Cyan Banister
speaker
346 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Cyan Banister’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
Art can be abused. All things can be abused. But at its core fundamental principles, it's extraordinarily liberating.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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