Dylan Lew is the CEO of Ecotone Renewables, a startup dedicated to making sustainable food and agriculture systems more accessible.
Ecotone Renewables has developed the “Seahorse”, which reinvents the food and plant waste disposal system, taking food that would otherwise be wasted and turning it into renewable energy and nutrient-rich fertilizer. The Seahorse uses a process of anaerobic digestion to produce ‘Soil Sauce’ and transform methane gas emissions into less harmful CO2. Ecotone won 2nd place at the Allegheny Cleantech Competition in 2018 and at the 2020 ACerS Humanitarian Pitch Competition. They are currently running a crowdfunding campaign to catalyze their next phase of growth. In this episode, Dylan and Aaron discuss composting, emissions, waste management, and how many modern sustainability issues are matters of coordination, not requiring technical breakthroughs. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Dylan Lew’s Challenge; Reduce your own food waste. Connect with Dylan Lew
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Ecotone Renewables Website If you liked this interview, check out these three sustainability-focused startups; Fifth Season (vertical farms) founded by Austin Webb, Sequoia Waste Solutions’ Charlie Dolan, and Mark Cuban-backed PittMoss (w/ CEO Brian Scott).
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Dylan Beynon is the Founder & CEO of Mindbloom, a telehealth psychedelic therapy startup. Dylan founded Mindbloom to help people treat mental disorders with clinically back solutions involving ketamine.
This is Dylan’s third startup and he has already raised money from some blue chip investors, including Founders Fund. Mindbloom is on pace to deliver 100,000+ psychedelic therapy sessions by the end of 2021 and is aiming to climb from 13 to 42 states of operation. In this episode, Dylan and Aaron discuss finding a Chief Medical Officer, ketamine’s history of use, and Dylan’s vision for a healthier future. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Dylan Benyon’s Challenge; Take 110% responsibility for your mental health. Read a book about mental health and well-being like Awareness by Anthony de Mello, The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, and Letters From a Stoic by Seneca. Connect with Dylan Benyon
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MindBloom Website If you liked this interview, check out our interview with Henry Schuck where we discuss sales and taking ZoomInfo public. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
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Aaron Watson [00:00:00]:
Hey, you're gonna love this interview with Dylan Bynan all about how psychedelics can treat mental health disorders. His startup mind bloom is administering ketamine to all sorts of different use cases. And in today's interview, we not only talk about the origins of the company and how to build a telehealth startup, but a whole lot more. Dylan Benyon [00:00:27]: people with anxiety and depression now. but there's some great clinical research around ketamine and other psychedelic therapies efficacy for things like OCD, PTSD, eating disorder, social anxiety disorder, couples therapy, Aaron Watson [00:00:45]: Well, Dylan, thanks for coming on the show, man. I'm excited to be talking with you. Dylan Benyon [00:00:49]: Thanks, Aaron. I'm fired up. Aaron Watson [00:00:51]: So, in the world of startups, and particularly saliently post pandemic. this concept of telehealth telemedicine, is either the, you know, I've I've friends who've been, like, consultants in health care for 20 years, and they're like, we've been talking about this forever, or there's people like, wow, cutting edge, new, be Boop. and and the 2 kind of brands in my mind in the startup world that epitomize that, that listeners may be more likely to be familiar with if they haven't yet heard of Blue are Roman and HIMS. Romans raised $876,000,000. They'll, you know, send you a testosterone and other sort of products, hims, you know, similar beachhead hair loss, erectile dysfunction, depression, via exclusively a telehealth visit. to help people start off, can you kind of use them as almost like a foil or a a a a cousin of yours to explain what's similar about mind bloom and what's different? Dylan Benyon [00:01:48]: Yeah. Absolutely. the CEO of him, Andrew Durham, is actually a really close friend of mine of, like, 15 years. He was a year younger than me and my fraternity at Penn. And I probably wouldn't be building mine. I believe it wasn't for the, trail that he blaze building the biggest telemedicine company, I think, in the world. Wow. yeah. So so Mindbloom is a direct to consumer brand, that's helping people achieve life changing, clinical, and personal breakthroughs. with at home psychedelic therapy. Specifically, we're using ketamine therapy, which is the only prescribable psychedelic medication in the US to help people today with anxiety and depression, in, I think, about 15 states reaching, 70% of the US population soon to be most of the US. there are a lot of similarities between us and hims and Roman. we have a a network of partner providers who are prescribing the medication and overseeing the medical care. but there are also some differences. one is in addition to the prescribing of the treatments, we also provide a network of coaches who are psychedelic guides who are going deep with people to help them prepare get the most out of their experiences and then integrate those experiences or actually take what comes up and put it into action in their life and leverage the neuroplastic state created by psychedelics to create real behavioral and emotional changes in their life. and we also have a sort of headspace are calm for psychedelic therapy app that includes music and meditations and therapeutic programs for things like anxiety and depression and self love and and loneliness and other indications and issues. so it kinda combines those 3 things. As a result, whereas HIMSS might spend, you know, 6 minutes with every patient. we're spending over 6 hours with every new client that goes through, 6 session course of treatment with Mind Blue. Aaron Watson [00:03:44]: Gotcha. And so is the the basic thesis here, you know, Mind Blue and and just kind of generally, positioning it as a psychedelic as treatment for mental health challenges type of brand. at least in the short to midterm opens the door where, you know, kinda ketamine would be the beachhead, so to speak, And, you know, where some of those other brands, maybe they started with hair loss or ED, and then they kinda start to expand their suite of offerings with later rounds of funding, more patients, kinda more proof positive. is the idea that as other, psychedelic treatments gain more regulatory approval, mind bloom would be kind of positioned to, already have that entree already have that brand equity and maybe they're just kind of frankly muscle of helping people deal with that. Is that kind of the thesis? Dylan Benyon [00:04:34]: so that's definitely a piece of the strategy. Right? Like, we're, as you pointed out, using ketamine as a wedge or beachhead to build the consumer brand provider network, distribution channels, therapeutic programs and software, such that as these other medications, such as MDMA assisted therapy in early 2023, psilocybin assisted therapy in 24, 25, and there's about a dozen other psychedelic medications in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. There are phase 3 phases of clinical trials that take usually 12 years. know, we're best positioned to rapidly get those medications to all the people who need them as quickly as possible and help them get the most out of them. But I think there are a couple other, key differences that are maybe even more core to our strategy. one is Whereas HIMSS looked at this medication that was, sort of off patent and generic and able to be prescribed at a more affordable price They saw a medication where, because essentially dudes historically don't go to the doctor, there were it was massively underserved So a lot of people, doctors believe should be using these medications, but aren't because they don't go to the doctor. It's inconvenient. It's embarrassing. It's expensive to buy it on labor, on, patents. It's like on patent, propecia, versus generic finasteride. and there's a stigma problem. so people see it as weird or scary or gross or or itchy or they just don't know about it. and so they have created this consumer brand and telemedicine platform to dramatically increase access to treatment. my bloom is similar in that we saw some similar issues with ketamine therapy. it's really new and scary for people. A lot of people don't know about ketamine therapy as an available treatment. I was extremely expensive before mind bloom. average cost of treatment was, like, 600 to $1200 a session, and we brought it down to less than 200 per session. and it was really the hard to access aren't that many academy clinics. They're more growing, but still to have somebody drive you a couple hours or an hour to a clinic, sit with you for 2 hours, drive you back, twenty times over the next year, is a huge, burden and inconvenience. and also it's not a really great experience sometimes to go into, like, a medical clinic. But there's another key difference, which is, Hym's and Roman are taking these really established and, you know, large in terms of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of sales, medications, and creating a better way for people to access them in a better brand and a better experience, a mind balloon, we're taking this medication that pretty much nobody is using. So when you, when you dig into the mental health care crisis, which is largely considered like the number one public health care crisis, what you find is that the existing treatment options that Tens of millions of Americans are using, like SSRIs, like Prozac and Lexapro, or even Talk Therapy, just aren't that effective. A lot of psychiatrists go into psychiatry or mental health care to help people, and then they're given, like, a hammer and chisel. Like, like, we're still in the age of mercury and blood letting and and leeches when it comes to mental health care. When you look at the clinical research around ketamine therapy, What you see is it's just ten times more effective. so SSRIs only work for, like, any ifs for cir Island works, like, 40 to 47 percent of the time. It takes 6 to 8 weeks to work. It has horrendous side effects for over 50% of people like weight gain, sexual dysfunction, insomnia, suicidalities, severe anxiety, and people get stuck on this daily medication they don't want to be on. Acadamine therapy is clinically shown to work for 65 to 70% of people, it works right away. It doesn't have these side effects. and it can be taken periodically. And in my mind when we're getting people even better clinical outcomes because we've combine the coaches and mental health care providers who are helping people before, during, and after get the most out of these experiences to drive better results. So it's both the increasing access, but it's also about getting people to switch from these legacy treatments to the new treatments of the future that, you know, that is what we're gonna see mental health care look like over the next 5 to 10 years. Aaron Watson [00:08:44]: Interesting. So can before we take it a step any further, people generally will have, you know, heard of psychedelics or probably at at the maybe the low end of the spectrum, they've never, you know, tried anything in any way, shape, or form, and they've watched some movie where, like, someone did it. And then, you know, don't know if it's addressed Thompson or or whatever, but, you know, in the context of that, candidly, I, you know, either have tried or know more about I would say LSD and psilocybin and MDMA because those just seem at least to me, like, more culturally more likely to hear about that. Maybe just, I'm not a sophisticated, like, a hip hop song or in reference to going to a festival. Can you talk about ketamine maybe in the context of those other ones? What where's this being derived? Like, what's the kind of history of it? Dylan Benyon [00:09:31]: Yeah. so Ladies pointed out most people know about LSD or psilocybin Magic Mushrooms. those are what are called classical psychedelics They act on your serotonin system, which regulates, like, mood as well as a bunch of other things. and they really sort of actuate at serotonin system and, sort of subjectively or phenomenologically, like what it feels like, enhance all of your senses, the point of extreme distortion. And that's where, like, a classic trip feels like. That's your visual senses, your auditory senses, your own factory senses, and your cognitive senses. MDMA is a little different in that it's, like, empathogenic experience that also acts on your serotonin and dopamine systems. And so it feels for people like this deep sense of connection to others, this deep, sense of, sort of warmth in euphoria. which can be really is powerful for a lot of mental health and well-being issues, but especially PTSD, this allows people to open up so they can deal with and interact with their trauma in a healthy way and then overcome it. Academy, combines a a little bit about to, but it actually acts on, like, a complete different receptor system. So it acts on your glutamate system, which is the most common neurotransmitter in your brain, and it sort of has the sense of cutting off your senses. and so for people, they can feel like this very out of body experience, where it almost feels like it's way more in the background, and they have a lot of memories that can come up, similar to MDMA, but not to the same degree. It can feel very empatogenic, and people can feel this deep sense of connection with others and the universe. But maybe most importantly, what it does is it creates the state of what's called neuroplasticity in the brain, which LSD and soul siding also do, whereby, people have this enhanced sort of creativity and this enhanced brain state where they're able to more able more easily able to create, like, new connections in the brain. and so both during the experience and then for, like, 1 to 2 weeks after, people are able to actually change their behavior, whether that's creating new behaviors or breaking bad habits, and take a lot of the insights that came up during the experience and put those into action. Aaron Watson [00:11:50]: Interesting. So is basically the the I I don't wanna say numbness because I don't think that's really what you were saying. You you you obviously have the more precise language of explaining these experiences for folks, but the kind of, cutting off of other senses, that's related to why this is actually DA approved because its history is less on a mental health angle and more as an anesthetic for, you know, helping people with other procedures. Is that why this is been approved for a while, and other ones are, like, you know, 2023, maybe sometime down the line. Yeah. And so as Academy was FDA approved as an anesthetic, Dylan Benyon [00:12:25]: and analgesic in 1970. It's over 50 years ago now. it's been widely used worldwide as one of the safest anesthetics since then, and it's used every single day and every single emergency room in the United States. even in World War 2, it was a medication that every single soldier had on them because if somebody was undergoing some physical trauma, Kevin was the safest way to sort of knock them out so that they wouldn't go into shock and so that they could be taken back and and and worked on. about 20 years ago, some really enterprising psychiatrists and researchers at Yale discovered that at really low sub anesthetic doses, it had these antidepressant effects, and people, you know, have also used it recreationally at these low sub anesthetic doses, So this is, like, you know, 1 20th to 1 5th of what a child would receive in the emergency room. at those low doses, we could talk about the brain chemistry. And if you're interested, but essentially at those low doses, it has a different effect and it has these psychedelics effects, and it has this, this neuroplastic effect for people, that is very much like a psychedelic experience where people can see sort of shapes and colors and visions and feel warm and pathogenic and have these insights from their own memories or things that come up cognitively that are these like, epiphany moments, that can last for people for the rest of their lives. Aaron Watson [00:13:52]: Gotcha. So when you're booting up a company like this, you know, we this audience is familiar with, you know, the difference between the VC track and bootstrapping. and there's some kind of obvious basics of, you know, we we gotta, you know, figure out how we're selling this thing. We gotta how the, you know, if it's software, how the code's being written or if this is a physical good, how it's, you know, being produced and and shipped to where it needs to go, Can you take us through some of the blocking and tackling of getting a company like this off the ground? Because, you know, there's a there's a telehealth component where you're having, I believe you said guides or coaches who are, you know, actually interfacing with people. You have partners that you have to develop. that are, I I would imagine the ones actually writing the scripts, and then some sort of, like, pharmaceutical supply chain to actually get this controlled substance into people's homes. I'm guessing, you know, as you said, direct to consumer. So via the mail system. Dylan Benyon [00:14:51]: so can you just maybe talk us through that? That that sounds like a a load of complexity that, you know, you've you've actually had their shoulder the load of. We just now get to learn from. Yeah. so that's that's that's interesting. I don't feel like I started my bloom 2 years ago. I feel like I started it 13 years ago when psychedelics first changed my life. And they've been a big, huge part of my life for the last 13 years as I built 2 other, call it, world positive companies, in, local politics and and then financial technology. when I came to starting Mindbloom, step 1 was I became a ketamine therapy patient myself, arrived on my doorstep, had the moment when I did it and saw that it was just as transformational as a lot of other psychedelic lessons that I've done, that here's this incredible medication that is prescribable and deliverable via telemedicine in the the male that most people don't know about and it's super expensive and that what you do before during and after the experience dramatically affects the quality of the experience. There's an opportunity to build not just like a commodity product where we just ship it cheap, but an experiential product where we build the world's greatest second half therapy experiences at scale. so there, I have the idea, but to your question, like, now what? It's just like, you know, just just, you know, me leaving my last company and I cofounded and, you know, having a laptop and, and a co working, membership. And what do I do? Unfortunately, I was able to, you know, quickly raise money from, previous investors, my companies, friends and other people I knew who were really passionate about this. that included, founders fund as well. but once I had the capital, which, you know, has, is a third time founders sort of the easy part The hard part was, building the legal and clinical team and framework to ensure that, like, we could do this and we could do this safely. This is serious stuff. so step 1 was going out and, having tried to do my own research a lot of conversations with some of the top health care lawyers, and building a legal and regulatory framework around how we could do this. that took about 3 to 6 months, in tandem, recruiting a medical director. so This was literally the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire entrepreneurial career is going out and finding a partner who is a leading psychiatrist and psychedelic research, doctor, Doctor Casey Palios, who's a principal investigator on the MDMA clinical trials and is probably one of the top 10 or 20, researchers in all of psychedelic medicine. it's an absolute pioneer who did, like, the landmark sel assignment for cancer anxiety study. a big part of the, ketamine for depression study at NYU, which was landmark and, has a pioneer doing ketamine therapy in his own private practice. once I met him and so we got together and saw that we had in line vision, it was bringing on ahead of clinical operations to work with, our medical director and with a clinical advisory board of other top psychiatrists and researchers that we built, to build the clinical practice guidelines and safety protocols, stand up a pilot facility in New York to sort of test a hybrid in person remote treatment model, And all that took over a year in order just to get our first patient in the door, in a way that where we could start seeing, okay, we know that this is safe, there are no MVPs when it comes to providing, medical care, much less psychedelic medical care. Like, everything clinically has to be completely, you know, buttoned up end to end. and that was sort of the the genesis of it. Other things that I did, I think, are are pretty unique. my, my wife, my partner, crime alley, she part time built our early, software platform. she was director of engineering at a $1,000,000,000 company where she was a founding engineer at, and she ended up coming aboard full time as our head of engineering. manages about 25 engineers now. my head of clinical operations I mentioned was actually one of my best friends. he was the best man of my wedding. a top health care consultant, who was helping me recruit through his network and realize that, you know, he's just as passionate about psychedelic medicine mental health care as I am. and came aboard to, to build this with me. so those are some of the, sort of early pieces that we got in place in order to begin building this platform that, you know, would bring on what's now, I think, over a 100 psychiatrists and psychiatric clinicians and psychedelic coaches and guides to, you know, treat thousands and thousands of people through our platform. Aaron Watson [00:19:28]: Epic. there there's so much to unpack there. I think you know, my my just immediate takeaway is it, you know, that that they say very often rightfully so that success compounds. So having the previous exits, like, we didn't really spend much time on raising money, like you said, because if you've delivered a a a w or 2 to past investors, not a guarantee, but the likelihood that they'll, you know, roll the dice again with you is relatively high. And then just, you know, cycling through the list of characters that you brought in, you know, the networks that you build from building companies in the past, obviously, in having a dynamite wife is another thing. A dynamite partner is another thing that, helps with that. I I I can speak to that from experience, but, the the thing that I wanna hang on is the fact that you said, that, recruiting, Doctor Palos was the hardest thing that you've ever done in your entrepreneurial experiences. So this is 3 startups. This is not, like, some throwaway phrase here. can you sorry. Go ahead. Can can you just take us take us deeper into that? Cause that's something that most of us have never done, and, we'd love to learn just, you know, what goes into it, how you even identify that person, let alone, convince them to join you. Yeah. So, yeah, can you imagine going out and having conversations with dozens Dylan Benyon [00:20:43]: of, you know, psychiatrists in their 40 the sixties, seventies as, like, a tech entrepreneur and telling them, like, you want to build a platform to dramatically increase the amount of people who are able to access ketamine therapy ideally eventually through the mail completely in order to dramatically reduce costs there are some very funky conversations. Aaron Watson [00:21:05]: I'm sure you got some epic news too. Dylan Benyon [00:21:09]: You know, this is actually interesting is early on, I thought that what we were doing or what I wanted to do or what I wanted to partner with someone to figure out how to do together was going to sound a lot stranger than it is. when you get into psychiatry, you get into it to help people. And then the psychiatrist, as I said earlier, like, given, like, a hammer and chisel and told to go do surgery, like brain surgery, and they're frustrated as hell. And so they're looking at the clinical research around psychedelics, and they're salivating, even if they don't talk about it as publicly, like, here is this promise and this hope of, medication or suite of treatments and a whole new paradigm for how to treat people with mental health and well-being issues that could be literally 10 or 100 times more effective. that's in dream come true. so people are, I think, are actually a lot more receptive than I anticipated. the challenge was so many people I talked to, if they were using ketamine therapy, maybe they only treat, like, 13 clients with it. So it was just still so early and so so new. what I did was I, built a scraper, scraped, a ton of different psychiatrists and psychologists directories and websites and dumped all that into a database, use an outbound sales software to sort of, like, mass blast a ton of people to try to set up conversations. the I had a bunch of conversations with people, and the, the person I partner with, Doctor Casey Palios, who's a pioneer in the space that I mentioned, I'd actually never Didn't reach out to him. I reached out to somebody else who just replied, no. And I responded. Do you know anybody who might be interested? She gave me 2 names. and the other one person responded like hell no. And then, Casey, our eventual medical director, and he's now our science director leading our clinical research efforts, respond to yes. And we started chatting, and I was chatting with a bunch of people at the time and realized that we had a a really, sort of United vision about how it was still sort of day 1 of figuring out how to help people get the most out of treatment and that there were gonna be businesses and people like me coming into the space. And, the best thing to do would be for people like him who had built their life's work around this to partner with businesses to figure out how to as safely and responsibly get these medications and treatments out into the world to the people who could benefit them to reduce human suffering. And we had sort of a long courtship of, seeing if there was a lot of, you know, fit here in terms of philosophy and approach before we decide to to partner up and and to put this put his work in the world out into the world, you know, on a bigger scale. Aaron Watson [00:23:50]: Right on. So, at this stage of the game, can you just talk in general about, like, how how long into this thing did, you know, the first revenue even come through the door? Like, what is what is and and and kind of further down line, you talked about taking this ketamine I'm I'm trying to retain these numbers correctly down from, like, 600 to $200 for someone to do this. It sounds like that's not necessarily covered by insurance in most cases. So can you just kinda give us some of the blocking tackling x's and o's of the actual, dollars being exchanged? Dylan Benyon [00:24:24]: Yeah. So I started, working on the company in earnest in probably, like, late 2018, mostly just like personal research. took in our first cash in, like, late 2018 or late 2019. we build spend that year building out the clinical protocols and start seeing the first clients in, they wanna say, September of 2019. we did sort of like a private launch. So I don't think we launched our website until, like, January of 2020 even, and we didn't do any marketing or any sort of you know, PR, press or outreach until, I think, March of 2020 after we had seen about a few 100 clients through the the platform and had seen that they all had these incredible clinical outcomes and a 100% safety record, right about that time COVID happened, And given that we had done, you know, over 1000 sessions, had already become one of the, you know, emerging larger, like, providers of ketamine therapy. private leaving without, like, advertising or anything, decided that we would accelerate and have the opportunity to accelerate our fully virtual timeline a year or 2. And so at that point, it, you know, really started growing quickly. we raised, you know, meaningful round of series a funding in, like, I'll say, August of 2019, and have since then just been growing, you know, since become by far the largest provider of psychedelic therapy in the world, you know, have raised over 50,000,000 in funding from, you know, top VCs, and have grown the team to over a 150 and are now massively scaling out our platform to bring ketamine and other psychedelic therapies to every single person and starting the US who needs them, for, you know, every single indication that psychedelics could help people for. Aaron Watson [00:26:16]: And in terms of revenue, is this being paid out of pocket? Is there, like, a commission when, Academy prescriptions filled? Like, what's what's happening there? Dylan Benyon [00:26:25]: Mhmm. Yeah. So it's a succession treatment program, costs, a little less than $200 a session, that succession treatment, And then subsequent programs are a little less than that, like a $120 a session. it's all cash Bay, although some of our clients do get reimbursed out of network, through their insurance companies. mental health care is, like, notoriously hard to get reimbursed for for psychiatrists and, and doctors, something that we're trying to change. And we have a sort of long term road map, and we're already in conversations with payers to try to bundle our platform and program or our treatment plans into something that could be reimbursed in a meaningful rate for clients. And I insist we're gonna continue to bring the cost down as we continue to get scale and to get more efficient. but, like, when you look at the cost, it's cheaper than talk therapy already. Like, a year of in network talk therapy is, like, $5000, right, if you're even if you're doing it with insurance being covered. and if you're talking about therapists out of network, that's like a $150 to $400 a session just for a 45 to an hour minute long. you know, chat with a talk therapist. so I think we've already dramatically reduced the cost. They made it affordable. to most Americans, but the name of the game is obviously to continue increasing access to this by making it more approachable for people and destigmatizing it and getting people to see that this is a really legitimate, clinically effective, proven treatment, not just some, you know, alternative treatment bring the cost down and, you know, making it accessible by continuing to open up as many states as we can. We'll be in, like, 42 states next year. to reach as many Americans as possible. Aaron Watson [00:28:04]: So I you said 15 states earlier. You said 42 by next year. Is that legislation getting through? Is that licensing? What's what's happening there to even you know, because to me, that seems like the obvious kind of 2 lovers of uncapping growth for you guys is if in some way, shape, or form this was more covered by, insurers, and then it was just able to be accessed in more markets. Dylan Benyon [00:28:27]: Yeah. So that's one lever. It is just licensing of clinicians. It takes a while to build out medical practices, essentially. every single state. So it's something that we've been working on for, you know, call it 18 months now expanding nationwide. so we'll be in, like, 3rd, like, think 25 or 30 states by the end of this year and then 42 early next. and another another lever too is just building out treatment protocols and programs for different indications for people. So we're helping people with anxiety and depression now. but there's some great clinical research around ketamine and other psychedelic therapies efficacy for things like, OCD, PTSD, eating disorder, social anxiety, sorter, apples therapy, potentially even like, you know, substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder, nicotine addiction, weight loss. so we're gonna be continuing to expand the platform too so that we can help, you know, as many people with the specific things that are affecting their mental health and well-being using psychedelic therapy and ketamine therapy, which would be another way to increase access. Aaron Watson [00:29:33]: Right on. So the mission is relatively legible. Right? We've got a mental health crisis you know, I'm I'm I'm regurgitating your lines again, but, you know, it's it's one of the most kind of pervasive widespread, you know, health challenges that that people are facing out there. and I just, you know, I guess as we end points wrapping up, you just put a little bit more color on the salience of this mission, and kind of why this is because, you know, I I I sit we say that in one regard and, you know, I've lost someone to, suicide and, you know, there there's There's other instances where people can, like, point to something directly at home that they've had to face. but there's also a degree to which it's not as in your face as other epidemics that are visually apparent to people. so can you maybe just, you know, paint a little bit more color on the intensity of of this kind of problem that is being faced from your from your point of view. Well, I think you just hit on it. I have not met a single person Dylan Benyon [00:30:40]: as a mental health care CEO now who does not have a 1 degree separation from a extremely acute and serious mental health care issue, either themselves are a close friend or family member. suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for people under 35, and it's the 4th leading cause of death for people, 35 to 55. depression is the number one cause of disability worldwide. and like you, I definitely seen that firsthand. Like, my family is riddled with mental health care issues. a lot of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in my family. My mother, was schizophrenic, an addict grabbing a really turbulent home. She needed homeless for 15 years before dying of a drug overdose. and through those experiences, what I saw is through my own psychedelic experiences that have helped me never have to have a mental health care shoe, and have made me a better person for myself and others. I've seen that mental health care issues don't just affect the individual, which is super tragic, but it affects their friends, their family, their community, And it affects the human capital that they have to go on and do work in the world and contribute. my mother was not able to contribute anything despite being a really intelligent woman. She couldn't even take care of herself, and we couldn't even take care of her as a society. and that is like an utter waste. so Our big mission in mind bloom is to transform lives, to transform the world, to help people become better people for themselves, but better people for the world. and when you look at anecdotes of people who talk about their psychedelic experiences and call it, you know, abs absolute life changing like it has been for me, or if you look at the clinical research around how much more efficacious, you know, these medications and, and treatments are than everything else out there, It just becomes very obvious and clear that one of the biggest things that we can do to create a better world, to create better people and to reduce suffering overall is to get these medications into the hands of people who need them as quickly as possible in a really safe, responsible way. and continue to learn and figure out how to help people get the most out of them because it's still day 1. Like, we've discovered how to split the atom but we haven't yet figured out how to create a nuclear power reactor when it comes to psychedelics. and that's, you know, I think a lot of the challenge and a lot of the excitement around the space is how we're gonna actually apply these to help people. Aaron Watson [00:32:58]: Yeah. I I what I was just thinking about is, you know, most of the healthiest people I know became and I'm I'm talking mostly physically just to for the the sake of this example, took, like, a 110 percent responsibility, experimenting with themselves, doing their own research, and finding the kind of formula for their own health. So I have a very good friend, who I I feel like I referenced now almost like every other episode, but, you know, he has got, like, the most flawless skin physique, everything the whole way down and and kind of, you know, biocount seems very, mentally grounded as well. But, you know, he is someone that, you know, has the degree in nutrition reads the academic literature and all the journals and and, you know, digs and digs and digs for his own kind of solution in this regard. And I I know that part of the platform you hear is, you know, interfacing with those professionals that can either, you know, legally prescribe something or not, but you know, if we we evaluate your story and your own kind of experimentation with this stuff 12 or 13 years ago, there is a degree to which I have to imagine you were seeing some of these, you know, mental health pop, you know, issues flare up in your family and trying to find your kind of path or gateway to avoiding that fate and finding a better outcome for yourself. and and that's really, you know, the kind of story here, at at least from my side, Everyone needs help. Everyone needs a community, but your ability to, you know, go hunt for what it is that you need is really the thing that kind of unlocks everything. Dylan Benyon [00:34:25]: I couldn't agree more. Like, it starts with taking a 100% responsibility. And it's actually this awesome movement where seeing in health care overall, which is a move away from old medicine that's really reactive patriarchal, like, wait till you're sick and then we'll treat it. Go, listen to a doctor and just do whatever they say, which could be good, but autogenics or you know, sort of medical errors, the number 3 cause of death in the US. So it's really hard for a doctor to get a snapshot of your health and then, you know, tell you what to do without you being an active participant. And now we're shifting to new medicine, which is more proactive. it's about people taking responsibility of their own health, doing their own research, trying their own things, and creating a, you know, more of a focus on holistic health versus waiting until you get, you know, really sick. and I think the same is starting to happen with mental health care where people are looking at talk therapy, like, oh, you don't just go to talk therapy when you're, you know, disturbed, you go to become a healthier version of yourself. and psychedelics are gonna be a massive part of that wave to new medicine and mental health care because they can help people achieve these, you know, significantly better states of mental health and well-being, you know, before they need to get on antidepressants necessarily. Aaron Watson [00:35:40]: Beautiful. Well, I dig the mission, man. I'm excited to see you guys continue to, trail blaze and and, you know, set more flags in the ground and and avenues by which to help people. I wanna aim for dropping up, ask our standard last questions. Before I do that, is there anything else you are hoping share today that I just did did not give you the chance to? Dylan Benyon [00:36:02]: The only thing I would share is, Mindbloom is growing really quickly. we are a really mission obsessed organization that's building a really unique culture of consciousness actually started the company as a remote first asynchronous company a year before COVID. and we, I think do a lot of things that are very magnetic in terms of culture. They, attract some to repel most, but we're hiring, you know, across product engineering, design, marketing, or hiring psychiatric clinicians, psychedelic guides. so if anybody listening has a really deep sincere passion for psychiatric therapy in the future mental health and well-being, we would absolutely love to hear from you. Aaron Watson [00:36:45]: Right on. if they wanna do that or just kind of follow along with Mindbloom, generally, what digital coordinates can we provide for people? Yeah. you can find mindbloom@mindbloom.com. Dylan Benyon [00:36:56]: we also have a a Twitter account and an Instagram account, my Mindbloom, and we have a a careers page. But even if you see a role. If if you have a role, if you don't see in the careers page, we have a, you know, a section for that. We'd still like to hear from you. Aaron Watson [00:37:11]: Dope. how hard was Mindbloom of a domain name to snag? Dylan Benyon [00:37:17]: Oh, well, you see the namesake for Mindbloom behind me a couple of pieces here. Android Jones psychedelic art. well, I was we're looking to communicate with Mindbloom was, wisdom, clarity and growth. I did a whole mind map exercise. I got mine bloom.com for the low low price of $37,000, with the, the domain brokers that I previously used to secure mighty.com at my last company. Aaron Watson [00:37:48]: so -- I'm sure that one was a little bit more. A lot more. dotcom is good, but it's only valuable to me. my dotcom is a premium domain name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. beautiful. We're gonna link all of that in the show notes for people to check it out. And, they can find that at going deepgram.com/ Aaron Watson [00:38:06]: podcast or in the app where you're probably listening to this right now. Aaron Watson [00:38:09]: But Dylan, before I let you go, I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Dylan Benyon [00:38:19]: I'm gonna, allude to what you said earlier about people who take a 110% responsibility over their health and using that as, like, the most important behavior for people's health. I actually talk about that all the time that's designed to take control over your health, including your own mental health and well-being, is, like, the first and most important behavior or decision that you can make. there's so many things you can do and try. Obviously, psychedelic medicine has been a massive part of my life, and, you know, myboom.com is a vehicle for that. but I think one of the other things that's been most meaningful to me if you told me 10 years ago, this would be what the most one of the most important parts of your mental health and well-being practice. I would tell you your nuts, is reading books and literature about mental health and well-being. and some of that could be like enlightenment literature, or sort of like eastern philosophy or, you know, things like that or stoicism, or even like, like, positive psychology So I would I would challenge your audience to, to pick up a book on mental health and well-being. it could be a book like awareness by Anthony Dimelo or the surrender experiment, by Michael Singer or letters from a Stowick by Seneca, Tim Ferris produced an incredible audio book on it, and then I highly recommend, or you can look into books on positive psychology specifically. and then the science of happiness, and start reading about mental health and well-being. that might have been the first and most important behavior reading about mental health and well-being that got me started on my path to realizing this was something I wanted to focus on and wasn't just gonna happen on itself. Aaron Watson [00:39:57]: Right on. And that's the same type of thing where you kind of touch on a couple different, like, schools of thought or approaches to something like that. And it's, you know, it it's the responsibility in conjunction with experimentation. Like, maybe stocism just ain't your bag. You you read it. You chew on it. Like, this just isn't for me. I'm gonna find a different approach that kind of mixes with my, you know, brain and DNA and all that stuff the right way. So I think that's a really good kind of pairing of the 2. Dylan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I really enjoyed talking with you. Thanks, Aaron. This was a blast. Appreciate having me on. We just went deep with Dylan Bynan, who went out there has a fantastic sick day. Aaron Watson [00:40:36]: Hey. Thanks for watching to the end of my interview with Dylan. If you enjoyed learning about the building blocks of one of these fast growing businesses, then you would also like our recent interview with Joe Percoco. He talks all about the building blocks of a FinTech startup.
Don Racey is Chief Executive Officer of Engage Energy & Industrial Consulting and President, Marketing for American Energy Partners.
Don’s specialty is assisting diversified energy companies to better align with sustainability and ESG initiatives. Don’s background in corporate finance, operations, and strategy allows him to guide business transformations and Asset Lifecycle Management plans. In this episode, Don defines ESG, talks about the energy systems that need to change, and talks about his background as a consultant. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Don Racey’s Challenge; Go out and plant a tree. Connect with Don Racey
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Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 458 with Mark Marmo where we discuss natural gas, business building, and company culture.
Kamron Khodjaev is the Chief Commercial Officer of Koop. Koop is an insurance technology and specialty brokerage company focused on commercial autonomy and robotics.
Robots have different data sets, risk models, and track records of performance than machinery operated by humans. Due to this complexity, many robotics firms find themselves struggling to get insured or paying way too much. Kamron and his three cofounders realized that they could use their own proprietary algorithms to better chart the risks of autonomy and partner with large insurers the help these companies. In this episode, Kamron and Aaron discuss the founding of the company, different data his team looks at, and the enormous market opportunity. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Kamron Khodjaev’s Challenge; Keep an open mind. Connect with Kamron Khodjaev
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Koop.Ai Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 395 with Çetin Meriçli where we discuss self-driving trucks and episode 357 Jim Gibbs about parking for self-driving vehicles.
Michael Tam is a partner at Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund known for the development of B2B Saas startups.
Based in Los Angeles, Michael sits on the boards of Bbot, Dray Alliance, Route, Trellis, and Vendr. He also works closely with notable investment companies such as Pipe, Salted, Shef, and Sync, amongst others. Prior to joining Craft, Michael was an investor at Crosscut, where he led investments at the seed stage. As an operator, Michael managed Uber's business in Southern California markets and launched L., a direct to consumer brand acquired by Procter & Gamble. Michael also serves on the investment committee of the USC Marshall Fund, which invests in startups in the Southern California tech ecosystem. In this episode, Michael and Aaron discuss how to break into venture capital, his investments in Shef & Pipe, and much more. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Michael Tam’s Challenge; Reach out to someone you’re afraid to. Send a cold email w/ intention. Connect with Michael Tam
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Craft Ventures Website Michael@craftventures.com If you liked this interview, check out episode 466 with Matt Harbaugh where we discuss founding a venture fund. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Dave Fink is the CEO and cofounder of Postie, a platform for making direct mail marketing campaigns as sophisticated as elite digital marketing.
Dave Fink has been building companies for the consumer internet for over 15 years. Over the last decade Dave has launched and scaled over 20 consumer-internet businesses. During the early part of his career he created performance-marketing platforms helping brands as diverse as Walt Disney World, Procter & Gamble and The Gap adapt to the rapidly changing digital media strategies available in the internet world. Dave also established the customer acquisition strategy that successfully launched consumer brands with celebrities including Kate Bosworth, Jessica Simpson, Rachel Bilson, and Mary- Kate and Ashley Olsen. In this conversation, Dave and Aaron discuss some basic marketing definitions, the mission behind Postie, and how Dave coaches marketing clients to success. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. David Fink’s Challenge; Find a new hobby to get a break from work. Connect with David Fink
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Postie Website dave@postie.com If you liked this interview, check out episode 386 with Jon Shanahan where we discuss YouTube marketing, men’s fashion, and much more.
Joe Percoco could not stand the idea that the best financial products were inaccessible to the common person, so he co-founded Titan. Titan is a fintech startup that aims to be this century’s Fidelity Investments
The startup is growing rapidly with 500% growth in the last 12 months, 30,000+ users, nearly 1 billion in assets under management, and a recent valuation of $450 Million. Their investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Kevin Durant, Odell Beckham Jr., and Will Smith. Joe has been able to build this company so quickly thanks to his pedigree at some of the world’s top business institutions; Wharton business school, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey. In this interview, Joe and Aaron discuss the building blocks of a fintech startup, why index funds & day trading aren’t right for everyone, and the near-death experiences Titan has survived. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Joe Percoco’s Challenge; Answer the question; What is your personal KPI for the week? Connect with Joe Percoco
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titan.com If you liked this interview, check out episode 231 with Andy Rachleff where we discuss Wealthfront, index investing, and a framework for successful venture investing.
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Joe Percoco
Percoco: If you have sub $10 million of net worth, you're driving these diesel gasoline vehicles with your money. If you have, if you're wealthy or you're an institution you're running around in a Tesla, Watson: Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome back to going deeper with Aaron Watson. My guest today is Joe Percoco. One of the co-founders of a FinTech startup called Titan. Titan has raised tens of millions of dollars and has collected hundreds in millions in assets, under management. Thanks to a very specific thesis while some people want to just put their retirement savings into index funds and others want to try and day trade actively on sites like Robinhood and weeble. There's another population that wants a managed investment portfolio that doesn't just index the entirety of the market has a thesis behind it, but is informed by really. Investment professionals, same services that hedge funds offer that mutual funds offer has to be able to be delivered at a lower price. That is what Joe's company is doing, and that is what we discuss in today's video. We also discuss the building of a FinTech business, his background at Goldman Sachs and a whole lot more. I think you'll love it. Here is my conversation with Joe Percoco. Watson: Joe. Thanks for calling on the podcast, man. I'm excited to be talking with you. Percoco: Thanks so much for having me, Aaron. Watson: I know I've got a proper guest on my hands when you've got the mic set up, ready to go. Despite the fact that you're running, uh, some crazy enormous company, that's doing like 500% growth in financial services. So I'm excited. Percoco: No, we'll probably one too many podcasts where I didn't have the setup and you'd come in and it doesn't sound clear for your guests deserve to hear us loud and clear. You know? Watson: Right on. So let's start on that, that growth, you know, the, the stat that the PR team gave me is you guys have 500% growth in the last 12 months, tens of thousands of clients, hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, under management, that's candidly, you know, I've a mentor of sorts that I listened to. And he says, you know, small businesses don't stay small on purpose, which is basically everyone wants to grow. Not everyone can kind of crack the nut of how to grow. So, Joe, how did you grow? Percoco: I think that’s great quote from your mentor. We should pick his brain for what other him or her, what other quotes he or she has? Yeah. How does one grow? It could boil, I often think, like you think about like business, like microbiology and in a sense, like, what is the like molecule of a business, the molecule of a business, at least how I think about. It's just, how do you delight a single customer so much, so you're willing to open your wallet and pay you a little bit for it. And you just have to be relentless in trying to give them value and just delighting them in a way the current world does not solve their needs for. Watson: And so how does Titan fit into that? Because, you know, we've seen, you know, GameStop and the Robin hood mania of all these kind of day traders who are doing a gamified form of investing in their app. Plenty of people have been, you know, told by their, you know, dad's accountant to just put it in Vanguard index funds and not thinking about it or use wealth front. We've interviewed Andy Rachleff to talk about Wealthfront and that form of kind of wealth building Titan slices, the pie a little differently. Percoco: We do. And it's funny as you hit on two of the three investing use cases that have been around for all of humankind, there's only three and you discover two of them. So good job. The one is make it go away, which was invented by Bogle, which was the passive revolution, Wealthfront is a great player in that space. As far as they as solve this investing thing for me, the second is get out of my way. I literally just want to do whatever the heck I want, on whatever platform I choose, whether my uncle told me to buy the stock, or I just really believe in this company that's called self-directed brokerage. A number of different players do that. They're all just sort of new age versions of the Amsterdam stock exchange from way back when, and there's a third use case called investment management, which is show me the way I want to give my money to someone, to act to invest it for me. And there's a long list of old school players that currently have significant market share in this category from fidelity to Tee Rower price to Franklin Templeton, to state street. It just goes on and on and on and on it's the largest of the three categories. Um, it dictates the most capital flows, but no one has yet to say who will be the fidelity. For the upcoming generations, I E V, Authority of where their capital should go when they want them to show them the way. So that's what we're building a Titan Watson: And that's at a very. Kind of generalized broad level, like all those brands that you're talking about. Yes, they could, you know, Hey, I want to play international hat. I want to play small cap. I want to play these different kind of radius. They could take you there if you wanted to. But the brand that's being built is really, you know, come here with your assets. Retirement may seem daunting. These other financial goals may seem daunting and, and there is a degree to which almost like the. The messaging, the branding kind of, um, reverberations, you know, you can understand why someone outside of the industry wouldn't really be able to delineate those different brands too much, because it's a similar message that they're all trying to pass along. Percoco: Totally. And it's, honestly, I feel for people who are trying to figure all this out from the outside, like I was there, I didn't, you know, despite going to Wharton, working at Goldman Sachs, I didn't figure out how to invest my first dollar. And I was 26, the very, very meager savings I had. After paying off some student debt, it all just lived in a bank of America checking account. Like it's the most paralyzing thing in the world trying to figure this all out, all the jargon everyone's competing for your attention, and you're just sort of part of the reason why I started this whole thing. I was like, this, this shit's up because frankly, like there needs to just be a way easier, more modern tool to do all. Watson: So what makes it easier? Give us more, give us more detail. Percoco: Yeah. So if you think about like the status quo, what is like the hallmark vehicle, if you want to give your money to someone to manage it for you in an active way, like you were saying, Hey, let's go put 10% of your capital in these small cap stocks. They think they're going to do really well. Or, “Hey Aaron, let's go check out China internet. Those could be the next big thing. Like the American internet revolution.” What's the primary way you do that. There's a few vehicles. One is ETFs, those are fine, but they're inherently black box, they often have layers of fees. You're never going to communicate with the person actually running the ETF. Another thing is called mutual fund. You're probably getting goosebumps or allergies. Just thinking about putting your money into a mutual fund. Everything I just described about the ETF is sort of like way worse from the mutual fund standpoint. Percoco: And so with us, we said, okay, core human behavior. Is there people deserve to be able to give their money to an expert, to do go find the best small cap stocks. And then what we, what we said was it just needs to be mobile first. It can't be a black box. Aaron deserves to have a direct line to whomever is running the thing. And so with that, it's sort of like our clients, we say used to be seated outside the stadium. Go figure it out yourself, but we'll take your money in this ETF with tightened clients, we bring them courtside seats. So we send our clients, you know, an in-app video saying, Hey, we just invested in you in XYZ stock, Instagram stories. Like they get it. We show them full transparently how their money's in real time. So it just sort of a going back to what I said, like why it's honestly really tough just to try to do this whole thing, ETFs mutual funds, you know, Watson: So it really sounds more like you've kind of triangulated this point between, and if this is a miscategorization, you know, pick me and tell me on the one end of the spectrum, you have hedge funds, but hedge funds have, you know, they're trying to solicit institutional investors where they can get enormous sums to go and invest. And the average Joe Schmo, like, I don't know what you had. I'm sure you're doing pretty well. If you were out of Wharton and Goldman in terms of income that you could potentially invest, but most of the characters, you know, the millennials between 25 up to 40 or, or past that don't have some, super high bar to go start investing in a hedge fund. And at the other end of the spectrum, you have a much more kind of conventional financial advisor. That's collecting a fee, but playing almost more of the social game of, “Hey, you know, relax, set a habit. Let me coach you and less of the I'm a tactician as it pertains to a real investment thesis.” And I don't want to disparage all financial, there's a degree to which that's the game. Percoco: And the two important points, which I want to separate what you've shared. They're both exceptionally important. One is, so you'd be thinking about it. Like, let's say Aaron has money to invest. First question where should it go second question. Let's go get it there. So where should it go? Number of different ways institutions and people figure that out. And then institution let's say like Harvard endowment has their own internal team figuring out. Okay. Should we go, should we go invest in private equity in Latin America? Or should we like buy us stocks? They have their own internal team. A human being will say, let me hire a financial advisor to try to help me figure out where it should go. Then there's like, okay, let's go get the money there. If you're an institution. If you're a normal person, the menu you have is quite limited in terms of, okay, like we're ultimately, can your money go? Probably it's stocks based, maybe a small cap, ETF, you name it. If you're an institution, the menu has about a hundred more pages. It's like, “Hey, venture capital, hedge funds, private equity, and so forth”. And so the, the big thing that I at least was really personally frustrated by, um, from a 30,000 per year sundown. Um, in New Jersey called Hillsborough was that the menu was just different from like where I've lived versus where I ultimately went to in New York. Um, so what we're predominantly trying to do is let's make the menu the same. Percoco: All of those, all the really amazing vehicles that institutions invest in with philosophies long-term compounding, unique asset class exposures. How do we get that to everyday people? So we'll let other people solve for the wealth planning that, that tax planning. Hey Aaron, if let's say you're getting married, here's how we should think about your budget. What we're firmly solving for is where your money goes. Let's game let's level, the playing field on the menu. By getting you access to the 20 pages, you don't have access to. Watson: So you know, in the, in the spectrum of, like you said, this is so complex for people trying to figure it out and you referenced Jack Bogle and the indexing revolution and the whole thing there that, you know, now fidelity beats, the same drum is just for cutting fees, cutting fees, we're cutting fees before everything else cut those fees, pare them down to the point where I saw someone making fun of it, where it's like, you know, Fidelity's trying to brag about this. Like, it's literally. Uh, like a half of a, a basis point or something different. So it's like at the end of the day, that's not actually making the difference on the outcome of retirement. Go down from a 2% fee to a, a 0.1% fee makes a difference. You know, at some point you're, you're splitting hairs. Watson: So what I hear, you know, you're not positioning this and I think there's okay. We do this with our own services of Piprr where we say, you know, we're not the cheapest. We are also not the Maserati necessarily, but we are something in the middle that kind of satiates a number of these different needs. Kind of explain why it's not just a, how much fees you are paying when you invest type of decision and how you know that, although in index funds work for some people, why a different approach might be more relevant. Percoco: Yeah. I'll enter this indirectly, the world. I see the world of investing and it's part of the reason why, like I'm running so hard at Titan. And like what wakes me up in the morning is I see the world as if you have sub. $10 million of net worth. You're driving these diesel gasoline vehicles with your money. If you have, if you're wealthy or you're an institution you're running around in a Tesla. And these are just fundamentally better vehicles that get you to different destinations, better destinations, but you just can't afford to get into it. And so for us, the primary question isn't even price. It's just this person who's driving a diesel cannot even fundamentally walk into the Tesla dealership. Like that is just like, it's just stuff I didn't read about. I saw all these PhD papers talking about like, Hey, like here's the optimized ETF with like three basis points. Percoco And it's like, what? That effectively, as I read it is like, this is the fastest diesel car we have on the market. And here's the miles per gallon. I'm like, you're literally missing the point. Like, you're trying to optimize a diesel car, like the elephant in the room and consumer FinTech is a fact that if you're wealthy, you're not even in that room. Like you were just over there. Like there is no Robinhood, there's no GameStop. You've got your capital in a hedge fund or venture capital firm. You're sitting back when the market goes down, you're not scared. You're literally grabbing pennies to try to figure out how to do. Um, and that's just a world I sort of like refuse to live in. Um, so it's why like we're moving really, really fast as a team and why we're just trying to get our product to market as fast as we can back to the whole, like how, why is our company growing it's I think predominantly because we're hitting on that nerve. Watson: So tell me a little bit about that transition, right? Because there's, there's plenty of characters that at least from the outside, looking in would say that, that you kind of checked all the boxes of kind of conventional goals being accomplished, graduate from Wharton, head to Goldman Sachs work at McKinsey for awhile. Um, you know, there's plenty of people that would say I've kind of hit, I've landed at this spot. There isn't a next Lily pad to get to those. Those are the leap pads that people aspire to. Yeah. Percoco: And so like, we're, we're, um, Like what wakes me up? Let me know how to answer your question. Um, like ultimately I'm from a family of immigrants, Puerto Rican immigrants on the one side, Italian immigrants on the other. And so both sides of that are like super education focused. And we are going to create a very, you know, education focused family. We're going to do it right. We're going to be here in America. And it's sort of like that immigrant attitude still carries with me to this day. And so, and now you can sort of get the point where this whole dichotomy of population A gets this population B gets that sort of like coming from a family of immigrants, you can see why that would like light me on fire. Percoco: So it's what ultimately it's ultimately how I just like, realized what I needed to do and have the courage to go leave that whole track that you just described, which a lot of really great institutions, really great firms that I think they're wonderful and I'm really proud of them as an American, but ultimately I said, okay, I go, I need to go build what's missing. Um, and I felt a deep sense of calling to do it, believe it or not. So, yeah, but still a lot of work to be done. Watson: I dig it. So there's a mean in certain, like channels of entrepreneurship and the thing that's coming to mind, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Andrew Yang, but before he was like running for president and mayor, he was, uh, running a organization called venture for America. And he wrote this book called smart people should build things. And he talks about being a reform lawyer, doing all these other things. And, you know, the, the emergence of, you know, the best human capital that we have out of those kind of very, you know, high end traditional professional services into different entrepreneurial ventures. And, you know, I feel like sometimes that idea gets taken in the direction of like, “okay, we'll go buy a bunch of self storage facilities or a trucking company or construction company”, which works is cool. But when I look at something like Titan, It almost seems like it necessitates the background that you've had in order to start it, like most people without actually kind of seeing behind the curtain, like you said, at a place like Goldman, seeing those high levels of corporate finance would even have the legibility to go about like, you know, what, what are, what are even like the component parts that go into starting a you know, scaled consumer FinTech play. Most people don't even have legibility into the pieces that are required. Percoco: It's a totally great observation. And it's probably, I think the biggest reason why it hasn't yet been solved is because once you're in, let's call it that back of the restaurant. You're like, I, this is comfy. Like why would I ever leave to go back to the front? I make, you know, one makes a ton of money back then. It's cushy, you got all the institutions lining up for what you offer. Like it's almost like pull up the rope ladder. Like now that you've made it and– Watson: just social status too, like you said, your family was pushing you on the education, but even you meet someone at a bar and you say, I work at golden rabbit like that, like that is the lights on. Percoco: Yeah. Um, and it's part of the reason why my family was like, “wait, you're getting off this track. I thought like you, do you realize why like grandmother came from Puerto Rico? Or why am I Italian to him?” I can't remember like, like, hold on. Like you're about to ditch all this. Um, but what was clear to me was that, you know, as you're saying, like oftentimes the domain expertise and one has almost a, gets a sense of responsibility, almost how, like you see a lot of these really great med tech companies are run by some of the best doctors. And they just like infuse into the company, just like patient empathy in a way a doctor would otherwise a non-doctor wouldn't otherwise be able to do so. So same with Titan, like one of the reasons why, and if you read our reviews, I think we've been able to nail the user experience is because like, I've literally been both sides. I like sit in every major product review and my voice isn't necessarily one saying, here's how we can complete this derivation of the product feature on this life. Well, with the predominant voice I play in that meeting is that is too confusing. Look at all these other products, people currently shoulder shrug at them. What can we do to push the envelope here, to just blow someone away who has no education? That's like the predominant voice I play. And it's, I think it's like an important one to go into your point. I think domain expertise is really critical for many different businesses at once is going to start. Watson: Absolutely. So can you take us just into the component pillars of a consumer FinTech startups. So, you know, we, we cover all sorts of different businesses on the show. And we've talked with an office furniture wholesaler about how his capacity to increase the square footage of his warehouse is like this primary driver of his profitability and business growth. I talked with a Haitian immigrant who started a trucking business. It's literally make enough to buy a truck, make enough to buy a second truck. And it's, you know, it's somewhat linear, but it's still fascinating to get an insight into what are the component pieces here cause there's, there's also, you referenced medicine. Those are two of the more regulated industries as well. So I'm sure you need a nice lawyer bill, but what else goes into it? Percoco: Yeah, so for the, probably the overarching mental model, which you're hitting and I really love. Yeah, every business in the world requires starting capital. You, then go build something with this capital. You then sell it to people and you earn revenue and then you have expenses, which are the people that you need to support it and market it. Every business goes through those same pillars. So for consumer FinTech side of things, you need capital to stand up the backend, let's call it like plug into the marketplace. It's called like a broker dealer entity. You need back-end. You need capital to solve the regulatory equation and get registered. You need capital to hire your early engineers and designers actually build the frontend product. And then you build this mobile application, which is offered to the front end, like a normal customer. Percoco: You have the backend, which let's say plugs into the market, or if it's like a welfare plugged into a bank, you've built that you have the legal and all the regulatory done. And then you also built all the backend things to accept accounts. Let's call that the like, okay, we've built an initial product from there, the business side, you have to build it in a way that people want to actually use like a lot of. Good consumer FinTech businesses, and a lot of bad consumer FinTech businesses. The primary reason between good versus bad is often did you literally build something people want to use? It's not anything genius other than that, are they paying you, you get revenue and then your costs are usually. You know, you have really high, gross margins because it's software, your costs are predominantly the people that you keep to build the thing, maintain it, iterate, and then any marketing expenses one may have. So if let's say, how do you get people aware of your product? Is it referrals? Is it organic or do you have to go buy a ton of TikTok ads? If so, that's a major difference in the marketing line. And ultimately as a business, you then hopefully earn some profit over time. So that's like consumer FinTech business in a nutshell Watson: So it's I think a parent that, you know, there's initial the licensing with the broker dealer on the kind of initial stand-up of the product itself. That could be a seed investment, a small team that's grind in the tussle, and to get something that has a, a kind of sufficient, you know, capacity to it is very different than I think your recent, most recent run a fundraising was like $450 million valuation, not, not the totality that you raised, is that kind of, that, that to me as an outsider, seems like we're getting close to the moment where let's, you know, pour the proverbial gasoline on the fire and marketing dollars to actually help this start to spread. Um, is that, do you feel like that's kind of close to where you guys are now and what was the signal that all right, It's time to actually do this. Percoco: Yeah, you hit on the nail. What you first seek to do is the goal is to use like ultimately from like a Warren buffet sort of perspective, your goal is to build a business which generates high returns on capital. What that means in non-finance speak is you're going to go to the world and say, world, give me money because I'm going to create a lot of impact to it, to society and shareholder return. I will give you more back than what you gave to me.” And so what you first do is say, look like I don't need a hundred million from you guys right now. Just give me a little bit, so I can show you a proof of concept. If that proof of concept works, you go back then. I've now, hopefully de-risk that I'm going to waste all this money on some business adventure that doesn't make sense. Look at this data. If we put more money in and flesh it out from a V1 to a V10, this could really be big And then it's like, okay, we've built something amazing. Now we have to hit the turbo buttom and let's go raise even more money to make this a really big brand and cement our market position.” And so that's where we're at. So we're, you know, we built an amazing proof of concept for years ago. It then got a ton of scale without us even trying people were just sharing it. And now it's like, okay, let's go take this from V5 to V10 and hit the turbocharge button. Watson: And I have to imagine, you know, part of the turbocharger is also bringing different offerings to the market, which we can talk about in a second. But the other thing that, you know, in traditional B2B SAS is always one of the core metrics is the net revenue retention or the general retention of users. Um, and I have more experience looking at that from like a B2B SAS standpoint where you're, you're trying to drive like, you know, net dollars growth because you're adding more seats, you're adding more usage, selling into a large org. Is that, is that relatively similar? Because if people have more assets under management, you're also going to have that net revenue retention. Percoco: Yeah. You're you're spot on. I would actually like hold the perspective that most businesses are more similar than they are different. And so even if like the language isn't exactly the same, the concept of, “okay, like this business gets revenue and then it grows per customer equals good business.” If it's the opposite direction equals bad, like that's actually just a fundamental principle that holds. Like pretty much all businesses. Ours is exact same. So ours, we get, you know, it might just be different on the timescale, which is you can get, like, let's say like a Robinhood, for instance, you can get a lot of customers up front and then ultimately it's okay like we believe that over time they'll be able to monetize it. And so hence in the consumer land, people are more willing to put chips on user growth first, before they talk about revenue, because they know it's like, okay, I've seen this story 10 different times. If you get users, you can then go across the album. A, B, C, D E. So, hence, I know it's a given, the net revenue will be there. If you can go get users, what's called distribution first. So ultimately it all shakes out to be the same, but probably the holy grail of a consumer technology company is how do you actually get people to be aware of you and shout from the mountain top? So that's, what's called distribution. And if you get that usual, If you're a software company, you have high gross margins and if you built a good product, you have strong net revenue retention. So like those other variables fall into place. If you can actually get user growth, obviously I'm, I'm summarizing things very simply, but that's at least the pecking order, first distribution, then unit economics, then let's see. All right. If you figured that out, how big can this thing actually be? Is this a billion of revenue or is there like 10 billion? Watson: And that's also kind of coincides with the different level of, you know, they're seed investors who are more akin to those earlier metrics and evaluation points. And then later on, when we're talking about growth capital, they're more akin to those second order types of calculations. Percoco: Exactly. So like an angel investor will be like, do I think this, do I think this team can figure something out here. And so that often means like, is a team smart, smart, and expertise enough. And is this space have profit? So like, even if their first product is not great, I know that it's just such a valuable space to be in. They'll figure it out, then see it as like, okay, show me a V1 of your product. And do I think there's a path for you to get scale from user basis, then let's call it like a series B or series C ambassador will be like, okay, show me that's the proof that you can go get distribution and what the unit economics could look like. And then ultimately, With all the late state strategics come in after a unicorn, they're like, all right, show me exactly dollar in dollar out is what it's called. Like this company will go IPO and it'll re it'll dilute itself, 10% on IPO from there, it'll raise XYZ dollars. Those dollars will convert into Y amount of revenue. And so my stock price should be X and three years. So you've hit the journey on the nail in terms of like the evolution of metrics. Watson: Yeah. I just listened to an interview with the ZoomInfo CEO, Henry Schuck, who's also been on this podcast before and he like, he knows exactly $1 spent into his or, or translates into precisely how many dollars of, of, uh, software revenue in the future. (The going deep podcast is underwritten by Piper, creative shooting, editing and publishing quality content is overwhelming. We make it easy so you can save time, build your. And grow faster, say hello@pipercreative.co.) Watson: So I've got two kinds of questions and then we can aim towards wrapping up with the standard. Last two questions. The first is it's become common now for founders during these different fundraisers. Another thing that outsiders might not necessarily understand is it takes some chips off the table. In extreme case, you got Adam Newman and we work who’s taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of WeWork as they're raising billions from SoftBank, but just, you know, as the company grows a little bit of chips off the table actually allows for, you know, founders to be financially comfortable to go swing for the fences, which is what those investors want with that money taken out. It's common for founders to now be investing in other startups. And if you think about it, it's like, you know, the best NBA players. Are the ones who can usually tell who the next star on the rise actually is before coaches, before scouts, because they know what it takes. So from that vantage point, given that you've now had your own startup and it's it's on this upward trajectory, what have you learned from starting, operating, founding, Titan that would inform a future investment thesis that you would have looking at potential startups to invest in? Percoco: Great question. The whole there's that question, Like what do you believe that others underway or don't believe. So there's that old adage like ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. I'd probably revise, the adage to ideas are everything and execution is everything the reason, or maybe even controversially ideas are everything execution. Make it good enough. Reason being, if a business just starts from a good, like, there's that old quote, like in the, in the, in the tail of a bad business versus a good operator, the bad business always went. And it just like the brutal reality of the marketplace. You could be the brightest human on earth If you're trying to ride a crippled horse, it's going to go nowhere. And so the first is just thinking through this space itself, like, is there value to be had here? What's the competitive dynamic of this space? Like, will you just get muscled out? Like talk to me about the horse and the race you're trying to run. Even if your view, even if I disagree with however you're designing your V1 or your initial product. Like, do I just believe you're in the universe or a good worse? And now I know a lot of people will say like team first or whatever attraction first I'm very much alike thesis driven space, first sort of person. And secondly team, like, are you going to run through walls to iterate when it's not working or when you get data and you get like, and you find a new competitive entrant, like what's your DNA. Like you are gonna, like, I've had to run through a good joint amount of walls. Titan almost died I think like two times in our early history. And then from there from like an early stage basis, that's all I look for. And later stages about show me the traction. So the i. e. Demonstrate to me, the data you've collected that your thesis about the future of the world is right. Because ultimately, like if you're running, if you're attempting to start the business, it's a bet on a future state of the world, like I am saying, the future of the world should be like X and I'm going to be the one to create that future. So by the time you should have data saying, “Hey, just be, have humility. Like just show me the data.” And so like Marc Andreessen, Andreessen encourages the best or on our cap table. What he usually says is as you get later and later stage. Your,investor deck should have less words and more numbers it's like, do, I even need to explain my business, look at the unit economics and the dollars in and dollars out. You almost like don't even want to care. And so that's at least how I think about it. When I see, like, I see a lot of really great entrepreneurs, um, starting companies. And so I just try to push them. Are you starting it on the right horse? If the wrong. Watson: I take that. Can you talk about either of the near death experiences? Percoco: They both had to do it very, very early on when no one believed that we should exist. Believe it or not. There was a world pre-Robinhood success. And we were that's when we were starting Titan, when still Robinhood was like, oh, like, I think I might've heard of it, remind me again, what that does. That was like the state of Robinhood brand in, uh, in American society. And we were like, oh, like, it makes total sense. Robinhood had succeed. There's only like three use cases everyone's focused on passive Robinhood is trying to democratize self-directed brokerage someone will next go after fidelity, which is the biggest prize in the room. And I like walked into a hundred different DC conversations and they laughed me out of the room every time they said like, wait, like isn't everyone just going to put their money in like an optimized ETF, that's zero fee? And I said, It takes a very rudimentary understanding of capital markets to know like society would break down. If there was no one to actually determine the price of stocks, every IPO would be priced the same, like that just cannot exist. No one, yeah. We just got rejected a lot. And I said– Watson: another way, cause that's an important idea that I don't think everyone grass either if a hundred percent of the shares that were transacted in, in markets for equities were all in index funds there's no price discovery because the index funds basically look in a very rudimentary way and say, “Hey, you know, the price of Ford went up. The price of GM went down.” And so we just need to reallocate our index fund, reflect that price change. We're not making some sort of a concerted vision on both of their respective EV strategies over the next five years. And what that could mean for future cash flows. Percoco: In a capitalist society and what people, everyone forgets is even with their hard earned savings. It is a vote almost like in a courtroom where the companies are the one coming up in your judge and jury, does this company deserve my money or not? That one is doing exceptionally well. I'll give you my money very cheaply. That company is really struggling. If you I'm going to give you money, you're gonna have to pay me a really high interest. Because you're clearly doing bad things with it. That's how capital markets work. And that's how literally capital flows from like places that have it to places that need it boasts. It's why, like, why, like India is receiving a lot of venture capital investment. Basically Indian society is saying, “Hey, we're ready for a lot of capital. It's really quickly growing. You can make a ton of money.” Hence, a lot of capital flows into India. If the world was just one passive ETF, forget literally everything I just described. It's just you spray all of your money evenly across all the good and all the bad and it forever just indexes to that. You give one chip to good company, one chip to bad, one ship to good one ship to bad capital markets break. So it was what ultimately gave us courage to just be like, we think everyone is wrong. But I said that humbly, I said, like, we think everyone's wrong, so let's go ship a product to market and see what happens. And then ultimately it worked, but it did create a, take a little bit degree of courage to actually go through that phase. Watson: Word. Well, that's awesome. Um, before we wrap up, I wouldn't be a proper podcast host if I didn't at least mention crypto. Cause I feel like that's like almost the cost of doing business in the podcast world. Um, so one of the offerings that you guys are also introducing is associated with cryptocurrency and we're kind of in something of a, uh, Short bull cycle here, um, over the last couple of months, basically since the Bitcoin having. So can you just talk about where that, where you as a company kind of think that makes sense in the context of a modern portfolio, because another, you know, Relic of the past is a 60-40 allocation. You've got your bonds, you've got your ex equities. You're good to go. And we're living in a bit of a different world. Percoco: Yeah I know. We very much are. What's key from a portfolio standpoint, i. e. where does Aaron put his wealth that he accrues is you need to make sure, like you have it in the right places to accrue the most wealth possible on a risk adjusted basis. And to, we feel the wrong debate is being had on crypto. People are currently having the debate, which is, will crypto exist or not? The right debate is at what percent allocations your crypto be in your portfolio adjusting for this risk, and so where we shake out is we think crypto has a really high potentially for quality growth with incredible diversification across other asset classes. Like despite all of this crypto hype. Crypto is still early and it's could provide what we say called venture capital asymmetric returns in addition to your equities are your stocks. And it could be one of the most, compelling long-term secular growth trends in the tech space. And so now the question is, okay, like what percent of your portfolio should you have in it? And then if it's like, okay, I should have X percent, usually most people will say anywhere between one to 5%, which of the assets should I pick? One, could say, screw the judge and jury concept I'm just going to get the whole courtroom. I am just going to spray all my assets across whatever their index weight is. Others try to be more smart, which is what we're trying to do instead of you know, everyone just buys a lot of Bitcoin. We're actually much more excited about Ethereum than we aren't Bitcoin. Ethereum is- Bitcoin was meant to be a digital currency. I mean, there's a few other applications. If furious has meant to be the operating system by which people build other crypto applications in particular in the finance sector. So for us, it's why we launch our Titan crypto product to do this discernment of judge and jury on behalf of the cryptos space. We know it's complex. We know people are wondering all these ups and downs, which should I do. So we felt it was super right to have an expert in the room. Watson: Right on. That's why you guys have a business. People can hire the investment team from Titan. Joe has been awesome. I want to ask the standard last two questions that we always do before I do that. Anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you the chance to Percoco: no, you covered it all. Honestly, this was super fun combo. Watson: Right on. Well, if people want to learn more, what digital coordinates can we provide for people to find out more about you? Percoco: We just bought titan.com in the spring. So go to titan.com. Watson: I'm sure that that was not a small purchase. Percoco: No comment you can go to, you can go to titan.com. You can follow us on Twitter. If you want to follow me personally, you go to my Instagram handle or my Twitter handle. So yeah, but titan.com, if you want to check us out, Watson: I bet you got a distinct last name. Joe, Joe is probably hard to come by by Percoco you probably heard Percoco: Coco. It means Peachtree and Italian. So J P as in Peter, E R C O. Yeah, Joe Percoco. Watson: Beautiful. Well, we'll link all of that in the show notes for this episode, it is in the app where you're probably listening to this right now, or @goingdeeperthereand.com slash podcast for every single episode of the show. Before we let you go, Joe, I want to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Percoco: Great question. I think what I'll share is what I did with our leadership team this morning, which was. I asked them, what is your personal KPI for the week and similar to home as a business? How you have KPIs? Like what is revenue growth? What, like how many employees are we hiring? Everyone should have personal KPIs. Mine is like number of weekday workout. I do at a normal time of day. Like not like trying to squeeze it in at 7:00 AM or 10:00 PM. And the goal is to, to like a five day work week. So I would challenge the audience to think about like, what is your personal KPI? And. And are you tracking on it Watson: and those numbers being tied to whether it's your health or your mental health, how good you feel if that has some sort of connection to your productivity, stuff like that all works together. I used to be very good about that. I have a two and a half week old. Um, so, thank you. So all my KPIs are how frequently are feedings happening and– Percoco: are you sleeping more than three hours. Watson: Exactly. I try not to think about the hours slept Percoco:. Congratulations. That's awesome. Watson: Thank you. Thank you. Um, well this has been awesome. Congratulations on all the success associated with Titan, excited to see you guys continue to grow and impact people from an investing standpoint. And we didn't even mention all the cool investors. You mentioned Andreessen Horowitz, Kevin Durant, Odell Beckham will Smith, all these cool characters. Uh, it was a pleasure to talk with you and have you on the show. Yeah. Thanks Percoco: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on Aaron this is special. Watson: We just went deep with Joe Percoco hope we're not there has a fantastic day. Everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the end of my conversation with Joe. If you found it insightful, then I would definitely encourage you to check out a different FinTech startup philosophy that we discussed with Andy Rachleff a couple of years ago when he introduced his service wealth front, which is much more focused on those index funds and a slightly different model for retirement. Investing, investing is difficult. These decisions. I empathize with the challenge of trying to make sense of it dearly, but hopefully these interviews will help you gain a little bit more perspective, have your money, do a little bit more work for you and be a learning process along the way. Percoco: Thanks for listening. Connect with Aaron on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson 59.
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If you liked this interview, check out episode 418 with Marco Marandiz where we discuss how to market in the modern age, what makes an authentic brand, and the future of commerce.
Dr. Dietrich Stephan is a geneticist, entrepreneur, and CEO of NeuBase Therapeutics. Neubase is biotech startup focused on developing precision genetic medicines.
Dietrich previously founded or co-founded 14 biotechnology companies, was the chair of the Human Genetics department at the University of Pittsburgh, and was the CEO of LifeX Labs, a biotechnology incubator. Neubase, his latest company, is developing technology spun out of Carnegie Mellon University that aims to address genetic diseases at the DNA or RNA level by combining the highly targeted approach of traditional genetic therapies with the broad organ distribution capabilities of small molecules. In April 2021 Neubase went public, trading under the ticker symbol NBSE, and has raised over $100 million in less than three years. In this conversation, Dietrich and Aaron discuss why Neubase went public earlier than most biotech startups, the vicious diseases they are fighting against, and the impact of the Human Genome Project on society. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Dietrich Stephan’s Challenge; If there is someone out there in the world that your admire, find a way to reach out and connect with them. Connect with Dietrich Stephan
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Neubase Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 340 with Craig Markovitz where we discuss business building, university technology transfer, and life after a successful startup.
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Aaron Watson: Thanks for coming on the podcast, man. Dietrich Stephan: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Aaron Watson: So I wanted to start off, I figured that you were someone who could, I've heard of the human genome project. I'm, I'm aware kind of like, you know, through maybe like an NPR report or something of like what it is, but as I was reflecting on it coming to this conversation it seems like one of those things that is hard to appreciate the significance in terms of moving the potential to move an industry forward. And it's a project that at least to some degree is part of the origin story of your company, Neubase. So I wanted to start there to see if you could just contextualize for people maybe at the very basic, just what the human genome project was and why it was so transformational. So in order to answer that question. I need to provide some context and so I'll start there. So first point is every human disease is genetic. Either you acquire some genes from mom or dad that are misbehaving in some way, or there's an environmental insult that changes your genes, then. And gives rise to disease, but it's like a pollutant entering and then the genes are altered in some exactly. Dietrich Stephan: But sort of 0.1 is every single disease is driven either entirely or in part by a change in your genome or changes in your genome. Now the way people have been treating disease historically, Is not at the genetic level you know, genes code for proteins, which do all the work in cells. And so because we didn't understand the human genome and all 6 billion letters of it that every cell in your body has and how it goes awry to cause disease. The way we would try and treat diseases is just take disease cells and start pouring random chemicals on them. Yeah, millions of different random chemicals and hope that a couple of them stick. And a couple of those might have the activity you want in terms of making that protein behave better, total random screening. So this is actually called high throughput screening, but it's more random. And then once you have a couple of those chemicals that do what you hope they do on those proteins and. Make the cells worse. Then you engage generally in a decade long multi-billion dollar chemical engineering effort, that results in one drug and oh, by the way, nine out of 10 of those efforts fail. So drug development has been extremely slow, extremely expensive, and it's why drugs are so expensive out in the world today is because these big pharma companies have to recoup all of that money and it all comes down to the fact that we had no idea which chemical was going to stick to which protein we couldn't model that we couldn't understand that in. So we had to go abroad. So the dream of the human genome project was to actually first sequence, the 6 billion letter genetic code in a healthy individual as the reference sequence or the blueprint of life, four letters, a C G T arranged in different combinations, across 6 billion letters in every single one of the trillions of cells in your body. So a lot of information, but think of it as nature's digital information and coding system. And so we finally in 2001, after billions of dollars of investment by the public and private sector got that sequence. What people don't really understand is what's happened in the intervening 20 years, which is it wasn't enough to just have the hard drive with a 6 billion letter sequence on it. What you really want to understand is how that sequence differs in people with various diseases. Right. We're fine. We're trying to understand which genes drive disease. And so there was a massive global effort to sift through the genetic blueprints of people with, and without diseases find out what was systematically different and put those in databases. And so now on your laptop at home, you can go into the human genome mutational database and figure out what mutations in that code cause cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy or whatever disease, your interest. And then what we had to do was build the national infrastructure to be able to take a sample for me or you send it somewhere and have that place report back to us what change we have in which gene that might be triggering our disease. It's not enough to know in the abstract that some mutation causes some disease. You have to personalize it so that you've now connected the loop. So if I have some symptoms, let's say I've got a cardiac arrhythmia. I can take a saliva sample, send it out to a San Francisco based diagnostics company. And a week later they'll give me a piece of paper or it'll pop up in my email and say, you have this mutation in this. Aaron Watson: And that's an accessible fee, which is also just in and of itself talk macro for a second, the first human genome project and enormous cost. And I, I believe I've seen that it could be wrong, but the rate at which that cost has fallen is actually faster than Moore's law, which is about the acceleration of computing power, which is just staggeringly fast. But making it accessible. Dietrich Stephan: Absolutely. So I mean, literally that first sequence costs billions of dollars and close to a decade to unravel. And now in less than a day and a half, you can sequence an entire human genome for less than a thousand dollars, much less than a thousand dollars and have all of that information ported right back to you. So yes, the cost curve is exceeding Moore's Law. But just to sort of reconnect the dots to your initial question. So retrospectively we had no idea what the genome sequence was or how it related to diseases. Aaron Watson: Would it be safe to say then basically that like what you just said, every disease is genetic before that we wouldn't have even been able to say that. Dietrich Stephan: Exactly, I think that's correct. Well, we, we could say that diseases were hereditary, meaning, you know, the kids of people with diseases had a higher probability of having that disease. And those measures of heritability pointed to genetic underpinnings. Sorry if that's too technical, but we had no idea what the genes were that caused those diseases. And now. Aaron Watson: Gotcha. Dietrich Stephan: So, and we've had that information and now we can give it to individual patients. And so the promise now on a go-forward basis and why we invested so much in sequencing that genome and finding all of those disease causing variants and building the infrastructure to deliver that information. The promise is now that we can develop genetic medicines that actually target the sequence that's changed in a person with the disease directly, as opposed to trying to fiddle with high throughput, random screening at the protein level, we just go in tame that misbehaving gene forms a normal protein forms, a normal cell forms, a normal person. And that's the era that we're in right now that promises truly scalable and efficient solutions for people that are suffering. Aaron Watson: Wow. So I want to kind of take this back to the Neubase story and even to your story specifically. So if the LinkedIn profile is to be trusted you were the chair of the pits department of human genomics, and there is a kind of correlation point with you giving up that chair ship and starting Neubase. So that sounds. Like the, the kind of stew of a catalyzing event. Can you put a little bit more color on that picture? Dietrich Stephan: Sure. I feel like I've had two separate careers that have somehow at one point become entangled and most recently become disentangled again. And so I started life as a academic researcher. So writing grants to fund my academic labs and publishing papers on what we observed out there in the world. I mean, that's what scientists do they try and understand the world around them and communicate that to build a foundation of knowledge. Next to an in parallel to that have always had a passion for then taking those new insights and trying to drive them into the marketplace to actually help people put another way. We would find a broken gene that caused you name it Alzheimer's disease, and we'd write a paper on it. And then it would just sort of float out into the ether. And there was no downstream connectivity to the real world. And so at some point, I'd like to say, I had my first existential crisis where it was like, why am I doing this? You know? And it, and it came back to the fact that I was doing it so that I could offer that information to someone who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease to get a diagnosis. Or to be able to take advantage of a new therapy built on that new information. And so while sort of running academic programs would always actively push this information out into the marketplace by trying to partner with big pharma companies and say, Hey, you got to look at this. You know, this is important, put it into your drug development pipeline or by spinning out a new company that was focused on building a new diagnostic or therapeutic in that area. And, and eventually. You know, I came back to Pittsburgh to build the infrastructure here in Pittsburgh to support that translation and commercialization. And we can talk about what that infrastructure is, but took a holding position as chair of genetics here at the university while I was building that infrastructure. And eventually when that job was done, jumped back into the private sector and I'm focused now on, on building Neubase, Aaron Watson: Delineate the infrastructure that you're talking about, and then also, new base almost like seems like its own form of infrastructure for this type of development. So can you just help delineate those two for me? Dietrich Stephan: Yeah. So if you go to places like Boston and San Francisco and now San Diego, what you see are incredible universities. I mean, think of Boston, Harvard, and MIT sort of smushed up together in Cambridge. All of those smart science, academic scientists are shouting Eureka all day long every day. And what is arisen next to them are people with money ie venture capitalists. And so the scientists will run across the street and say, Hey, I have a new idea for new, a drug or a new diagnostic. Give me some money, and we'll start a new company and then help me hire people that know how to build a company and that whole ecosystem of startup in biotech has really been, and it was birthed in Boston here in the U S and then migrated to San Francisco. And it's reached to a sophisticated state in Pittsburgh. We have, we have that exact constellation of universities where people are shouting Eureka every day. There's little investment capital in the biotech area and little expertise in building companies. And so I worked for about five years to set up a place, which is here in the south side that young scientists can, or any scientists can go and say, Hey, I've got an idea. Help me figure out if it's a good idea. Get me the capital, get me the expertise and let's start a new company. And I've, I've sort of released that back to the university and hopefully that will flourish here. But that wasn't my life's, you know, passion to build that infrastructure. It was I think just a necessary piece of infrastructure to unlock real solutions for patients here in Pittsburgh. So NeuBase. Was one of those companies that was spun out of a scientist's lab at Carnegie Mellon University who had a good idea. And we came around it got the capital. So we've raised about a hundred million in financing and built a team around it, which you see around you here in the office to basically take that idea and turn it into real medicines. One other aside, and I'm sorry if I'm being too, long-winded here. Aaron Watson: The beauty of the podcast is that it is a medium that lends itself to high context, long form storytelling. So you are doing a fantastic job. Dietrich Stephan: Thank you. Thank you. I had the pleasure and honor of sitting down with the president of the national academy of engineering down in Washington, DC. And you know, there are various national academies. There's a national academy of medicine of science, of engineering. And. I forget how I talked my way in to see him, but he had a very simple message for me and I, I'm not sure how we got to that part in the conversation, but it's always stuck with me and is I think really telling of why. academic research is different than commercialization. It's scientists, looking at the world around them, try and understand it and communicate it. Engineers and artists and entrepreneurs create something that the world has never seen before. And it's an absolutely different endeavor, fundamentally different. In many ways you see universities try and facilitate commercialization, but they can never really do it because it's not their core business. Aaron Watson: It's a different muscle. Dietrich Stephan: Totally different muscle, different people, different language, different incentives. What universities need to do better is to let the technology flow out. They can't think everything's the crown jewels and lock it down and they have to just be open about it. I remember when I was a scientist that was all the dark side industries, the dark side, all those people are bad people bad. Exactly. It's like, no, you know They're trying to do something different. It's as simple as that, that's the part that we've been missing here in Pittsburgh and what I've always focused on in terms of infrastructure building. And now what I'm trying to do by way of example here in our region. Aaron Watson: So we've spoken with Craig Markovitz at CMU about university technology transfer. So it sounds like getting to Neubase here found this researcher who developed or uncovered the underpinning technology. And then in some way, shape or form university technology transfer allows that to come out of an academic setting and start to be commercialized. Is that accurate so far? Dietrich Stephan: That's correct. Yes. Aaron Watson: So take me through not only what you saw, but what the market now sees as a publicly traded company that makes this such a compelling opportunity. Dietrich Stephan: Within the university, there was a scientist who has been working on this core chemistry for quite a while. It was his core focus area. There is a lot of early research that he did that promised that these could be used to treat genetic diseases. And so over the course of interacting with that scientist and learning about the theoretical potential of these I got quite excited about it. And so ultimately what we did is together went to the university's technology transfer office and said, Hey, what would it take to get a license to the inventions from this investigator's lab? And so they outlined sort of a set of terms, financial terms that a company would need to meet in order to get an exclusive license to that intellectual property. And so we said, okay sounds good. Booted up a company. Took a license, an exclusive license. And on the back of that, we're able to finance the company. Now a key point here is that the theoretical potential of a technology is very different than the application of that technology in the marketplace. And that's where the risk comes in and risk capital and everything else. Aaron Watson: So what you're saying is in one of these like Boston, like environments is if you have a base of investors who are finally attuned to specifically buy it, technology investments, the number one, they're going to have the best tool set of anyone to understand those risks potentially work with you to de-risk. Cause that's really actually, when you're working through a startup you're, de-risking step-by-step as you go through the process and in addition to help you actually navigate the regulatory challenges and the hiring challenges that come along. Dietrich Stephan: Absolutely well said, and, and it's a different type of investor than an investor who likes tech or whatever it is, retail goods. So there there's a different arc in a different set of de-risking activities, for lack of a better word that needs to come around to biotech. And so it's a finely honed skill to be a biotech investor and understand how across a portfolio you can actually make money. I mean, what we're talking about is you know, one of the hardest things to do is like take the commotion complex machine we've ever encountered in the universe, the human body and say, okay, well that's broken, I'm going to fabricate something. That's going to fix that. I'm going to go in. And there's a whole regulatory oversight that you alluded to to make sure that not only do you not. People, but you actually help them. It's hugely expensive. It's it takes a long time, but the benefits it's are enormous. These companies don't make money for the first 10 years of their existence generaly. So, how do you value them? I mean, it's just a different skill. Aaron Watson: So you've basically, it's funny cause we just recorded with Jonathan so the listeners will be a week apart, but for me it's hours and use that exact same metaphor of the most complex system or the most complex structure you can put together. And it just clicked for me. It's obviously so plainly obvious to you, but for me, you know, someone who might have the skills as an auto mechanic or the skills of constructing a building, that's still something that has been designed conceived of from the human mind. And so its starting point is within the bounds of the human mind, whereas we didn't design our bodies. It was not something that we kind of had an active role in, in shaping to a significant degree. So it is to some degree unbounded by that otherwise mental constraints. Dietrich Stephan: So well said, I used to use that exact analogy, which is we didn't come with an owner's manual or a schematic diagram. And in fact, in many ways the human genome project was the first step in that direction. Okay. Now we've got a, a sequence that encodes for the instructions for how to build it, but we still don't know how to build it from the instruction manual. It's just the first step. Aaron Watson: That makes sense. Dietrich Stephan: I mean, you couldn't take a genetic sequence and ever extrapolate all of the steps that had to go from that to a living, breathing human. Yeah. We're just correlating the sequence to a person that has a disease that's as far as we've gotten. Aaron Watson: So I want to change lanes a little bit. We're still talking about Neubase, but like you said, these companies don't make money for a long period of time. 10 years. Sometimes, often you, a Neubase just went public in April. Of 2021, despite the fact that this company was brought together in the beginning of 2018 or approximately in 2018, we've had a number of other preclinical biotechnology startups on their show before, and they are all still in some way, shape or form private enterprises. Can you help me to understand number one, just it's a decision to even try to go public, but it's also a, a marker of the appetite from. Some segment of investors out there to potentially participate there. There's a reason that multi-billion dollar asset under management, hedge funds, don't go investing in like the seed stage of tangential consumer app companies. There just isn't the right kind of trade-offs based off of the incentives of their structure. So can you help me understand why NeuBase is a publicly traded company. Whereas similar aged preclinical biotechnology firms might not be. Dietrich Stephan: I've had a lot of experience building companies out in the San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley and Boston, that traditional path has been. A founder, usually at an academic institution walk across the street to a venture capital firm, pitches it in a minority of cases. They'll get a check and a company will be founded and that VC will bring the money, but they will also essentially take control of the company for the purposes of de-risking it. As we talked about before. So they'll seat the board. They'll seat the management. They'll keep the reins pretty tight and maximize for a liquidity event at some point in the future. And usually their fund life is 10 years. And so they want to get their money back out within that 10 year timeframe at most so, and that's all geared to a founder. That's never done it before and recognizing it's a different skill as we just discussed. And so it makes sense for first time founders now, after having done it a dozen plus times, you learn the boiler plate of how to build a biotech company and de-risk it. You don't need that skill set that the VC brings anyway. And thus you question, well, why would I give them control over the company? Then if, if, if I know how to do this, essentially you're injecting more risk because they don't know the substance of what you're building as well as you do. So if you bring both the management expertise and all of the tricks of the trade to company, building with the scientific expertise, it's actually more risk to take VC money. And by the way, every time, every traunch of money you take from venture capitalist comes with a massively dilute of event. So by the time. You ever sell that company or take it public, the people that founded it or are putting their blood, sweat and tears into it, have a fraction of what the VCs have collectively. So in this instance, I wasn't willing to do that again. And so we decided actually right at founding to take the company public and let me take a half step back. So how do the VCs get their money? The primary routes are either sell the company to another bigger company and get a check and return your fund or take the company public. And once the stock is liquid, it can be freely traded on the open market and they can take their money back. So the game, and it really is a game that has emerged is build these companies up. And then you the VCs apply what I call purple haze, which is basically a brand halo, which says, oh my gosh, if Sequoia Capital thinks that's a good company, it must be a good company. And then, you know, the IPO balloons, the VCs generally take their money out. And then management is left to support the stock in the, in the aftermarket. And there's Aaron Watson: even a hype cycle there where like some certain firms are like, well, if they invested, then we'll invest. So like in terms of sequential rounds, you don't want to over-simplify, but can be like part of the basis of too. Dietrich Stephan: It's the game, that's the game. And, and, and that is also predicated. On a concept that the venture capitalists somehow knows that that company is better than the person who founded it, which to meet us and make any sense because the person who founded it is the one who understands the theoretical potential of the company, much better than passive investor. I would think maybe that's maybe that's a stretch, but the notion that a passive investor would credentialize me somehow in my judgment always rubbed me the wrong way. At NeuBase it was plain as day what the potential was, and we had no need for the expertise that those early stage investors brought. And in fact, it seemed like an anchor in terms of giving up control, being buried under layers of profile. You know, financings and so forth. And quite frankly, it was demotivating to after five to seven to 10 years of work that our team would emerge with just a sliver of ownership. So we said, forget that model. We're going to do something different. Aaron Watson: But you still need capital to make this happen. Dietrich Stephan: You have to get money to make this happen. And so what we strategically decided to do was at founding in essentially in July of 2019, we took the company public on NASDAQ, concurrent to raising a seed round of financing, roughly $20 million. And we use that. I mean, it was nothing. We had no operating history, no offices, no nothing. We use that money to build the plane while we were flying in essentially sort of a design build process. So we got some incubator space. We hired a half dozen people. We set up a wet lab, produced our first data set and concurrently we socialize the story with all the public market investors. We've probably had three or 400 unique investor meetings over the last two or so years since we were founded and went public. Aaron Watson: And what percentage of those are you? Dietrich Stephan: All of them. Aaron Watson: That's intense. Dietrich Stephan: Yeah. You gotta be willing to put the work in. Right, so nothing comes for free. Aaron Watson: Once again, the illegibility of a career like this, that's not something that I think is widely appreciated with the role that you play. If this company is public and you know, it's not like we just post it once. Here's the thesis. Hope you like it. It's repeated rounds of questioning, honing the pitch. In order to make this happen. Dietrich Stephan: Absolutely. And then clawing our way to real progress in terms of data that build, conviction that we're going to get into the clinic with our first program. And then we're going to get into our next five programs. And then in 10 years, 20 programs or whatever, whatever the trajectory is like, there's a constant narrative that needs to be bolstered with data and real progress to build confidence in the public market investors. And, and it's a whole different dance than getting VCs into a company, which has its own unique skill set. And we can touch on that if you'd like, but there's a whole different dance there. That's fascinating as well. Aaron Watson: So I want to get there, but I want to just make sure that by now I feel like we've, we've gone in so many interesting directions. I just want to make sure that it's completely legible for folks what NeuBase is doing right now, which is developing solutions aimed at Huntington's disease and myotonic dystrophy, which you can expand a little bit. How that works and what that entails. And then that can kind of help us give an entree into where things are going, because like you said, there's kind of limited range of, of current treatments, but that aperture should be widening with the passage of time. Dietrich Stephan: Yeah. No, thank you. So we're about to, we're a little less than two years old in terms of our operating history, we've raised about a hundred million dollars in the public markets. We've got 30 people on our team. Now we just moved into some beautiful space here in Pittsburgh that we're very proud of. A beautiful view of the river and the city. I mean, world-class and we are working on three different disease programs, all of which are purely genetic diseases. First is a disease called Huntington's disease, which is one of those diseases you never want to get close to basically around midlife, if you have the misbehaving gene, your brain starts to die and you slowly begin to lose the ability to walk and then talk and then think, and then you die because your brain dies and there's nothing you can do about. And oh, by the way, half of your kids will carry the effected gene as well. They know what's queued up for them. And there are these agonizing decisions about whether to get tested or not, and know the future and not being able to do anything about it. The second disease is myotonic dystrophy. It's a disease where effected individuals carry a gene that has a mutation in it. They suffer from muscular issues like myotonia or an inability to relax after contraction, muscle weakness, and wasting, cardiac conduction defects, cognitive deficits, and they generally don't early. And then a form of cancer caused by an oncogene called K RAs. 30% of all cancers are caused by mutations in this gene. And there are no effective therapies for the most common mutations in this gene. So think about pancreatic cancer as an example. I mean, you get pancreatic cancer, you're gonna die. And that's because this gene has historically been quote unquote undruggable. So those are the three to things we're working on. Each of which has a misbehaving gene that we're targeting. And we make medicines that actually look like a tiny little gene. So if you think back to high school biology, you know, you've got the DNA double helix that looks like a, a ladder where the rungs of the ladder are A's C's G's and T's, and it's a double helix because there are two strands that mesh and form the rungs and then you twist it. And that's why, that's why it's a helix. So if you rip that DNA helix in half, think about sawing down the middle of the rungs of a ladder, pulling those two backbones apart and snipping them to be very short. What you have is a backbone with some A's C's G's and T's on it. And that's what our medicines look. Period. Now the chemistry is what makes them special, but we can let them loose. And we've shown we can do this in animal models of each of those three diseases, you know, simple subcutaneous injection. And they get into every cell and every tissue and they're like heat seeking missiles. They sorta query the genome, find their perfect match, and then they stick. And when they stick, they stick really tightly and they only like to stick to the broken gene. Aaron Watson: So that you literally, just now as the exact question that I was excited to ask, so it basically can identify where that is inappropriate and then the cell or the, the, the genes itself are also sophisticated enough to be like, actually I'd prefer to have the one that's not broken as opposed to this broken. Dietrich Stephan: Exactly. So what happens is, you know, there's a concept called complimentary based pairing. And again, digging deep back into high school biology, A's liked to hydrogen bond to T's. G's like to hydrogen bond to C's. And so based on the sequence that you plug into the drug, there was only one place in the 6 billion letter genome that that drug will stick perfectly. And so, I mean, it just brings. Unbelievable questions. Like how does a query every location in the genome and find where it's supposed to stick. And what if it's nine out of 10 positions? How does it rip itself back off again? But somehow it does. So all of that sort of stuff that has to happen before you get perfect target engagement happens. And then you've got a lock on the misbehaving gene, essentially. So that gene. Is taken out of action, meaning it can't be copied into what's called a messenger RNA, and that can't be translated into a disease causing protein. But remember, you also have a second copy of that gene from your other parent, and hopefully that one's still functioning well and can do what it's supposed to do to maintain normal function. So you've gotten rid of the insult, but you still have, Aaron Watson: I'm glad people like you were working on stuff like that sounds basically like magic also alluded to, if you've done the venture back to path, a couple of times there is a thumbprint for the development of a biotechnology company. I think the most valuable thing for the audience generally would be a summary of that notion just in terms of, you know, to use I'm more tuned to like a B2B SAS type of company. So you need the technical lead who can actually build the software product. You need a business function. That number one can sales and market its way into actually getting into the other company's workflows. And you need a support, a venture that can both help those customers work through their problems and identify the bugs so that those can be passed on over to the engineering arm to get the things solved. That's a gross oversimplification, but that's. Basically what we're aiming for here. And if you can build B2B SAS platform with those three functions and they continue to leverage each other up, you're in a great spot. So if we could attempt to paint a similar picture for these biotechnology companies, generally, they have another game-changing technology seems like it would be the presupposition for any of this to work, but once that kind of breakthrough or potential breakthrough has been identified, what are those type of building blocks that are needed to assemble? Dietrich Stephan: It's a hard question to answer because in many ways, There are multiple flavors of these types of companies. If I would try to get to some commonalities, the first is the technical lead or scientist who has developed hopefully a new platform technology that can output medicines that can address diseases in a different way and promise solutions where there was no solution before. Aaron Watson: I think an interesting nuance here is often with other companies. They're really like a big thing could just be, we can do it for cheaper. And while that's still the case In bio, it seems like that's much less the issue and it's more, we can get a better result, even if it costs more. Now, even if it's way more expensive, there's a means of covering this. It's very much oriented around similar outcomes with less side effects or drastically better outcomes are the primary bellwether. Dietrich Stephan: I think that's right. I mean, there are so many diseases that we can't do anything about. And so even some incremental benefit or clinical improvement. Can be a multi-billion dollar drug. And then really the cost engineering happens when those solutions come off patent and a generics company comes in and basically just copies the molecule and offers it for cheaper. So, so it's less about cost on the front end. And it's more about, you know, how much better can you do at reducing suffering and death. So you need the technical lead. You need a source of capital, obviously, because this stuff is hugely expensive. When we go on our tour, you'll see. A chemistry laboratory and a biology laboratory and big, huge million-dollar machines that sequence genes and, you know, make molecules. And that's very different than a capital efficient build out a for example, a tech company where you need a laptop, a couple of cups of coffee, coffee, and a laptop. Exactly food ad libitum coffee. And you're you're set. And really it's focused around sort of the, the laboratory based activity until you hit a point where you begin to become a clinical stage company, and then you need a chief medical officer, you need regulatory experts, and it turns into a whole nother type of build-out where you're ensuring that it's safe and human beings. In what's called a phase one trial. If it passes that gate, you have to show it's efficacious in humans in a small number of humans, that's called a phase two trial. If it passes that gate, you do a phase three trial. If it, if it's safe and effective in, and now a larger set of human beings, you might get approved. And then there's phase four or post-market surveillance where you make sure that no one out there in the world keels over for some unknown reason. And actually there's a famous story. The drug Vioxx got pulled from market because of the phase four surveillance work. There were some cardiovascular issues. Multi-billion dollar drug got pulled. So hugely expensive, hugely time consuming, different skillsets than which you just articulated. Aaron Watson: And I would love to just hang on the chief medical officer a little bit more because that's one that has up until this moment I've remained, but federal, I think you might be able to help me. So there there's the technical lead. That's much more about engineering of the drug and my interpretation of the chief medical officer is they're doing some form of translation from a laboratory setting and academic setting into the clinic, which is where the doctors have their own whole wonderfully complex mode of operating. And where would this actually fit within their context of evaluation, recommendation, ongoing care? Is that, is that kind of accurate or? Dietrich Stephan: Yeah, absolutely. And so we, for example, we have this wonderful chief medical officer, Dr. Saundra Rojas Caro. She reaches back into the science shop and looks at our molecule. To say, okay. Does that molecule perform from a pharmacologic perspective? Meaning if you give it at this dose via this route of administration, it has this effect get comfortable that that would translate forward into humans. And then similarly say, well, is it safe in this animal model? At some higher dose. And what does the toxicology profile look like once she gets comfortable? All of that gets packaged up into what's called an ind application that goes to the FDA. And there were meetings with the FDA to run them through this data, literally at, at the, at the, at the level of sort of experiments and data elements and everything. And, and then they'll say, I mean, we're talking about people, right? Putting weird new things into people is what we're talking about. So this is very sophisticated and disciplined work. And then once the FDA reviews that ind application has the meeting, they'll say, okay, we feel comfortable. You can go into a dozen patients or a dozen healthy volunteers at some low dose. Maybe it's a dose escalation study and we just want to make sure that nothing bad happens. And so that CMO will oversee all of that work. That will also be responsible for enrolling the patients at various sites. Once that gate is finished, there's another meeting. There's another application. It goes to the phase two trial and there there's usually multiple clinical sites enrolling patients with the disease. And you've got to be able to communicate to those people why we think this is going to work, why it's not dangerous, and sometimes they'll have other options of trials to, to go into all of that gets led by the chief medical officer culminating in approval to go to market a new drug approval NDA. Aaron Watson: Yeah. I feel like I could ask you questions to infinity, but I don't. I want to be respectful of your time. So my last. Question before we ask our, our last sequence of questions is around a concept that maybe I tangentially was aware of. I first, like, first of all, clarity to me associated with the whole COVID thing and this record setting development and approval of vaccines to be deployed in mass to people. One of the narratives that I saw come up was the concept of challenge trials basically meaning short-circuiting that multi-phase approach to the approval of vaccine. And if there were a contingent of willing, in fact, formed volunteers who said, I understand that this has not been as rigorously tested as most of the vaccines that we'd be willing to put our body, but because of the stakes at a societal level, I'm willing to take that risk eyes wide open as a usually a young, healthy person. Test this vaccine on me and let's see what happens. Short circuiting, that multiple phase process basically. Can you just articulate the kind of spectrum of the folks that will be the first humans on the front lines for trialing anything? Assuming this is not child trials, maybe that's like one kind of extreme end of the spectrum. Can you just talk about the folks who are, between a rock and a hard place where, you know, we're talking about treating Huntington's, they're already looking down the barrel of a really, really nasty thing. And you're able to come to sit, come to them and say, there's no guarantee that this will solve everything, but in the absence of other viable medical solutions, this is, is one of the alternative attempts. Is that, is that a fair? Dietrich Stephan: It's a great question. In these devastatingly severe diseases where there's literally nothing else. Available think about again, pancreatic cancer. I mean, you know, there's nothing you can do generally there, I think is an interest on the part of patients, maybe a heightened interest in exploring more experimental therapies and engaging in those conversations. And of course there's an interest on the part of the manufacturers of these medicines to help those people and the tension, the appropriate tension is still making sure that you're not ever doing any harm. Right. So how does that manifest? I think you begin to get into an area where you really need to be thoughtful partner with the agencies and just be hyper communicative. So for example, our hope as we get into our myotonic dystrophy type one and Huntington's trials is that we can do what's called a combined phase one, two trial, where rather than enrolling. All healthy individuals, there's all, or part of the humans actually have the disease. And so we hope fully concurrently or very quickly thereafter, both show safety and efficacy. To try and get hints of whether we can double down and move quickly into sort of a larger phase two or a phase three trial. Aaron Watson: And it makes sense or regulatory body would be likely to approve something like that because of the stakes. It's not, there should be kind of almost like a different bar for, Hey, you know, people that their eyebrows grow too fast or something that's like not so devastatingly high stakes, where if we can accelerate this in any way, alleviate any sort of suffering, it intuitively makes sense that there would be a somewhat different bar for how that's actually tested and brought to market. Is that, is that a fair assessment or maybe not so much? Dietrich Stephan: You know, it's, I think from, from an intuitive and patient-centric perspective, I understand that mindset. I think from a, from the perspective of a company, that's trying to always make sure that we're safe and then efficacious and probably, and I can't obviously speak for any, any anyone besides me and the company, but I could imagine that they also want to make sure that they're not harming people first. And, and also then on top of that, ensuring that there's some modicum of benefit. And so there's a, there's a natural and I think a very healthy tension where, where everyone's really is trying to do the right thing, maybe coming at it from slightly different perspectives. Is it ever optimized? I don't know. It's probably never optimized in every single scenario. The parties are aligned and in getting to the end goal, maybe the only, the only folks in that triad. Perhaps would be willing to take excessive risk would be those patients who have no other solutions. And, you know, I've seen that personally, but at the same time, could you imagine that the damage that could come from doing things incorrectly? So, yeah. Yeah. Aaron Watson: Dietrich. This has been awesome. I have learned so much and I really hope that at some point in the future, we can do it for a second time and you can teach me even more before we ask our standard last two questions to wrap up. Is there anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you the chance to. Dietrich Stephan: Now I would just say thank you for the honor of being on your podcast and also for, for what you do. As we talked about previously, I think the world is a really complicated place and giving young people exposure to various different areas so that they can find their passion more effectively. Is it's amazing. Aaron Watson: So that's very kind, but the, the honor's all mine and I hope that listeners will continue to follow along with everything you guys are doing. What digital coordinates can we provide for people that want to learn more? Dietrich Stephan: NeuBaseTherapeutics.com and then feel free to also reach out to me on LinkedIn personally, and happy to continue the conversation with folks. Aaron Watson: Awesome. We're going to link that in the show notes. You can find it in the podcast app. You're probably listening to this right now goingdeep.com/podcast for every single episode of the show before I let you go Dietrich. I want to give you the mic one final time so you can issue an actionable personal challenge to the audio. Dietrich Stephan: So my challenge would be, and this is a real life skill that I have to employ every single day. And I'd say it's the most important skill is if there is someone out there in the world that you admire, or you want to talk to, for some reason, figure out how to do it. They're just people. Aaron Watson: You could not, that that should be like the, you know, front of, not that I'll ever write a book, but on the front of my book, that's literally the whole strategy is the world is so much smaller than you realize it's so much more accessible than you realize. And there is even just something to the realization that they are just people, the deification of another human is. Cause all sorts of issues. And when you realize they're just, you know, live and breathe and think, and try to get to make their way through the day, even LeBron we're all humans. Dietrich Stephan: Absolutely beautiful. This has been fantastic.
Jonathan Steckbeck is the founder of Peptilogics, a biotechnology platform company that develops best-in-class novel peptide drugs for unmet medical needs. He also has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine.
Amongst other problems, his company Peptilogics is focused on developing a new category of antibiotics. It has been 20 years since there was a genuinely new class of antibiotics, yet bacterial cells have continued to evolve and develop into drug-resistant infections. In this interview, Jonathan and Aaron discuss the founding of Peptilogics, why they’re focused on this new modality of medication, and the FDA approval process. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Jonathan Steckbeck’s Challenge; If there’s something that you want to do that doesn’t exist, go do it. Connect with Jonathan Steckbeck
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Peptilogics Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 456 with Pete DeComo where we discuss the long, arduous process of developing a medical device and episode 443 with Blake Dube where we talk about better oxygen tanks. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Euan Guttridge has spent the last 7 years working in the self-driving car divisions for some of the world's largest technology companies.
Between these two roles, Euan developed an angel investing syndicate under the banner Reinforced Ventures. The syndicate differentiates itself for the technical proficiency of its limited partners, bringing a fresh perspective to the companies it invests in. Euan’s portfolio includes a number of past Going Deep podcast guests including; Gridwise, Locomation, UpContent, Fifth Season, Edge Case Research, and Honeycomb Credit. While not geographically exclusive, Reinforced does focus on Pittsburgh because of its over $10 billion of academic research funded and $6.6 billion of private funding in technology over the past decade. In this conversation, Euan and Aaron discuss a career developing autonomous vehicle technology, how an AngelList syndicate works, and how to do thorough due diligence. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Euan Guttridge’s Challenge; Follow your curiosity. Connect with Euan Guttridge
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Reinforced Ventures Website euan@reinforcedventures.com If you liked this interview, check out some of Euan’s portfolio companies like Locomation’s Çetin Meriçli, Edge Case Research’s Mike Wagner, and Gridwise’s Ryan Green.
Steve Muck is the CEO of Brayman Construction, a heavy civil and geotechnical contractor that builds bridges, dams, and other large infrastructure. Steve is also the cofounder of construction-related robotics startups TyBot and Advanced Construction Robotics.
Steve has started or acquired twenty businesses and currently operates a portfolio of entities that in construction-related endeavors alone runs approximately $200 million in revenue annually. Steve acquired the company over 28 years ago in a leveraged buyout and has since acquired a number of companies as he has expanded his business empire. In this episode, Steve and Aaron discuss how Steve got started in construction, the company’s ‘Dragon Slayer’ ethos, and how he has upskilled his team in order to escape competition. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Stephen Muck’s Challenge; Take a risk. Connect with Stephen Muck
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Brayman Construction Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 412 with Jake Loosararian where we discuss industrial robotics and raising one of Pittsburgh’s biggest Series A financings. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Muck: The trade unions that we interact with the laborers and the ironworkers. When we introduce the products to them, and we started talking about what we were doing, they actually embraced Thai baht because they've had customers like me coming to them, looking for people in the peak season and they don't have them. And it's very frustrating for them to have to tell me as an employer or a customer that we can't send you a five guys cause we just don't have them.
Watson: Hey, this is a very special episode of going deeper with Aaron Watson, my guest, Stephen Muck has taken a company that he acquired over 28 years ago. That was doing $7 million in annual revenue and built it into a multi-faceted diverse powerhouse. Doing more than $200 million in annual revenue. Stephen talks about how he's built the business, the role that robotics and automation will play in the future of construction, and why he trains all of his executives to be dragon slayers. There's a ton here. We didn't have a ton of time with Stephen. So I tried to move it at a really quick pace and think you're going to take a lot away from it. Here is Steven Muck. Watson: Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. I'm excited to be talking with you. Muck: Yeah, it's my pleasure. Happy to be here. Watson: So I'm going to go back to 1992, you had started your career in investment banking and made the decision to acquire a construction company. How did you make that choice? And can you talk a little bit about the state of that company when you were acquiring it. Muck: Sure. Let me take you back one step further. Watson: Okay. Muck: Okay. Because I think it's relevant and it's maybe a little bit interesting. So when I got out of school undergrad, the first job I took was in economic development. So I actually worked for private, nonprofit corporations doing job creation, economic development, creating small business incubators, assisting companies with developing business plans and funding them using public funding programs to supplement bank funding. So, that was really unique environment because I had sort of the who's who of various communities on my boards. And so those board members became mentors to me in various ways and had a lot of diverse business background. So when I left investment banking to acquire my first business, Braman construction was a little $7 million rusty construction business that was focused on doing subcontracted, concrete structure work for, the bigger earth movers and things of that nature. So that's kind of where they were when I came on the scene, they had some older superintendents, they had a lot of older equipment. And I was full of piss and vinegar, and ready to rock and roll in and figure out a business that I really didn't know much about. Watson: And so for folks that are less familiar with contracting generally, subcontractor general contractor, that's relatively self evident, but in terms of the stair-step up, this is how I was thinking about it coming into the interview. And you just correct me if I'm wrong, a subcontractor. It is somewhat constrained and is relatively, I mean, maybe you're just absolutely world-class in that little sub domain, but there's a lot of competition, a lot of different electricians, carpenters, plumbers that could potentially bid on the general contractors job. And so, first by climbing up into being a general contractor instead of a sub, and then moving into the different specialties that Raymond has developed underwater, efforts, bridges, dams, these really kind of complex, heavy civil infrastructure projects. It was really a study in differentiation and kind of escaping a lot of the competition in the construction realm. Muck: Yeah. That's fairly accurate. I mean, as a subcontractor, you need your horse to win the race, and then you need to be the jockey that got the ride. So, that it, your odds, aren't the greatest. And as a general contractor, you have much more control of your own destiny. So we work in both hard bid and negotiated environments. Most of what we work in are hard bid environments, which means, if you're qualified and you're low, you get the job, which means you have to be efficient, you've gotta be good at what you do. And as a subcontractor, you don't have that luxury. You've got to have a relationship with that general contractor and that general contractor has to be successful. And then ultimately has to select you to do the work for them. Watson: And so what is the muscle or kind of experience that gets built to be able to consistently land in those in low bid environments, because, you could, you can't necessarily forsake safety or kind of basic like cost of goods sold, or things like that. Where is the competitive edge that allows a company like Braman to win those qualified and low bid type of situations? Muck: Yeah. It's really experienced people. We're margin hunters, so we built the business on hunting margin, making money, reinvesting that capital in our business, in our business plan and in our target markets. So we've had to make the money to be able to grow the business and to do that. We kind of focused on higher profit activities and the higher profit activities tend to be riskier in a number of different ways. And you're absolutely right. We keep safety first in everything we do. So you can't soft sell safety in anything that we're doing. And frankly, over the years, we've learned, I've learned that having a safety first environment creates a more productive workforce. They feel secure, they feel safe, they know that we're looking out for them and we expect them to look out for each other. They tend to be more productive. So, to find the margin, you have to rub up against the risk, and a lot of our businesses are risky businesses. Our foundation business is risky and that you don't know what the subsurface conditions are, and you may have soil borings that give you some indications, but it's not crystal clear. So, that's a risky business. To the extent that we've learned to develop ways of solving problems in that environment, it lets us mitigate the risks. Maybe more effectively than other contractors, which let us embrace the challenging work, which is really twofold. It creates organizational development and it creates the human development in your people by providing them with unique, interesting challenges, and at the same time we still do mundane sort of straightforward projects, but we're always out looking for things that haven't been done before. Watson: And so that was kinda the next question I was thinking about where, Hannah and I run a media business. If we want to go run an experiment, we can make media for ourselves. And there's, it takes some time, but there's not some sort of, kind of physical output or outlay that has to be a prerequisite for that type of experimentation. You can't necessarily go just, Hey, we're just going to go build a bridge somewhere else way, way beyond the bounds of some of these possible. So as you try to move an organization in the direction of some of these riskier ventures, these potentially higher margin or less competitive ventures. What is the on-ramp? Is it recruiting the right person? Is it, what gives you the confidence to even say, hey, we can go fill that need that we put the bid in for something like that. Muck: Yeah. I think, institutionally it's having done it. Before when we started down this road, we were a little $7 million business. So we've, incrementally reached and reached and reached and grown and done more challenging, more interesting work. Another way we approach that is by combining the various expertise that we have. So, we have our Marine construction capability, we have foundation capabilities. If we combine those, it lets us go after a combination of let's call it a Marine foundation job, which is complex. And there are fewer people who are willing to, or capable of going after that work and having the confidence to know that they can get it done and they can get it done right. So it's having the right people. It's sometimes acquiring the right business that brings a certain new skill set to us. Sometimes it's hiring an individual, who's got a specialization in a special capability and bringing him into the team. And some of the things that are kind of fun and exciting for us is that we get people joining our team because of the diversity of things that we do. And good people want to keep learning and developing their skillsets and working with people who can help them. And we've got a, an interesting mix of young folks and some older folks who've got great experience. And so, our young people turn tend to learn up pretty rapidly here in this world. Watson: Yeah. So in that spirit of the acquisitions that you've had in order to kind of assemble Braman into this company, one of the things that was really interesting to me is in startup culture, there's this celebration of equity sales in the forms of your series A or series B in it. And people are like, oh my gosh, congratulations. And what you actually did was just sell your equity off to these other kinds of outside investors. Was it, it was a leveraged buyout to, for acquire Braman. Can you talk about the financial construction side of the business? And as you do these acquisitions, is that mostly through debt financing? Is that something that because of your background in investment banking, you kind of had that legibility into how to best do that? Muck: Yeah, I mean, initially it was, and it was kind of interesting when I finished grad school and I was trying to decide what was next. The banking industry was kind of a nice place to go because ultimately I knew I wanted to be debt developing my own businesses and working for myself. So developing those financing skills and the banking experience really gave you a lot of credibility for that first deal in particular, because I knew what they wanted to see. I knew how they wanted it structured. I knew what was reasonable from a projection standpoint. So it did give me kind a basis for starting down that road. And then as we've gone, the deals are all a little bit different. But typically we've bought small businesses with a few good people in markets that we weren't currently in. So new products. So whether it was our large diameter drilling business, we acquired that was the first acquisition. That was a bankrupt company that was owned by, at that point, our bank, had taken them, had taken their assets and we went in and, bought the assets from the bank and went back and picked up some of the people that were cast offs from the bankruptcy and brought them back and started down that road. So back then, it was very much a bootstrapped diversification because we were still building profits, and building our equity. And we didn't have a lot to work with. So there was a lot of leveraging going on back in that day. Watson: Makes sense, and that's kind of opportunistic. It's a great deal. Maybe more so than like the perfect strategic compliment, but as you continue to grow, then you can kind of step back in. That really seems like what advanced construction robotics is, is much more of a stepping back, surveying the landscape and saying, this is something that needs to exist. And we're going to apply robotics to construction, which is, is relative to the other industry has been somewhat less automated than many of the other, Muck: Right. Yeah. That's a great point. And that's a great contrast, that first acquisition being a bankruptcy that was repoed by our financial institution, we bought the assets for dimes on a dollar kind of scenario, and got the business back on its feet. And then, with advanced construction robotics, it's, 25 plus years of watching the construction industry as a business person, more so than an engineer and looking at it and recognizing that our productivity is we're dropping, our workforce availability was becoming more and more of a problem. Safety had become more and more of a concern. And we started looking at which activities were repetitive and what the convergence of technology was at that point, which was about four years ago. And really came to the conclusion that the technology had reached a point where, as it was converging, it looked like there was an opportunity to develop solutions for the construction industry and the heavy civil marketplace. And that's really what started is we looked at it and said, somebody's got to do something and it's much better to develop solutions for problems than develop technology and then go looking for the things that it might do in a marketplace. So we very much focused on the problems in the industry. And then, ultimately I was very fortunate to find the right co-founder and build the right team of mechanical electrical motion control, vision, artificial intelligence, software guys, and pull them together with this vision to be the premier robotics solution provider for the construction industry. That's kind of, that's the position that we feel that we sit in right now is one of the very few entities who's actually developed and commercialized construction robotics solutions. Watson: And so when I, researching advanced construction robotics. My mind went to AWS and Amazon where AWS is cloud computing was first. Its first client was Amazon's retail business, that e-commerce website. And they were able to kind of sit side by side as a very amenable, friendly client to them as they built out the model, and then eventually that spins out and that's wildly more profitable than Amazon's e-commerce business. And it sounds very similar here where, because you're in the business of building bridges and you have the weight to say, hey, you're going to try this robot out of this job where there's probably some skepticism at first. And take qualitative feedback, see where the opportunity is and get that actual real life laboratory, as opposed to the theoretical laboratory in order to roll out that product. Muck: Yeah, that integration capability is one of ACR strengths, because of our ability to iterate quickly, and get direct input from the people with boots on the ground that are actually doing the work, we're able to cycle through our prototypes extremely quickly. We understand the parameters that we have to work to from a productivity improvement standpoint, to build a commercially viable product. And our mission is to embed the least amount of technology, necessary to create a robotic solution that has a robust economic impact. And that's really what our focus is. And we're moving on to our second robot now, and we're in prototype development there with full-size, and that next robot is called iron bot and it will carry in place rebar. So, another very labor intense, strenuous, activity that generates a fair number of injuries because of the need to walk on uneven surfaces, carrying weight, and do it in unison with four or five other people because the rebars long, and then you bend over and put it down and stand up, take a step and over and put it down. So there's a lot of repetition. So we're solving productivity issues. We're solving manpower availability issues, and we're solving safety issues all at the same time. Watson: Yeah. I was really curious if you could talk about like the messaging of something like this being implemented, because I know that the labor conversation is all over the place. I think literally this morning, the new labor numbers dropped of simultaneously more people, unemployed and more companies struggling to like find people to fill their roles. And that's something that the construction industry is not, it's no stranger to. So can you talk just in broad strokes about how you've managed that through your different construction entities, and when something like this gets rolled out and you, maybe when your guys it's like taking a sideways glance editor or more maybe having a harsh word, like what is the messaging coming from leadership in this type of environment? Muck: Yeah. It's interesting. There's, I mean, the construction industry. It is very slow to adopt new technology. There's a real desire to kind of do it the way we've always done it before, because we get an adequate result. And some of that comes from the fact that our products are engineered in significant detail because they're carrying traffic and there's human life type issues involved in safety issues. And so there's a reason for that, but there are also opportunities to adopt new technology and we're trying to push that forward. So, one of the really interesting things as we were introducing the robot was that the the trade unions that we interact with the laborers and the ironworkers, when we introduce the products to them, and we started talking about what we were doing, they actually embraced Thai baht, because they've had customers like me coming to them, looking for people in the peak season and they don't have them. And it's very frustrating for them to have to tell me as an employer or customer that we can't send you a five guys cause we just don't have them. So they looked at the robot as a solution for that labor scarcity. And when you drive it down to the individual level, the guys really don't like the work. I mean, it's strenuous, it's repetitive, it's boring. There are higher and better uses of skilled construction labor than doing these tedious, repetitive activities. So most of the manpower are happy to see these tools come into play. Now the nuance is if the construction industry is slow and I have some of my people sitting on the bench per se, so not actively employed in the workforce, then, I may let that technology set bring my people back to work first. And then once we run out of our skilled labor, then we go back and we say, okay, now we're going to use those robots. As the robots become more and more economically compelling. Hopefully the construction industry is picking up and, and busier. And so, we're happy to have those robotics solutions, but we have seen that ebb and flow and in a robust construction environment, we see a real poll for those solutions, in a very slow construction environment where maybe there's people, looking for work, then there's a little more hesitancy from the contractors and employers because they want to keep their steady people busy first. And we get that cause we live in that world. So we have seen those kinds of nuances. Watson: So do you see from your vantage point, those type of labor shortages, and we've talked about something similar without one of the third-party logistics providers about the kind of shortage or the trouble with retention for truck drivers and some of these industries. Do you see that as like, if there were the kind of different variables, the just kind of way a generation was raised, everyone was like center sent to college in certain ways. Blue collar work was like disrespected, and in certain educational circles, you see that as a demographics thing. Do you see that? Like how do you try to piece apart the why behind those types of shortages or is it just cyclical? And it's like this macro cycle is in a high build versus a low built type of state. There’s gonna be $2 trillion infrastructure bill or something like that. Muck: Yeah, no. I think traditionally, we've assigned certain stigmas to working with your hands. As a society, at least in the US, and probably in most of the developed countries. And we've pushed kids towards higher education. I think there's a real opportunity right now from a trade skill standpoint. I mean, we have guys working with their hands, making six figures and doing very well. I see other young people come out of college with degrees and they're having a hard time finding a job and a fair amount of time and a fair amount of debt. Right. So, I mean, I really think that as an industry, we need to do a better job of kind of sharing the opportunities. I described the construction industry as the last bastion of the wild, wild west. And what do I mean by that? Well, we're an environment where, if you're a good gunslinger and you're willing, really willing to work hard, and you're a young person, you can get ahead. Very rapidly in this construction marketplace, it's a matter of really putting your heart and soul into it and applying yourself, but there's so much opportunity. I’ve got three or four people running profit centers that are in their mid thirties, and some of them started in those roles in their early thirties, and I guess it's become sort of one of my philosophies because when I did do my first leverage buyout, I was 31. So I don't discriminate against 31 year olds running businesses. As a matter of fact, one of our philosophies here is, we like to teach our young people, not just the work that we do, but the business we're in. So how the business works, the upside with that as we get some very energized and involved young people who not only understand how to build construction projects, but actually understand the way the levers push and pull to make the business grow and develop and how we generate profits and, and how we plan for the future. Watson: And ultimately, you said you started as a $7 million business when, at least from what LinkedIn said over 200 million in annual revenue now, and the only way you scale to something like that is by developing people that can make good decisions on your behalf. You have only so many hours in the day. So many brain cells, you can't make every decision. And so, it’s only through that legibility into the org and how it functions that those people are going to be trusted to make those types of goods. Muck: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things I joke about. I've got a lot of people running around with my wallet, and my credit card and the message I give them is spend it like it's your money, treat it like it's your own, and we'll never get sideways. Just when you make decisions to why you're making it and have good thought process. Get good feedback and go get it done. Watson: Right on. Well, I wanna be respectful of your time. We'll ask our kind of last wrap up questions here in a second. But before I do that, I've got one question that did not plan on asking until I entered this room that we're seated. Can you explain what a dragon Slayer is and how important that is to your org? Muck: Oh, that's colorful. So, it comes from me sitting around our construction meetings. At the end, I used to tell the guys still do to go slay dragons, which simply means go do the difficult things that you need to. So the dragon slayers have evolved into our senior management team and the thought process behind them is they're standing back to back in a circle with their swords out towards the dragons or the enemies or the challenges of any day, week, year. And inside that circle is our corporate family. So all of our people, our employees’ kids, our employees’ spouses, all the college tuition payments, all the car payments, all the mortgages, and our mission is as senior managers are to protect and grow the business and take care of that society. So, it's a little bit gothic, maybe. But it's really about the other saying that we have here, that you may have seen somewhere on the wall is we, what we killed. So the saying there is simply to call out to our people that we live and work in a very competitive world. And it's either our lunch or it's somebody else's lunch. And we have friends in the industry, but at the end of the day, we’re in a competition. And so I like for them to have that in the back of their mind and recognize that edge, that there's winners and losers and we're in a competitive world, so let's get after it. Watson: Beautiful. Well, hopefully the winds can continue to keep piling up and the team continues to grow. Before we ask our standard last two questions that I prepped you for, Steve. Anything else you were hoping to share that I didn't give you a chance to? Muck: No, I think you've asked great leading questions and we've really covered a lot of it. You've clearly pulled out our tradition of heavy civil construction projects and, tied in my interest in technology and driving technology into the construction world and marketplace. That's a real passion of mine. So I'm happy to have got the opportunity to share that. Watson: Beautiful. Well, hopefully we can do this again sometime, and I can learn more about building a business empire and building a dam and all these other cool things that you've been up to. But, for folks that want to learn more about Braman, about you, the different things that you do, what digital corners can we point people towards? Muck: Yeah, I mean, I would just point them at our website, at braman.com and at ACR bots, to follow both the high-tech part of our business and the core construction elements. Through those websites, they'll find links to the various companies that we have and the businesses we're in. Watson: Beautiful. We're going to link that in the show notes. For this episode, you can find it in the app. We are probably listening to this or going deep in with Aaron dot com/podcast for every single episode of the show. Before I let you go, Steve, I'd like to give you the mic a final time to issue an actionable personal challenge for the audience. Muck: Hm. Okay. Actionable, personal challenge. Take a look, take a risk, and put it out there and go after your dreams. Watson: I took it. Can you tell me about when you made that decision to do the leveraged buyout of Braman and whatever the perception of risk was at that point in time? Can you just talk through, like how you navigated that? Was there a point at which you were unsure if it would occur or if it would be capable to come through? Like what, like when you were at the riskiest point, what was the kind of mental self-talk that got you through that situation? Muck: Yeah, I think, any deal you do has points at which you think you may or may not get it done. So I think that the concern was that I had a really great job. I was doing a strategy for nations bank. So I was buying banks and assets for the bank reporting to an EVP who reported to the CFO who reported the chairman. So I was basically four seats away from the chairman and I would get calls occasionally from the chairman asking about different deals we were working on. So a super cool job that I walked away from and they were a little stunned when I did. So I guess I was concerned about making sure that I was doing a good job for them while I was working on this deal, and the deal was pretty personal and pretty consuming. And so it was my job. So balancing those two, was probably the biggest challenge, I think. Because I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing for my current employer. And I was very passionate about what we were doing and the deals we were working on. Watson: Right on. I love the side hustle. That's another, a consistent theme throughout the different interviews that we've done. I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. Like I said, I hope we can do it again, and appreciate you giving us some of your time. Muck: Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Watson: We just went deep with Stephen Muck. Open out there has a fantastic day. Hey, thank you so much for listening to the end of my interview with Steven. If you were interested in our conversation about how robotics can impact heavy industry, move people out of dangerous work and fill gaps in labor shortage. I think you'll also enjoy our conversation with Jake Luciferian from gecko robotics. His company builds robots that inspect large energy infrastructure, keeping humans out of dangers, arenas and making the inspection process simultaneously more thorough and more efficient. He talks about that in the interview. Go check it out. It's linked in the show notes and hit subscribe because we've got a bunch of great interviews coming down the pipe. Thanks for listening. Connect with Erin on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson, 59.
Jon Pastor is the SVP for Consumer Solutions at RealPage, a leading global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate industry. RealPage was trading publicly at over $10 billion market capitalization before being taken private by Thoma Bravo.
Jon’s entrepreneurial career started when he cofounder RentJungle with previous guest Geng Wang. That company was acquired in 2014 and Jon chose to stay on and lead the acquiring company as President. Four years later, that company was acquired by RealPage. In this conversation, Jon and Aaron discuss the lessons from all these acquisitions, the challenges facing the real estate industry, and the incentives that guide successful organizations. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Jon Pastor’s Challenge; Create a list of ideas for projects or businesses that you could start. Connect with Jon Pastor
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Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 474 with Geng Wang where we discuss three startups, social enterprise, and where to find motivation. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Jorge Mazal is the Chief Product Officer for Duolingo. Duolingo is a free language-learning website and mobile app with over 500 million downloads, 40 million monthly active users, and a valuation over $1 billion.
Jorge previously worked on the product for Zynga, MyFitnessPal, and Kleiner Perkins. Today he blends skills in design, gamification, and leadership to manage a product team that has 10xed in size since he joined the company. In this episode, Jorge and Aaron discuss how Duolingo makes product decisions, the importance of interpersonal skills, and how Jorge’s background has prepared him to excel in this role. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Jorge Mazal’s Challenge; Find some time to go help someone, with no expectation of anything in return. Connect with Jorge Mazal
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Duolingo Website If you liked this interview, check out our conversation with Jason Wolfe where we discuss tech products, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Underwritten by Piper Creative
Piper Creative makes creating podcasts, vlogs, and videos easy. How? Click here and Learn more. We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs. Follow Piper as we grow YouTube Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify Watson: So thanks for coming on the podcast, man, I'm really excited to be talking with you. Mazal: Thank you, Aaron. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here with you. Watson: So I want to start off. I have to imagine that almost everyone that might be listening to this is aware of what Duolingo is. But maybe we can just start off, you know, this is an app with over fifth, I'm sorry, 500 million downloads, 40 million monthly active users, that has taught just loads of people, how to speak all sorts of different languages. Can you talk a little bit more just about what the apps mission is oriented around and the role that you play as chief product officer? Mazal: Sure. Yeah. So what the app does, is it's just languages and you can basically pick up Duolingo and just, even if he's just used Duolingo to learn a language, you can replace up to four, maybe even five semesters worth of college credit, worth of language education, which we're super proud of. And the reason why we do that. Well, we teach languages -- there are actually several reasons. We're a very mission-driven company. So we care a lot about the impact that language learning has on the world. And the truth is that the impact is different depending on who you are. So for a lot of people learning English, It's very transformational so they can access better jobs, better educational opportunities. And that's kind of, my lived experience has been bad. And also Luis, the CEO, has a similar life experience as well. And then also for a lot of people who maybe already know English, learning another language helps them connect with the world better. We have lots of users who are learning a language because that's the language that their in-laws speak, or maybe they want to learn Japanese so they can read manga in Japanese, or learn Korean to listen to K-pop or something. So there's this many reasons why people learn a language and we're excited to support all of those reasons. Watson: Yeah. I mean, those are exactly the two things I was just thinking about before we hopped on was number one, economic opportunity. We actually at Piper just hired our first international team member who just blew me away with his proficiency in English, despite that not being his native tongue. And that is, you know, part of how things get done. You need to be able to communicate, but at the same sense, you travel different places. And obviously that's usually--if it's a tourism related type of company-- that's part of the job, is to be able to bring people in and have that multi-lingual skillset. But it's also a way to connect. You know, there's a difference in walking through Tokyo and reading the signs in Japanese versus having someone translate it to you. You're getting that kind of layer of distance before you can really connect with the place. Mazal: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's impossible to have an authentic experience when you travel unless you know some of the language at least. Watson: A hundred percent. So I'm super curious to learn more about the role of chief product officer. And later on, we'll talk kind of about how you've built up your skills and experiences to land in such a cool position. But, I guess maybe as a starting point, I think that, you know other roles, I think it's very legible how one is evaluated as an executive. So if you're a chief revenue officer, you need revenue to go up, right. If you've got maybe like a head of HR, it's are we hiring adequately? Do we have the kind of diverse team that we're pursuing with product that there seems like so many different kinds of lanes and avenues that it can go down. Particularly for something like we said, over 500 million, half a billion downloads of the app, all these different languages being taught. You could be, and I'm not saying this is the case, but just as an example, you could be killing it at teaching people Turkish. And maybe it's not as effective at teaching people French or whatever the thing may be. So how are you as a chief product officer evaluated, and then maybe we can connect that to how you actually spend your day in order to accomplish those goals. Mazal: Yeah. I mean the, the role of chief product officer, I think it's not standardized. I think it means different things in different companies. And at Duolingo, what that means is I lead three functions, which are product management, data science, which is kind of like early advanced, sophisticated product analytics that we do here and also UX research. So understanding our users and what makes them tick and all of these functions together are focused on really driving product market fit and constantly improving that fit. And also we know what's unique about Duolingo, and we have founders that are very technical, very product minded. So, you know, they're very involved in product, especially the recent CEO. And it's a very collaborative kind of way to make decisions with him, with chief designer, with our SVP of engineering, Natalie. So basically all of us together and our teams come up with a roadmap. Right. And execute on that in terms of, how am I evaluated in terms of performance? I swear it's different each time I get it back evaluated, it just depends on what matters at the time. Right. So, there's basically everything matters and whatever is not working well. That's the thing I need to be focusing, you know, next. So it's a matter of how well the business metrics start doing, and we care about, you know, user growth. We care about revenue growth and we care about teaching better. So we're always doing those three things. And at this point we're lucky that all those things are going really well. And we're just getting better and better at those things. And then there's also all of the people's side. Are we hiring the right people? Are they happy? Are they growing? And are they working well with others and creating the culture that we want? So, as my job has evolved, when I joined Duolingo, I came in as director of product and it was a very small team and that team has grown almost 10 X than it used to be. And so now a lot of my focus is on ultra, and how they make sure that people have the guidelines, have the principals, have the tools, the support system, so they can be increasingly more and more autonomous and more effective on, us teams. Watson: Yeah, I think we, in the pre-interview we talked to, when you joined, it was like 90 people and now it's over 500 people on the team. Mazal: Part of the whole company. Yes. Watson: Yeah. Crazy. So I was trying to guess, like some of those metrics, we referenced the monthly active users. And I guess the reason it's such a kind of moving target and those metrics changes, you know, something that maybe conventionally people understand for a Tik Tok or a Facebook or some of these other super apps that are at the top of the charts, because they are advertising based, more time on the app going from 30 to 40 minutes on average--it's time, someone spends on the app-- is really impactful because that increases the ad load that they can be shown. But at the same time, if you're also evaluating like the efficacy of people continuing to come back, you know, if it becomes this thing that eats up more and more of their day, maybe their kind of consistent habit of actually going and even making a daily practice of learning the new language is at odds with that. So that's a kind of a really interesting tension to kind of be playing with as a product lead. Mazal: Yeah. There's always a lot of different tensions and between the metrics that we care about, right. You could do something that helps with revenue, but hurts retention. You can do something that helps retention, but hurts the number of minutes per day they spend on the app and then those learning, going to the mix as well. So the way we balance that is we have teams that are -- some teams that are kind of metrics driven and they have like a goal to optimize revenue, for example, and that's the target metric revenue. And then we have guard rail metrics, which tend to be the target metrics of other teams. So if you run an experiment, cause everything we do gets AB tested and ran an experiment that helps you target metric, you gotta make sure that it doesn't hurt any of the guard rail metrics. So they have to be the velvet intuition. Teams have to develop an intuition of how other teams metrics move. So they know not to mess up with them and not to bring them down. So we basically create a system where everyone's incentivized to move everything up and not at the expense of something else. Watson: Gotcha. That makes a ton of sense because yeah, you're juggling all those metrics, but if we're talking to down to like the team level or the individual level, you can't have everyone looking at all things. They need that element of focus. So tell me a little bit about, you know, you joined the company a few years ago, it's been growing like a weed and there's a lot of excitement in Pittsburgh in particular about, you know, a potential future IPO. And that love what that means just for the Pittsburgh tech scene. But can you paint a little bit of a picture of where the product was when you got here, changes that have been made, that kind of take us to the present and then maybe we can talk a little bit about where it's going in the future. Mazal: Sure. Yeah. I mean, the product has made tremendous strides. Since I joined-- I don't want to take credit just because I joined is like correlation or share has custody, but it has been a tremendous amount of progress on the product side. Cause I mean, it's very collaborative. Everyone's involved in this, but you know, we were struggling in many fronts, honestly. Like we were trying to figure out a way to monetize. We weren't exactly sure how to do that, growth was a little bit like stagnating. And we were kind of stuck on how to teach better. Honestly, we were like trying to figure out all of these problems and everyone that tremendous amount of effort to turn all of these things around a little by little. So first on the morning, on the morning, the station side, we landed on the subscription business that has been very successful and we're able to continue to grow, on a consistent basis. On the growth side, we came up with-- I won't get into the details too much, but we have a fairly sophisticated growth model, that has a bunch of different metrics that we identified. We run modeling on it and identified a metric that turns out to be super high leverage, which is called CRR, CRR is the retention rate. And we put a team just optimized on that, to focus on that to optimize that metric. And that has resulted in people just staying with a product a lot longer. So when they come into the product, they get hooked on having like a Duolingo streak. And those, the number of people with a streak of seven days or longer, used to be about 20% of our DAUs and now it's about 60%. So people are just a lot more engaged with the products. They stay longer telling their friends more about it. And that has really super-charge our user growth. And what's cool about it is that it's growing faster than ever. It's growing super fast, but it's growing with better users, better and more engaged users. Right. Which is really a really healthy way to grow. So that was a lot of research by a lot of people and just a lot of creativity and problem solving. And then on the learning side, I think probably about half of our product teams in the company, work on learning. And that is really challenging because it's hard to measure learning. So we have to use a lot of just learning science research, intuition of the product ourselves, and coming up with kind of proxy metrics, provoke, believe your percents learning, and combining all of that together. And also being very systematic about how we think about languages and what is the language and how do you break up a language into its components and different levels of proficiency. So you can think about languages as vocabulary, a combination of vocabulary and grammar for enunciation, understanding sounds and being able to have skills like with that, like speaking, writing, reading, listening, and able to do that different levels of proficiency from beginner to advanced. And then we've systematically basically thought about that matrix of skills and levels of proficiency. And targeted each of those cells and just got better and better at all those things. And that has made a tremendous difference in how well we teach, where I think Duolingo is known for as the way to get started with a language and over time, we have more and more people say, wait, you can go a lot more, you can go a lot further with your language to Duolingo, than people in the past thought of or realized. Watson: And so as we kind of chart into the future, it sounds really like that ramp up from beginner, moderate, into really high level proficiency is the aspiration for where the product is going? Mazal: Yeah, that's a big part of it. We want you to be able to pick up Duolingo and get all the way to proficiency, to full proficiency, where you can go to a country and study there, or work there, travel there, and just feel like you're fully prepared, just using Duolingo. We're like maybe three quarters of the way there. Maybe I'm being a little bit generous on myself, but we're getting close. Watson: All right. So in terms of where the product falls, as we think more from like a business standpoint, this is very much in the category of like a consumer facing app individuals downloaded. They kind of have their own personal goal and that's where the interaction lies. But we started this off talking about the economic opportunities and the, you know, the potential, I would imagine for things more aligned at a kind of enterprise or B2B type of level. Is that-- how does that come into the consideration for Duolingo? Where does that kind of fit into the whole product framework? Mazal: It's a great question. And I'll answer it. Sorry to run it that way a little bit, but we have another product called the Duolingo English test. And this is a computer adaptive, fully online, AI proctored and human Proctored two test that you can take. It measures your English proficiency and that is accepted as as a sign of language proficiency in over 3000 universities and colleges. So it's become a significant part of our business now. It grew in the thousands of percent during the pandemic, which was pretty cool, because our competitors, you have to go to a testing center and you have to sign, and all those shut down. And it just became basically the only way you could demonstrate your English proficiency in the whole world for, for a few weeks. So, we believe that, how this connect to your question is, people who need to learn English, they need to also be able to demonstrate, certify that they know English. That needs to be in the resume, that needs to be when they're talking to employers or potential employers. Right? So them doing an English test, plays a big part on that economic opportunity angle. And what we're trying to do is that we call it," closing the loop," basically teaching well enough on the Duolingo app, that you can take the Duolingo English test and do very well on it. And we're just beginning getting to that point. Watson: So, I want to now kind of hone in on this role that you find yourself in because, you know, feedback that I've heard from listeners of the show is man, I love, you know, understanding what it takes to be the founder of a office, furniture wholesaler, or a tech startup, or what have you. To be chief product officer-- I keep saying the number, cause to me, this is just, almost anxiety inducing when I think of the scale of it-- but to be teaching languages to tens, hundreds of millions of people is an immense responsibility and a really kind of, I'd imagine, fantastically, intellectually stimulating role in which to be. So I I'd like to unpack a little bit and you can start wherever you know makes sense to you. But to me, you know, you have this background, you worked at Zynga which was a digital game company, MyFitnessPal-- I've used that to track a few runs, back when I was more into running, I haven't had the consistent habit, like you're aspiring to with Duolingo. But, and that's more a me thing than the product thing, can you talk a little bit about these past experiences and, you know, if chief product officer was the goal, like how did this come together to make you capable of filling this seat? Mazal: Yeah, so definitely a chief product officer was not the goal. And I was actually surprised when Louis said, Hey, I think I want to promote you to chief product officer. And it's like, really? Same thing happened with VP of product. I was like, what, you want to do this? So the--but to get to your original question of, how did it get here? It was just so many different things in life that build up to this. And I think it's just great coincidences in a way, you know. You can go as back as like, high school. I was learning English, I didn't grow up speaking English. And I was lucky enough to go to a school that did a pretty good job teaching English, and came to the US and realized I didn't understand. I could understand actually pretty well, but I couldn't really say much. And so I had that experience as an adult, of really being able to empathize with people who are learning a language and how hard it is and all the things that kind of catch you by surprise. Like, you know, for years, I could not understand the difference between a bag and a bug. I was just like, to me, it was the same word. It was like, people were just making fun of me. So anyway, I could empathize a lot with that experience. Then after I graduated from college, I ended up working in nonprofit, in the education sector, eventually leading an education program and coming up with curriculum and mentoring programs and just really diving into how people learn. Then went to grad school, discovered this thing called product management. Also, I did a master's in decision science. So I'm always being curious about how people think, how people make decisions and how you can influence people's decision-making for their own good. And so I studied kind of public policy and decision making together. But I got into product management somehow. This company, Zynga, that makes video games, I thought, I was like, oh, what an interesting laboratory of how people make decisions. And so I went to work there, really enjoyed the aspect of making games and how collaborative and creative it could be and how cross-functional, right. We had a team of, like, I remember for one feature, it was probably like 10, 12 people and everyone did something different. There was no two of the same. And, you know, you have artists and illustrators and animators and engineers and game designers. And it was just so fun. And then at some point, I remember people-- they brought to the office, some of our most valued users, which were people who had spent probably like over 50,000 to a hundred thousand dollars on this game. And I was like, to be able to spend that much money on a free to play game. This has to be consuming their entire lives. And I felt really terrible about it. I felt like, oh, I can't, I don't know that I can be part of this and feel good about it. As much fun as I was having making games, just seeing the impact that a very addictive thing could have on someone just didn't feel right. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing in my life. So soon after that, I quit and I went to work at MyFitnessPal, which you mentioned. And that was again, trying to use behavior change and decision science to make people have habits. But I wanted to make sure that these were habits that were good for them. So that's how I got into that job and enjoyed it. It felt like I learned a lot there. Then, you know, eventually moved, worked at a different company. I helped them build a PM function at that other company. And then Duolingo reached out, out of the blue and my mom was using Duolingo at the time to learn English. I was like, sure, well, let's chat and, it was like, I came here to Pittsburgh. I really liked the city, you know, coming through from the tunnel from the airport into Pittsburgh at night. And it's just like the lights. It was like, wow, this is like really cool. And the people are super nice, you know, it made me think a lot of just, east coast city, in terms of things that are available culturally. But the niceness and kindness of the people is very kind of Midwestern. And, it was like just the perfect combination. So yeah, I like the city, and I also felt like you brought everything together, right? That the language learning experience, dedication experience that I had, the gaming experience, experience building a PM function, product management, function, everything into one. So a lot of the things when I joined Duolingo came really intuitively. I just understood a lot of the things that people were talking about because I had lived them myself. And I think that has really helped being able to have impact at the company. And I would say--so I may be like rambling way too much, you can stop me at any time. Watson: I mean, the way you told that story, it reminds me a lot of the Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address, when he talks about how you could have never planned it as you were moving forward. But looking in reverse, there's this very kind of obvious sequential interrelated amount of lily pads that kind of landed you at this current Lily pad. And I think that the, you know, I'm thinking about some different things: I'm thinking about habit building, I'm thinking about just like good design principles generally, and then I'm also really thinking about, you know, the human side of this. Which is there's the human users that you kind of had this experience at Zynga, seeing the effect on the humans in that regard. But then there's also the humans that work with you that work kind of on your respective teams and learning how to really get the most out of them, because it's very different than an entry level product role, where you're kind of got your little corner of responsibility. And now overseeing everything, it's much more about how do I coach, how do I incentivize, how do I recruit so that these product goals that I'm responsible for basically get fulfilled by the team members there. They're doing most of the heavy lifting. So tell me a little bit about that, tell me about the development as a leader and kind of how you've added that realm of skills. Mazal: Then how I help others become leaders, how I grew as a leader, or- Watson: I mean, I would say your growth as a leader is your ability to help other people become leaders and take that responsibility on. Mazal: Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point. So I think to be a good leader, you gotta be authentic to who you are. And for me, I'm someone who is very reserved and introverted. Someone who thinks a lot about feelings, and also very driven and ambitious, which is I think like a weird combination that throws people off. But so my approach to leadership is to basically understand what makes, well, what people are, what makes people tick, right? Why are they here? You know, why they're showing up to work to get what? And help them get that, whatever that is. Some people they-- and I do that because I care about them and I just, don't judge what it is they're here for. It's like, whatever it is that matters to them, I help them get there, because, you know, I care about them. And I think that makes people keep showing up at work and keep doing their best work. And that requires listening with empathy. It requires not judging. It requires honestly trying to help. So that's kinda my approach. Also, I think it requires taking care of their feelings, right? Like when you got to say something hard, you got to make people change their mindset or something. Some managers will be like, "Hey! You know, you got to change. This is not--you're not getting what you want, like deal with it." And I was like, well, what can I-- I don't go and do that. I just take some time and think, how can we turn this into a win-win situation? Right. And I was like, "hey, you're not, maybe you're not getting the thing that you wanted, the win that you wanted, but can we create another win that can help you grow in other ways that you also wanted to grow? So. That's one part, right? And then the other part now is helping managers to be able to do that for the people that they're managing and encouraging them to really get to know the reports and listen to them and to understand not just how they feel, but why they feel the way they do. How are they seeing the world, that the facts are being interpreted in a way that generates the feeling that they're having, and help them understand where in that needs to be worked on. And we're like, well, maybe we need to change the facts. Maybe we need to change the way the facts have been interpreted with, with new facts that they're not aware of. And we need to help them and understand that the feelings they are having are reasonable, but there's other feelings that could be reasonable to have as well, right? And focus on the thing that makes you happy, right, and grow from there. So anyways, that's like a bit of a rambling answer, I apologize, Aaron, but happy to dig into any of those things more deeply if that would be helpful. Watson: Yeah. But it really, you know, what I'm hearing again, is one of your metrics for the app is retention, right? And part of retention is predicated on being deeply empathetic to the user. If you understand what they're actually looking for, and you're able to give it to them, then that's going to keep them coming back cause you're delivering the goods. And it's the same idea where, you know, the empathy for those team members. And that's a huge topic of conversation. I feel like it's been that type of conversation for a decade now, but it's like people are job hopping. People are, you know, going from thing to thing. And one of the biggest advantages or levers, or kind of points of opportunity for a company, is the ability to recruit and then retain great talent. It's part of how you beat your competition, is we were a team with chemistry that had been thinking about this problem for three, four, or five, six years, as opposed to six months, 12 months, 18 months. It's just going to lead to better decision making. And, you know, it's the same. Those two things are obviously interrelated, but it requires the same kind of core skillset of empathy. Mazal: Absolutely. Yeah. And, I'll tell you something that I've learned at building in terms of that. I never really grasped this before working here, and it's: my imperfections generate some sort of pain or discomfort or problems for other people, and then having empathy for the pain I generate on them, and being humble about that. It's something that I've been learning, and it's been very transformational for me to like just lean in into that uncomfortable situations, like, oh, I am the cause of your pain. I'm the cause of your discomfort -- and listening to change. And that's been something really great about working at Duolingo where I felt like they--Louis has had patience with me, as I worked through the things that I need to work on. And I realized that at some point I have felt like embarrassed or wanting to hide those things, but it actually doesn't help. Like the more open and transparent you can be by the things you're working on, the better others feel about sharing what they're working on, the more they feel they can share it. And also they're going to have more patience with you, because they know at least you're working on it, right, and that really helps keep a team together. Watson: Beautiful. I have one more line of questioning and then we can kind of aim towards wrapping up here. And that's the idea of constraints. We've been-- we've explored this in so many different ways, you know, a nascent startup they've got every constraint in the book, but you know, all the way up to people making geopolitical decisions. There's always some sort of constraint that's in place for a company like Duolingo. And more specifically for someone in the role that you are as chief product officer, your team, like you said, has grown 10 X. Since you've joined the team, I don't know the exact number, but you as a company have raised tens of millions of dollars. How would you list or prioritize or explain the constraints that are facing you, in the present, as a company that has, you know, more funding than 99% of, of startups out there? And, you know, these kind of other obvious resources that unlock some constraints, what are the constraints that face the org and maybe you as the chief product officer generally? Mazal: Hmm. Great question. So the major constraint almost in a way, it's like what-- your mission, right? Like the, who you're trying to be and what you're trying to do. You could think of it as a constraint as well. That tells you lots of things you cannot do, because you don't want to do them because they're against who you want to be and why you want to achieve. The next step, there, I think is we're constrained by the amount of information that we have. And that's something that I've been very proactively trying to work on at Duolingo, by building new functions, like data science and UX research, and really being an advocate for like our learning science team as well. Because the more information we have... at the beginning, it really felt constrained by, we don't know a lot. We need to learn more faster. So information I think is key, and making sense of that into frameworks, into strategies, into plans, et cetera-- so processing that information too. The next big constraint is people, right? Getting the right talent on the right seats at the right time is obviously extremely challenging, and there's lots of things that we would want to do more of, but maybe we can't because we haven't found the right person for it. So hiring is key. And I think-- that's it, yeah. Watson: Interesting. Yeah. I mean-- one of the lessons of life that I've slowly come to realize is everyone has the constraints. There is no kind of boundless entity, God, that that's walking through the world in some way or shape or form unconstrained-- maybe Bezos, maybe one day I'll get to ask Bezos what his constraints are-- but the planet earth, perhaps with the blue origin, rocket or whatever. But, yeah, it's an interesting kind of thing to reflect on. And, I I'm guessing that you won't make any sort of comment on this whatsoever, but I do suspect that there is a kind of next chapter for Duolingo as a company, generally hitting the public markets at some point in the future, that I know that the folks in Pittsburgh are very excited for, and what that will mean as for the city of Pittsburgh, for the company, Duolingo, for all the constraints that you guys continue to face and hopefully unlocking some of those. Mazal: Sure. I hope so, yeah. Watson: Cool. Well, before we ask our standard last two questions, is there anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you the chance to? Mazal: We're hiring? Yes, Duolingo's always hiring. So check out our job post on our website. Watson: Right on. Well, that's the next question-- digital coordinates where people can connect, learn more, follow along with what you're doing. Obviously, download the app and start learning another language if you aren't already doing so, but what other coordinates can we point people towards? Mazal: Yeah. I would say download the app and find me and follow me, I'm Jorge Mazal on the Duolingo app, you can find me there. Watson: Right on. We're going to link that in the show notes. I'm actually not quite sure how to link that one, usually I'm like, oh, it's just a LinkedIn profile or something, but I'm going to try to figure out how to do that with the Duolingo profile, if I can make an external link or not. But, that's all going to be linked, going to put their.com/podcast for every single episode of the show. Or in the app, or you're probably listening to this right now, but before I let you go, I want to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Mazal: Hmm. So I had a wonderful experience last week where I really took like a significant amount of time to help someone with something that they really needed. And it was-- It was great. It just felt so good, especially if they're being isolated for so long in the pandemic to do something that-- we're just helping someone feel better. And the challenge that I would have for the audience is can you block three hours, half a day to do something that will make someone else feel really good, without having any expectation of return. And just getting that perspective again, that we're all in this planet together. Service is what makes us human and it makes you feel best at the end of the day. So that's my challenge. Watson: Yeah. Have you ever heard of the book, the five love languages? Mazal: I have. Yeah. Watson: Yeah. So acts of service, I'll go to the grave saying it's the most underrated one in terms of being able to convey love. Not that there's anything wrong with gifting or words of affirmation or any of those other ones, but it definitely takes I would argue more of a lift than some of the other stuff .And so I absolutely love that challenge and I hope that a bunch of people will take it right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Jorge. I really, I learned a ton and I am excited for the future, you and the company. Mazal: Thank you, Aaron. It's been a pleasure. Anytime--happy to come back anytime. Watson: Awesome. We just went deep with Jorge Mazal, hope everyone out there has a fantastic day.
Marko Papic leads the strategy team at Clocktower Group, an alternative investments firm. Clocktower offers long-term strategic investment strategies to their clients, investment managers and institutional allocators.
Marko brings his constraints framework, outlined in his book Geopolitical Alpha, to analyzing the geopolitical trends of the day. His ability to accurately forecast major political events has enormous ramifications for portfolios. In this episode, Marko and Aaron discuss how the future of China-US conflict, Turkey’s geopolitical prospects, and how to break into the geopolitical analysis field. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Marko Papic’s Challenge; Spend time around people with the opposite political and cultural perspective of you. Connect with Marko Papic
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Geopolitical Alpha book If you liked this interview, check out our interview with Mike Green where we discuss Bitcoin and index funds. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
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Piper Creative makes creating podcasts, vlogs, and videos easy. How? Click here and Learn more. We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs. Follow Piper as we grow YouTube Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify Aaron Watson: Well, Marco, thanks for coming on the show, man. I'm really excited to be speaking with you. Marko Papic: Absolutely! Same here. Real pleasure. Aaron Watson: So, I want to start off just explaining for folks specifically, the, the role that you play at the Clocktower Group, maybe a little context of the Clocktower Group generally. And then, we can kind of move into this really, really good book here, Geopolitical Alpha, the concepts, the, the impetus behind it. But to start off, what's the kind of role you play in this financial firm? Marko Papic: Sure. So I'm a, I'm a partner and a chief strategist at an alternative investment management firm. We're based in Santa Monica, California. And what we do is we specialize in turning macro big picture ideas into you know, relatively illiquid alternative investment strategies. So those would be, for example, seeding macro hedge funds or investing in early stage fintech companies around the world. We've just launched a fund dedicated to Latin America. In that particular sphere. And also we have interesting businesses in China. We're also taking our approach to seeding macro hedge funds, and we're taking that to China. So most people, when they think of macro investors, they think of investors that deal with, you know, public markets that trade copper or dollar these kind of big asset classes. We also think about big ideas, but we didn't articulate it in these kind of illiquid strategies. Aaron Watson: And mostly if folks were trying to wrap their head around the client that you're serving, it is the capital allocators at some form of a large institution, be that an endowment or some sort of, you know, pension system or something like that. Marko Papic: Yeah. So it would be institutional investors, exactly what you're describing. And that's because, you know, you know, retail investors are not going to have the patience and the mandate for something as exotic as these illiquid strategies. But also in the U.S. In particular there's a lot family offices that would be the kind of investors that would do this in family offices, of course, are high net worth individuals that have basically an office managing their assets. They would, they would also be interested in, in private delegation or illiquid allocation. Aaron Watson: Gotcha. So the reason I was so excited to have you on, as we've discussed previous to the recording, I really enjoyed the book, Geopolitical Alpha, and outside the context of how someone might know me professionally, which is, you know, we're helping people with media production and marketing my kind of Intellectual recreation is usually around geopolitics. And so being able to come at the world of investing with this geopolitical lens is a very kind of interesting intersection of ideas that we explore on this show. And just perhaps a framework that people aren't as used to incorporating into their investing strategy. Maybe they'll say, "Hey, I'm going to go into emerging markets," or "I'm going to have a U.S. Centric index fund that I'm investing in," but really having to have a, a sharp edge to the tools with which they are evaluating the geopolitical changes of the day is becoming increasingly more relevant than I think that's why he wrote the book. That's why you've kind of found yourself in this position. Can you talk a little bit maybe give you a little bit of a history lesson as to why that's becoming so salient, and then we can kind of move into the constraints framework that you're using. Marko Papic: Yeah, sure. Well, I think what's happening. I mean, first of all, someone with my background and my skillsets and my methodological bias would likely not have a job in finance, you know, 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And that's not entirely true. Macro hedge funds have always been very sensitive to politics and geopolitics. But for, for a run-of-the-mill, you know, investors, usually do not have to concern themselves with these issues. And why is that? It's very simple, because we adopted the west adopted a set of policies, a set of best practices they had to do with macroeconomic policy. So for example, fiscal policy should be countercyclical. That means you only really stimulate when there's a recession. Or monetary policy became very orthodox, very focused on, you know, a preemptive rise in interest rates, and the first sign that the economy is overheating. Free trade, you know, became kind of a best practice laissez-faire economic system, where the government takes a back seat to regulation or industrial policy. All of these were really established in the eighties. And this is a really important period of time because the 1980s saw the world leave a very turbulent decade where inflation had overshot expectations where policy was largely incoherent. There was a lot of unorthodoxy that led to suboptimal outcomes. You know, we had very high rates of inflation throughout the 1970s. And so the way to curb that, of course, Paul Volcker raised interest rates, which is a very foundational moment for many people's careers in finance. And at that point, 1980s saw this adoption of these best practices that many economists and journalists and kind of professors have dubbed the Washington Consensus. That was a really, really important moment in history. And then from 85 to 90, the Soviet Union collapsed. So as the west is adopting these policies of capitalism, the alternative, which is institutionalized socialism and communism, collapses. And so then the rest of the world says, well, which, which system works, we'll take the Washington Consensus. And that's what the IMF and the World Bank starts propagating the set of best practices around the world. So what's changed? What's changed is that those best practices after 2008, after the great financial crisis and awkward this year have been brought into question. And that means that fundamentally the government got pushed aside by those best practices, the role of government and finance and economics it's coming back. And that's where politics and geopolitics are now. Again essential to being an investor and not just a fancy hedge fund trader, but like if you're an investor, you have to have some understanding of politics and geopolitics. Aaron Watson: And the framework that you introduced in the book, you talked about it being a constraints based framework and on all sorts of previous conversations we've had on the show, we've talked about constraints is very familiar probably to the people listening to this, but usually in the context of their business. So, you know, it's hard to find the marginal additional talented person to employ or cash flow or distribution for their message or all these things that small business owners are very, very accustomed to having to negotiate. It's all constraints informed. Can you talk, you know, that's more of like a micro level. Can you talk about when we take that up to a macro level and evaluate a nation state, how that same idea of constraints is applied to these much, much larger entities? Marko Papic: You know what, I'll, I'll explain it from a different perspective that I don't think I've ever really used to explain this before. There's really two sets of groups of people who analyze geopolitics. There's policy makers, like, who are in the game. They're within the same realm. And so they rarely think of constraints because it's a little bit, like, ego deflating. If you know, you overlook constraints in other policymakers, because you don't want to believe them yourself. So, and what this means is that very rarely is an intelligence agency of a sovereign nation state to say, ah, don't worry about it. You know, they're constrained. They focus a lot on what policy makers want to do, what politicians want to do. So if you go to an, a former member of the intelligence world or a former politician, they're rarely going to talk to you about what they can't do because they've spent their whole lives, trying to overcome that. And you know, like, like that's why we elect many of these people. That's why we hired them. So did they came to do better than your constraints? And so they're wired in a certain way. Then on the other side, you have the investment community that when, when the investment community tries to do approach goepolitics again, because the last 40 years were so clear for many investors, what they needed to learn and they get basically needed to get a CFA. They needed to know how to value things, you know, mathematically, like it became very mathematical routine, kind of a job that very few of them really looked at geopolitics and politics in a systematic way. And so they started to think of geopolitics as a realm of food, where you got to go and find a former politician to tell you what's happening, you know? And so you had this real mismatch in cultures where on one hand, investors are extremely systematic, frameworks driven, objective, quantitative. But when they're faced with geopolitics and politics, these suddenly become like chicken on trail readers, you know, and they, and they visit these websites. And I don't want to name, but are really, really subpar in the kind of information they're giving you. It's basically conspiracy theories. And I found this really fascinating when I joined the financial industry, I was like, "Really?" Like, "You'll read this crappy blog to find out what's going on in the world. And yet you're so focused on systematic framework driven approaches in finance?" That was bizarre to me. And so, what I settled on is just focusing on constraints because they're observable, they're quantifiable. And because in my experience, you know, preferences are both optional and subject to constraints. Whereas constraints are neither optional nor subject to preferences. And that goes back to your example, which is like, if you're running a business, you can wish to have more cashflow to hire more people. You can desire it, but that's your preference. The reality is the constraint. And then you operate within those constraints. And that is a tool for forecasting politicians, policymakers, as good as we have available to us. Aaron Watson: Yeah, I would love the Nike advertising and marketing budget, but just because I want, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to be able to come into being. Marko Papic: Exactly. Aaron Watson: So just to maybe get a little bit more specific, and then I kind of want to go around the world with you and talk about the kind of practical application of this framework to a couple of different elements of geopolitics. Some of these constraints might be, or correct me if I'm wrong. You know, the, the general kind of sentiment of voters. So it doesn't matter if you want to do something wildly to one extreme left or right. If there's kind of a, a median voter or the average consensus of the voters, you can't stray too far from that without exposing yourself to real risk in non authoritarian dictatorships. There's the core geography of the country. There's the demographics, how old or young and the general skill, what other kinds of constraints when you're looking at a country? Not that you're going to discover a new country necessarily, but when you come to it analyzing country, what are the main things that you're honing in on? Marko Papic: You know, it really depends on the question you're trying to answer. So if I'm trying to forecast weather, like, Russia is going to militarily invade Ukraine again, you know, there's one set of constraints specific to that issue. If you're trying to forecast whether India is going to be able to do pro-business structural reforms, there's a set, there's a different set of constraints. And the book kind of like as you list yourself, the good, the book goes through all of these. And I give empirical examples. I give examples of how these constraints work in, in, in reality. I guess what I would say for listeners of this podcast though, I would just kind of like bring you back back to the kind of like big picture and simply simplify it to this. If you can measure it, it's a constraint. You know, if you have to read a book about some politician's views, it's not a constraint. So I'll give you an example of this, like 2016, 2017. I went in, I was working in what's called south side research. I was working at a different firm and I was producing research for investors. And so I would go on these road shows where you go and you basically pitch your, your wares, your, your views and ideas. And I went to Asia, you know, Hong Kong, Singapore China, Tokyo, and I, we were talking about the trade war and everyone told me now we're good. We're not worried. Okay. You're not worried about the trade war? Why is that? Well, because we read The Art of the Deal, the book that, you know, Donald Trump wrote, and we know what's going to happen. It's all good. Don't worry about it. Like, we're good. And I was like, oh, really? So you read a book and that makes you feel confident that Trump is not going to pursue a significant trade war? Like yeah. Yeah. He's not really serious. He's just, you know, trying to get a little bit of better terms. And I was like, "Yeah, this isn't about his preference." The median American had moved against laissez-faire economics, had moved against free trade. And we had the data to back this up. This wasn't about Trump's preferences. He was simply a political vessel for the American media voter to express their desire, to have basically, you know, confrontational view, a much less openly globalist policies. And, you know, he was just the right person for the right time. But yeah, this kind of like a nonchalant, well, don't worry about it. There'll be a little bit of a scaffold and nail here. He'll get a deal with China. Like, turned out to be really wrong. We were headed for a recession, even before COVID, largely because the animal spirits had sapped from the economy. You could see this through numerous of indicators because the trade war had been much more significant than people thought. And that's a great example of how even the smartest people who make a lot of money and they have great education overemphasize the ephemeral, the qualitative, and it really reminds me of that scene from the movie Moneyball I don't know if there's any fans of Moneyball here, but when Billy Bean is sitting around surrounded by these octogenarians you know, baseball scouts for talking about baseball players, based on these completely qualitative indicators, like this ballplayer player is not going to be good because he has an ugly girlfriend. That's literally a scene in the movie. And you're just like, wait, what does that have to do with how, oh, it shows a lack of confidence, you know, like, okay, maybe that flew in 1963, but that is a non-diagnostic variable. And you will be surprised how many people in positions of serious power who manage a lot of assets, make the same kind of statements about politics. It's just not systemic, no framework. Just I read a book or I read a blog. Aaron Watson: Yeah. Speaking of the ephemeral, at least to me, it feels like there is a new headline or something associated with the Strait of Taiwan and some ship sailing through. And that being basically pointed to as the potential flash point or hot point associated with rising tensions between the U.S. And China, but at the same time, one, one thing you did a really great job in the book of talking about was the actual constraints of popular consensus that still affects the Chinese Communist Party, despite a less sophisticated person looking at the, well, either a single party, they've got no competition. Why would they have to worry about public sentiment, but can maybe you bring the constraints framework specifically to tensions in Taiwan and the, you never going to say concretely, but the likelihood of things escalating there in some way, shape or form. Marko Papic: Although I would, I would. You know, like this is what I have to do for a living. So I, I would say overtly what, what the probabilities are. I mean, I think I would say the probabilities of conflict between U.S. and China or let's say co crisis, some sort of a crisis, you know, Berlin Crisis, Berlin Airlift Crisis, or Cuban Missile Crisis are good analogies. I think the probability over the next six months is, is actually quite high. I would say about 20%, which is significant, you know, that's, that's like a, basically a one in five chance that we have some, some crisis that is derived from the, the, the tensions in the straits of Taiwan or, or just South China Sea and so on. Why is this? Well, because I think China is adjusting to a new America and, you know I think it was relatively easy for Beijing to to, to, you know, like interpret the, the, the Trump administration as an anomaly. But now that the Biden administration is doubling down on many of the same sort of pieces of rhetoric, but actually making it even more uncomfortable for China by stressing human rights and stressing geopolitics, which Trump didn't really do until 2020 it's it's going to cause the period of adjustment. And China is adjusting to this new rhetoric and strategy. This reality that the U.S. and China are indeed rivals. And so in the near term, I would say the probability of a crisis is, is elevated, but I think it will dissipate and then we'll have this interregnum. So once we've passed the first six months, all the adjusting to a new administration, I think us and China will settle into some sort of, you know, more stable equilibrium. And then only in the longer curve can the probability of conflict rise again. If, if China does manage to, you know, rival the U S in terms of raw geopolitical power, so it's a U-shape probability. Now, why does it dip? Why doesn't it just increase linearly? Well, because of the constraints that I think many commentators are just completely ignoring. And there's two sets of constraints, what is a mega constraint, which is the fact that we don't exist in a world where only China and the U.S. matter. There's other countries with significant independence in pursuing their foreign and economic policy. And you might say, "Well, I mean, that's always the case." Well, no, it's not in 1945. I can tell you, there were only two countries on the planet. The matter there was Moscow and there was Washington DC, nobody else got asked anything. You know, like us sort of like kindly asked London and Paris what they thought, but not in a serious way. In fact, when France or the United Kingdom tried to pursue an independent foreign policy in the Suez Crisis they were threatened by the U.S. to back off because it was causing problems in its relationship with the Soviet Union. So the bipolar nature of the Cold War, or it's something that's unlikely to be replicated the us and the Soviet Union had incredible hold on their allies. I wouldn't even call them allies. They were really vassal states, you know, NATO and the Warsaw Pact were not alliances of equals. They were. You know, there was the center and then the periphery. Today, China, the U.S. are nowhere near the same level of power in relative terms. And that means that the constraint on the two of them carving up the whole world is that their own allies are not going to abide by their policies. So imagine in a world where the U.S. for example said, "Okay, you know what, we're going to stop trading with China." You know, the Congress Department says to Boeing, "Hey, no more selling airplanes to China." What's going to happen? Like, is Airbus going to follow the United States? Of course not. There's no way. France is going to say like, "Oh, that's a cool story. We're going to go and sell them more now airplanes. Yes, that's awesome." And this is by the way, what happened in the 19th century, precisely the same dynamic happen. And you had this world where Germany continued to trade with the UK, France, and Russia, because those three countries couldn't coordinate on these matters on their own. So that's the first constraint. The second constraint is what you alluded to, which is China itself is constrained in being extremely assertive. A lot of the policies that are emanating from Beijing suggests that they're moving towards a more consumer-based society. And one of the reasons that - economy - consumer based economy. And the reason they want to do that is they want to become more independent. They don't want to rely on the American consumer demand or economic growth, but that's going to take time. And last year, and this year it's exports that have led the recovery in China. The household spending has actually been hit quite a bit. China did not stimulate its economy the way we did. There were no stimulus checks kind of flowing into the Chinese economy. And so if China wants to have economic stability, it's going to have to play ball with the rest of the world because the end consumer, the final demand, is still external to its economy. Even as its exports, a share of GDP has fallen. So China has this real difficult balance. It's not ready yet to become, you know, fully assertive. And I think a lot of the commentary, especially in theU.S. Overstates both Chinese assertiveness and its ability to be as aggressive as people think it will be. Aaron Watson: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. As a, as you talked about those different analogies, you know, thinking cold war and vassal states either aligned with the Soviet Union in the U.S. I almost thought more like American football where it's kind of the head coach and everyone is just pieces on the head coaches board in terms of where they might move and this multipolar environment where there's maybe two stars. If, if you want to call China and U.S. the stars but all these other capable, independent actors, more like a basketball game where maybe, you know, things rotate around the Steph Curry or the LeBron, or what have you. But, you know, some guy might just decide to go off and do their own thing and, and throw the entire game out of whack just because they have that autonomy. Marko Papic: You know what, like, listen, I'm a sucker for sports analogies, as you know, like you plant, like I can tell - the book is full of them. Some of them were funny, I think. So I would say that you know, soccer is a really good example of what we're collecting. You know, like I think basketball is perhaps a poor analogy itself. Do I see the Coca-Cola - coach point? Basketball is just like five, five dudes with the ball, you know, so like one person really does make a big difference in basketball, but soccer, like you can be the best soccer player in the world as Messi has been for the last, you know, like 10, 15 years. And yet you cannot really contribute to your team as much as Michael Jordan or as a coach in football. And that's the world we're in today. It's a world where the us is going to have to work, to get its allies on board on a number of different things. And I think one of the things that you've seen American commentators really tried to stress is the threat of China. And the problem with that is two-fold. One Japan has been living next to China think forever. And you know, I mean, Tokyo is sitting there and listening to Biden and Trump and like, "Really? You know, like that's really cool story. Yeah. We've been dealing with this for a very long time." So Japan is actually quite pragmatic, even after some serious confrontations with China that almost did lead to the blows, like in 2011 and 12, over to Diaoyu Senkaku Islands, you know, Japan has continued to trade and invest in China. Look, I'll bite that a lower trajectory, but Japan has, has learned to live with a very powerful in a certain China. And so they're not going to freak out over that overnight because suddenly America tells them to. And then you, and the other side Europe, which is so far away from China, you know, I see some of these comments, the theaters in the U.S. talking about debt-traps and so on. And a lot of this stuff is just honestly nonsense. No one, I feel like no one in Eastern Europe is worried about becoming indebted to China and then China showing up with a gunboats and seizing factories. And Europe is so far away that, you know, there's obviously concerns about property rights, intellectual property, about technology theft, all those things, but for Europe, Japan, even South Korea this, this new kind of verbiage out of America is just difficult to agree with. In other words, China would have to do a lot more to prove the U.S. correct in the eyes of the rest of the world. And that's why coordination against China is going to be much different from coordination gives the Soviet Union Aaron Watson: And so, that would kind of lead into people, very familiar with NATO as this kind of way of trying to block in the Soviet Union. And there's this similar noise made about the Quad: India, Australia, Japan, the U.S. kind of coming together to try to form a similar type of containment to China generally. And you would just say that that's not really going to operatein a similar way? Marko Papic: No no way. I mean, you know, like NATO has. Has a mutual defense clause which has triggered automatically Quad is nowhere near being that kind of a level of a military alliance. And so I think, I think it's just going to take a lot more time and it would, it would require China to, to make some severe mistakes in terms of foreign policy. So it's not impossible. For example, trying to reunify with Taiwan militarily would certainly accelerate some of these efforts. And then I think that would, that would change my my view considerably. But short of that, I mean, it's just, you know, there's, there's no level of threats that's equivalent and I'll give you an example of this. The Soviet Union had something like 70 tank divisions ready to burst through the Baltic gap, and take Frankfurt in like half an hour, you know? And there was actually no way conventionally, at least this was the thinking at the time, it was later revealed to have been perhaps a little too alarmist, but the conventional view, in the sixties, seventies and eighties, was that there was no way to prevent the conventional war against the Soviet Union. There was like no way to stop them. And so the United States did not have a no first use policy towards nuclear weapons. Why? Because he plans to use them in Europe who stopped Soviet attack, which tactical nuclear weapons, which were positioned throughout European continent. So the Union on the other hand was very magnanimous and they said, "No, no, no, we will never use first because we, you know, we'll be in Paris in a week." And so this was like not some sort of a theoretical threat. "Oh one day China will have dominance of 5g and then they'll spy on our kids through tick-tock and then our kids will be brainwashed," you know, like, no, no, no, no, no. There was a tank! A Soviet tank, like over there, you could see it and it was going to come over here. And so that's where NATO was born, you know? So like the equivalence here is, is, is honestly. Like comical, I'll give you another one. There were parties like political parties in Europe, in Paris, in Rome, in 1940s and fifties that owed their allegiance to Moscow. You know? So like this wasn't again, academic, this was actual parties. Oh, in loyalty to an enemy. And you know, the Communist Party of France, Communist Party of Italy, like, look it up. They didn't win elections, but they weren't like 20, 30% of the vote. So today, you know, people freak out about China, like you know, using money in different ways to influence people. Of course that's happening of course, but the level of like espionage and influence, which is much different. In fact, that's why the us launched the Marshall Plan to ensure that Italy and France did not turn towards communism as their operating system in the late 1940s and 1950s. And so Europeans who understand history and have experienced these, these geopolitical tensions. It's just going to be very difficult to convince the Italian government that there's this existential risk. Well, when it comes to China, it's basic. What's going to be possible. It's going to be possible to show up in Rome as a member of theU.S. State department and say like, look, China's like critical. You need to stop trading with them. It's just not, it's literally not going to happen. Trump didn't succeed, Biden won, and that's going to then create the constraint that American policymakers in how much they can really be leveraged from their own relationship with China. Now this doesn't mean the war doesn't happen. This is something very important. It sounds like I'm pretty dovish. It sounds like. I think that world's going to basically just sing kumbaya. The problem with that is that I'm absolutely historically empirically, correct? It's like the argument is practically unassailable, but my example from the 19th century, how did it end up. Yes, Germany traded with the UK would France and Russia right up until summer of 1914, and then it went to war with it. So that's something to just keep in mind that, you know, you can still have these nonlinear outcomes, even for the, even if for the next five to 10 years. You know, there may not be economic bifurcation between the U.S. and China, and that's something to keep in mind. Aaron Watson: So I'm going to spin around the globe again and touch on a couple of things you've said. So there's these very capable, other independent actors around the globe. And there's another country that has been a part of NATO, but has kind of been up to their own stuff, which is Turkey. And to me, this is at least in my reading of the news or my perception as an American, the biggest blind spot, generally for Americans, just in terms of influential actors elsewhere on the globe. You know, there's all the, all the drama in the Mid - Middle East with Iran. Obviously we talked about China and have an awareness of world war, you know, Europe because of learning about World War ll somewhat in our history classes, it seems like an enormous blind spot. I, I can't and don't even really know who I would talk to in my life about Turkey in some way, shape, or form. So can you kind of take us from like a rudimentary level up to the constraints and the challenges that Turkey's facing? Marko Papic: I mean, wow, Turkey's facing a lot of different cross-currents. I think Turkey is facing one of the largest mismatches between what it aspires to do and what its actual capabilities are. And so, you know, Turkey has a pretty advantageous geographical position between two key continents. It had great economic relationship with countries like Syria and Iraq to which it provides a lot of services, a lot of you know, manufactured and consumer goods. So it has a potential to be a pretty significant, you know hub of technological, consumer manufacturing, prowess, and it has a lot of potential markets that it could dominate because it understands those markets culturally linguistically in case of, you know, some central Asian economies and so on. At the same time, it has a real problem. And then real problem is that in terms of energy, it's completely dependent on Russia, more or less. It has really no imports, massive amounts of oil and natural gas. And then finally, it, it never really managed to integrate itself into the European economy because it did not really satisfy all the kind of political and sociopolitical, you know, rules and norms that Europe was asking it to do. And it. The fact that it's sort of an advantageous geographically almost as a detriment because it can't decide which sphere of influence to fit into. And it's continuously tries to carve out its own before it reaches a certain level of material wealth. And so that's what I would argue has been the problem with the policy of, of Ankara over the past 10 years, it chose to make a bid or a sphere of influence of its own before he was capable of doing so. It abandoned its bid for the European Union, thinking after 2008, 2009, while the West is declining anyways, why do we need them look at them? They're about to collapse. We're going on our own. All of those decisions were probably made even earlier than 2008. And they basically struck out on this view like, well, we're going to carve out our sort of proto sort of Neo-optimum sphere of influence that we had in the past, which is really north Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucuses, and the Balkans. And the problem with that strategy is that it upset way too many actors, whether it's the United States, whether it's Saudi Arabia in some of its moves after Arab Spring in Egypt, whether it's Russia and basically all those attempts to carve out the sphere of influence have largely failed through the detriment of its economy. And it's a really good example of why geopolitical power ultimately rests on material wealth. You know, like, and a lot of geopolitical strategists, mis - mistake this. There's this view that economics is irrelevant for some, some, somehow subservient to geopolitics, to demographics, the geography, and Turkey is just a good example that you can have great geography and just be at the mercy of you know, actors around you that have a larger surplus that they can carve out of their economy and dedicated, to geopolitical endeavors. And so Turkey has just been biting off more than they can chew in a world where other powers still have a lot of interests. Aaron Watson: That's so funny. Once again, the analogies to like small businesses and startups, the ability to have focus versus kind of spreading yourself too thin on too many projects. Yeah. I'd argue that Uber was guilty of that, but some of the endeavors that they've pursued and they're kind of learning that lesson painfully now. I have one other question kind of, as we talk about places around the globe, and then I want to talk about this career that you found yourself in, how you got into it and all that good stuff. There's another idea out there, which is the notion of the rise of the city state, and maybe the sterling example of that is a place like Singapore, and, you know, you see attempts at this happening around the Persian Gulf. And, you know, even the, the, some hype, at least in like tech startup circles around Miami versus San Francisco and these other types of places. There's, I guess a somewhat arg- obvious constraint in that these city states usually cannot raise anything, resembling a substantial military to defend themselves. However, they do have some really substantial capacity for wealth generation. And so I'm curious if you kind of buy into that idea of the rise of the city state narrative or if you could maybe just talk as, as you think about those different types of endeavors, if you see them still as either vassals to a more powerful entities or the ways in which those types of frameworks are constrained. Marko Papic: You know, I think every period in history had city states or neutral places to do business. I don't know how to define it because you know, some of them are not necessarily cities, but they're like those little enclaves. So I think that I'm not sure that there's anything unique in history through the current mo - - moment. There are always places that managed to leverage their relevance, human capital, geography, and neutrality to the great benefit. You know, also like you think of Singapore today, you can think of Venice as well in the late middle ages. You know, so there are examples of this throughout history. You have the Switzerlands of the, of the world and by the way, Switzerland and Singapore have a pretty similar population, even though one is a country, the other one is a city state. So I don't think there's anything really unique about this. What's interesting is what gives rise to these entities. And I'm not sure that there's anything you need again about current conditions. You know, like you could argue that Singapore is very much leveraged to globalization. And you might think that in a world where we have de-globalization over globalization has kind of reached its apex. Maybe we won't have as many city states, but I don't, I don't think that's the case. I think that you will always have places in the world that because of their interesting mix of regulation, the human capital become, you know, important in some way. So Miami is a really good example because of advantageous taxation, because, because of a idiosyncratic really issue that most people probably don't think when they think of Miami, but after 2008, the United States cracked down on financial, safe havens on places where, you know, you could do tax avoidance. Where a lot of wealth was basically hidden, whether it was Switzerland, the Caribbean, and ironically, all this money basically flooded back to the U.S. whether consciously or subconsciously the U.S. created this incredible effect and, and a lot of it from the Caribbean and Latin America did go to Miami. And so I would, I would say that was the first step in this latest iteration of Miami that combined with low corporate tax rate would interesting, you know, multicultural scene. I think that's given to Miami, this rise that you're witnessing right now. I think this will always happen. I don't think it's unique to this current period. And, you know, it'll be interesting to find out which ones are the next ones. Aaron Watson: And, and they do to some degree make themselves a target by accruing that wealth and influence perhaps evidenced by the kind of absorption of Hong Kong by China recently, where if you are that kind of economic driver and some particularly powerful geopolitical forces nearby, you, you kind of put a target on your back. Marko Papic: But I'm not sure that Hong Kong is going to dissipate as, in terms of influence. I mean, I've changed my view on this. I've written some reports where I've said it will. I mean, you know, it depends. I actually think, you know, Hong Kong could continue to be relevant, especially in a world where, you know, investors want to access China, but they require interlocutors to which to do it. So I understand the argument that China of course has, you know, like interest in boosting Shanghai of Guangzou or Hainan island. Some of their latest measures are really focused on Hainan, which is really interesting. Maybe that's the next, you know, kind of a city state. But, you know, it's, it's, it remains to be seen what happens to Hong Kong. And I think the human capital aspect of this is, is really, really relevant. I don't think that city-states are possible without human capital, and that's what Singapore got right really well. Aaron Watson: Right on. I could probably talk about these different types of places with you forever. But I do want to spend some time because this is a show that it's categorized as a careers one, and how you found yourself in this role with the Clocktower Group. You're very candid in the book about how you were going down the conventional PhD professorship type of track, and then have taken all sorts of different diversions. I wanted to start basically, just talking about your time at Stratfor and explaining for a little bit about people, what Stratfor is was, and how you kind of found yourself there. Marko Papic: Yeah, so Stratfor is in the political risk industry. Just like you raise your group as well. And so when I got disillusioned with academia and said, well, I should probably learn how to, you know, I should probably have a real job at some point before I decide to go into academia. It was just obvious. It just made a lot of sense. And so I joined it. This industry is not that big, you know, that's, what's interesting about it. It's it's actually really small. And so, you know, getting a foothold in, in the kind of a political risk space, it's much more difficult than people think. And so it doesn't really exist as a profession. And so I was very fortunate to be able to, you know, spend some time at Stratfor, and, and learn some of the ins and outs of how one actually, you know does political risk analysis. And what I found while I was there was that it was kind of useful for a lot of CEO's and a lot of corporates as a background, but I didn't feel like it was really you know, it was nice to have, not a need to have, the political kind of analysis that we were doing. And I felt that there was a way to do it in a way where it could actually generate alpha. That's the name of the book, which is returns above a certain benchmark in finance. I felt that there was actually a way to use political analysis to beat the markets in certain, you know, cases. And so that's why I decided to cross over more specifically into finance. But I definitely get a lot of questions all the time from people in LinkedIn or young people studying international relations and political science, like, "Hey, how do you actually enter this industry?" Aaron Watson: And yeah, you mentioned it being such a small world. I didn't even quite realize it. I first saw one of your interviews on RealVision, but you know, the Stratford that's where Peter Zion's come out of George Friedman. It seems like an exceptionally, a small circle of characters that you know, have the ears of those decision makers and have done the work to kind of prove that they can make a call. You can have some confidence in it know that it's it's well researched. One of the other parts that was interesting to me in the intro was I, I believe it was your partner there, the Clocktower group, Steven, who said that you were this nihilist. You had this nihilistic approach to analysis and in different interviews, we've kind of talked about that in, in, in a different context, not in geopolitics is potentially being harmful, but can you talk about how general nihilism about geopolitical analysis has behooved you in this profession? Marko Papic: Yeah. And I think that's the, if I, if there's one thing that I would take from the book and proselytize, it's that we need more, nihilists. Now not in your behavior as a human being, but in your profession. Why? Well, even if you're running an NGO and it's trying to fundamentally change the world, you can't be blind through the constraints that face you, you know, and in fact, I think the way to be successful in any endeavor that has to do with the real world, which is messy and doesn't obey Newtonian physics. And so you can't just outsmart it through math. So whenever you're dealing with societies or humans, I think it's really important to separate the analysis from your action and agents. And so I talk a lot about this. I call it a loop in difference, my partner, Steve calls it nihilism, and I mean, I do too, but the idea behind it is that in order to forecast where the world is going, you need to really wash away all the biases that you have. And that's a really difficult thing to do. And very few places will teach you how to do that. And once you do that, once you can kind of forecast where the world is going indifference to, whether that's good or bad, you know, putting passion aside only then can you actually figure out, well, how do I change that? But if you go into the analysis already biased or already focused on changing the world, you're just going to fail in my view. And you see this a lot, you see this in politics all the time. You have the zealots. Yeah. illogically committed zealots who basically come in and say, this is how we're going to do it. And they faced oposition because obviously they do .Now from their own personal self-interest and many of them want. They admit this they're really not trying to change the world. They're just trying to make themselves feel better by kind of washing themselves with their own preconceived biases and views. But if you want to change the world, you have to understand the constraints you're operating inside and then try to change those. But that, that starting point of a loop in difference, I think, is most critical in this analysis or really in any endeavor that has to do with, you know, human agency. Now the reason this is very difficult to acquire is because while we're humans and we're biased. But the second reason is that again, the political risk industry is very, very small. So most people who've been international relations or political science, or are interested in this. They either go into government, you know, we're obviously they don't get trained in nihilism. We'll loop in different. I think it'd be, I think they should be, you know but they don't. Or they go and go into kind of the international organization NGO world, whereas you definitely don't get instructed on this method. Or you go into business or you're in finance where you would think where you would think that people are instructed in how to think analytically and separate themselves and their own views from their analysis, but they actually don't. And so there's still this kind of indignance and just kind of you know judgmental quality, even in finance to viewing the markets as right or wrong, or what policymakers are doing is stupid. You know, things like that. Then, you know, you get faced with this, even if finance where it's like, it's not stupid, it's just is, so act accordingly. And I think that it's very difficult to train this. How do you train it? I think the way you train it is you try to use empathy a lot in your analysis, and you try to put yourself in the shoes of those who you even really disagree with. This is really critical. To becoming desensitized to yourself and to be able to start looking at concrete data and objective facts in forecasting where the world was going. That's where it starts. Aaron Watson: Well, it sounds like you are though optimistic about the ability to train someone towards that because I would, I would struggle almost with differentiating, you know, the right team culture, where leaders and the, the norms have been set, that we're all gonna, you know, point out each other's biases and kind of correct when someone's being too ideological and a view that would be one kind of arena where you can hopefully develop other people to operate that way. But then there's also like my mind goes to almost just like, you know, they have a different kind of psychological personality profiles and someone that just is oriented around disagreeableness is going to be much less likely to land in an environment where everyone's kind of nodding along. So if you kind of have that, that disagreeableness off the bat, you're more comfortable being like, well, that's a ridiculous tape that doesn't have any sort of grounding and the actual facts on the ground. Marko Papic: I'm not sure if it matters if you're disagreeable or not, you know, maybe even make an argument that disagreeable people are more likely to have a counterintuitive view. Like I think it comes down to this. I mean, I've, I've worked with disagreeable people and agreeable people who both equally were unwilling to think outside the box. It requires several things. I think, one, it requires you to have, at some point in your life, been the other. I do think you cannot do this without it is extremely difficult to have a level of aloof indifference that's required for forecasting the future without having been othered at some point. Whether that means that you grew up in Arkansas and then you will land in Manhattan. Like that's good enough for me. I'm not asking for you to live abroad or something like that, but you have to have sometimes been out of, like, out of place. Because that act of sort of cultural and social, social, you know, otherness gives you the necessary level of a now analytical capability to then understand that everything is relative and how somebody can act under constraints in a certain way. I think that's, that's like the starting point. You have to have felt that at some point, or maybe you were born just different, you know, you're, you're a kid in a family full of football fans. You're like you're rebelled and you're like ice hockey. Like that's good enough for me, you know, but the point is that at some point you'd like, you have to have felt that. Once that's done, then you have to kind of seek it out because the, the critical point of analyzing societies and then making a difference is being able to forecast correctly, policymaker moves without thinking that they're stupid or that they're driven by this or that. You know, once you're there, you can then focus on the objective facts. And that's why I keep saying, like, even if you're running an NGO, that's, you know, focused on climate change, even if you're, even if you're extremely like focused on normative and value-driven issues, you can still be pretty nihilist in your analysis right up until the point where you then have to act on your analysis of how to change the world. Aaron Watson: Right on. Well, my last question before we ask our standard ones for wrapping up is precisely the opposite of nihilism. You mentioned being a basketball fan, a soccer fan as well. Where do your fandoms lie and what are your expectations for the 20 21 NBA season? Marko Papic: Well, I'm a huge Laker fan. I had this before I could speak English growing up in Serbia, huge basketball fan. And so I think, you know, The Lakers will probably win again. I guess I'm hopeful of that, but but you know, it's, it's a great season and it could go either way. That's that's what's interesting about this. We'll see. Okay. Aaron Watson: Yeah. If we get a, a, another Katie-LeBron showdown in the finals, that would be absolutely stunning. Marko Papic: Right? That will be awesome. I think, I think that would be really good. Aaron Watson: Cool. Well, before we ask the, in the last few questions, Marco, anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you a chance to? Marko Papic: I guess you know, one thing I would say, just in terms of this, this industry political risk industry I do want to spend maybe just a little bit more time on that because I do think it's a growing industry. I just think that a lot of people who tried to get into it go about it the wrong way. And the reason I say that is that, you know, they see someone like Ian Bremmer or someone like George Friedman or Peter Zeihan or myself. And they say like, "Oh, I want to do that." But the issue is that you're looking at the end of the line, you know, like you're looking at the end of the assembly line and what you should be thinking is how do I enter the assembly line? And the only way to really enter the industry of political or geopolitical risk analysis is to become an expert on something pretty small. Don't think big picture, you know, don't try to become a global strategist on day one gain an expertise, especially in parts of the world that are not. You know, interesting right now. So you know, like learning Mandarin in 2021 is the wrong time. You know, if you're an American student, you know, it'd be like learning like Arabic in 2011, like bad time to do that. So start thinking about, you know, where the world is going, what matters. For example, climate change is something that I think is a really big issue. I think that policy makers are reacting to it. And I think that that's going to require a level of investment in commodities that we haven't really seen in awhile. And we're starting suddenly going to start caring about things like nickel or cobalt or lithium, and guess what the good news for someone who's young is that a lot of these things are found in places that no one's really spent any time studying for a very long time. So if you're interested in Latin America or Africa, I think that your time will come. And so, you know, Focus on developing an expertise in a skillset, in something that's digestible that you can study. And from there, you can eventually become, you know, someone who has a global purview. But thinking that you're going to start off with a global perspective, you know, right out of university or right after a master's even is just, it's not feasible. It's not realistic. I mean, as I write in the book, I started off as a European analyst, which was about as interesting as being an Admiral of a Swiss Navy know, always make fun of myself for that, but it ended up being really fortuitous. I got lucky that the EU crisis hit, but I developed a competency in something that nobody else really wants to touch to be quite Frank with you. So I, that would be my advice for a lot of people trying to get into this field, find a niche and the niche doesn't have to be a geographic. It doesn't require language study necessarily all the time. It might be something in, you know in technology that's emerging, it might be something in a policy that's emerging. That's cross-regional cross-country but focus on developing an expertise first and then thinking about branching out to more regional and global issues. Aaron Watson: I love it. We've hit on focus twice. It's one of the most important ideas. Marko, if folks want to learn more about all the work that you're doing we're going to link to the book in the show notes for people, if they want to check that out, but any other digital coordinates that you want to provide for folks that want to learn more? Marko Papic: No, I actually don't have any. If I had any advice, it would be stop listening to people like me. There's this, you know, like there's this huge obsession would following the right people. Ultimately anything that you get from me in the, in the sort of ether of the internet, is going to be not really that useful to be, to be quite honest with you. I think. Focus on learning from yourself. And I think my book was written specifically to empower, you know, mainly investors, but it can be anyone with this idea that you yourself can do the hard work. So I actually am not available anywhere outside of the book all the research that I produced is really for a select group of institutional investors. And so, yeah, I mean, and, and what I would say is like, you know, maybe whatever, however many people you're following, cut it in half and do more deep reading and deep analysis yourself. Aaron Watson: I take that. Can you talk about some of the sources that you go back to most frequently when you're trying to get to that ground truth? Marko Papic: Yeah, that's a great question. Always primary, primary, primary, primary, primary, primary documents. Always! I don't know what they teach history classes, but it's not how to go to the primary document. Like I can tell, you know, like this is key. This is key. You cannot go to a blog post. You cannot go to New York Times. You cannot go to Financial Times. It's not research. It's just not. You know, it's entertainment first and foremost. The only place where you can find true truth is the primary document. So if you are trying to figure out what's going to happen with the fiscal stimulus in the United States of America, don't go and read what New York Times says about it or Axios or Politico or The Hill. Although those are especially The Hill, very good sources of information, you want to go and actually read them. And if you're starting out and, you know, like the reason I really love this podcast Aaron, and the reason I want to do it is because I do want to talk to young people trying to get us into in this industry. What I would say is like, read less of stuff that's easy to read. Read more of stuff that's really difficult to read. And you know, it's difficult to read? A bill! A c- c- congressional bill. A House or a Senate bill. Oh my God. It's one of the most boring things you can do in your life, but that's where you're going to start, you know, like, can you read like five of them, you're going to start seeing like interesting tidbits, interesting knowledge that other people have not picked up. And that's something that a lot of, of my mentors, like my partner here at Clocktower, Steve Drobny have said, I mean like, you know, the median person you're competing with is lazy and they're not going to do the hard work of going through the primary documents. And so put in the effort to do it. So how do you collect information? How do you become more aware of what's going on in the world? I would say there's like, there's three levels. One is read the news you know, just headlines. I prefer to use Reuters for that or the wire services, like a AFP or AP, like the, the less analysis there is in the news, the more I liked it. I don't need someone to pre digest the news for me and give it to me a little slices. I just want the actual thing that happened. So that's first. The second is talk to people. Get a group of friends that you really admire. Get people who can, you know, where you can talk out ideas and what's going on in the world where you can have this iterative dialogue, because that's where you're going to get great ideas. So basically you get the news, you hear what happened, you run it through a filter of really important people that you admire. Hopefully some that are older, different perspectives, more experienced, whatever the case is, then you come up with ideas and you pursue those ideas by doing deep, deep knowledge and deep analysis in deep breathing. That means academic papers. It means books, and it means primary sources. When you read academic papers and when you read books, read the footnotes. Occasionally there'll be funny if you read my book, for example, there'll be many in there that are funny and some that are not. Why do I have funny footnotes? Because I want you to hope that every footnote is worth reading. And most of them are because that's how you get to other sources of information. Some of the best thinking that I've done in my life, in some of the things that have made my career were found in footnotes. Where you read an article about why an academic piece, about why issue Y and then you get to issue X because of that footnote, and it blows your mind. So that's what I would say. I mean, the questions that you are posing, Aaron I get it a lot. What do you read? And my answer is I don't read anything that can really be read very quickly. I don't read any of the things that you would expect, like the economist, foreign affairs, foreign policy, all that stuff is not useful. I think obviously if you are, you know, building a company, that's doing something specific where you don't have to be a geopolitical risk strategist, right? Definitely. You should read the economist. Like that's my favorite. Like for sure if it's just something you want to have on your mind, that makes sense. But if you want to do this professionally, what I'm doing, this is the only way to do it. Aaron Watson: I dig that. Well, part, part of my game is to try to get around really smart people. And I'm not afraid to say something that's probably not correct and let them correct me on it. That's one of the ways I like to go to the source as well. But I I really, really appreciate you taking so much time to talk with me and share your stuff with the audience. I prepped you for the challenge at the end. I feel like we got a couple here. So if there's still another challenge that you want to shoot the audience this is your chance on the mic. Marko Papic: Yes, definitely. So my whole thing is the hardest part about this job, the toughest part of this job is to really try to be as, as unbiased as possible. And I've tried to do that in my life by surrounding myself, by people who I disagree with, you know, On on some important issues. Although I don't have anyone in my life was a Clipper fan and I never will, no, I'm not. No, but so what does that mean? What's the challenge? Well, I think there's two parts of the challenge. I think one is trying to do what I said and I mean, this is, this is so important, whether you are, you know, hoping to have a geopolitical risk kind of analysis career or finance career or not. But I think spending time abroad is really useful. And I know that's been said before, and I'm sure I'm probably not the first or the last, who will say that as a challenge. But I would say that right now, I mean, this summer is a really good time. Spend some time abroad. If you were at a university, do it for sure. Like, this is probably the most useful thing you can do at the university. The second thing I would say is, you know, if that's, it's like too big, like I can't do that tomorrow or this weekend then do something different. You don't like go to a, like a political meeting. Or go and talk to someone who is on the exact opposite political spectrum from you and spend some time to listen to that. And don't really just ask questions, you know, like spend like as much time as you can just listening. And if you can't find anyone, which would be really sad, if you can't then just watch the TV channel you deeply disagree with for like a week, make it like almost like a medicine you take before you go to sleep every night. And the reason I say that is because you really need to learn. I think in life, you put yourself in the shoes of those who think differently and act differently than you, because that act in of itself will make you a much better analyst. I mean, that's that, that's kind of the core. I mean, my book has a bunch of pants, examples of finance and all this stuff, but fundamentally speaking, if you're going to be in the industry of analyzing politics or geopolitics for living. You have to be able to have a baseline level that's analytical and in order to produce outcomes and produce forecasts, then you can, you know, what you do with that is obviously what you want. You can change the world with that. You can be extremely non nihilist with it, but the analysis itself has to be done from that baseline level of a loop difference. And it's impossible to do that unless you practice. Aaron Watson: Right on. Well, hopefully many listeners will take the challenge, practice it and have a bunch more nihilists walking around. Marko Papic: Well no! Not necessarily nihilists. Just analytical nihilists. But then what you do with that - please I'm not trying to say... Aaron Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just joshing you. Marco, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Marko Papic: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for the opportunity, Aaron. And I hope that you know, I hope it was helpful. Aaron Watson: It absolutely was. We just went deep with Marco Papic. Hope everyone out there has a fantastic day.
Andy Norman is a researcher focused on studying how ideologies short-circuit minds and corrupt moral understanding.
His studies have led him to develop a toolkit of methods for improving reasoning and share them in his book, Mental Immunity. His hope is that a collection of academic research can be lassoed together to serve as the foundation of a new scientific field, Cognitive Immunology. Cognitive immunology would explore the ability of researchers to develop a mind vaccine to inoculate individuals against dangerous ideas. In this conversation, Andy and Aaron discuss the dangers of loneliness, the importance of dialogue, and the future of viral ideas. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Andy Norman’s Challenge; Learn to treat your ideas as houseguests. Perhaps one day they will depart, and you will be glad. Connect with Andy Norman
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Andy’s Website CognitiveImmunology.Net Books Mentioned Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think by Andy Norman Tribe by Sebastian Junger The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins If you liked this interview, check out episode 472 with Demetri Kofinas where we discuss epistemic truth, geopolitics, and. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Geng Wang is the CEO and cofounder of Civic Champs, a software startup focused on creating s seamless and rewarding volunteering experience for both volunteers and service organizations
This is Geng’s third commercial venture. He’s previously co-founded two companies; RentJungle.com, an apartment search engine which sold in 2014 to The Rainmaker Group and Community Elf (rebranded as Cosmitto), a social media management firm which we sold in 2017 to a PE firm, Topanga Partners. Given his past successes, Geng is looking to both create financial and social impact with his latest company. He has leveraged a number of startup incubators, including TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield, Elevate Ventures, Innovation Works, TechStars Iowa, and Mass Challenge, to get it off the ground. In this episode, Geng and Aaron discuss how motivation changes through an entrepreneur’s career, the nature of product development, and how to design a startup’s culture. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Geng Wang’s Challenge; For National Volunteering Month, get out there and go find an avenue to help your community. Connect with Geng Wang
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Civic Champs Website geng@civicchamps.com If you liked this interview, check out episode 12 with Scott Rogerson where we discuss Community Elf, social media management, and their software spinout UpContent. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 |
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