great time. That sounds like a super fun trip.

And I will learn something about myself on top of everything else.

I mean, yeah, if you can spend 5, 5 and a half days birdwatching, I think you will learn something.

Yes.

Well, Tyler, I appreciate you joining us today, and I hope that your trip to Colombia is full of Byron plumage and, uh, and positive personal revelations.

You know, I think it's part of a bigger idea. Some percent of what you should do should be quasi-randomized.

Yeah.

And by letting other people pick, like, where you go, what to do, you achieve that partially. So I don't know how much should be randomized, but if it's zero, I'm quite sure that's the wrong quantity.

It's the wrong number. So how do you almost inject some amount of, like, serendipity into your system? And to kind of almost like explore like different, different paths in a way that is controlled but, you know, ultimately randomized.

Well, you rely on the other people to do that.

That's right.

And if you have these great circles of friends, you'll get this awesomely good randomization also.

Comes back to that. Comes back to that. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Tyler. We really appreciate your time. Any time spent with you, I think, is like forces me to kind of like get better at what I'm doing. To your point about being surrounded by amazing people. I think you've kind of already changed some of the questions I'm going to be asking as I talk to people about their -1 to 0 journey. So thank you for that. Thank you. We really appreciate it.

A pleasure chatting with you both. My honor.