POD OF JAKE

Latest Episodes:

#127 - ARIEL SEIDMAN Apr 27, 2023

Show notes

Ariel is the CEO & Co-Founder of Hivemapper, a decentralized mapping protocol that uses a crypto-enabled dashcam. Prior to Hivemapper, Ariel spent time working on Yahoo’s mapping product and founded a mobile mapping startup, Gigwalk. Follow Ariel on Twitter @aseidman.

[0:00] - Ariel’s extensive experience in the world of mapping

[9:10] - Learning, iterating, and finding product-market fit

[13:34] - Building a crypto protocol with real-world utility

[18:31] - The functionality, economics, and challenges of a digital mapping protocol

[24:57] - Distinguishing Hivemapper from Waze and Google Maps

[29:16] - Hivemapper’s dashcam technology and use of crypto incentives

[33:32] - Breaking down Hivemapper’s tokenomics and AI training models

[39:37] - Hivemapper the company vs. Hivemapper the protocol

[42:42] - Supply and demand for the HONEY token

[47:19] - How Hivemapper and digital mapping can be useful for augmented reality

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#126 - KEITH RABOIS Apr 04, 2023

Show notes

Keith is the CEO & Co-Founder of OpenStore and a General Partner at Founders Fund. He is an experienced technology executive and entrepreneur, a prolific investor, and a self-described contrarian. Keith previously served as a General Partner at Khosla Ventures. Before that, he was COO at Square and served in influential roles at LinkedIn. He also co-founded Opendoor. Keith began his career in technology as a senior executive at PayPal. He has since invested early in many great companies including YouTube, Airbnb, Palantir, DoorDash, Stripe, Quora, Yammer, Affirm, Eventbrite, and many others. He also served as a Board Member from inception to IPO at Yelp and Xoom. Follow Keith on Twitter @rabois.

[0:00] - OpenStore's early momentum and fundraising strategy

[5:35] - How an decentralized department store could unlock eCommerce growth

[12:33] - Introducing OpenStore Drive and why it is great for Shopify store owners

[16:49] - OpenStore's horizontal approach and why Keith believes it is best

[18:41] - OpenStore’s business acquisition strategy and thoughtful process design

[24:09] - How learnings from OpenStore’s initial acquisitions have led to improvements

[28:56] - Why OpenStore’s business is resilient in various macroeconomic environments

[35:06] - Acquisition offers and accept rates as metrics and countermetrics at OpenStore

[38:45] - Introducing Gumdrop which matches long-tail influencers to long-tail SKUs

[41:40] - The advantages of aggregation that benefit OpenStore’s business model

[45:19] - Building a great company culture; finding & developing undiscovered talent

[51:11] - The most high-leverage activities Keith allocates time to as OpenStore's CEO

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#125 - NOAH SMITH Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

Noah is an American economist and writer best known for his Substack, Noahpinion. He has made contributions to Bloomberg, Quartz, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Before starting his Substack, Noah wrote full-time for Bloomberg. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University. Follow Noah on Twitter @Noahpinion.

[0:00] - Noah's story and how his Substack got started

[4:59] - The role of Substack and individual opinion writers in today’s media environment

[12:11] - The duality of work for college professors

[20:43] - Declining trust in mainstream media institutions

[29:40] - How opinion writing differs from traditional journalism

[35:17] - Noah’s process in researching and writing about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse

[39:22] - Noah's perspective on the ongoing banking crisis

[44:48] - Why Noah considers himself a techno-optimist

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#124 - DAVID & DANIIL LIBERMAN Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

David and Daniil are brothers, serial entrepreneurs, and investors. After selling their augmented reality startup Kernal AR to Snap, the brothers created a holding company, LibermansCo, to incubate their current endeavors: Product Science and Humanism. Humanism allows people to invest in people. Follow them on Twitter @DaLiberman.

[0:00] - How the Libermans’ upbringing in the Soviet Union prepared them for their entrepreneurial endeavors

[6:10] - The Libermans’ experience selling a startup to Snapchat and their subsequent role in improving the company’s performance

[11:21] - Creating LibermansCo as a holding company for future Liberman startup endeavors

[22:10] - How the idea for LibermansCo created a framework for investing in individual founders rather than direct businesses (Humanism.is)

[26:52] - Comparing the Humanism model and economics to the traditional venture capital system

[48:02] - Determining what should be included as an eligible asset under the Humanism model

[52:38] - How the Libermans iterated upon previous attempts to invest in individuals

[58:17] - Considerations around setting floors and ceilings for payouts under the Humanism model

[1:10:26] - The drive to take LibermansCo public and show the legitimacy of the Humanism model

[1:14:08] - Radical transparency and why the brothers share one life together

[1:18:51] - The desire to create Humanism as a way to provide future generations with access to wealth

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#123 - MICHAEL GIBSON Feb 23, 2023

Show notes

Michael is co-founder of the 1517 Fund, a venture capital fund investing in teams led by dropouts, the uncredentialed, and renegade scientists. He recently published his first book, Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University. Previously he was vice president for grants at the Thiel Foundation and a principal at Thiel Capital, where he helped launch and run the Thiel Fellowship. Follow Michael on Twitter @William_Blake.

[2:18] - How Michael’s background in philosophy ultimately led him to venture capital

[12:06] - Michael’s brief stint as a screenwriter and how he views founders through the perspective of a storyteller

[22:49] - Analyzing the factors that contribute to individual and societal creativity, greatness, and progress

[39:08] - How Michael approaches talent attraction, identification, and development

[48:07] - The story behind the title of Michael’s book “Paper Belt on Fire”

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#122 - WILLIAM "JB55" CASARIN Jan 27, 2023

Show notes

Will is the Founder of damus.io, a mobile client for the decentralized social media protocol Nostr. In addition to his work on damus, Will is a regular contributor to Bitcoin Core and the Lightning Network. Follow Will on Twitter @jb55 and find him on nostr: npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s.

[2:18] - Will’s early interest in the internet and experience watching it mature

[8:00] - How Will discovered Bitcoin and used it as a tool in his work

[11:25] - An introduction to internet protocols

[14:21] - The issue of self censorship

[18:21] - Breaking down the architecture and censorship resistance of the Nostr protocol

[23:41] - Building damus as a mobile client on Nostr

[26:16] - Catalysts for Nostr adoption and interoperability

[31:38] - How damus is integrating Bitcoin’s Lightning network for payments

[33:34] - Will’s approach to financing his work building damus

[37:15] - Participating in a distributed workforce and building open-source software

[40:18] - Will’s strategy to allocate donations among community contributors

[42:12] - Nostr’s competitive positioning and future outlook

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#121 - DAN SIROKER Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

Dan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rewind.ai, a search engine for your life. Rewind uses artificial intelligence to help you find anything you have seen, said, or heard on your computer. Previously, Dan was the Co-Founder and CEO of Optimizely, an A/B testing software platform which he grew to over $120M ARR prior to exit.

[2:18] - How going deaf in his 20s led Dan to create Rewind

[9:55] - The creation of Optimizely and Dan’s experience in YCombinator

[15:06] - Dan’s experience taking his startups from 0 to 1

[20:42] - How Dan knew it was time to move on from Optimizely and create Rewind

[23:41] - Rewind’s background in human longevity and mind emulation

[33:54] - Introducing Rewind as the search engine for one’s life

[38:45] - Early feedback and insights from Rewind’s initial launch

[42:58] - How Rewind leverages Apple’s proprietary silicon chips for its backend processes

[44:50] - Normalizing the idea of recording all aspects of one’s digital life

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Support the show by checking out my sponsors:

Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake.

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#120 - WOJCIECH ZAREMBA Nov 17, 2022

Show notes

Wojciech is a Co-Founder of OpenAI, where he leads both the Codex research and language teams. OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company aiming to develop and ensure that artificial general intelligence is safe and benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is known for developing GPT-3, a natural language model that creates human-like text, and DALL-E, a machine learning model to generate digital images from natural language descriptions. Follow Wojciech on Twitter @woj_zaremba.

[2:18] - Wojciech’s childhood interest in science experiments and explosives

[11:14] - How following his curiosities guided Wojciech to AI

[21:33] - Defining consciousness in the presence of AI

[27:15] - The Alignment Problem - how to ensure AI does what humans want it to

[45:13] - Why Wojciech believes AI augmentation can be powerful, and help to further advance AI itself

[49:52] - The shortcomings of AI in communication and decision-making and how these will influence future development paths

[1:03:11] - AI’s opportunity to expand human empathy

[1:10:40] - OpenAI’s role in making AI a widely-distributed public good

[1:18:10] - How Wojciech views other organizations’ approaches to developing AI for mass consumption

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Support the show by checking out my sponsors:

Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake.

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#119 - ILLIA POLOSUKHIN Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

Illia is a Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol, a fully sharded, proof-of-stake, Layer 1 blockchain. NEAR has raised over $500 million and is widely considered one of the most promising projects in the blockchain space. Prior to NEAR, Illia managed a team of Deep Learning and Natural Language Understanding Researchers at Google Research where he worked on building TensorFlow. Follow Illia on Twitter @ilblackdragon.

[2:18] - How an early interest in computer programming led Illia down a path towards artificial intelligence and blockchains

[16:45] - Existing blockchain issues that led to the creation of the NEAR Protocol

[19:52] - NEAR’s focus on scalability and usability for long-term adoption

[26:00] - Why Illia views sharding as the superior strategy to scale blockchains

[34:47] - NEAR’s approach to encourage adoption of its tech stack

[47:20] - Governance considerations for NEAR’s decentralized ecosystem

[55:10] - The coming convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence

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Support the show by checking out my sponsors:

Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake.

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#118 - JON ERLICHMAN Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

Jon is a Senior Television Anchor at Bloomberg News and Co-host of Bloomberg Markets and The Open. He is also a Correspondent & Anchor at CTV National News, The #1 News Organization in Canada. Jon has interviewed many great investors and entrepreneurs as well as others like Kobe Bryant, Ice Cube, and Robert De Niro in his 25 years covering technology, business, and investing. He is also prolific on social media, where he has accumulated a significant audience. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonerlichman.

[2:18] - Jon’s origin story, TV career, and digital media explorations

[11:37] - The evolution of podcasting and other new media formats

[20:40] - How to tailor content and communication towards specific social media platforms

[31:36] - The interplay of traditional media and new media over time

[38:23] - Why Jon likes covering the stories of successful technology company founders

[47:08] - How learning the art of listening can improve the quality of conversation

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Support the show by checking out my sponsors:

Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake.

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