Cyan Banister
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Congratulations on that, Cyan. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be back, and I'm so excited. I did not expect to see David, so I'm over the moon. I'm so excited.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Well, 181, 181, 181, and 18. 18 stands for life to people who are Jewish, and my partners are Jewish. And it was something that was very important to them and to me to stand up after October 7th and take a very public stance. And so we announced our funding announcement on Bloomberg yesterday, and our office is on 18th Street. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And so now we're helping institutions help people go to school, solving cancer and things like that. So every day that we get up in the morning, we're aligning what we do. Our mission is to chase the magically weird. We're looking for alpha in things.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
When everybody is consensus investing and they're doing the same thing and talking about the same things, we're thinking six to eight years in the future. When our fund three, we invested in a company in the chip space And, you know, we were thinking ahead about what's going to power AI and crypto.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And now that everybody's investing in the application layer, we're going into the next thing, which is like, what is that going to enable? And what's coming down the road and looking for founders that are thinking differently that most other of my peers would look at it and say, that's crazy. I don't want to put any money into that. So that's what we focus on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, that was a magically weird company at the time. If you remember, I sent it around to multiple investors and they came back with the stupidest excuses I ever heard, but it was their excuse, which is, you know, Not everyone wants a black car. The car doesn't come to my house yet. No one wants to get into a stranger's vehicle. The list goes on and on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
But it takes a vision of seeing the future and seeing how it plays out and believing in all the miracles that are gonna happen And getting in early is where all the alpha is, you know, before the thing is defined as a category. So that's where I like to play is I don't want it to even have a market name yet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
That's where like all of my peers can go lose all their money in an ocean of dead bodies because like I don't want to play there. Yeah. And you get a price advantage too, right? Like if you enter early before it's a defined category, you're taking on a lot of risk. And so, you know, I'm getting deals anywhere from like five to 10 posts while all of my peers are playing in the 20 to 30 range.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I think that the government has long relied on private industry to solve some of its biggest problems, and that's what sets us apart from other countries in the world. And so you look at some of the best companies like SpaceX, Anduril, et cetera. We need more companies like this if we're going to compete. And so doing this absolutely makes sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Every movie theater. It's everywhere. This is everywhere. You have not left.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And it's just going to help the sales cycle to get that sort of stamp of approval that, you know, our government is using that software.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I think it's incredibly lowbrow. I agree with Chamath. And I think it's just so distasteful for a public official to do something like that, especially for an American company. And if you hear the people cheering in the background, it's obvious that there's a base that supports this. And that frightens me even more because he's saying these things because his constituents believe it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And a politician says these things because they think it's going to motivate them to vote for them in the future. And that really frightens me. You know, that we are riling people up to cheer on the destruction of American company and possibly go out and burn cars. You know, I think that's the outcome.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Well, I disagree with all those points, obviously, but... Sure, they could run on them. They have tried. They've definitely said, we're going to have health care for all. Selling the American dream of home ownership I actually think is flawed in many ways. We're putting people into debt for things they can't afford, and they get screwed.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And so I just actually think they need to find a unifying, figure out who their moderates are. And there's also politically homeless people. We didn't include them. You know, there's these people who are just like, well, I can't vote right and I'm not left either anymore. So we've got to bridge this divide somehow and they've got to figure out the messaging.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
But I don't think going back to what they used to do is going to work because they promised universal health care and it hasn't happened and they had plenty of opportunity to do so.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, I'm going to start with my thoughts on Wiz. I think this is really exciting for me because this is a great example of a contrarian investment. When this investment was initially made, there was not a lot of money going into security. There still isn't. It's an underinvested category.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And with AI and the threat of the types of things that people can build and vibe coding and everything in between, you're going to need better security. And so I'm excited to see that maybe this might become an investable category. I think this is the largest exit ever in the security space. Am I wrong? I mean, I think...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard of anything this large.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
So, you know, how does this impact M&A? I mean, it's still pretty slow out there. You know, some actions better than no action, but like Niantic was just bought by Scopely.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I was.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, that's a Saudi conglomerate. And so that exited for 3.7 billion. And I think we're going to start seeing some movement, especially with the new administration.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Oh, my gosh. As soon as they spun out when Alphabet formed and spun them out as their own entity. There's a funny story for another time about how I got into the deal. But I realized it was my only opportunity to get in as early as possible. And so I stalked the founder and sat at his door. Oh, tell us the story. Okay.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, it's a great story. So before Pokemon Go, they had this game called Ingress. And I started playing it with my friends and I started noticing that my friends were doing some really unusual things. They were like charting helicopters and like traveling all over the world to cast these invisible triangles over the earth.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Basically, it's a game of green versus blue and who can cast the biggest triangle. I was like, why are these people spending so much time? And not only that, but why are they going around taking pictures of points of interest? for Google. Like, what is Google actually doing with this asset was my number one question. So I realized that Ingress was part of a bigger mapping plan.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I mean, if you look at the team, you look at John Hanke, they all come from Keyhole, and they're obviously part of the Maps team and helped build Google Earth. So this wasn't just a game. Pokemon Go was a joke. It was basically an April Fool's joke where the founder of Pokemon said, wouldn't it be cool if we put Pokemon on the map and we just tried to find them?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And John Henke's like, yeah, let's turn this into an Ingress-like game. I went around telling everybody like if I had a chance to invest in anything, it would be Niantic. And because they were part of Google, I thought there was no chance. And then I got a call one day and they said, hey, my friend of mine was like, did you hear Niantic spun out?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know anyone at Google. How do I reach John Hanke? And I realized I'd invested in this company called Hentwater and they were giving out game codes on the bottle cap. And I was setting up her ticketing system one day and helping her out in her office. And I saw all these tickets coming in with the subject line that said Ingress Game Code.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And I was like, what is this all about? And I just connected the dots and she introduced me to John Hanke. And then I went there with two engineers because I figured I got to show up with some value here. two badass engineers who were players. We sat on the front stairs and basically sat there and said, please take our money. He's like, I don't need you. I've got Nintendo. I've got Google.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I've got, and we're like, no, you really need us. And he gave one of those engineers a job offer pretty much that day. He gave me a key card to the office. And so I can come and go from Niantic as I please, which is pretty awesome. But it's just a fun story, you know? Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Just quickly, you know, one of the things that really concerns me is how we've been so high on cheap supply for so long. Like if you look at Shein and Timo before this pandemic, podcasts, I wouldn't looked up that their prices are up by 27% or something like that. And so when you used to be able to get a garment for $18, you're now paying $37 and Zara is like 75 for an equivalent.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And I think people really liked getting packages in the mail and feeling like their dollar went further and it's not going far. And so when you have a bunch of people who can't buy anything and consumerism is a big part of our, unfortunately, in some ways, our culture, you know, what does that do to You know, if you're looking around, there's urban blight everywhere in retail.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And, you know, we can't fill our malls. We don't have brick and mortar stores. They're shutting down. Forever 21 just shut down. You know, these are the types of things that, you know, people really care about is whether, especially in a time where, you know, you do have a recession, people want to buy a tube of lipstick or a dress to feel better about their life.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And right now they can't even do that. And so that's what concerns me is thinking about the retail future and then, you know, the consumer landscape of how this all affects everybody.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Well, obviously, Boeing is the big loser here. It's interesting to me how bad they just fumbled this. And then there's the political element. I don't know if we want to get into it. about how we weren't able to save these astronauts and they were stuck up there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
We were seeing it landing in the water, but what you're not seeing is they couldn't walk when they got out and they were only supposed to be there for what, like 10 days?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, eight months, which is horrendous because one of the things that I believe that America stands for is we don't leave people like that. And it's an American issue, not a political one. And so there's no reason why we shouldn't have engaged SpaceX sooner. It was offered and they turned it into a completely political issue and Boeing fumbled the ball.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And so, you know, I think hopefully this is a message that's loud and clear. And one of the things I'm so excited about is little kids watching this and seeing this and what it means for the future of our country, because they're looking up to people like Elon and they're going to be the next political class in the future. And that will matter. You know, this is the equivalent of the moon landing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
And to see somebody in private enterprise do what Elon has done is just outstanding. So that's basically my comment on it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
You would think this would be a Mark Watney story, like the Martian.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Okay. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I'm concerned about the cultural stuff of this. Like America is so ill-equipped, especially with this wave of the last eight years of DEI and how it's infiltrated all of our institutions and how we raise our children in this country. Like we taught them that math is racist while China is, you know, their kids are the leaders in AI.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
You know, deep seek should show us that, you know, we have underestimated China every step of the way. And I think it's just a tragedy that, You know, I'm working on a book that's coming out called The War on Science, which will actually expose a friend of mine wrote it. It's a collection of essays exposes just how entrenched this became in every institution from medical science, etc.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Like, how do we recover from that is how we can compete with China, because otherwise we can't. You know, I really honestly don't understand how we're going to do it if we don't. And part of it is seeing these space launches. You know, obviously the next generation of children will be inspired by that. But we have a gap of about eight to 10 years where we lost that advantage.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Mm-hmm.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Well, not only that, but they are taught that you're either an oppressor or you're oppressed and there's no other option. And so if you go to one of these private, nice schools, then you're automatically an oppressor. So think about that. If you're a kid and you're born bad, inherently bad... Evil from birth? What does that do?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
We have to fix that. I actually think it's one of the number one issues in our country is to get kids...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
excited about being americans again you know we were talking about the democrat party uh they don't love america on the far left they hate america and they're very loud and vocal about it and so i'm glad that they're you know their base is shrinking but it needs to shrink further and we need to have more unifying messages and i think spacex could be one of those unifying messages where we bring people together and we encourage kids to think bigger about the future i'll tell you one anecdote
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Send them to a place that values free speech. Look there first. Look at the FIRE rating. And then that should tell you everything you need to know.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
No, it's fine.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I have a 13-year-old boy sense of humor. It's fine.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
Yeah, I want to know from David what his favorite piece of art is there and whether or not David and Chamath saw the Declaration of Independence.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue
I think you'll get a chance to.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I agree with Friedberg and Chamath. You know, it's a lot of everything. But I also think that to add to the prevention part, you know, other than clearing out underbrush and trees and things like that, you know, we don't build things in the state of California in a way that Houses should be built when you know that there are fires like this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
So, for example, we have more wooden roofs than we really should have. We should really evaluate our materials that we're building things out of. But we also have, you know, down in El Segundo, you know, this is a company that I invested in Rainmaker. We have the ability now to cloud seed and do preventative measures to actually make a region have more water.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And I don't understand why we're not looking into things like this that could have prevented, you know, we knew that this storm was coming. We knew that these winds were coming. You know, Southern California shut power down. I have a farm down there. We still don't have power because they knew that most of these fires were started by PG&E or down power lines.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And so they proactively shut everybody down and we're still running on generators. And if you notice, there's no fires down there, but they also have 100 mile per hour winds.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And you're not seeing it. And there's plenty of mountain ranges and dryness there. You know, avocado farms are basically just sitting fuel. So I do think it's a combination of all of those things. And competence is definitely one of them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Oh, without a doubt. I think diversity is good unless that's all you have. And I'll just simplify it like that. And I think it's very sad that somebody could be very qualified and be in a position, and we now have to question whether or not they were hired because of DEI. And Then it comes down to prioritization.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Like, when you're dealing with an organization like a fire department whose main job is to protect the public and put out fires and save people, any amount of time, as we know, is a valuable, precious resource that's being spent trying to roll out these programs or, you know... It goes beyond just who you hire. It's even the thought police of how you think.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's so pervasive within an organization that you die from the bureaucracy of it. And if anything went wrong with DEI, it was that they didn't have their eye on the prize of fighting fires. And instead, you know, they're focusing on something that truly doesn't matter. So you can be as diverse as you want to be and not be able to put out a fire and then it just really doesn't matter, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Because you're not training people. You're not spending money on things that matter. You're not having the discussions that matter. And... That's where I think that does fall apart and it has a place there. But, you know, I go back to what Chamath said, though, you know, it really comes down to prevention and learning from our past.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
We seem to have a very short term memory and we forget very quickly because we rebuild and it looks pretty again and everybody forgets. And we just don't have the ability as a society really to think long anymore. Yeah. And that's a real problem. And I think we should learn from this fire. I really hope that what comes out of this is a shift in political leanings in this in this state.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
You know, I think more moderates are going to come to their senses. And as we've seen with the election and the outcome. And I think the state might shift some and we might actually get some policies that you're so right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's nice to see everyone.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, I mean, a lot of these people paid for, I was reading stories of 30 some odd years into insurance thinking that, you know, their house wouldn't burn down. And then, of course, it gets canceled two weeks before their house burns down. And then the one time they need it, they don't have it. And part of this is, I mean, a huge part of it is what Friedberg was talking about are the regulators.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And so the free market solution is the only solution. If you look at, I have an investment in a company called Kin Insurance, and they specialize in direct-to-consumer insurance. insurance for areas that are plagued with natural disasters. So their number one state out of the 11 that they serve is Florida, followed by Texas, which has tornadoes and things like that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And how they're able to get into these places and do insurance is the pricing is according to the construction of your home and all of these various things, and also weather models and using data science, things that are not allowed in California, if you can believe it or not. So you're not allowed to use a weather model to price in your decision-making for insurance in the state.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And that just doesn't make a lot of sense. You should be rewarded if you put the resources and time into your home to make it weatherproof, fireproof. Fireproof. Even earthquake resistant, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
That's the number one thing that everybody misses and is mentioned in every interview that I've seen is photographs. Photos.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, we're in a couple of companies together. Yeah. Density. Density. We were on the board together for a little bit, so that was fun.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, I think I think Democrats need to reclaim their party. I think there's a lot more strength in the middle. And, you know, they've let this woke ideology, I call it woke imperialism, like a religion. take over in place of actually doing things that matter to the people that elected them, that pay taxes, that pay their, you know, their paychecks and everything in between.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And it's time that people really look in the mirror. I've got so many moderates coming to me saying, you know, people call me a Republican and I'm far right and I'm a Nazi and I'm like, yeah, welcome to the club. At some point, you've got to stop letting them run the board and stand up and say, enough's enough. We're not building some railway that's never being built.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah. Thumbtack. Thumbtack. Actually, Thumbtack, Density. and Uber, I all discovered through you. Which one was Uber?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
We're not solving homelessness with billions and billions of dollars. We're not doing this stuff anymore. We do need real executives, to your point, Jason, to run things that understand how things are, how it works, and the best use of funds. Because right now, it's misappropriated.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I don't think you're allowed to say them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And replace them. It's scary, but you can. You know, they send all their people after you. They threaten you. Gets personal. They went after you. I was signature number one. And I had to deal with the deluge of that stuff. But to be honest with you, I've never been happier to do something and get civically engaged.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I think it's so important that everybody starts getting involved in their local government and their state government and the national government because you can't just expect people to do the work for you. and expect it to turn out well. And I think that's kind of the mistake that we all made.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
If we want to take some responsibility, the tech industry as a whole did not get as involved as we ought to have in the past. And I think we should get more involved than we are.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I think we were busy building companies. And I remember, if I remember correctly, the only person I remember was, getting involved in local stuff was Ron Conway. Yes. And he would try to get everybody involved.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's true. It's true. Yeah, so found all three of those deals at your events. So that was really great. Aw. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And we were all just like, you know, there's people who are smart that do that sort of thing and they're going to do their thing and they're running stuff and we're just not going to get involved. And there are a lot of people would say, I'm not political. I don't, I don't do politics. I don't, you know, they didn't get involved until it affected them. Kind of like the house is burning down.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It affects them. And yeah, You know, like they're saying that first they came for so-and-so and I didn't speak up. You know, that's what's happening here. And, you know, I just really think that people need to realize it's now affecting them and it's now time to make a change and elect better leaders.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I actually think deep down inside, he always has been. You know, I go back to the beginning days of Facebook and when there was social networks that were competing, which back at the time was MySpace, the only political party you could be was Republican or Democrat. And then along came Facebook and he added this third option called Libertarian.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And I would like to go to the Wayback Machine at some point and find his profile because his profile said he was a Libertarian. So when he started Facebook, you know, that's where he leaned. So I think he's always been a free speech person. I think he's always, this has been deep in his heart. I think what happened was he had enormous success. They grew very large and he had to become neutral.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Or he thought he did. And so I think what we're seeing with Zuck right now with his change in his, you know, even how he appears with a gold chain and how he's dressing and everything that he's doing is him going back to his roots to be more authentic. Because I think he hasn't been authentic for a long time. And that was a big critique that people had of him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
You know, they were just like, when he talks, he's like a robot. And I think what we're seeing is him coming out of his shell. And I don't know if fighting helped it or what helped it, but you know, I do think it's the best thing to do and all the platforms need to do it and should embrace it. And it can be game though. Community notes can be game that we saw it with.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I saw a report that, you know, Kamala's campaign or, or I don't know if they directly work for her or what happened, but they did take over community notes on X and started manipulating them. So you have to be really careful, you know, how you run a community. But in general, I'm all for it. I think it's the right move.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Well, it was four hours. Three hours. I think he cut it to three and a half. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Not to mention a violation of our constitution.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Obviously, he's a brilliant businessman, but I do think underneath it all, he is a human being. And I think his fighting in the arena and this fighting stuff that he does actually did change him. And this happened long before the First Amendment stuff started to appear. You know, I think... Or free speech, I shouldn't call it First Amendment. But I do think that the government did interfere.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And after January 20th, we're going to find out some interesting stuff and we'll get to the bottom of, you know, how did the government pressure him to censor things? And I think he's getting in front of that because it is going to come out. And I think that is a huge part of why he is getting more involved is because it's going to be revealed just how much the government coerced him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, I mean, this is why I think the fighting actually helped. I think he learned to stop acquiescing. Wow. Interesting. He put up a fight. That is where I started seeing the change in him and started noticing it. And so did, you know, he's got so many more fans and people who are looking to him as a leader in a different way now because he's actually starting to express who he is.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Oh, thanks. Can I have you all as my professional cheerleading squad from now on? I don't like talking about myself and this is great.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And like what kind of music he likes. Nobody ever knew that. They thought he was just a robot. He doesn't like music. He hired a whole PR team to craft. This is my understanding. But anyway, I don't know that much detail. I don't I'm not involved in his personal life like that. But I just I always love to give people the benefit of doubt. I guess that's just me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And I do think that people people can change. And I'm hoping that he is actually going to stay on this side. We we want more leaders like him to believe in free speech.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, exactly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I think he's going to have to deal with advertisers next, though. I mean, that's one thing that X doesn't have to deal with as much. And that's going to be the second problem he's going to have is not just the government. But do advertisers want to be next to some of the content that's about to appear?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about it because I think I've been trying to figure out how they justify their valuation strategy. over the long run. And I'm not a public market person, but I am fascinated with NVIDIA. And their cloud GPU business is definitely a majority of their revenue.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
So I think a lot of what we're seeing is them trying to grow into that and trying to expand in case the music stopped. Now, I don't actually think the music's going to stop. It's insane to me We haven't even barely touched what AI is going to do and change and all of the various things that are going to come from it. And the early adopters cannot use Clawed
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
without getting shut down because of scaling issues. And I don't think those are artificially created based on the type of investing I'm doing. And so I'm very bullish on NVIDIA. It is interesting. It's an interesting thing to go consumer. And the thing that really hit me was the fact that he kind of declared Tesla one of the most valuable companies in the world in the long run.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's interesting that he got behind Toyota. But at the same time, you know, I don't think there's one single car company out there that has the kind of data that Full Self Drive has and Tesla has. So if they enter the robo-taxi market, I actually think they should buy Uber.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Oh, yeah. I think they should buy Uber.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's kind of hard to believe, but it's true.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And then you launch that robo-taxi service, and maybe there's some sort of secondary aftermarket solution, kind of like Comma AI or something like that, that you can do for people's cars, where you can actually get anybody's car into the fleet and start self-driving. But it is true. This is going to be the largest breakout in robotics we've ever seen, if Waymo's any indicator.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And, you know, I read somewhere, I think that Amazon or somebody was looking at it. I don't know what was going on with Waymo. But, oh, Lyft. Amazon was going to buy Lyft.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
That makes no sense, right? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I think maybe delivery or something like that. I can't figure out what their play is there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
originating now in 2024 2025 look into your crystal ball and how do you think they'll uh grow the footprint of them how is this going to accelerate the startup scene i actually think we're going to see a cambrian explosion of creativity and and development of different things and some of them are going to be stupid ideas and some of them are going to be great but i think it's going to make our job especially at the seed stage of investing harder and harder
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
There's just going to be a lot of people that have similar ideas at the same time that can execute quickly and do things at breakneck speeds that they've never been able to do before.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's going to be harder and harder. Yeah. And it might be that, you know, I've been thinking about this, like, do you invest in competitors, which is something I never used to do? You know, do you take a bet and index an entire category that you're interested in? You know, what is the approach at seed and precede? Because I think of an idea and I'm like, wow, that's really neat.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And then I go and look out there and there's 30 people working on it. And that didn't used to be the case. And I think part of it is we've really unlocked a tool that allows people to do things that would have been cost prohibitive or gives them the ability to think, gosh, I could be an entrepreneur and I can try this and I could do this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
So I'm seeing people experiment and do all sorts of things. As far as the startups, some of the AI stuff is just a feature. You know, it's just table stakes at this point. It's like, you know, a chat or whatever. And that doesn't really matter. But then you're seeing people reimagine games and reimagine... you know, even things down to your kitchen appliance, et cetera.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
So I just, I do think it's going to be very, very difficult. And, and I tend to sit out a lot of hype cycles. So I invested in power and compute lithography and, kind of all of the things that are going to be underneath all of this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And so I'm not sure how much of it I'm going to participate in until it starts to get to a steady state and you kind of can understand what's next because the rate of acceleration is just so great. that it's just kind of unclear to me sometimes, especially when it comes to these consumer applications, consumer facing things, it's just really hard.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
You wouldn't think it, but there's still a lot of spreadsheet companies out there. You think you'd run out of them, but they're still out there. You look at and I think this is where AI is really going to make a difference, like RFP proposals for governments, something that takes like 30 days and it's manual and you have to submit these horrible documents.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
You can ingest your entire corpus of all of your previous bids and submit them at a breakneck speed now and win more contracts. That becomes like a national defense company at that point. And so I think we're going to see a lot of really interesting things where a lot of cruft is going to disappear. And that'll be a really interesting wave that I'm looking forward to.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's very strategic. If you look at the Panama Canal, I believe either end is operated and controlled by China. We are at war with China, whether we like to admit it or not, in my opinion. And so this is very strategic. He has a very strange way of communicating, as you pointed out, but I think it's brilliant. And I actually think we should add to that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I've always thought that we should open up and add more states to and extend that invitation, you know, to Taiwan. I might be too controversial to even say India. But I do think that that we there's a lot of countries out there and people who really, really resonate with what it means to be an American and the freedoms that come with our subscription fees of this country.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And so I do think that it would be great for us to expand. And I don't know what he's thinking or how he's got behind the scenes who motivated him to do it. But I really think it's a great idea.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
Well, we have a military base there and we also protect it and we occupy it already, which is interesting. Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
I just went down a similar rabbit hole with the Grand Canyon.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
What about UFOs? I've looked into... I mean, UFOs is the only one that I usually come back to because, you know, if you look at... putting logs underneath and trying to roll them, or you look at flooding an area, all of this just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
And so, and then, you know, the fact that there are other civilizations that also have pyramids that are stunning and feats of engineering as well, things like Stonehenge, et cetera. I mean, there's just things that defy explanation. I don't know if you ever tried to make a catapult, but it's really hard.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It's really hard. And so, like, we just did not have the technology, or at least we can't find any definitive way that it happened. And so I do think there is a possibility that there was a more advanced civilization here or we were visited. And I think about that a lot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
LA's Wildfire Disaster, Zuck Flips on Free Speech, Why Trump Wants Greenland
It could be that. It could be that. It could be we had control of matter and alchemy or something like that. Who knows?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Or do you say, I've got to turn over all the stones and see where the opportunities are. I've got to figure this out. I have to have hope. I have to have faith that something's going to work. And so I chose to have faith and hope route every time. And it always worked out. It always did. And I think that had I gone the other direction and just said, there's no hope, there's no future.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I can't do this. The cards are stacked against me. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, I was in that moment. So I became a ward of the state and they removed me from my mother's house. And they told me I had 24 hours to find a home. And I didn't have a home. I didn't know where to get a home. They told me that if I didn't find a home in 24 hours, they were going to put me in a group home. I'd been in those group homes. And I knew that that's not where I wanted to end up.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so I just said, I looked up at the sky and I said, please universe help me. And I got an answer, which was, I knew one adult and I walked over to her house and I said, can I live with you? And she said, sure. Very easily in that moment, I could have just sat there and succumbed to sorrow, to suffering, to all of it. And because it worked out, I just kept doing it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
It was one of those things where I was just like, you know what? I had a stroke five years ago and same thing. I looked at it with curiosity. I looked at it with wonder. And got through my stroke. I lost my ability to walk, my ability to see. If you look at everything with curiosity and wonder and love and hope, you can overcome a lot of things.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I think that's what people don't realize is that it takes a lot of bravery to be optimistic. It's easy to be pessimistic. It's easy to say that things won't work. It's easy to say, I'm not going to do that because then you don't have to muster up the willpower.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When it happened, I just... surrendered, it was one of these things where I was just like, I have no control over this situation. I have to trust that the medical doctors that are coming to me that are the best there is at UCSF hospital are going to do what's right. And all I have to do is sit here and try to maintain my calm and try to find all the joy in all of it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When the students were coming and sticking lights in my eyes and lining up down the hallway because they'd never seen an edema in an eye before, I was like, yeah, line up. Come look. Come look. Everybody come look. I've got diamonds in my eyes. Come. It's obviously precious. You want to see it. Every time I did an MRI, I found it joyful.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Every time I had to do a blood draw, I would just sit there and know that I was contributing to medical science because my stroke was one in 5 million a year. It was even rarer than that because I was young. So it's one of these things where you could either just say like, this is it, I'm going to die and cry.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Or you just say like, you know what, what if these are my last moments, I may as well make the best of them. So I did. And I honestly believe, granted, I can't prove it. But I believe that that's what helped and aided in my recovery and why I recovered so quickly.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Why is it so rare? I think we've lost touch with our child minds. Inside of us is a child yearning to be free. That's cosplaying as an adult. I think we, over time, build our personality. We get told what we can and can't do. We wear certain clothes. They're just costumes.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If you really think about it, you really could wake up tomorrow and dress as SpongeBob SquarePants if you want to, but something's keeping you from doing it. And it's really just a perspective shift. For me, I go out and stare at four-leaf clovers. I haven't found one yet, but I go out looking for them. Sorry, I don't stare at them. I go out looking for them.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Did you know that there's a four-leaf clover in every 10,000 clovers? So your chances of finding one are real. It's not fake. It's not made up. And children, when you show them a four-leaf clover and the pattern of a four-leaf clover, find them within like 20 seconds.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They're able to find them because their mind is not clouded with all of this, frankly, garbage that we grownups carry around with us. And so for me, I'm constantly looking to reconnect with my child self, with the spirit that's inside of me that yearns to be free, that yearns to learn about everything. I think a lot of people take for granted what's around them.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They think they've got it all figured out. There's like, there's nothing new to learn. even about maybe your bedroom. But if you look around with curiosity about your bedroom, I bet you with a new set of perspectives could see your room in a whole different way. You could see your backyard in a whole different way. You could see your friendships in a whole different way.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I just don't think a lot of people understand that that curiosity is inside of each one of us. So it's really about allowing yourself to be silly, allowing yourself to relax and more, be comfortable with who you are and let who that person is out. I think we are really, really afraid of that authenticity that's inside of us and how people might judge us.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Like I said, if we dressed up like SpongeBob and came to work.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. If you actually think about what you are, we are an animal. When we die, we decompose and we become dirt. So what else are we? All of this is just an avatar. But there's something inside of us that yearns to be creative, that yearns to build things, that yearns to change the world, that wants to have a purpose for being here.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And we deny that spirit its existence every day. I am guilty of this. Everyone's guilty of this. You spend time with children and you spend time with dogs and you go out in nature and you bathe in nature. You start to realize the things that truly matter. Like when I came out of the hospital after having my stroke, I fell to my knees because of the air.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When the air hit my lungs and I was like, whoa, what if I never got to breathe that again? How magnificent. The sun was on my face and I was like, how splendid. That's what truly matters in the world. Like we make up all of these stories inside of our heads about what's important.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But what's really, really important is remembering just how precious life is and how we have a short amount of time to accomplish all of our dreams. And they're all accomplishable. And I really, really hope that when people listen to this, they try to figure out how to tap into that creative, curious side, because I'm endlessly curious.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
My biggest complaint is there's not a thousand of me, that I'm not scalable. I would love to have multiple Cyan agents out there roaming the world.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, learning as much as they possibly can. So for me, my appetite for knowledge and for everything is insatiable.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If you think about it, business is just art. The US Constitution is a piece of art. Money is art. Contracts are art. Code is art. So the art of storytelling is art. So when someone's in front of you and they're giving you a pitch, they're telling you a story about who they are and what they want to build.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So immediately I'm a visual thinker and I start spinning up a universe in my mind of what they're trying to build. Ideally, I've already thought about what they're trying to build by daydreaming, by sitting around and immersing myself in the world. I go to strange conventions that most of my colleagues would be like, why on earth are you spending time at these places?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But what I'm doing is trying to immerse myself among the general population of people and trying to figure out what their problem points are. For example, going to a mining convention, not Bitcoin, but actual heavy equipment and seeing like, what are these people that are moving the earth thinking about going to a toilet paper convention?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I was curious, like everybody during the pandemic ran and bought toilet paper. Why did we have a shortage? I'm going to go to a toilet paper convention and find out things like that. And I just think that when a person sitting in front of me and they're giving me the pitch, I start daydreaming and I start seeing the truth of what they're telling me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And if I feel it, then the feeling I call my lightning bolts. It literally feels like a jolt of energy in my body. And I feel like a tingle. And it's like, ooh, there's something here. There's something novel here. There's something different that I haven't seen. And then I try to figure out what is different about it. Is it the person? Is it the opportunity? Is it the timing?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Has someone tried this before and failed? Why is this person potentially the right person, etc. ? And so sometimes it's so overwhelming that I'm just like, I've written checks on the spot because it's like one of these things where I just feel arrested by it. And sometimes I go and marinate on it and chew on it for 24 hours. And if I still feel the same feelings, then I make the investment.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But in general, it's this weird intuition that this person is onto something and it could be big. For example, let's look at Pokemon Go, Niantic.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah. And I went to work. I was working at AngelList at the time and I was showing everybody their previous game called Ingress. And I was playing it and trying to explain to them about how this world would be reskinned. And instead of these portals that I was playing at, there would be these Pokestops and then there was going to be Pokemon around and everybody's like, you're insane.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
What are you talking about? And I could see it clear as day, but I couldn't understand why no one else could. And when I go out and start trying to explain this dream to people, this visualization that I see, and they continuously can't see it. And they came up with excuse after excuse not to invest in it, which was like, Nintendo is a corporate investor.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I don't do investing with corporate investors. These guys are spinning out of Google. Do they really have grit? There was excuse after excuse after excuse. I was just like, you don't understand. These people built Google Earth. They really understand mapping. And then the other thing was the insight that I had was that company was ultimately a mapping company. not a gaming company.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And trying to convince people of that, they're like, well, they only look at the bird in hand. They're just like, well, it doesn't look like that right now. So not interested. And so I think that that's how my mind is different and how I arrive at these decisions is I just really, really trust. And I really don't care if people don't believe me or think I'm crazy or stupid or any of those things.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so for me, I don't have those kinds of fears that some people have. As a matter of fact, the more they disagree with me, it's almost like I feel like it's a sign. I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Or I look at the argument and I try to see if it has merit. Like I said, don't be contrarian for contrarian's sake.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If somebody's coming to you and they have a really good argument, they can talk me out of things for sure. Maybe it's something that I didn't see. But sometimes I weigh that piece of advice and I'm like, hmm, I still think that they can overcome that hurdle.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Uber. Uber. I lived in a hotel for a period of time. It was a nice hotel in San Francisco. And the front desk would arrange cars for me to get to the airport. And this was before Uber was even a thing. And so there was this livery driver that was my livery driver. And I really took a liking to him. So I got his card and I said, why don't I just start booking you directly?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I'll just ride with you. You're just an amazing person. And he was an immigrant from Brazil and just a really good driver. And just, I really liked talking with him in the car. One day I was going to the airport and he says, you know, I'm not an investor, but if I was, I would invest in this thing called Uber cab. Have you heard of it? And I said, no, I haven't.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And he said, well, I'm their only driver. to me how Uber cab worked. And I said, okay, so they're paying you by the hour to drive around and pick up people who are texting some phone number. Keep in mind, there was no app at that time. It's just a phone number and you show up. And he's like, yes. And I said, huh, well, let me know when they're not paying you by the hour anymore.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And the reason why I said that was for years prior, I was thinking about how Uber why is it that I go out and I try to hail a taxi and I can't get one, especially if it's raining or if there's a big conference going on, you'd think that there'd be more taxis that would come online to meet the market demand. So I started talking to taxi drivers about
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When you go get your car, what's the first thing that happens? And they say, well, I have to pay $100, $150 just to get the car to leave the yard. So they're already in the hole $150, right? So they're out there hustling, trying to get that $150 back just so they can be in the money.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So they're zooming around like crazy acting like, because everybody says I get in a taxi and they drive super fast. Well, that's why they drive super fast is they're trying to get to the next fair and the next fair and the next fair. So then I said, well, how do you become a taxi driver? And they explained the medallion system to me. And I was like, wow, what a racket that is.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Definitely seems like a protectionist racket. So go back to the driver that I'm in the car with. This is a livery driver. It's not a taxi. They are regulated by TCP licensing, which means they have to be drug tested and they have to go through proof of insurance and all sorts of things like that in order to be a livery driver. So they started with those for a reason.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And that was the first vision. A lot of people, the first objection I heard about investing in that company was not everybody can afford a black car. And I said, well, that's a short-term vision. The long-term vision is that everybody's car becomes available and comes online to drive. And they said, oh, well, strangers won't get in strangers' cars. And I'm like, but they do all the time.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They get in a taxi. You don't know that person. And that person doesn't even own that car. So he gives me Ryan Graves' business card and he says, call Ryan Graves. And I look at the business card and the phone number I think was in like Chicago or something.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And at the time I had a pretty strict rule about only investing kind of in my backyard because every time I tried to invest outside of my ecosystem, I got hosed. I didn't know the players in New York or the players in Austin or Europe. And I couldn't get follow-on financing for the companies. That's all changed, especially since the pandemic and people have become remote.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But then I was just like, ah, so I put Ryan Graves' card away. Fast forward, David Hornick has this amazing event called The Lobby. I went to it. And basically, The Lobby is based around the fact that most amazing conversations happen in the lobby of the hotel. It's not the content. It's not any of it other than that. And it's absolutely true.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And it also happened in the swimming pool and the hot tub and the various things when you're offsite at a resort that happen. Like you go snorkeling together, you go swimming together. So a huge group of us were in a hot tub and there's this guy, Travis Kalanick in the hot tub.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And he had just exited from Red Swoosh and he basically announced to everybody he was on the bench looking for his next thing. As an investor, you always pay attention when somebody says something like that. We trade on secrets. So I took stock of his personality and his personality was very alpha. It was very aggressive. You could tell that everybody sort of quieted down when he spoke.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
There's a lot of things you look for in a leader. And I noticed that. And so I thought, well, I'm just going to watch this guy and see what happens. So a few months later, I got invited to Open Angel Forum, which is a thing that Jason Kalkanis did for a while. And I'm sitting there and like the second presentation that comes up is Travis Kalanick presenting UberCab.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I wrote to my husband and I said, we need to invest in UberCab like today, right now. I don't understand what's going on with Ryan Graves, but it's kind of irrelevant. And we did meet Ryan Graves and we loved him, but we knew, or at least I knew that Ryan Graves would step aside with a person like that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
He's going to want to be the CEO or Ryan would even recognize he was the natural fit for it. I'm not sure what happened on the back end, but Ryan did step aside. He became the COO and the rest is history. And so there's an example of just being really curious and following the white rabbit, so to speak, down the rabbit hole. You take that curiosity and you see where it goes.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then you strike the moment you have that lightning bolt. The lightning bolt hit me when Travis got up.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I believe that one was $8 million.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
That's the first round.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
There's this beautiful period when the company is small and you can send emails to the CEO and they respond. And that's usually when they're under 100 employees. And then that disappears. And it's natural. Every angel investor, every early seed stage investor should understand that this could happen. Travis becomes more unreachable.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Emil becomes more unreachable because you're not their most important problem of the day. They're fighting so many fires. And it's not because they don't like you or love you or aren't even thankful for that first investment. It's because they've got to run a company. And so there's this period after 100 employees that they lean on you a lot less.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
that's where you kind of just sort of surrender to the big players that are going to write the checks and hope for the best outcome. There's very little you can do. You know, in the case of Uber, Chris Saka got involved very early. He rolled up his sleeves and he actually showed up to board meetings, to planning sessions. And they saw a lot of utility in that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so that's one way that you could stay connected to the business. For me, that's not my style. I tend to like to be somebody's backbone and they call me whenever they need a door opened or they need something fixed or they want my particular type of advice. The uncomfortable part happens when the company does really, really well.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then suddenly everybody starts speculating about your personal wealth and starts telling you what you should do with it. And you start getting written up in articles and your privacy starts getting invaded. And that can be pretty daunting. That happened for a period of time. And then of course, when they go public, there's a holding period.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yes, yes. I actually think that it's best psychologically for people to not think about specific outcomes, to set it and forget it, literally. To say, I will be pleased with whatever happens because that needle is going to move all over the place. There were times that we thought that our shares would be worth something and then the next day they're not. You're in for a wild ride at that stage.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so I just think you shouldn't become too attached to it and you should just come up with a plan for why did you do this in the first place? And what are you going to do with that money once you have it? So this is something I always try to advise my partners and anyone in the investing spaces. Why do what we do if it doesn't serve a higher purpose or higher power?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So if you are lucky enough to have an exit of any material means to you and your family, I think it's really, really important to align it with your North Star, whatever it is. You see Warren Buffett do this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
You see the most amazing people in the world, high net worth individuals who figure out charitable causes to support or how to align their investing by starting a fund and getting institutions that they believe in alongside them. So that every dollar you write, you maximize that dollar. You're solving cancer research or you're helping kids go to school or you're helping a pension fund.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I absolutely think that spirituality is an investable category and it's been long overlooked. So I remember when Pray.com was raising and everybody thought, who's going to actually use this? Which target demographic actually wants this? And I think that there are a lot of people, especially coming out of the pandemic, who spent two years wondering, why is this happening to us?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Then you're actually really making a dent in the world through capitalism. And I think capitalism has like such a, I don't know, people use it like a dirty word. And I think it's one of the most beautiful concepts in the world that we have to protect. because it absolutely can move the needle in innovation and change things on multiple levels.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Let me go back to it's my first time experiencing it. So when I was younger, I actually felt that business people were evil and they were exploitative and all sorts of things. And I'm sure there are business people who are those things. But when I lifted myself up off the streets, it was by selling necklaces and making t-shirts. So I realized I could scrape up a little bit of money.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I could make a thing and a person out there could buy that thing from me at a markup. And then I could reinvest that into more supplies and make more money and literally get off the street. And to me, that was like, whoa, wow. Why can't everybody do this? Why can't they see this? And instead, what they see is various abuses of capitalism. Capitalism itself isn't just an idea. It's art.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Art can be abused. All things can be abused. But at its core fundamental principles, it's extraordinarily liberating.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Oh yeah, the SpaceX story is a good one. So I worked at a company called Ironport and I was employee number 30. And it's the best company besides Founders Fund I've ever worked at in my life. The CEO there was incredible. His name is Scott Weiss. And he built a true meritocracy of a culture. It was the first place that I went to that I felt really valued for my mind above all else.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And every time that they gave me a raise, instead of asking for money, I asked for more equity. Because I believe so much in this company. And so I was just like, give me more, give me more equity. That's all I want. I'll figure out a way to make ends meet otherwise. And because before that, I worked at many startups and the equity didn't turn into anything.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Every one of those companies ultimately failed. So when I had my first financial windfall was because Ironport sold to Cisco for $830 million. I think it was 2007. I looked around to my friends and I was very fortunate to have made friends that were angel investors already. And my husband was an angel investor, had already been doing angel investments for 10 years.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And he said, obviously building a company is one way to create wealth. And he said, but the real way that I make my money is by putting capital into high-risk startups. He's like, why don't you do that? And I was like, okay. And he's like, well, why don't you go out and look for opportunities, see what resonates with you and come back. So I did. And yeah,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I was very, very uncertain and very, very scared to put the money that I'd slept under my desk for into startups. But then Luke Nosek came over to our house, who is a dear friend of my husband's. They went to college together. They dropped out of college together and drove west with walkie talkies because they didn't have cell phones and an apartment next to each other.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Eventually, Max Lutzen moved next door. But he came over and practically got on his knees and begged us for money for SpaceX. And it was his conviction and his belief in Elon Musk, this love that's indescribable. This man is going to achieve this vision. And then I went and talked to some NASA engineers and they said, what he's doing is solid.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And the narrative violation there was a private entity can't enter the spacecraft. realm, period, the end. This is NASA. End of story. The government will never allow him to participate. I put money in. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to put everything in it. Everything I made from Ironport, I put into SpaceX. And I was like, you know, I'm young. I can do this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
What is this all about? Why am I here? What is my purpose? And then looking inwards and then looking outwards. And I think people are seeking these answers more than ever before, because when you look online and you read what's going on in the world, it seems like it's increasingly getting darker out there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I can make the money again. I can always join another startup. I can always figure out something else. I definitely had built myself a safety net so I could take that risk finally. So I did that and it'll probably end up being bigger than Uber by far.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
You can kind of figure out they've just blown up a rocket on launch pad and they haven't figured that out yet. And that can give you an idea of timing. They haven't done that in a long time. So I feel lucky, but I also feel like it's because what I do with the money is
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I'm going to go back to spirituality, that the universe tends to direct energy in places where people are doing good things with it. And so I think if I started doing bad things with it, my chances of luck diminish. I think the fact that I have a North Star, and so does my husband, and we believe in things like freedom, the US Constitution,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We believe in people being able to start businesses for ideas to flourish. I think these things are very important core values of ours. And it's possible that we are rewarded as such. Now, obviously, I can't prove it. But I really, really believe that I am a steward of capital that doesn't belong to me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
It is mine to deploy judiciously, but is mine to basically put into innovation and into nonprofit work to move the needle on this earth to make everybody's lives better ultimately in the end. And I believe that as long as I continue to hold that hope and I trust my gut feeling, which I believe is kind of divine, my ego is aside.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Like it's one of these things where I don't even think that I'm responsible for some of this. I don't know if you've read the Rick Rubin book. I compared myself to Rick Rubin online and I got a lot of backlash and it was funny to me because... Rick Rubin is very, very similar to me because we trust these feelings that we have to make decisions.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And for him, it's like, I found the Beastie Boys and no one's ever heard the Beastie Boys and they're going to love this. And I know I'm onto something. And for me, Travis Kalanick is the Beastie Boys.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah. So a few years ago, I was an atheist and like many people during the pandemic, I had a lot of free time to sit and reflect on. I mean, some people, I hate to say this, but some people didn't have the time because they were obviously frontline responders, but I was fortunate enough to sit down and think like, why is this happening? Who am I? What is my place in the world?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I would say that it's not, but this is where spirituality comes in and lets people know where the light is. I think spirituality comes in many different ways. It comes in the form of prayer. It comes in the form of meditation. It also comes in the form of potentially even psychedelic medicine. So I do think that it's a hugely investable category. And you look at the success of Angel Studios.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And really, really figure out the why. Because for a long time, I really felt like we're supposed to just be good people, live a good life and make the best of it. And we just turn to dust in the end. And that's all there is to it. But the one thing I never tried was believing. I never tried actually having faith. You might ask yourself, how does one try? It's not trivial.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Like you can't just say today I try having faith. I actually had to figure out how to truly believe that the world is magical. And the moment that I truly believed that the world was magical, then the world became magical. It rocked the foundation of who I am. So I had a spiritual awakening today. And it's the only way I can describe it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I can tell you that each one of us is walking a very thin razor's edge between sanity and insanity at all times. Serotonin regulates a lot of how we perceive reality. I had a surge of serotonin in this lightning bolt like no other. It was basically this surge of energy that went from the base of my spine out the top of my skull. And suddenly everything in the world looked different. Everything.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I started viewing signs differently. I started viewing art differently, conversations I was having with people differently. And I realized everything around us is a projection of our perception minds. We, when we're born, when we are born, we come online with like going back to parts work and things like that. But when we're born, we come online with about four distinct things.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
systems that come online. And then through stimulus of interacting in the world, we develop a personality. And we think this personality is fixed. We think it can't be changed. But it turns out it absolutely can be changed. Many parts of it can. How I had the spiritual awakening was the realization that all the trauma in my past was a construct of my imagination.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
That basically, yeah, it happened. But it happened like a dream happened, like a nightmare. A nightmare you wake up from and it's gone and you're relieved. You're like, oh, that was just a dream.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Well, it turns out trauma is also just a dream because if you can overcome it and you can get past it and you can move forward, you have to realize that that thing, when you spin it up in your mind, creates all kinds of hormones that get released that shape your reality and how you see the world. We forget that we're an animal that has hormones and a mind.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then there's this really special thing called consciousness, right? And so I believe that consciousness is kind of like an operating system and it brings these parts of us online that benefited us at one point that no longer benefit us because they have jobs. I think of them as kind of like processes that come online to assist you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They're like cron jobs and they're like, I'm here to assist you. And we don't know to put them away and tell them that they don't have that job anymore. They don't need to do that anymore. So once I let go of this huge amount of trauma and I realized that it just didn't matter that these things happened to me in the past, what matters is literally right now.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Well, Angel Studios basically crowdfunded ticket sales as well as the development of a film. And it ended up being the best box office film at the time. And it went completely out of a studio model. And they basically put out this piece of art that people were clamoring for. And the studios themselves didn't think that it was an investable category.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And you hear people say this and you wonder, what does it mean when they say this? And I always wondered it. I was like, what does it mean? When you have the true realization, it's almost like it's written in your DNA, right? what that really, really means, then you start to let go of so much. And when you let go, all of a sudden you realize, oh, life isn't so hard. It's actually quite easy.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I just have to trust myself and I have to trust my intuition and I have to just be. And once you learn how just to be, life gets a lot more simple. All of a sudden, everything you ever wished for in your life just starts coming true. It becomes effortless. It's really weird. It's really super weird. And the only thing that changed in my life was having faith in something higher than myself.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
That was it. This is why when you ask me what sort of insight or brilliance or whatever led to whatever, it's too easy for our ego mind to take credit for everything. Something gave me that feeling that said, you ought to go deeper into this. You ought to do this. You've got to take this risk. You've got to jump right now.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I guarantee you, if you talk to a lot of different people, they'll say, I don't know why I did this. I just had a feeling. And I now believe thoroughly in that feeling. And I believe that that feeling is the universe or God, whatever word you want to put into it. And it helps guide me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And now that I don't egotistically attach myself to it, I am just a much happier person and everything is just falling into place.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Bill Murray is my spirit animal. About 20 years ago, I saw a film called Lost in Translation. And I thought, this is a person who feels so real. He's not acting. He is, but he isn't. I looked at his eyes in that performance and I saw a man who was suffering, who was dealing with some real life shit that was coming through the film.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And not only that, but I felt my own suffering and I felt a connection to that suffering. It's kind of like when you look at a painting and you see yourself. I saw myself. Bill Murray. And so I did a Google search just to see what he was up to and then saw that he was appearing at people's parties and was spotted at somebody's dorm room or something like that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And he went into their house and just started washing their dishes. So it started this movement where people started putting out banners saying, Bill Murray, please come here. Welcome here. I thought to myself, What kind of man like him puts themselves into the general population like that? And I identified with it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I told you earlier, I go to these conventions and I put myself on purpose in uncomfortable positions just to absorb humanity. And I realized, you know, if you're... Brad Pitt, or if you're George Clooney, it's hard to be these people. Everywhere you go, you're recognized. Somebody wants to take a picture with you. Someone wants to touch you. Why would you subject yourself to this on purpose?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I became obsessed with that question. I started thinking about it nonstop. What drives this man? I ultimately decided it was spiritual, that in order for him to maintain his humanity, he decided to start teaching us all how to live. Now, if you watch what he's doing, he's showing you that even the act of doing dishes can be a joyful thing as much as going to a party.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Going back to curiosity and joy, you can find joy in the most mundane of things if you try. And so he's showing us a really beautiful thing. It's not about the sort of prank of showing up at a house and washing dishes. It's about showing you that dishes are a fun thing.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If you walk down the street and you just suddenly start dancing with someone, you're showing them... It's almost like they had a weird dream when they run into him. He'll take your french fry off your plate and he'll say, no one will ever believe you. I love that story. And I think that... I want Bill Murray to live forever.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But when he leaves this earth, this go-round, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of stories of Bill Murray are going to come pouring out. And that man's going to look like a saint. He is a saint of sorts. He's a very difficult person to work with, I've heard, because he demands the best of people. He expects people to show up and give 100%.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And his bar for talent and for art is incredibly high. But I can tell you how I met him. So I put my dream out into the universe that I want to meet Bill Murray. And someday it would happen. And I visualized it. And I said, and when I meet him, I'm going to get to ask him a question. Just one question. That's the most important question to me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If you do this, I guarantee you most of these things will come true. Not in the exact way that you imagine they'll come true because the universe works in its own mysterious ways. When I set out to meet Bill Murray, I did not have money. When I met him, I did. One day I was sitting on my couch. My favorite site to shop on for gifts for friends is Charity Buzz.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I was on Charity Buzz and all of a sudden this thing popped up that said, spend a day of golf with Bill Murray. And I was like, what on earth? No way. And I was like, I'm in a position where I could buy this. do I do it? And so I said, yes, I do. This is my chance. This, the universe has just handed me an opportunity and I get to support charity at the same time. Like how beautiful is that?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Peter always says, Peter Thiel says, you know, it's okay to be contrarian, but you've got to be contrarian and right. Being contrarian for contrarian's sake is probably not a good path to take. But people have labeled me or coined me as contrarian. I don't know that I would be self-described as contrarian, but I tend to think differently than other people do.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So I reached out to the organizers. I didn't know how to golf. That's the funniest part about this. I had never gone out to golf in my life. I actually had a pretty negative opinion of golf. I thought it was hoity-toity and only for wealthy people. And it just was not for me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so I reached out to them and I said, I know this is a very strange request, but would it be possible if I just ride along with him while he plays and I could be his caddy? And so they wrote back and they said, well, he's willing to have lunch with you. And I was like, oh no, I heard golf is like a full day affair. Like, I really want to know this man. Can I please just come along?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And to his credit, he said, sure. He said, absolutely. So- The day that I showed up, he paired me with his partner, Scott Simpson, who is an amazing man, just absolutely amazing man. For the first 10 holes I spent with Scott Simpson, I brought my friend, Emily Gillette, who's an amazing golfer because I figured one of us has got to be able to play.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So I brought Emily and she was paired up with Bill. And a little over half of the day later, he comes over me and taps me on the shoulder and he's like, didn't you buy this whole thing? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, don't you want to meet me or come for a ride? Right. playing golf with me because I was having the time of my life with Scott Simpson.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So I go out and golf with Bill and he was teaching me how to chip and how to putt and how to everything. And he was just so gracious and didn't care if I knew how. And he took us out to Clint Eastwood's golf course. And I got to ask him my question. And my question was, how do you stay present? When I asked him, he stopped the golf cart and he gave me the stair and he
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
You could tell it just took him by surprise. It was not what he was expecting out of this whole ordeal. All of a sudden he points to the hill and he goes, Turkey. And I go, what? And he points to the hill and he goes, Turkey. And I was like, okay, Turkey. All right. I looked at him and we start talking about this turkey. And he's like, he called it a he.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so I joked and I'm like, you don't know the pronoun of the turkey. And so then we got talking about that and joking with him. So then I came back to it again and start talking about it again. And he goes, tree. He points over to tree, tree. And I was like, yeah, that's a tree. And it became very clear he wasn't going to answer this question.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
What I didn't realize in that moment was I got my first lesson from Bill Murray, which is how do you stay present? Notice what's around you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
marvel in it there's a freaking turkey in front of us like how often do you get to see a turkey not every day why do we take the turkey for granted why do we take the tree for granted at first I was like I'm not getting the answer and this is frustrating but later on when I reflected on the day I realized he did answer me I got my answer. It was just an incredible, valuable lesson.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And it definitely helped me on my spiritual journey in a way that is just so profound.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So this goes back to just following your curiosity. I have a friend named Michael Tiffany. He's a wonderful entrepreneur and somebody I've known for a long time. And we go to DEF CON. So I've been going to DEF CON since DEF CON 4, since I was 18 years old. We were fantasizing a few years ago that wouldn't it be cool if we hired a violinist to follow us around and just sort of play a soundtrack?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so when I identify an opportunity and I go out and try to convince other people that I've found an opportunity and they consistently tell me, no, this isn't going to work, which usually indicates to me that I'm onto something. I know something that no one else does. I'm thinking in a different way than other people are. And there is usually high alpha. there when you find these secrets.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
wherever we went, because I'm really into performance art in general. And I thought it would just be really funny if you just show up to a meeting and you're like, hold on, my violin players here, have them play. It'd just be eccentric and odd, just kind of a funny thing. And so we daydreamed about it, joked about it and put it away.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We're walking through DEF CON and there's a young man, boy, he was 16 years old, 15 maybe, playing a violin. And it's so beautiful. And he's busking in the middle of this conference. And in front of his violin case, it says, raising money for a certification course. I asked him, I said, how much do you need? And he's like, I need $2,000 to take this class. And I said, oh, okay. And I said, huh?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then I turned to Michael Tiffany and we started walking. He goes, are you thinking what I'm thinking? And I said, I'm thinking personal violin player for the day. What are you thinking? And he said, I'm with you. And I said, he goes, you want to go have these? And I said, yeah.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So we walked back to him just as the conference was about to shut him down and tell him to close his violin and get the heck out and said, we're going to pay for your class. But here's the deal. Are you willing to follow us around all day and just play music for everyone wherever we go? Because the conference didn't care that he was playing violin.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They cared that he was asking for money is really what it came down. They didn't want that to become a thing. But they absolutely loved that he was playing violin. And he asked his dad and his dad was like, sure. So he and his dad just ended up going with us all day long. We went into the conference hall. He would just sit there and play music.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When we were walking down the hallway, he would play like the Imperial Death March or he would play Game of Thrones. It was just really fantastic. It changed his life. He was able to take that class and he changed our life. And it was just miraculous and beautiful. And it just goes to show you can do these things.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We can all create magic in the world for other people and for ourselves if you think about a situation and you act in that moment.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, so I think when I first started investing, I made a lot of mistakes. We hear about the wins, but you don't hear about the losses because you're really tuning your antenna in the beginning. My first check ever obviously ended up being a wild success, but there was lots of checks after that that did not. You have to accept those failures as a lesson.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
As you go forward and then internalize those lessons. What did I do wrong? What did I not see? It wasn't out of my control. Did I still do the right thing, but then it was the wrong timing, et cetera, et cetera. And then you hone that into your gut feeling so that when the next time comes around, you can make hopefully a better decision. Now I've been at this hundreds of companies.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I was at Founders Fund, obviously was on the investment committee there, have seen many, many, many deals. My antenna is getting better and better and better. I think my job now is to teach future generations how to trust their gut. So when I left Founders Fund, I joined Lee Jacobs at Long Journey Ventures. And he's a decade younger than me. He's just starting out and hitting his stride.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
He's been at it for a while, but his early investments are starting to bear fruit. For example, he was a seed investor in Loom and Loom just exited. So he had his very first exit. So he's got his first story right now, which is really, really exciting. Hopefully help him and inspire him to, one, I have no doubt he's going to be wildly successful. Same thing with Ariel.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I just want them to follow their North Star in the end, which is what causes do you care about where as you are successful, you can make a real dent in them. In the beginning, it was about making the money and continuously deploying the money and the causes that I was supporting through the actual companies themselves. But now I'm starting to think about all my actions.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
How do they help the bigger whole? So sometimes you'll see me doing things with companies that we have very small investments in, and you'll see me putting a lot of time into it. even though I know that the returns aren't going to be huge because it doesn't really matter. That person's out there doing something incredibly important. It's not about opportunity costs.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I'm a firm believer in whatever you put out in the universe comes back to you. You know, if you do good things, good things come back. It's just how it works. So what's changed for me is just being more methodical about my time, how I'm spending it, who I'm spending it with, what kind of vibrational energy is around me. Am I lifting up the vibrations of the world around me?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Are they lifting me up and so forth? And that's all I want to focus on because I just want to make a venture firm that's going to be around long after I'm dead. And my spirit is inside of it somehow. It lives in the values. It lives in the discussions that we've had. And so I believe that our thesis around investing is the combination of the three of us. But my spirit is definitely in there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Well, I dropped out of high school. I did not go to university. And so I always like to joke that I went to Peter Thiel University. And it was a dream come true for me. I was working at AngelList at the time. I was an angel investor. I'd actively been investing at that point for probably about eight years. And when they reached out to me and asked me to join them,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Founders Fund has a spirit. It comes from Luke Nosek, who was one of the original founders of Founders Fund. he dared to disrupt the venture industry to create the first truly founder-friendly venture firm. And this is not about being value-add, by the way. It was about not ever firing a founder and removing them from their company. That's it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
That's their biggest value proposition, which is they will not mess with you once they've invested in you. That seems like Kind of a simple thing to hang your hat on, but it's actually in the end comes down to be incredibly important as they think that the soul and the spirit of the company lives in the founder.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, my philosophy isn't quite as far as Founders Funds. Founders Fund is like, we invested in you and now you're on your own and it's your job to extract value from us. A certain founder loves that because they know how to get value. They look at that group of people and they know who they're connected to and they know what to ask for.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We are a little bit to the left of that if they were on the far end of the spectrum. We are more hospitality oriented because I think at the seed stage, being hospitality oriented is important. What that means is one of our values is be a bubby. Bubbies are grandmothers who give you hard advice, but they love you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so our job is to give honest feedback to the founders, but give them unconditional love. What a founder needs to hear is the hard stuff. They need to hear like, you're not performing compared to the rest of our portfolio companies of the same vintage, maybe in the same space, or this person you've hired is probably not cutting it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
The other thing is to letting them know when they have done amazing things that you notice and giving that feedback, just like a Bubby would do. Then being there for them in the hard times, because the one thing that all CEOs are afraid of is really revealing all their cards to investors because it could backfire. That's why they always say it's always up and to the right. Everything's great.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Three, it was like a Cinderella story. I got to go and work with people that I look up to so much and be able to learn from them and to basically absorb knowledge every single day. And they brought me on to run their early stage efforts.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We're killing it. And then you later on find out that's not really the case. If you can form a true relationship with your founders, they're going to tell you when things are not going right because they want you to lean in and help. We want to be there
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When you've had a loss in the family, we want to be there when your best friend, something happened to them because we are human beings at the end of the day, it's a mental game. So we do a lot of things around like mental coaching and presence of mind and things like that with our founders. We think that all the rest of it is got to be a core competency of the company, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Like we're not going to help with marketing. We're not going to help with hiring or any of these things, unless we have a candidate that lands on our lap. And then we do place them in companies. We absolutely do do that, but we're not going to go out and be recruiters. All of that needs to be core to your business. And I think that's what truly matters, especially at the early stages.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So I was talking to Justin and my partner and they said, you really should look into IFS and try it out. So then I tried it out and I went in skeptical and came out realizing, oh my gosh, how amazing is that? For people that don't know what IFS is, you basically view all your parts of your personality as there are no bad parts involved.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Every part is there to serve you, including the ones you might not like. And they come online to serve you because they're trying to defend you and protect you, yourself, that's underneath all of that stuff.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And when you start treating them as separate entities and have curiosity about them and start having conversations with them, you start to realize they're automatic processes that come online that you can then give them other jobs to do. And you can change your personality permanently for the better.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I've gotten rid of some behaviors that I thought were unchangeable through IFS, nervousness, types of nervousness, types of reactions to people talking to me and realizing that these were all just automatic functions of how I show up and react to any kind of perception or stimulus in the world. And it wasn't about the person I was dealing with. It was about me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
In general, it's usually all about how you... handle anything coming at you. A friend of mine said something really powerful to me once, which was, if people are coming with you with anything but love, it's not about you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel flawed. You're going to hear people talk about when they talk about spirituality, about being asleep and And what being asleep means is going back into your mechanical automatic reflexes of reacting to life and just sort of not being truly present. And if I have a flaw, it's just the flaw of being human and not realizing that I'm not being present in the moment.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
But as you know, Founders Fund became a very large fund and it becomes increasingly difficult in a multi-stage fund to execute different strategies, especially at the early stage. And so they tried their best to help me grow into the muscle of Series A, Series B investing. And they did everything they could to keep me there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so that's something that I want to grind away at and fix over time. I think that sometimes I can be reactive to things in ways that I wish I wasn't. So I'm working on those things. None of us is perfect. I think the whole experiment of life, if you are an infinite being, let's just pause at this for a moment.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If you're an infinite being, being in a body is meant to basically give you artificial constraints. And what if it was possible that maybe you even chose these restraints? I want to be in this situation. I want to overcome this adversity. I want to have this hardship. I want these things and I wanted them. And so I've got to figure out how to get to the other side of them.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So all of our imperfection is just a lesson. That's all it is to me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I would disrupt the Hollywood industry. I would reimagine the studio system and I would build a company around it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
You've got to look back at Hollywood and how it was founded. The old studio system, all of the artists used to work for the studio. And they were on payroll. And then what happened was they became wildly successful and then fans loved them, but they had no upside. So basically they had no way to really capture any of this fan engagement.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So they couldn't get money from public appearances and things like that. Along came Michael Ovitz and turned that on its head and created something called CAA.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And Michael Ovis is the best. I love that man. And he re-imagined how an industry could operate. And he put the power back in the hand of the artists. That's why it's called the Creative Artists Agency. And he fought for these artists and basically started packaging these deals that were full packages where they developed everything and then worked with the studios on financing and distribution.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
It's still that way today. And unfortunately, kind of like all protectionist rackets that exist out there, they don't want to adapt to the times and the times are changing. And now we have Netflix. In the beginning, they were pretty short-sighted. They thought that DVDs coming in the mail was like the Holy Grail. They didn't see where the evolution of this thing was going.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Kind of like Napster disrupted the music industry and we ended up with Spotify. We haven't ended up with... a new model for how studios operate. We're starting to see some interesting things happening with like NFTs and Web3 and distribution techniques for content that have never been tried before.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Whenever you have gatekeepers who are the only people who are putting out content, that means that there are millions of voices that aren't heard. And I believe that every voice has a chance to be heard and ought to be heard, even if you don't like what they have to say, because how else can we get to the right answers if the full discussion isn't happening?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I would have stayed if we'd been able to figure out probably some sort of strategy that worked because I do love that team so much. Working there was probably one of the best four years of my life.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So the movies that we're seeing right now are dumbed down for general audience appeal. They're made to make the most amount of money possible, but they're not made to teach you potentially how to live your life differently or to question yourself.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Art has an amazing way of moving the needle of culture and for opening people's minds and hearts to subjects that they might not have otherwise thought about. And so I'm afraid right now we're in kind of a monoculture where there's only a few people making content and they have an agenda. If you look at a lot of this content, it's being censored by the CCP.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We're not even allowed to criticize China in any of our film. We should be allowed to criticize China in our films. That should be okay. And the fact that we're not alarmed by this to me is kind of nuts. I would want to bring transparency to accounting and the studio model to where everybody understands the waterfall and understands who's getting paid what and how.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I would love to give power to artists and to the early believers in that system. So for example, in venture, angel investors can invest in a company and we have a lot of upside protection.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
So the later investors come in and save the day of the company, maybe they have some preferences, maybe some things happen where they get rewarded, but you should never screw over the first people who believed because you would have never had the opportunity in the first place. to invest later on if you screw over those first people who believe.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Hollywood is totally based off of screwing over those first believers. And so there's a lot of people who put money in or wrote a script or did a lot of things that they don't ever recoup that money. It's only the later stage investors who do. I just really, really think that ideas have to flourish. I'm a First Amendment nut.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I donate money to the UCLA amicus brief clinic down in LA, and I'm very, very, very drawn to that cause. And so a lot of the philanthropy that I do in the first place is around the First Amendment. So if I had a trillion dollars, it would be to go after Hollywood. The next thing would be create a school of comedy where we train the next generation of comedians.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Because I think that what the world needs more of is laughter. Because this is how we let out steam about what's going on in the world. We're all too sensitive right now. Everything is offensive. We got to stop being so concerned about the words that people are saying and learn to think for ourselves instead. Figure out what our inner voice is, our true north is.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then it doesn't matter what people say. It shouldn't even hurt you. I would say that a trillion dollars is a lot of dollars.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah. I mean, I probably would try to work on legalization of mind-expanding substances, MDMA, psilocybin, et cetera, probably put more money to work behind that. I probably would try to work on incarceration rates, people that are in prison for causes that cause no harm to anybody, to free those people. I probably would plow a majority of it back into startups and
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are incredibly freaked out right now about AI. Rightfully so. A lot of them are going to school and wondering why they should even bother. We're not paying attention to that despair. They're like, why am I learning these things when I can just go to chat GPT and ask this question or create a report with chat GPT that's good enough?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Or why am I learning how to code when there's copilot or these things that are just going to generate code and create apps just because someone dreams of it? Like, why am I learning the intricacies of how all this works?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so one of the things I'm deeply thinking about my dispatch from the future is how do we create a world where people understand nothing is going to be more valuable than what's created by human hands in the future. So in a world where everything is quick, cheap, and flawless, the things that are flawed have value. So I don't know if you've ever read the book, The Diamond Age.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
When you're an early stage investor, you're very qualitative, not quantitative. And I'm a qualitative investor.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, exactly. So we're heading into the diamond age. Borders of countries are being questioned. Democracy itself is being questioned. Do we create files of societies through crypto where people subscribe to a certain type of living like the Victorians did in diamond age? And do we have material matter printers that print everything we need on demand?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
If everybody has most of what their needs are met, what's left and what's left is artisanship. And so I think we're moving into a great age of artistry like has never been seen before. And the big argument that's coming is whether or not AI created art is really art. I argue that it is. I argue that an idea that someone had in their mind that they didn't have a paintbrush to bring to life
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And that becomes very difficult when you're trying to talk to quants or people who think about a world in data rooms and spreadsheets and wanting an answer to how you decided that you want to invest in something because you're trusting your gut or you've thought about the world a certain way, or you've been looking for this answer to appear in front of you may look
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Now they have that paintbrush. Now they can take that idea and synthesize it into something that people can see and express themselves in ways they never were able to in the past. Now, did they not spend 10,000 hours honing that craft? For sure. But does it make them not an artist? No. So my dispatch from the future definitely is going to be around painting.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Gen Alpha and what we do for them and Gen Z to try to make sure that they understand they have a future and to start investing in that future now so that those platforms exist so that they understand where they can participate in this new economy that's coming.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I've had so many kind things done for me in my life that it's so hard to pick one, but I'm going to pick this one because I was hitchhiking on the side of the road when I was 17, 16 years old. I think I was 16. in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I'd gotten kicked out of Denny's because I overstayed my welcome in there with the bottomless cup of coffee. And it was in the middle of the winter.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I went into a gas station and I got kicked out of the gas station. I ran out of options. So I went out to the freeway and stuck my thumb out and started hitchhiking. I got hypothermia and I started feeling my body shut down and I knew I was probably moments away from death. And that's when an RV pulled up. I was with a boyfriend at the time. He's like, God told me to stop for her. Not you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
He pointed to my boyfriend, which was kind of mean. And he said, but her. And he said, but since you're with her, just get in. And so they picked me up off the ground because I was not able to move anymore and brought me into the RV and put a blanket on top of me. And he gave me hot chocolate. And he said, where are you going? And I said, I'm going to Flagstaff, Arizona.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And the next thing I knew, I woke up and I was delivered to the front doorsteps of my mother's home at the time. And so that act of kindness saved my life. It was a complete stranger. He told me that he had circled past me probably eight or nine times, gone off the off ramp, on the on ramp, off ramp, on ramp.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Thinking that it was crazy that he was getting this lightning bolt, going back to lightning bolts to save my life. But then he was just like, I realized if I don't stop, she's going to die. And so he saved my life and I'm so thankful to him. I don't even know his name because he just dropped me off.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I slept through the whole ride, but it was that act of kindness, that act of giving to a complete stranger and listening to his gut feeling that I'll never forget.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, thank you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
To others is if you're impulsive because you want to move quickly and they want to be deliberate and want to get in the data room and want to know more about the company.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And oftentimes at the early stages of a business, you know, very little, you know, that you've got a good founder in front of you, you know, that they have an idea and they have a shot, but all of that data is not going to be there. And so you've got two different types of investor types of minds that And that can be difficult to navigate and frustrating.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
It was actually kind of soul crushing for me. I tend to like to be incredibly optimistic. And usually when you get into the quantitative realm of the world, you're dealing with a lot more pessimism. And so for me, I'm an intuitive thinker. And I think that if you're an intuitive thinker and you
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
have sort of a gut feeling about things and you really deeply think about the world, then early stage is probably the best avenue for you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Peter gave me one of the best pieces of feedback. One of the things I love about Peter is he's so precise. He can give you like an amazing piece of feedback if you're willing to listen to it and really digest it. And he took me on a car ride one day and he simply said one sentence to me and it changed my life. And it actually led to me quitting the firm.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
He said, Cyan, you're really good at feeling, but you're not really good at knowing yet. That was it. And I looked at him and I understood exactly what he was telling me. And I marinated on it and marinated on it. And I said, do I really want to know? Do I really want that skill set? Do I really want to learn these things that are so uncomfortable and unnatural to me?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And is this the right place for me? And the answer was no. So I think what Peter loved about me and why he wanted me to join the team is because I do have principles. I do have a North Star. I do make gut decisions very quickly. I think that...
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
There was a world where they had a carve out of a seed stage fund and it was a separate fund and it didn't conflict with the main fund investments, then this probably would have worked out. I think what he saw in me was someone who thinks differently about the world. He really loves to reward diversity of ideas and backgrounds. I think that people don't give him enough credit for that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
The fact that I'm a high school dropout, I didn't go to university is a plus in his mind. He wants to work with investors who never wanted to be investors.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I was homeless at a very young age and I grew up very poor. And I always remember where I came from. And so when I do investments, for example, some of the investments I've made in Postmates or Uber, I always think about the younger me, which is if I could have driven an Uber or I could have delivered a sandwich, that would have been life-changing for me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I think a lot of the times when we're investors, we live in a bubble, our lives are relatively comfortable for the most part, and we lose track of what the rest of the world's experience is. Being able to have flexibility in your income and in your work is a dream come true for many, many people.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And so my North Star is around ending poverty, creating different types of wealth categories and income generating categories for people who didn't have access to those in the past. For example, AngelList. crowdfunding, reg CF financing, things like that are really interesting to me. And if you look across my portfolio, that's not always the case.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Sometimes I'm just really interested in a category and I want to invest in it. But for the most part, I would say that anytime someone comes to me and they say, I have a new way for people to reach a market and sell a product that could be life-changing for a small entrepreneur. That's where I really, really, really like to play.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I think that some of the companies, while vilified, like if you look at Uber and you look at Postmates, they've been vilified throughout time. It really, really doesn't take into account that there's people out there that are disabled. There's people out there that have family on hospice. There's people out there that have children in daycare and they need that flexibility.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
They need that source of income. And otherwise they would have been locked into a nine to five job with no flexibility, unable to take care of their relatives, unable to take care of their own medical needs. And so I want to invest in things that really change and move the needle in people's lives on a grand, grand scale.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And then I think there's obviously venture returns in those opportunities, but they also align with my North Star and my core values.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
Yeah, I really like when a founder has overcome some kind of adversity. So it's one of the questions I ask, which is what sort of adversity have you faced in your life? And I'm not looking for a story like mine. Adversity comes in many, many ways. For example...
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
You might be a founder who grew up in a family that expected you to become a doctor or a lawyer, and maybe they immigrated to America, and they know that that's a really good career for you to have. And so they push you hard to do those things. And then you say, no, actually, I'm going to go start something else, and I'm going to build this company because...
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I really feel like it's the right thing to do. And this is my calling. So answering a call to adventure against your parents could be a form of adversity. Maybe you went to the military and you were deployed and you had to overcome what you saw. That's also interesting. Maybe you were in Parkland and you were at the shooting. And you overcame that adversity.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
We have founders who are coming out of those. And I just really think it's remarkable when they come out of one of these experiences with a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective on the world, and most importantly, hope. They're just like, yeah, I had it rough, or I overcame this challenge, but... I'm so excited about living. I'm so excited about innovating.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
And I look for those founders and I want to help them and I want to be by their side. Because when you build a company, you're going to be faced with so many amazing challenges. And if you can't overcome them all, if you can't move past them, if you can't put your ego aside and do what's right for the company and always arrive at the best answer, then you probably won't succeed.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS]
I've been thinking about this a lot as I've been writing. And I really honestly think that when you're faced with the question of survival, that was literally my question. I was turned out onto the street when I was 15 years old. I didn't have a job. You have to ask yourself, do you hunker down and just say, this is it for me?