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
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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. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
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 
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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Marko Papic
https://web.descript.com/44dbeb16-3e96-46e1-bb01-baa52650ba66/b33c9 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 ephem- 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. ???: 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 brand and grow faster. Say hello@pipercreative.co. Aaron Watson: 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 Zion 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 Popic. 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 
Sanjiv Singh is CEO and cofounder of Near Earth Autonomy, a technology company focused on autonomous flight.
Sanjiv has 25 years of experience working on autonomous ground and air vehicles. He came to Pittsburgh 30 years ago to participate in the DARPA challenge and has spent decades exploring different applications for self-driving and self-flying robots. Near Earth Autonomy started by developing self-flying technology for the United States Government and has expanded to bring their technological capabilities to a variety of enterprise customers. In this conversation, Sanjiv and Aaron discuss applications for self-flying vehicles, the origins of the company, and the difference between working with the military and the FAA. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Sanjiv Singh’s Challenge; Imagine a world in which you could autonomously fly from point A to point B. Connect with Sanjiv Singh
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YouTube Near Earth Autonomy Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 306 with Bryan Salesky where we discuss autonomous vehicles. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and host of Hidden Forces, a podcast devoted to exploring the underlying forces driving the most powerful changes we see in the world.
His show covers a qide range of topics, including culture, philosophy, economics, technology, social science, and the hard sciences. Demetri has previously co-founded Guerilla Gaming Concepts, an interactive entertainment company focused the middleware of gaming. He has also reported on financial news and told stories to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. In addition to his show, Demetri consults blockchain and distributed ledger technology companies, helping them anticipate security vulnerabilities by building theoretical attack frameworks against token-based systems, and he consults hedge funds and venture capital firms on how to invest in and around these same emerging technologies. In this episode, Aaron and Demetri have a far reaching conversation about truth, technological progress, and geopolitics. Mentioned The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson Peter Zeihan Ian Bremmer Grant Williams Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Demetri Kofinas’s Challenges; 1. Hold yourself to a higher standard. 2. Put space between your thoughts/emotions and actions. 3. Try not to judge people Connect with Demetri Kofinas
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Hidden Forces Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 463 with Jeff Booth where we discuss the deflationary nature of technology. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Black Tech Nation Ventures is launching its first flagship venture fund in Pittsburgh, PA. The firm is founded by three managing partners, Kelauni Jasmyn, Sean Sebastian, and David Motley have come together to form an investment thesis focused on investing in black and other minority founders who have historically missed out on opportunities to raise venture capital.
As David outlines in this podcast, these represent an underutilized asset capable of creating outsized returns, not a charitable donation. David brings experience from three decades in corporate America, sitting on the boards of multiple public companies, investing tens of millions of dollars into real estate, and a track record of venture investments through the Blue Tree Venture Fund. David has also raised a $207 Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle (SPAC) called Deep Lake Capital. David Motley has also co-founded 3 enterprises: The BlueTree Venture Fund, DLM-WCM (a real estate development company) and, MCAPS, LLC (a professional services company focused on Managed Services, Staff Augmentation, and Consulting). In this episode, David and Aaron also discuss how to craft a fulfilling career, how to raise money from large institutions, and why SPACs are taking off. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. David Motley’s Challenge; Don’t undershoot. Set a goal and go after it. Connect with David Motley
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BTN.vc If you liked this interview, check out episode 265 with Kelauni Jasmyn about Black Tech Nation, episode 290 with Ned Renzi about Birchmree Ventures, or episode 405 with Matt Kesinger about his medical device startup. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Paul Martino is a venture capital investor and has raised 5 funds totaling over $350 million in capital. That money has been deployed into FanDuel, Grove, Ipsy, and SpotHero.
Before forming Bullpen, Paul was an active angel investor and personally invested in the first rounds of Zynga, TubeMogul, and uDemy. Prior to his investing career, Paul founded four companies including Ahpah Software (a computer security firm acquired by InterTrust) and Aggregate Knowledge (a big data advertising attribution company acquired in 2014 by Neustar). He is the holder of over a dozen core patents covering social networking and big data. In this episode, Paul and Aaron discuss the FanDuel success, his advice for startups going through tough times, and the different space that venture capital investors make their mark. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Paul Martino’s Challenge; Start every meeting on time Connect with Paul Martino
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Bullpen Capital Website paul@bullpencap.com If you liked this interview, check out episode 231 with Andy Rachleff where we discuss how to find non-consensus investing ideas that work. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Aubrey Strobel is the Head of Comms for Lolli, a free browser extension that lets users earn free bitcoin when shopping online.
The platform’s mission is to help make cryptocurrency more accessible to the average shopper. Founded in 2018, Lolli has over 1,000 retail partners including Expedia, Nike, and Glossier. In this episode, Aubrey and Aaron discuss stacking sats, bringing women into crypto, and how Aubrey has modeled the Lolli brand and marketing off of Barstool Sports. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Aubrey Strobel’s Challenge; Call an elderly person in your life. Connect with Aubrey Strobel
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Lolli Website Lolli Youtube Lolli TikTok Lolli Twitter If you liked this interview, check out episode 426 with Flori Marquez where we discuss creating the ‘Chase Bank’ of crypto, BlockFi. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Mike Green is the Chief Strategist at Logica Funds and has spent nearly 30 years studying markets.
These days, he calls on that experience and his proprietary research to educate the public, the Federal Reserve, the BIS, and the IMF about the shift from actively managed portfolios and investment funds to systematic passive investment strategies. Previously, Mike has served as the portfolio manager for Thiel Macro, an investment firm that manages the personal capital of Peter Thiel, founded Ice Farm Capital, a discretionary global macro hedge fund seeded by Soros Family Management, and founded and managed the New York office of Canyon Capital Advisors, a $23B multi-strategy hedge fund. In this conversation, Mike and Aaron discuss the popular narratives around index funds and Bitcoin, what those narratives get wrong, and how to effectively develop non-consensus views when investing. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Mike Green’s Challenge; Vote better. Connect with Mike Green
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Logica Funds Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 427 with Ben Hunt where we discuss investing and the Coronavirus, or episode 339 with Jim DeCicco where we discuss building his healthy coffee company. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 More from Mike on Bitcoin and Index Funds Mike debates Anthony Pompliano Index Funds Flaw on Zeroes TV
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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: Mike, thanks for coming on the podcast, man. I'm excited to be speaking with you. Mike Green: Aaron. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Aaron Watson: So I wanted to start off for, for folks just defining your role at Logica Funds. You know, it sounds cool. It sounds like a, like a compelling part of the C-suite, but as chief strategist, what's your role there? And what is the larger service that Logica as a service provider is playing in the financial space to your clients? Mike Green: Sure. So Logica is a hedge fund and a hedge fund is a effectively, a type of investment manager that is, has a particular limitation in terms of the number of investors that it can have. It falls under a regulation called 501-C3 that requires the investors in hedge funds, which tend to be more complicated strategies to have a certain level of net worth or a certain level of financial experience that's driven by the regulatory framework. It also limits the number of investors that we can have. Logical fills a role in the portfolio that is similar to protection. We have two primary products, tail risk product, and what's referred to as an absolute return product. The absolute return product is designed to deliver uncorrelated returns. With the objective of making profits under both up markets and down markets and does so by taking advantage of what we see as particular opportunities that are created in the options market. And so in particular, the work that you may have heard me talk about about how markets are being changed by the growth of passive and systematic strategies, that, that actually changes the way that options should be priced and it should be evaluated, and that is influent. That influences the way that we construct our portfolios and that we trade our positions. Most portfolios are looking for some type of protection. Over the past several years, that's been primarily obtained through the purchase of bonds. And so a portfolio that runs with an allocation to risk-free bonds will often have protection characteristics in strategies that are referred to things like risk parody, et cetera. We think that as interest rates have gotten much lower, that it becomes less valuable on a riskier way to express protection in your portfolio. And so the strategies that we pursued, where we own options is what's falls into the category of long volatility funds. And you have to recognize that there are challenges associated with that. There's also opportunities you tend to have what's referred to as a convex payout either to the top side or the downside. Or markets move in an extreme fashion. Your portfolio should respond with a positive return pulse. The role of the chief strategist is to do a couple of different things. So I play by my official title is chief strategist portfolio manager and partner. My job is to collaborate with the rest of the team in terms of identifying the opportunity for us to structure our portfolio and to structure our strategies. It's also to represent the firm in terms of thought pieces to give us, give us a leadership role in the industry in terms of helping people understand how markets are behaving or what may be risks that they face in their portfolio, and to represent the firm publicly in situations like this, where I'm being asked to speak as a representative of the firm, or to provide some interesting commentary to individuals or corporations institutions that may ultimately become investors. Aaron Watson: And so, you know, to use an imperfect analogy, I think about like basketball. And if I go and I play pickup at some park, I'm looking for, you know, someone that can handle the ball, someone that can shoot someone that can set a screen, but the, the heightened sophistication of an NBA front office. Looking for the perfectly complimentary, you know, shooting big that, you know, can also run because they have a young point guard with a ton of speed is very similar to how these large institutions, when they think about their capital allocation is basically what you're articulating is. You know, we, we were going to put some of our money into say bonds, and we're going to try to find the best manager associated with. The ownership of bonds to handle that portion of our portfolio, but in order to compliment that whether that's exposure to equities or derivatives or cryptocurrencies or wherever, our kind of macro framework of the, the portfolio. The same way a GM would have a framework of the type of team that they want to build your basically saying as Logica, if you maybe kind of by a couple of these assumptions, or you have this gap as a job that is to be done, which is associated with what you just explained, we can kind of fill that role within the context of your larger portfolio and you are playing with these large institutions. So it really is the kind of NBA, you know, prime time level, type of investor. Mike Green: I mean, I think you're flattering us to a certain extent, but yes, I think that's correct. I mean, what you're describing is the role of the capital allocator. So when you are a large institution and endowment or a pension plan or a corporate treasury, you're looking for investors that can help you fill certain slots in your portfolio, very similar to a point guard or a big man, et cetera. I fall into the big man category, larger than ideal and also large, but the that characteristic I think is correct. And then the role to, to fit that is you're both the player and also the agent. And so one of the challenges that you recognize as you grow into any business role is that there are jobs that are execution there's jobs that are sales there's jobs that are theoretical or, you know, tied to research and development activities and within an organization like Logica, if people wear a lot of different hats, cause everybody has to contribute to the thought process. Everybody has to contribute to the sales process. Everybody has to be capable of representing the firm in one form or another. And it's just a question of, you know, who's playing that role at any given point in time, but that is one of the characteristics of, of hedge funds is that you tend to have individuals who or in smaller organizations. So the size of even the largest hedge funds with the exception of a few, like an AQR Bridgewater are going to be measured in the tens at most hundreds, right. For large multi strats, those individuals tend to be relatively high achieving individuals. Right. And so you, you, you tend to have a somewhat self-selecting crew of people who have. Strong, theoretical backgrounds, strong selling backgrounds, strong strategic background, and the strong market backgrounds. And all of those have to come together in an interesting kind of stew to create a successful firm. Aaron Watson: So before you're at Logica, you were at Tio macro helping manage the capital for Peter T on one of his big ideas is mimetics, which is this idea that humans copy each other. We copy each other all the time. Way more than we probably realize way more than we probably appreciate it. And the two. Ideas, particularly for someone my age, I'm 29 years old, you know, you're, you're trying to like, just read some stuff, a little sophisticated, one form of everyone copying everyone else is just throw yourself money in passive index funds. It's low fee. It's passive sounds great. Passive income like that. That sounds fantastic. Just sit there. Don't think about it. Don't touch it. You know, Jack Bogle designed this with Vanguard however many years ago. It's a great idea. You've got that on one end and then on the other side, a whole other contingent. You know, I used to work at a software as a service from the two founders who are tech guys. They're like my entire life savings is in Bitcoin. And I'm just this super crypto believer. Just put your money in Bitcoin. You'll be fine. Don't look at it for however many years. And you've got nothing to think about. And, you know, what's fascinating to me is that not only have you kind of pointed at those two very big, very widely dispersed memetic ideas and investing philosophies as potentially riskier than people appreciate. Do you see a connect? I, I guess there's a too big of a question. Now, maybe you can spend a little time explaining that for people that haven't heard, you share those two ideas, and then we can kind of explore how you actually get comfortable going out on a limb like that. Mike Green: Well, so I actually do think the two are similar and I would suggest that they are, you did a very good job of actually describing exactly why they're similar, right? They are functionally offering you the same advice, put your money in, do so on a consistent basis and just ignore it. It should be fine. Right? In the case of Bitcoin, you're buying into a quote unquote future monetary system or a store of value that is not only a store of value, but also makes you money because you've bought into the next operating system for currency or how the world is going to work or whatever the narrative that wants to be pushed out today. On the passive side, it's effectively a narrative of incompetence on the aggregate market side, and that you're better served by simply matching the performance of all the active managers, which is the theory behind passive it's effectively a free rider on the information that is provided or created by those who are engaged in the capital allocation process. It says by buying into that output at a fraction of the cost, you receive the same before fees results and your after fee results will be superior because you have paid less for it. Right. In both situations, they're encouraging you to put money in and basically ignore it. And that should create wealth for you in the future. Right? The challenge with that is twofold. One is the idea that wealth is supposed to accumulate without effort at scale can't possibly work. Right. We know that, if we were all just decided that we would. Do the exact same thing as everybody else with our money and that nobody was actually paying any attention to it. That's not a prescription for societal wealth to be created. And so in both situations, you're looking at a, an element of fundamental misunderstanding in the case of passive investing. It's the idea that you're actually passive. And my fundamental insight was building off the work of an individual at AQR, a gentleman by the name of Lasse Pederson, who in 2016, wrote a paper called sharpening the arithmetic of active management. That paper ties back to a paper written in 1991 by a gentleman by the name of Bill Sharp. Those who are active in the investment world will know Bill Sharp for what's referred to as the Sharp Ratio, which is a measure of the effectiveness of managers for adding return per unit of risk. Right. He won the Nobel prize for his work on portfolio theory and portfolio construction, along with one of his advisors, a gentlemen, by the name of Harry Markowitz, their theory that passive managers are capable of free riding on the behavior of active managers. I'll say Peterson identified a flaw, which is that when an index rebalances, as the passive manager becomes an active manager, they have to make changes in line with the index construction. So many of your listeners will be familiar with the idea that Tesla was recently added to the S and P 500 right in 2020. And so when that occurred, somebody who was managing an S and P 500 index fund would have had to sell an existing security out of their portfolio. They'd have to buy into Tesla. And Laci Peterson identified that when that occurs, that those passive managers become active managers. And therefore you really can't think of them in the framework that Phil Sharp originally laid out because by Sharp's definition, by his own definition, a passive manager is one who never transacts. It's one who only holds in proportion to the existing market capitalization weighted index. My recognition was something, a little different, which is if everybody is putting money into passive funds, then those passive funds have to transact on a daily basis. So they aren't passive at all. What they actually are, are giant active investors who have the world's simplest algorithms, right. The algorithms by which those funds are managed, or did you give me cash? If so then buy, did you ask for cash? If so, then sell, what is the proportion that I should allocate the cash? What, how much of things should I buy? Well, I'm going to buy things in proportion to whatever their existing market cap or more accurately float weighted market cap is. Does that change? Sure. If the price of something goes up, I'm going to buy more of it. If the price of something goes down on incremental flows, I'm going to buy less of it. Right? And so what that does is it creates a momentum feedback, things that go up, get more capital allocated to them, things that go down, get less capital allocated to them. It creates a feedback loop. And then the second component is, is when you think about the impacts that they themselves have by transacting in the market, you need to begin to actually look for that. And so that's what I've built my work off of is building agent-based models, building diagnostic tools to help understand how these strategies are affecting the underlying market. And unfortunately, the answer is it relates to passive is that they're having a dramatic impact on markets. And, you know, we can demonstrate that in a wide variety of ways, one of which is what we're seeing in markets today, which is. Everything going up in price, right. The valuations rising dramatically. And so I have different conclusions than a lot of other people that, you know, we'll look at the market and say, oh, well, clearly what's happening. Is this just the fed printer goes bur meme, right? Yeah. We're printing endless amounts of money. The dollar is collapsing and therefore everything is going up. I don't think that's actually accurate. Right. I think that there's, there's elements of truth to that. Clearly the federal reserve is actively involved in trying to support the financials, but I don't actually think that's the causal factor that people think it is. And so that's kind of the first one is, is understanding that passive impact. And my theories are far from universally accepted, by the way. Although the academic community is now starting to wake up and ask questions in a different way. Right? So until 2020, the questions that were asked were always some variant of how does membership in an index influenced the behavior of a single stock today? They're starting to ask the question, how is the stock market influenced by the growth of these passive strategies? In line with my work, we're beginning to find that the answer is significantly. Aaron Watson: So to that end, the exact notion that you just said, people are kind of coming around to it, but there's plenty of people that disagree. There's plenty of people and they're probably a third, even more spirits when it comes to Bitcoin, we can get there. But you know, in a past interview we talked, we spoke with Andy, Rachleff a venture investor and he talks about this a two by two matrix of, you know, it can be right or wrong, but then consensus non-consensus and really the essence of any good investment is you have to be right. But it's really about being able to land in that non-consensus bucket so that you are effectively ahead of that curve. So, so whatever narrative it is, there's, you can be at the back end of the narrative, the last one to receive it and you follow along. And then you're the person caught holding the bag. As we saw evidenced with the game SOG and the people that rushed in when it was, you know, in the high three, four hundreds, where the people that really got creamed. So the, the essence of kind of, I just want to, I just, I'm really just trying to like, grab onto that for a second is the bet that you're placing or the, the sale that you might make to the institutional investor that backs this strategy is saying, we have this struck, this fundamentally non-consensus view. We have a lot of evidence to support the idea because of the studies that we've done and what have you to indicate that it's right. And so therefore the way that we might convince you to allocate capital to us versus some other player, Is through the convincing pitch of that notion. Is that accurate? Mike Green: Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, that is that's going to be true in any situation. I think that two by two matrix is actually quite useful to think about, you need to establish truth, right? And you need to establish, are you going to have other people begin to believe it? Right? And so as you point out, you can be right and you can be the last person to realize it. And that can be a bad outcome, right? You can be right, the very first person to realize it and be an ineffective salesperson or an ineffective storyteller to help people understand what's going on and fail to attract people to your point of view. And that also can prove to be fatal. Right. That's you know, th there's a classic expression in markets, you know, early is wrong. And so you have to be very thoughtful of that. One of the things that's interesting about the passive dynamic is just that it creates the immediate reaction that people tend to have when you, when you explain to them the impact of passive and that it creates an increase in prices. Most people initially will respond to that and say, okay, so it creates a bubble. When's the bubble going to crash? And the hard part for people is to understand, you know, kind of the James Joyce, you know, the sign of genius is the ability to hold two opposing ideas, right? You're both going to crash and you're going to explode higher. We're nowhere close to the full impact of passive investing as it's currently set up. And so perversely, this actually creates a lot of the behavior that we're seeing, where prices of securities are rising in an increasingly rapid fashion. Despite the fact that valuations are extreme. And that's a very hard thing for people to accept, because anyone who's been in markets has been taught over the years, that the price that you pay for something, if you pay too, if you pay a higher price that should lower your returns, that raise your returns, right. We've seen the opposite. We've seen this happen over and over again. And again, it directly feeds back to who is the marginal investor. So if the marginal investor is someone who says, Hey, the price of this has gone up, therefore I should buy more of it for virtually. That's going to drive returns in a momentum direction, right. It's going to reinforce a momentum factor. The other part of this is, you know, the dynamic of, of trying to make people aware and get people to buy into the narrative. And that I think is where the exciting stuff is happening. Right. So when I look at the challenges that I'm articulating. One, it creates a very negative feedback loop in the markets where those who try to approach markets from a standpoint of information collection and rationality, right. Figuring out what a company's sales are going to be figuring out what a company's profits or cash flows are going to be, or more accurately calculating what they think the cost of capital should be for the company that you should be discounting those back out. Those individuals have been decimated in the markets in the past five, six years. And we're actively seeing a narrative that emerges that says, well, the problem with active management in the fund space is that there's just too many active managers and the market is too competitive and therefore we need to have more passive to create opportunities. My work suggests actually the exact opposite, the greater the passive share, the worst the performance of the active manager community. Cause there we're actually changing the structure of the market and perversely things like the Sharp Ratio increasingly lead you in the wrong direction. Now for us, that creates all sorts of opportunities because the same thing suggested options are mispriced. The same thing suggests that there are ways for us to take advantage of that. But you know, we're still very early in this process and there's a lot of assumptions that have been made in markets that are now embedded into the regulatory structure that are going to be very difficult to turn around. And I think that, you know, it's both terrifying and it's exciting because it suggests that these, these dynamics are going to persist and the opportunities will exist for an extended period of time. Aaron Watson: So let's, let's move it to, to Bitcoin too now, because that's another you know, very, I mean, particularly for people in my age range that, that see themselves as a kind of digitally native, like it just checks these boxes. I, you know, for me, I have this memory of, you know, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square basically saying, well, what just kind of makes sense that there would be a form of currency that was native to the internet. And you're like, damn. I mean, like. He, he seems to be a pretty prolific successful dude. And that kind of seems pretty matter of fact, particularly for someone of my age demo. So that's, that's another one that you've got a non-consensus view on. Mike Green: Well, so I, again, I think it boils down to a core misunderstanding, right? So in the same way that passive is not passive money, doesn't exist in a natively digital space. Right. Money is actually a construction of government. And by government, I mean, as a social setting, right, there are strong governments. There are weak governments, but at the end of the day, money is a mechanism that is used for one very particular purpose, which is to cancel out obligations. Right? So when you think about what a dollar bill actually says on it, it says this is legal tender for the settlement of debts, public and private. That's actually a really important statement. Because it actually tells you what it is at its core. And that's what Bitcoin doesn't have. It is not legal tender for the settlement of debts, public and private. And it's one of the reasons why you have seen it fail as a transaction mechanism, right? Merchant transactions have fallen on the Bitcoin network. They have not risen over the past four years. Since 2017, we actually have seen a decline in the end number of retail transactions occurring with Bitcoin. What it has become as a speculative asset, similar to Beanie Babies or gold or anything else. And I would suggest that, that, that fundamental misunderstanding about what money is right, where people struggle with that dynamic. It doesn't feel good to say it doesn't feel good to say that, you know, the, the legal standing or the dynamics behind a dollar bill and, and the U.S. Dollar as money, ultimately rest with a system of violence. And enforcement that resides in our court system, in our army and our, you know, our military framework, our police forces, et cetera. If you do not pay your debts, you will be thrown out of your apartment. You will have your car repossessed. All of that will be done by agents of the government who have a legal right to do so. And you have a legal right to settle it with green pieces of paper, right. Those that just does not exist in the Bitcoin space. Right. And so what I would suggest is happened in the Bitcoin space is that you have had a number of individuals who have bought into this idea. Yeah. It just makes sense. Right. It doesn't make sense that it would evolve this way and it's not the way the system works. It's the same thing as passive, you know, being quote unquote passive. It's not right. What you're actually building is you're building a system that is in opposition to the U S government and the points that I'm trying to make to people. Is while we may object to the U S government. And we may think that the U S government is hypocritical. We may not like all of the actions of the U S government. And this is certainly true for us citizens. And it's probably even more true for those who are not us citizens, right. Younger generation, I think in particular feels robbed and rightly so by some of the policy choices that have been made by the U S government. So I understand the frustration, but it's not true that the world would be a better place. If it was, if the us did not fill the role that currently fills, right? The lack of the U S dollar, the lack of the U S government to protect property rights, the lack of the U S government to be able to protect its citizens on the national, on the global stage. And broadly speaking to maintain a global piece, the PAX Americana, right, while it's far from perfect is better than a system of competing warlords. And that's, you know, effectively with those who are trying to break this down. Are increasingly advocating for you. You're seeing a lot of people who are at their core are functionally and Arco capitalists, or the means is, is that they believe that the rules of capitalism should exist. But the enforcement of those rules is functionally tied to the individual, right? Where might equals right on the individual basis. That's not a good system. That's, you know, that's a very, very dangerous system for the average person. Aaron Watson: So, I appreciate you articulating those positions. I, I really, I want to get to this like next level past that, and I'm going to link to, for listeners that want to explore more, you've done fantastic. In-depth articulations of these two ideas, more that people will be able to get to what I'm really fascinated by. Yeah. Is, you know, I think the people will benefit just from hearing that perspective if they haven't heard it before, but the, you know, the, not the give someone a fish, but the teach Amanda fish part here is that idea of mimetics and to be comfortable in a space of non-consensus you've firmly, particularly in the financial part of the world, Finn, Twitter, all that stuff. And I know you've got people that, you know, co-sign and, and, and ride with your ideas. But the reality is that that there's some vociferous people on the other side that, that, that don't care for this non-consensus view that you have. And it's very uncomfortable. We're social creatures. You know, if you buy the, the memetic theory framework of Gerard it's deeply. Deeply uncomfortable to, you know, be ostracized from the tribe and to be in that type of, you know, cross hairs. So can you talk about the, the, the meta pattern that allows you to occupy that space with consistency in the work that you do? Mike Green: Well, I think it ties back to the same underlying feature, right. Which is the recognition. That oftentimes markets don't mean what people think they mean. Right. So when you think about a stock market or you think about the price of Bitcoin, ultimately what you're looking at is a record of transactions, right? So somebody bought Bitcoin, somebody sold Bitcoin, somebody bought a stock somebody sold a stock. My focus in my career has been on understanding. Why, why did somebody buy that? Right? Why did somebody buy the stock? Why did somebody buy Bitcoin? And when you do that, would you discover it. What you discover is that oftentimes transactions are not a function of a deeply reasoned and philosophical or, or thoughtful approach to, I think this is the right price for this particular security, right? In the case of a stock. Buying and selling activity can happen on an individual stock. Not because it's being considered in an absolute sense, but because it's being considered in a relative sense, I don't have anything against Coca-Cola. I just think Pepsi is a better buy right now. Therefore I'm going to sell my Coca-Cola and I'm going to buy my Pepsi. And so I'm making two separate choices there. And the price of Coca-Cola may or may not be too high in absolute terms, but in my judgment as an individual investor on a relative basis, it's too expensive relative to Pepsi. Likewise. An individual could need to buy a house and therefore they're selling their mutual funds and that's leading to the mutual fund manager, making a redemption, you know, having experiencing a redemption and being forced to sell, not because of anything that has to do with any of his securities, but because of what's happening in the life of one of his investors. And so the minute you start to understand that you begin to understand that nothing is quite as simple as people think, right? So when the Bitcoin proponents say, well, the price goes up, right? Price just goes up. They're viewing that as validation. Same thing is true for Tesla. Same thing is true for the S and P 500. Right? And so when you talk about the Geradi dynamic, as soon as there's things that people are deeply uncomfortable with, one of them is uncertainty. And so when people are uncomfortable with uncertainty, they seek out narratives that give them certainty. Bitcoin must be true because the price goes higher. Therefore, I believe those who are Bitcoin proponents. Likewise, the economy is linked to the stock market. The stock market is the discounted future cash flows associated with the components that are in the economy. Therefore, a higher stock market price must mean that the economy is going to do well in the future. If you recognize that that's untrue, that those are individuals seeking security in a narrative, right. I know you've, you've met with Ben Hunt and, and discuss some of these dynamics with him. If you understand that, that, that, that truth doesn't have to exist, right. That there's always going to be uncertainty. Then you grow more comfortable with a non-consensus view because you're, you're able to say, well, that's, that's an, an explanation. It doesn't have to be the explanation. And so my objective is to actually just find out what I think is the most likely explanation that can be for the most part explained by the structural features, that force people to do something. And so in the passive space, again, to go back to that example, figuring out the rules by which passive managers operate. That's very simple. If you give them cash, then buy. If you ask for cash, then sell it. Doesn't feel like a breakthrough once you've made it. But it's really hard to get to that point. Aaron Watson: So you've led me perfectly into the, like the, the question that I was most excited to ask you, Mike, which is, I took very easily to your no index fund or anti index fund view because I've never spent any time or my money investing in index funds. Conversely, I was, frankly, just insanely lucky because of a specific friend to get early into cryptocurrency investment. And it was so successful that it was actually enough for me to sell and pay off my student loans, which is the reason that candidly, I was able to buy my first piece of real estate. Start a business, have a degree of financial security or independence that is just not granted to a lot of the peers in my generation. And so it's been a lot more kicking puling dragging screaming to maybe not completely accept, but like to appreciate your view as it pertains to the crypto, because that's been, you know, the thing that gave me comfort in the storm that made me feel good in all this complexity that we're, we're drowning in. And so having. You know, maybe this isn't the right word, but blown up these two icons to which you know, loads of people are worshiping, what. Advice, can you give, when most of the listeners and most of the people, the humans out there are not accredited investors, they don't have the privilege of these copious amounts of funds and the ability to diversify between some of the best, you know, money managers and allocators in the business and are just trying to make. Very simple decisions with maybe the 5,000 per year they can put in their Roth and the, you know, 2% that their company matches in the 401k. Like when you, and I'm guessing you're not talking to those characters that often, and like the day to day of the hedge fund business, but to those type of characters, what kind of breadcrumbs or advice might you leave? Mike Green: Well, so this is actually, I mean, this is the hardest part of this process, right? Because what you're describing is a situation that, again, I think is improperly framed. So when you talk about security in retirement, which is, which is what you're describing. Right. The initial introduction of things like social security were designed as a social insurance program, it was designed to help individuals whose life expectancy had risen in a manner that they had not anticipated. And if they effectively exceeded the genetic lottery in life, in terms of years of life expectancy, it was not reasonable to expect them to have also succeeded in the lottery and have accumulated enough financial assets to fund that retirement. All right. So, so that was the core of the observation about financial security. And the way it historically was addressed is that you'd have children and you were relatively nice to those children. You didn't beat them too often. And if you didn't beat them too often, then they would probably feed you, you know, at least the leftover cross and grool so that you would be able to survive into your old age. And again, that was much less of a problem because of, you know, an increasing communicable diseases and, and accidents and everything else that would have happened. We replaced that world with a social safety net. First from the government in the form of social security. And then because of competition with the government in the form of defined benefit plans, et cetera, that were introduced in the 1940s, in extraordinarily tight labor markets. And in the 1970s, as the supply of individuals began to rise, strip the capacity to provide that safety net. We changed the structure so that it increasingly was pushed onto the individual to be responsible. All right. So social security became an increasingly un attractive retirement vehicle, right? Relative to the contributions. It's one of the worst investments that you can make, right? If you stop and think about that every single year, roughly 15% of your income for the vast majority of people is going into something that you are then going to make withdrawals on an inflation adjusted, but not return adjusted basis. Once you exceed the age of 70, in most cases today, it's just a terrible investment. Right. You'd be much better served taking that 15% and putting it into any number of things that you could identify yourself. Right. But we have augmented that weak social security system with a personal responsibility system in the form of 401ks and IRAs, where you are expected to be able to guarantee your own security in retirement. Right. And I think that's actually where the core of the problem sits since the vast majority of people don't have that capacity. You were very fortunate. You nailed it. You were introduced to an asset early on, you generated enough income and wealth that you were able to give yourself a head, start in life. That's an extraordinary gift. And I wouldn't take anything away from Bitcoin and the speculative activity that you were involved with that facilitated that. And I think that's actually part of what people see in Bitcoin is they see individuals like yourself. Whose lives were impacted by moving early into an asset and selling it to allow them to retire debts and obtain assets that have facilitated a level of fiscal independence that has changed your life. And I think that's really powerful, but that's not what people are now being encouraged to do. Right. What people are being encouraged day is to buy Bitcoin and hold that Bitcoin. Because it's going to make them rich without them making any other choices. That's where my objection begins to emerge. I can't possibly know the future. I can't possibly tell you that Bitcoin is going to a million or the Bitcoin is going to zero. That's not my job. Right. What I'm doing within Bitcoin is identifying something very, very different, which is that the narrative that people are being told is not true. The us dollar is not collapsing. We are not seeing, you know, levels of money printing that are guaranteed to cause any particular outcome, whether that's inflation or deflation or, you know, the stock market going up or anything else. Right. It contributes to those. I'm not gonna deny that, but the narrative that we're being pitched is one that's untrue. The narrative that Bitcoin is a truly decentralized system that can't be stopped. That is not true. Right. The nature of the system is increasingly centralized. They're being told that the energy consumption doesn't matter because it's being produced off for waste energy. Again, these are not true statements and it's very uncomfortable to your point. Like what makes you deeply uncomfortable with in, in interactions? And it makes me uncomfortable, right? In interactions is to look people in the eye and say, no, that statement you just made is not true. Now that's a socially unfriendly thing to do. It makes me very angry when people say it to me, right? That is, that was an untrue statement. Like I did it intentionally. If I intended to deceive somebody, I'm going to be very defensive. I'm going to be offended that somebody would, would feel that way. And I think you see that from the crypto community. I think at the core, most of the people that are involved deeply in the industry know that they're engaged in a variant of fake it till you make it right. What's the hope. If they can get this thing large enough that effectively the government views, it is too big to fail. Right? I don't think that's going to happen here. I think this is what has not been told to people is that this is different than Airbnb, right? Which was unlicensed, lodging. This is different than Uber, which was unlicensed taxis. This is different than YouTube, which was unlicensed communications or Facebook, which was unlicensed communications in a variety of ways. Right. Those have managed to make it through, but now you're actually talking about money and the role of money in a government is very, very important, right? It is what actually allows the government creates the money. Where do you get that dollar from the only possible place you can get a dollar from is from the government. You may not feel that way, right? You may have gotten it from your boss who paid you a check, you know, who, who wrote you a paycheck? And you think the money is coming from him or her? Who did she get it from? Right. Well, it was given to her by somebody who got it from a bank, which is a licensed agents of government or got it from the government and some of their purchasing activity, right. The government isn't paid for by taxing government creates demand for currency via taxation. And so like all of these things just are the way it is presented within the Bitcoin or crypto universe. Is, Hey, this is just like everything else, right? This is just like all the other technology stuff. It's just totally native and totally normal. And it's the way we should think about it. And it's not, it's just not the same thing. And if you, if you go a step further and you ask yourself, like, who are the actors and who are actually involved in this and you dig in and you start saying, is Bitcoin increasingly used for transactions? The answer is no, it is not. Right. Is Bitcoin disproportionately used for money laundering, activity, drug activity, paying for various forms of nefarious actions? Yes, it is. Right. It represents the lion's share of the activity. If you dig into it and you look at it and you correctly do the analysis and you recognize that transactions shouldn't include things like exchanges, right? Where it's one person buying some Bitcoin and another person selling Bitcoin. That's not actually a use of money. All right. This is speculative activity to do the same math on the U S dollar. It's not $20 trillion in GDP that you should compare it to or $20 trillion of monetary supply, right base money supply it's 700 to $800 trillion worth of transactions that occur in any given year that actually result in that $20 trillion of economic activity. Right. The Bitcoin universe. Really only has somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million a year in actual transaction activity. It's meaningless. It's totally, totally meaningless. I could go away tomorrow. And the only thing that would change is there would be a bunch of really ticked off people who kept their life savings in it. Aaron Watson: And they'd be very mad online. Mike Green: They would be extremely mad online and I'll be candid with you that like my wife is terrified that they'll be convinced that I caused it. Right. I mean, it's, it's That is that, that is the scary part is that, you know, rather than stopping and thinking, wait a second, we built a trillion dollar assets on $400 million worth of transactions. You know, that's absurd, right? It's no different than Tesla stock or, you know, and people may disagree with me on Tesla stock. So, you know, pick something else, GameStop. Right. $25 billion worth of market cap on a company that is losing money and candidly, nobody is ever going to use, you know, a Game Stop is not going to become a central part of any economy going forward. So it's a, it's a very similar setup and it's just made worse to, to continue down that path by the fact that the players that are increasingly involved. Is China, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, et cetera, countries that are using Bitcoin to evade us sanctions and effectively, you know, drive a narrative that is against the interest of the United States itself. Aaron Watson: Mike, this is this has been heavy. This has been a lot. I really appreciate you walking us through all this stuff, because it is not a perspective that is easily gleaned. From most of the sources of media and education, I prepped you before the interview with the kind of standard last two questions that we always do actually have two, before that, the first little bit of a different vibe, would you pitch Keto as an effective diet to folks out there looking to try potentially a different diet? So the quick answer is it works for me, right? It is very clear that. Consuming carbohydrates in large quantity is adverse to, to my health. And so embracing that and understanding that I've now done it twice, the sustainability of it is difficult, right? It's very hard to ignore carbohydrates and a society that throws them at you. And, you know, a loaf of bread is an extraordinarily cheap source of calories. And as human beings we retain. The underlying features of our ancestors that say, Hey, get as many calories in as quickly and cheaply as you possibly can. Right? I mean, you don't see a paleolithic tribes, you know, walking around and be like, eh, I don't know. That's kind of, you know, that, that mammoth meat thought, not the best mammoth meat. Let's go to the next group of mammoth and, you know, try to find like, you just don't do that. Right. You find food and you eat it. That's what we are. We're omnivores. And. You know, carbohydrates are remarkably calorie dense. They do an amazing job of giving you the energy to stay alive and your brain needs to consume an incredible number of calories. And so we're, we're naturally evolved to gravitate to that sort of stuff. Now we happen to live in a world in which the biggest problem that we have is not how do we for, for the developed world, I just want to emphasize this. The biggest problem is not, how do I obtain enough calories, but how do I raise the output of my body in terms of exercise or various other activities to dispense with the calories that are available to me or restrict my caloric diet and keto proves to be an effective way of doing that by isolating particularly towards proteins and to a certain extent toward fats, but at the end of the day, it's all calorie restriction and your body reacts to, you know, eat is very, very easy for people to eat a bag of chips. It is very, very hard for people to consume, you know, a 64 ounce steak. Right. You, your body starts to shut down and says, please stop long before you make it through, you know, two giant steaks or whatever the equivalent calorie component would be. And so it, the the answer is yes, I would recommend it with the caveat that it works for me. I can't speak to everybody else. I've, I've done it and I've found that it helps. I did it with my, my now fiance and my mom to kick off a year and the little bit of like commiseration while you're going through it. And like staring longingly at the box of pasta in the cabinet is definitely a helpful part of it. Mike Green: Well, the other thing that I would say, so my wife and I are both doing it between the two of us. We've lost crazily 80 pounds since October. And so I'm, I'm actually really pleased with the way that's gone. I will tell you that I've done it twice. This is the second time. And the number of choices that are available to you to consume is keto products. Whether that is keto sweets or that is keto snacks or that is guidebooks or KIDO, pasta, pastas shirataki noodles. For example, I actually really enjoy it. It works, you know, your options are much better today than they were five years ago and that makes it easier to manage. So to answer your question yes, with the caveat, I'm glad to hear that it worked for you as well. And I agree the secret is support. Aaron Watson: For sure. I'll also link for folks. The, the DiCicco brothers and their key to life coffee is like a keto friendly drink. I freaking love it. It's protein and coffee. Amazing way to start the day, but there are a past interview doing really well. Mike, this has been fantastic. I don't want to take any more of your time away from the, the swim meet weekend that you're participating in. So not participating in your you're you're cheering on with, with your son. Where can people connect with you in the digital world if they want to follow, you know, other, other things that you're finding. Interesting. Learn more about logical, all that good stuff. Mike Green: So for Logica you can go to logical funds.com, www.logicalfunds.com. We have a research blog where we regularly publish our thoughts to follow me in the electronic space or in the internet space. The easiest thing to do is, is Twitter, where I'm confusingly prof, plum 99, P R O F P L U M 99. That's a, there's a long story behind that. And even more confusingly I managed to find the only better bolder guy as my avatar. So I've got Vicini from the Princess Bride is my avatar again, and an outgrowth of never thinking that I was going to have a meaningful social media presence, but now it's too late to change. And if I were to replace Wallace Shawn with myself, people would be very confused. Aaron Watson: So I yeah, I don't know if it was like 18 months or so ago. I was following some other fin twit characters and I saw them interacting with this guy. And I was like, who is this? Like, cause, cause you're used to some of the suit anonymous characters in, in financial Twitter. Okay. But there was a couple of like characters that I had known current past guest of the show. And there was this guy with like this ridiculous picture. I was like, is this really who this is? I could not figure it out. And it took me like six months to realize it had been, cause I'd seen your real vision interviews. It took me a while to figure that out. So hopefully a couple of more people will figure it out soon. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm going to link all the show notes or all the links you just mentioned in the show notes, going deep with aaron.com/podcast for every single episode or in the podcast app. You're probably listening to this right now, but before I let you go, Mike, I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Mike Green: So the challenge that I keep trying to get people to engage on and I've used the, you know, what may or may not be good language is vote better. Right. And what I actually mean by that is that many of the problems that we see in our society, the reaction that people have to things like Bitcoin, et cetera, is actually a reaction to saying, Hey, the policymakers, aren't making choices that I support. I don't agree with the decisions that are being made. And, do you attempt to take that power away from them? By changing the system in wholesale format is unfortunately somewhat doomed to fail and is rife for manipulation. What I would encourage people to do. And I actually think it's one of these things that the coronavirus could have an unintended positive effect here is to get people, to try to engage at the local level attend. It sounds crazy, but attend your local city council meetings. Pay attention to who's running for office locally at participate, run for office. If you think you have good ideas, right. But become engaged as a civic citizen, because the core of the problem that we face in our society today is that we are coming apart. We no longer have the capacity, or we don't seem to have the capacity to interact with people that are nearby us that may only share a geographic location with us in terms of our viewpoints. And so that is what I really truly believe is going to be the critical dynamic is seeing the young people like yourself who were brilliant, successful, have the future ahead of them. Haven't had their children yet. And aren't looking at it from the lens of somebody who saying, boy, I really need to actually try to make sure that I'm securing a future for my children. Right. Look at it and somewhat dispassionately pretend that you're, you know James Madison and saying, how do I build this future society? What do I actually want the restrictions on government action to be, and start with your local community? And you'd be surprised how enjoyable that process can be. It can also be a real pain in the ass, but it's, you know, it's a technical term, but it really is like if we're going to make this place a better place, we got to start there. Aaron Watson: Well now it's your turn be, being into kind called me brilliant. But I really, really you know, I love the challenge. I appreciate the insights that you've delivered as we've shared this hour or so together. And I hope that we can, you know, continue to have the conversation at some point down the road as we all struggle to make sense of, of everything that's going on. Your, your voice has been in, in certain ways of light in the dark. Yes, for me and hopefully for others as well. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. Mike Green: Well, I'm incredibly flattered by that statement and I hope it's true and I'd be thrilled to continue the conversation on the future. Thank you for having me as a guest. Aaron Watson: We just went deep with Mike Green. Hope everyone out there has a fantastic day. 
Mark Kovscek is a mathematician, inventor, and entrepreneur. His company, Conservation Labs, builds and sells a smart water meter that provides consumption insights, custom conservation recommendations, and leak detection.
At the cutting edge of Internet-of-Things and conservation, Mark uses his experience from a career building products and delivering solutions to address multi-billion dollar challenges. He has spent time using his mathematics skills in marketing analytics, finance, and supply chain management, but says this is the most compelling challenge he’s ever faced. In this episode, Mark and Aaron discuss the sound that pipes make, where the idea came from, and the potential for environmental and bottomline impact. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Mark Kovscek’s Challenges
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Conservation Labs Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 432 with Charlie Dolan where we discuss waste management, tech, and bootstrapping a software company. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Matt Harbaugh is a co-founder and Managing Director at Mountain State Capital. The 20 million dollar fund has invested in over 16 firms in the greater Appalachia region.
Prior to founding MSC, Matt served as CEO of a machine learning-based software company that was acquired by Facebook and was the Chief Investment Officer at Innovation Works, one of the most active seed funds in the United States. Across his career, Matt has invested in, managed, and advised more than 100 private companies over the past twenty years. He realized that he was interested in being involved in venture capital back in 1999 as an investment banker at PNC and has spent more than a decade and a half preparing himself to succeed. In this episode, Matt and Aaron discuss his career arc, the venture capital business model, and how startups in the region are still lacking enough funding options. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Matt Harbaugh’s Challenge; Build the skills and find an avenue to be an entrepreneur. Connect with Matt Harbaugh
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Mountain State Capital Website If you liked this interview, check out our conversation with Stephen Gurgovits about private equity in Western PA and our conversation with Glen Meakem about the DotCom bubble and his experience venture investing. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Andrew Gazdecki is the solo founder of MicroAcquire, a marketplace for buying and selling small Software-as-a-Service companies.
He has previously started two companies, Bizness Apps and Altcoin.io, which were both acquired. MicroAcquire has reached $250,000 in annual revenue in just one year, by collecting fees from buyers in exchange for connecting with the entrepreneurs selling their business. Andrew is applying lessons that he’s learned from past successful companies to *hopefully* make this his best business yet. In the episode, Aaron and Andrew discuss playing entrepreneurship on “hard mode”, the mistakes Andrew has made in the past, and how MicroAcquire has grown to more than 30,000 subcscribers. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Andrew Gazdecki’s Challenge; Start journaling. Document your goals, memories, and experiences. Connect with Andrew Gazdecki
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MicroAcquire Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 394 with Ryan Kulp where we discuss buying and selling small businesses. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Chris Anderson is the founder and Chief Technical Officer of Innotescus. He leads a multi-functional team of machine learning scientists, software architects, and engineers that are innovating in the world of image annotation software.
Prior to founding Innotescus, Mr. Anderson was the Director of Software Engineering and IT for ChemImage. Here he oversaw the core innovative software products for hyperspectral data acquisition, analysis and visualization. These products range in application potential across forensics, defense, pharmaceutical and medical markets. He joined ChemImage in 1999 as intern developing a data-driven course on “Chemical Imaging”; assuming exponentially increased responsibilities over time as the core imaging technology of ChemImage required ever more dynamic and intuitive software. In this conversation, Aaron and Chris discuss spinning the company out of ChemImage, how Chris has taught himself the technology, and the constant curiosity needed to succeed. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Chris Anderson’s Challenge; Learn something new every day. Connect with Chris Anderson
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Innotescus.io If you liked this interview, check out episode 399 with Hayden Cardiff where we discuss spinning the company out of Pitt Ohio, challenges in the trucking industry, and raising capital. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Jeff Booth led BuildDirect, a technology company he co-founded in 1999, for nearly two decades through the dot-com meltdown, the 2008 financial crisis, and many waves of technological disruption.
BuildDirect aimed to simplify the building industry and graduated from online catalog to logistics network to artificially intelligent platform. Last year, Jeff released his first book “The Price of Tomorrow – Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future” where he outlines the current state of our economy and what must happen to enable a brighter future. Jeff believes it essential for everyone to understand the deflationary nature of technological progress and the implications of this core truth. In this episode, Aaron and Jeff discuss this idea, the story of BuildDirect, and how anyone can use this period of upheaval as an opportunity. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Jeff Booth’s Challenge; Have empathy. Recognize that economic deflation and its symptoms are causing political polarization. Connect with Jeff Booth
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Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 440 with Brent Johnson where we discuss his Dollar Milkshake Theory and its implications for entrepreneurs. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Stephen Tse, is founder and CEO of Harmony.one. Harmony is a blockchain-based open source development project with its own cryptocurrency.
Stephen has been obsessed with protocols and compilers since high school. He reverse-engineered ICQ and X11 protocols, coded in OCaml for more than 15 years, and graduated with a doctoral degree in security protocols and compiler verification from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to founding Harmony, he has worked a researcher at Microsoft, a senior infrastructure engineer at Google, and sold his startup, Spotsetter, to Apple. In this conversation, Stephen and Aaron discuss how a blockchain project is like a traditional startup, the technical tradeoffs of blockchains, and how Stephen expects future projects to work together. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Stephen Tse’s Challenge; Set up a monthly newsletter to your close friends and family to keep them updated on recent events. Connect with Stephen Tse
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Harmony.one Website If you liked this interview, check out our library of past episodes with blockchain innovators, investors, and entreprenuers. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
Joshua Lisec has been a ghostwriter for a decade. Public figures hire him to write compelling books, newsletters, and tweets in their voice, so that they can build their media platform.
He has helped to write best selling and critically acclaimed books and teaches the best practices publicly online. Joshua coaches his clients to offer higher-ticket services, courses, and products in conjunction with book sales to build a sustainable business. In this podcast, Joshua and Aaron discuss the business model behind most successful books, why traditional publishing deals are hard to get, and how ghostwriters are like actors. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Joshua Lisec’s Challenge; Use the ‘Jobs to be Done’ framework to evaluate your business offering and improve it. Connect with Joshua Lisec
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Joshua's Ghostwriting Website Youtube If you liked this interview, check out episode 226 with Ed Latimore where we discuss writing online and personal growth. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Patrick Colletti is the founder of Net Health a $100M+ cloud-based provider of specialized software that serves specialized medical facilities like wound centers, senior care, and occupational therapy.
When Patrick began his tenure as company president in 2001, Net Health was experiencing significant financial turmoil resulting in laying off all but 2 employees. By utilizing a Refounder mindset as a framework for success, Patrick was able to spur rapid business growth and cultivate a flourishing corporate culture. He has spent two decades serving in multiple leader positions at Net Health, including the president, chief revenue officer, and chief operating officer. Now he wants to share what he has learned. In this episode, Patrick and Aaron discuss selling to private equity, building a company culture, and scaling the company. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Patrick Colletti’s Challenge; Regardless of your experience or seniority, recognize that you can be the change that you want to see in your organization. 
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Refounder.com NetHealth.com Book Referenced 4 Disciplines of Execution by Jim Huling Chris McChesney, and Sean Covey If you liked this interview, check out our interview with Dr. Chris Howard where we discuss leadership and the role of universities. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680
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Alex Berman is an actual serial entrepreneur. Before the age of 30, he has built a 7-figure agency, completed multiple movie projects, and built a 50,000 subscriber YouTube channel.
Most folks feel content to throw that title in their bio as a way to summarize some half-finished projects. Alex, on the other hand, builds systems in a focused and brutally efficient way. He has delegated leadership of his agency, Experiment 27, to someone else and has now set about acquiring more companies for his growing empire. Further, he has generated millions of dollars of B2B services revenue with his cold emailing skill. In this conversation, Alex and Aaron jump around discussing how Alex got his start, what makes a good cold email, and lay out the interrelated conglomerate Alex is building. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Alex Berman’s Challenge; Find someone that you look up to and reach out with a cold email. Connect with Alex Berman
Linkedin
AlexBerman.com Email10k Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 394 with Ryan Kulp where we discuss avoiding competition, thinking creatively, and how he’s built a business empire through acquisitions. Also, Noah Kagan. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 458 $100 Million Turnaround in the Oil and Gas Industry w/ Mark Marmo of Deep Well Services12/28/2020 
When Mark Marmo took over as the CEO of Deep Well Services, the company was losing $2 million per year on $9 million in revenue. Six years later, Deep Well Services was making $30 million in net income on $110 million in revenue.
Mark accomplished this by focusing on bringing an innovative & efficient service to the market, building a healthy company culture, and trusting his data analysts to make good decisions. In this conversation, Aaron and Mark discuss the standard he has implemented, the challenges of 2020, and the plans Mark is making for the future. Deep Well Services’ mission is to help make North America energy independent and his team is proud to be working toward that end. Their clients include Ascent Resources, CNX, Chevron, Shell, XTO Energy, Hess Oil, Eclipse Resources, Range Resources, Gastar, Arsenal, HG Energy, Gulfport, Rice Energy, and Southwestern Energy. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Mark Marmo’s Challenge; Find a mentor. Build your network. Get into a firm with a great culture. Connect with Mark Marmo
Linkedin
Deep Well Services Website mmarmo@deepwellservices.com. If you liked this interview, check out episode 425 with Matt Wieszczyk where we discuss land rights, gas prices, and the Marcellus Shale formation. Text Me What You Think of This Episode 412-278-7680 
Frank Augustine is the founder of ILLEGAL apparel.
Frank and his brother created the brand, and associated company, in their parent's basement back in 2013. He has spent the last 7 years scaling production, opening a store on the South Side of Pittsburgh, and learning many lessons about entrepreneurship. He’s gotten the business off the ground via a relentless commitment to sales and a willingness to experiment with designs. Not bad for someone still in his early 20s. In this episode, Aaron and Frank discuss the way he has positioned the brand, how Frank sold shirts in the early days, and the hard lessons he’s had to learn along the way. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Frank Augustine’s Challenge; Be grateful and be positive. Check out Earl Nightingale and Positive Mental Attitude. Connect with Frank Augustine
Frank's Instagram
Website If you liked this interview, check out episode 451 with Will Dzombak where we discuss managing Wiz, marketing in Hip Hop, and launching a cloud kitchens restaurant. 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 
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