Cyan Banister: The Future is Cool Again / Falling in Love with Technology / A Brush with Star Wars

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kent Lindstrom (00:00):
Hey, folks, it's Kent Lindstrom. I'm a partner at

(00:02):
the venture capital firm, eightbit capital. We invest in
software startups at theearliest stage, and I have this
podcast. And today is CyanBanister, which is something
I've been looking forward to fora long time. She This is an
incredible story. It it ends upbeing so grand and so sweeping
the story of her life that itreally can't even be told in one

(00:23):
podcast, and so it's not her.Her life begins with her being a
kid who's homeless in Arizona.That whole story is incredible
and a lot more uplifting thanyou would think.
I suggest you listen to TimFerriss podcast, where she
covers it beautifully. We don'ttell that story here.
We begin at the end of that,where she finds her first

(00:43):
computer, or maybe her firstcomputer finds her, and then she
learns to program it and dothings with it, and ends up at
Silicon Valley. And the storygoes on and on. She ends up
being one of the great investorsof our time, and she's really
only just getting started. I saythat everyone says that great
investors, one of the firstinvestors in Uber, one of the

(01:05):
very first investors in SpaceX,while the rockets were still
blowing up, and that's just asmall part of what she's done.
This is an incredible journey.You're gonna love it. Oh,
there's a whole thing you like.Star Wars, great story about her
experience with Star Wars andLucas Films that I don't think
you've heard anywhere else, andI think will very much entertain
you. Much entertain you. So I'mreally pleased to tell you that

(01:27):
we've got Cyan Banister thistime. Think you're gonna like
it. Welcome back. All right.
Welcome back. This is thesomething about your podcast. I
am Kent Lindstrom. I am yourhost. My guest today is Cyan
Banister. How are you doing? I'mdoing great. Thank you so much
for doing this. Cyan i i triedto put together this

(01:49):
introduction, and there's somany pieces to what you've done,
so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give ita try, but I might not get all
of it. She's a partner investorat long journey ventures was a
partner at Founders Fund haswritten eloquently in the ugly
duckling about starting offhomeless, although, as you
beautifully laid out in TimFerriss podcast, that's not as

(02:11):
sad a story as you might think.It's sort of a story of
resilience,
and has invested it kind ofreminds me of Elad Gill, who I
also had on who you can't quitefigure out how he or how you
are, in so many companies, butthey've included investments in
Uber space, x, Niantic, HQtrivia, which is interesting,

(02:32):
and roll
and so trying to think of whereto start this you,

Cyan Banister (02:51):
So many people I talk to have a love affair with
some first computer, someCommodores, something they
found. How do you come to acomputer in that world? Well,
I'm excited to tell you thisstory. Well, the first computer
that I ever got to play with waswhen I was a kid. We'll start
there, and I was in a teacher'sclass named Miss Haney, and she

(03:14):
had basically a computer in alittle room off of the main
room, and she would let me gosit in there, and we would learn
logo. Programming language. Andthen at some point, the school
yanked all of the computers fromall of the classrooms, including
the computer lab, and then theschool was computerless, and I
didn't encounter another oneagain until high school. But I'm

(03:36):
very thankful that I got thatseed planted, because I don't
think I would have noticed whenI saw a computer the first time
in the wild, that was a portablecomputer. So I was at a coffee
shop. I saw a guy that I had metwhen I was homeless as a silk
screener. You know, he was oneof my first customers, and I saw

(04:00):
him walking down the street, andhe had a shirt on that I had
made, and he became my friend,and I hadn't hung out with him,
but I saw him again a few monthslater at a coffee shop, and he
was sitting in the dark, and theglowing of the laptop screen
illuminated his face, and Iremember running over there, and
I didn't even care who it was,and I just walked up to him, and
I said, what is that? Where didyou get it? How did you get it?

(04:24):
It was a work laptop, and hetold me how expensive they were,
and I thought they werecompletely out of reach for me,
that I would never have one. Andso fast forward to where he
helps me get online for thefirst time. I heard a modem
sound for the first time throughhim, he introduces me to Unix. I
end up falling into a group ofhacker kids at 2600 meetups in

(04:47):
Phoenix, Arizona, and,
well, this is a fun but terriblestory, but one of the kids in
that hacker group, I kind ofbecame his big sister and.
And he was my little brother. Itwas not official part of a
program or anything like that,but just kind of fell into that.
And he and his friends actuallystole a computer and gave it to

(05:09):
me. That was my first computer.I didn't ask for this. They
proactively did it.
I had to reprimand them for it,and I was too terrified to give
it back, because I thought forsure these kids would go to
jail, but we sat up all nightand installed Unix on it, and
that was my first laptop for awhile. But that thing was cursed

(05:31):
from the day it was stolen till
it was just bad. But eventually,another hacker in the group gave
me a desktop computer once I hada home. And so my very first
computer was a pizza box shapedold Mac computer, a server. But
that first laptop that I had waswas legally, you know, obtained,

(05:52):
unfortunately. And what, youknow, it just reminded me. The
story, reminded me of BillGates. That's probably not what
you thought. I think the storyof Bill Gates was that he found
computers because he was in somereal is kind of the opposite
story, really, but he was insome really rich school in
Washington, and his mom justhappened to be rich and get,

(06:14):
like a computer. It was like,and they bought, they they they
had time on some mainframe orsomething like that. So, in
fact, when, when Bill Gates wasusing computer first, he was
kind of one of just the firstpeople who had access to it,
like, it wasn't like, a millionkids across America got their
computers at the same time atBill Gates as Bill Gates, he was
just, like, this really earlyadopter, exactly, and a lot of

(06:37):
parents, they spent, I don'tthink people understand that
desktops back then that werevery slow. They had very small
hard drives. Were anywhere from3000 to $6,000
right? And, you know, if youwere a kid, you wanted to tinker
around on a computer, you mostlikely your parents didn't want
you to touch it, right? So,yeah, so I was very fortunate to
have my stolen laptop. But, youknow, I I really wish they

(07:02):
hadn't have stolen it, but itwas, and I've never told the
story either. So this is thefirst they're coming for you
now, and what was the I canbarely remember. The back
reaches my memory, but this iswhen the internet was magical,
like when you so you would loginto something right with your
2600 baud your modem that madethose crazy beeping sounds like,

(07:24):
what was pre, pre 20, pre, 2600It was around that time, though,
and you know that the magicsounds, if people have never
heard them, you should just goto YouTube and type in modem
sounds, because there's a lot ofpeople have actually never heard
them. You'd hear this, or, youknow, sound, and eventually you
would connect. And then thisfeeling of being connected to

(07:45):
the whole world through a devicewas the most magical thing I had
ever experienced. The fact thatI had a small experience living
where I was, it suddenly becamevery grand and very vast. And
then I was able to find peopleto have intellectual
conversations with that Icouldn't have where I was. So it
really, really expanded myworld. I joined IRC pretty early

(08:10):
on, and that was so incrediblefor my career, because I would
just jump on these channels andjust start talking to people
about Cisco routers or, youknow, network engineering, or
whatever else I was curiousabout, and people were very
accommodating, very kind. Andthe other thing is that we were
just all figuring out theinternet together, right? Like

(08:31):
there wasn't a search engine.There wasn't, you know, back
then, you had to share links andtry to promote each other's
links. There was, it was nearimpossible to find content on
the internet, yeah. And thenevery day, something new and
innovative would come out, andsomething new and exciting. I
remember when Google launched,for example, and that changed
everything. At that time, therewas AltaVista and a few other

(08:53):
search engines, but Googlereally changed the game, yeah, I
remember the modem too. I taughtmyself once what it was saying,
right? Like, it was like, I'm acomputer, I'm a computer. We're
both computers. Yeah, all thosesounds were something, of them
talking to each other, and thenthey're like, Okay, let's talk
in this language, or whateverthe three or four things were.
And I kind of recall too, theinternet that early stage, being

(09:18):
aware of the physicality of it,like you would, you know, from
San Diego, and you'd log intoMinnesota, or something like
that. And it was just, you know,now, who cares? Your data is all
over the place. But at the time,I was like, I can't believe I'm
logging into a library computerin Minnesota. It was just sort
of, you just, you just couldn'timagine it. And, no, you

(09:40):
couldn't it was, I, I wishpeople, I mean, I don't know
what the the equivalent, I guessthe equivalent today is llms and
the magic of AI has that kind ofwonder, right? That early days
of the internet had, you know,but keep in mind, like, for
those listening like most of uswant.
To the library, or, you know,existed off of the very little

(10:05):
literature that we were able toencounter until the Internet
came around. Yeah, and so, likebroadening that horizon of
information was just profound.And what do you think the
differences for areas, justlike, you know, my time, it was
better, but people who kind ofwent from, you know, a green
screen and learning prompts tosort of the magic of the first
time they saw, like a Mosaicbrowser, to people who just

(10:28):
start out with 100

you know, completely connected iPad works
perfectly, never built acomputer. Do you think there's
something difference betweenthose, different between those
generations? Oh,

for sure. And what's really interesting is
Young kids these days Gen alpha,there's a trend where some of
them are installing somethingcalled Arch Linux. And what they
do is they and if you ask themwhy, they say, Well, I want to
go from first principles, and Iwant to understand, you know,
when I put an operating systemon my computer, what are every
single process that's running?What are they doing? I want to

(11:04):
understand it so kids arethinking from first principles
and trying to recreate what youand I lived through. And those
kids are really interesting tome. They're joining modding
communities for video games, andthey're thinking about how their
computer works. So that's notlost completely. There's still
these hacker kids who reallywant to understand, like, when I

(11:25):
press the H key on my keyboard,how does it end up on my screen?
And these are the types ofquestions you and I used to
have. They still exist, thankgoodness. But I'd say majority
of people just get online andthey don't even question it.
They don't even understand howthe internet works, and that
knowledge is slowly gettinglost. And

even before me, the guys were, you know, people
were building their computerslike they were putting boards
and things together and goingto, like, home brew clubs. And
there was a culture too, that Ikind of recall that I was trying
to explain to something,somebody recently, of that early
internet, like there was sort ofethos. ETHOS is So, for example,
like, you should, you wouldn'tthe idea of Amazon, like,

(12:06):
selling things wasn't cool,right? Like, or making money
wasn't cool. It was not cool.And when URLs came along, like,
you wouldn't just grab a URL,like, it wasn't cool to, like,
go get business.com, andmorganstanley.com, or whatever
you just took, kind of took whatyou needed. It was this like
when you see what happened tothe internet later, it was not

(12:28):
what the ethos was at the timeat all. No,

I think that we set out as sort of the, I like
to call us the pipe builders ofthe internet, who laid the
groundwork for it with thisdream that it would be a
distributed, decentralizedinternet and that no one would
control it, and the idea thatthere would be these monopolies,
that there would be a Facebookor a walled garden, or, you

(12:54):
know, anything like that, was ahuge violation of what the early
architects of the internetbelieved it would become and
wanted it to become. And I thinkwe're reverting back to the
dream with crypto and with someof the things that are appearing
now, but I would say that a lotof it started to deteriorate
when AOL showed up. So AOL wasthe first closed walled garden

(13:21):
that you had to pay to be a partof that ecosystem, and they
destroyed systematically everysingle took down every small Ma
and Pa ISP, one after anotherafter another, because they
would basically offer theirinternet below market rate. So
when we had to charge $20 amonth for dial up at the ISP I

(13:42):
worked at AOL would come andsay, Ah, well, we'll give it to
you for 999, eventually it was499 and then 399 and then
eventually free andadvertisement driven. And that's
not what the creators of theinternet envisioned, like they
did not see that coming. Yeah.But that was a natural
evolution. And, you know, assoon as all of the business

(14:03):
minds got a hold of it, and theysaid, Wow, you know, we can turn
this into something, somethingelse.

Oh, man, when I was in high school, there was a
band in San Diego called army oflove, and they stamped their
little logo all over town, andtheir logo was AOL. And I always
thought you guys should havejust bought that Euro, right?
Everything would have beendifferent if army of love had
bought their bought their URL.Did you realize at the time that
this wasn't super normal, or youjust fell into a group around

(14:32):
the world where you gatheredtogether enough people that were
like you, I guess at that atthat point?

Yeah. I mean, at first, it was my little group of
hacker friends at my 2600meetups. And then, I don't know
if you're familiar with theconference, DEF CON, but I
started going to DEF CON at DEFCON four. And I think they're on
DEF CON 30 something, or maybe40 something. I have no idea.
This is a security conference,right? Yeah, security conference
and the same hacker friends thatI hung out with I worked at a

(14:59):
call. Center, and they hit me upand said, Do you want to go to
Vegas? And I just gotten abonus. And I was like, Yeah,
I've got $700 burning a hole inmy pocket. Let's go. At the
time, I didn't have a bankaccount. I just carried around
cash or put it in my sockdrawer. That's a long story in
itself, but I got put on checksystems and couldn't, couldn't

(15:21):
bank. I was unbanked for quitesome time, but we went to Vegas,
and I think we were 18 yearsold, 18 or 19, Chris and I, and
he talked me into going to thisthing, and I actually was
terrified, because I was in acasino, and I thought I was
breaking the law. So the wholetime during this conference, I
would hide under a table, then atablecloth, and I would peek at

(15:42):
the speakers. And that at thattime, DEF CON was a two room
conference. There was a room forthe speakers, and then a room
for the like whoever wanted toput on a demonstration, and then
there was a, what's called acapture the flag contest. That
year, it was a company calledSidewinder, and they were giving
out a $25,000 check for anyperson who could hack into their
system, and someone won, and Ijust thought that was

(16:05):
remarkable. The thing that atthat time I my knowledge of the
internet and Unix and all ofthat and security was very
minimal, but that's what's gotme hooked, was seeing those
people running around and howpassionate they were and how
excited they were to be part ofthis industry. I went to every
DEF CON after that, for the mostpart, and a lot of my circle of

(16:28):
friends were established at DEFCON or around DEF CON, so it's
kind of like my Burning Manwhenever I show up. Now, you
know, there's still some some ofus left, yeah, but we would get
together and stay up all nightand work on crypto challenges,
work on ciphers, work on, youknow, listening to talks,
talking about the world, whereit was going. It was very

(16:52):
optimistic, actually. And thesepeople were on the fringe of it,
and that was the thing that Iloved about it, is they were on
the absolute outside edges ofthe whole internet movement.

It's when the future was cool. Are you? Did
you? How did how do you thencome across? Man, I can kind of
see the outlines of it now. Buthow do you come across and
intersect with Silicon Valley?Or when do you just get a get a
job? Yeah.

What was interesting was I was working at
this thing called Western StatesFire Protection company, which
is they do fire prevention andthey do sprinklers for buildings
and things like that. And I waswhat was called an expediter. I
basically the four men out onthe jobs would call me and tell
me they were missing a part, andI would go out to the shop and

(17:42):
find the part, and then I wouldget into a truck and then drive
it to the job location and andone of the things I became
fascinated with there is thateverything was manual, and there
was no true, ground truth,understanding of what was in the
shop. And so I talked the CEOinto letting me inventory
everything and start a wholesystem where I created a

(18:02):
database around what was in theshop. And I get, I wouldn't say
bored, because I'm a verycurious person, but if I'm
sitting there doing nothing, Ican't do it. I have to learn
something at all times. And sothat was me trying to learn
something new. But also theywere ferrying around, what do

(18:23):
you call it, blueprints, byhand. They were printing them on
these big roles. And then I waslike, why don't you put these on
zip drives? Because those were athing at the time, right? And,
and there's other or FTP orsomething like this is just
ridiculous that we're carryingon these scrolls all over town.
At that time, my friend said,you know, you should get a job

(18:43):
in the tech industry. You shouldnot be doing what you're doing.
And I was like, I don't know howto get a job in the tech
industry. Don't you have to havea high school diploma or degree
or something? And they're like,no, no. This is the one industry
where you don't need any ofthat. And I was like, Okay, tell
me more. And they said, Well,why don't you come over and
we'll role play what it means tobe a tech support person for
dial up. And my friends roleplayed with me. They were the

(19:06):
customer. I was the supportperson, and we went through
several calls where I wouldtroubleshoot whatever problem
they were having, and then I gotan interview at an ISP and they
hired me to do dial up techsupport. So that's how I got
into the industry. Now how Iadvanced in the industry was my
boss, hit Lee, who's an amazingmentor. Unfortunately, he's no

(19:28):
longer with us, but he saw me, Iguess wasting my time in his
opinion. Speaking of domains, Iactually registered a ton of
them because they were free. Andso I would sit there and just
all day long, register domains,and then I can start sending out
bills. There were $100 a domain,and I started getting bags,

(19:50):
trash bags, of bills showing up,and I couldn't pay them. So I
had to, like, figure out whichdomains to keep. And I ended up
keeping lucasfilms.com, world.Dot com, Master, yoda.com,
Millennium Falcon, and I thinkDarth Vader were the ones that I
kept. And, yeah, so

Lucasfilms get in there without, ah, yeah.

So that was crazy. There's, that's a fun
story. So, and then I'll get tohow I got to Silicon Valley
after that, but so my friendLucas and I, I told him I found
Lucasfilms, and he was like, Ohmy gosh, that's insane. And he
and I were making these littlethis is when flash 1.0 appeared,
and we started learning flash,and we fancied ourselves web

(20:36):
developers, and we were going todo flash sites for people in our
spare time. And so we thoughtwe'd host it on lucasfilms.com
and at the time, Lucasfilm hadlucasfilm.com and I was like,
What a weird thing, that theywouldn't realize that they have
multiple films, and theywouldn't register this domain,
but it's not the name of theircompany, so it didn't occur to

(20:58):
them, right? And the mistakethat I made, I ran this. I
actually had that domain for ayear before they even noticed it
was I set up a catch all whereany email that came into
whatever address just went intoone inbox. And so I saw
everything like if it came intohr@lucasfilms.com or if it came
into what I discovered was theiremployees would typo their own

(21:18):
domain. And I was getting inneroffice chatter. And I was
getting information at the timeabout Phantom Menace, and I had
a sneak preview of Darth Mauland all of the various darths
and what toys they were workingon with Hasbro. And, I mean, it
was insane. And the mistake thatI made was, there was this guy
applying for a job, and he justwas hitting every email address

(21:41):
trying to, like, get through.And I thought I was doing a kind
favor, and I wrote back to him,and I said, this is not
Lucasfilm. You need to emailjobs@lucasfilm.com right? This
isn't going anywhere, and you'rewasting your effort. Well, he
reported that to their legaldepartment, and then their legal
department started coming afterme, and I didn't figure this

(22:04):
out. I'll tell you another thingI I was a young person, and I
was not a fully developed personwith a sense of morality that I
have now. So I just will giveyou that disclaimer. But there
was an email that had a one 800number to call into that was a
conference call, or maybe itwasn't even 101 801 800 number,

(22:24):
but some kind of number. Butanyway, I called into it, and it
was the lawyers talking aboutall the various domains they
wanted to get back from people.And I sat and listened in on
this call, wow. And they wentthrough each one of us, and they
got to me and to listen to themtalk about me. They're like cyan
Callahan, which is my name atthe time, she she won't be a
problem, you know, we could,she'll roll. She'll just, you

(22:48):
know, the way they talked aboutme, it was so funny,
disrespectful, yeah, so theysent out a private detective.
Eventually, this went on foryears, to follow me around. They
went to various differentbusinesses to ask about me. And
I think they got a littlespooked, because my best
friend's name is Lucas and wemade films, right? And when they
called me, eventually they askedme. They were like, you know,

(23:09):
you can't get away with this. Wehave an implied trademark. It
turned out Lucasfilm was not, atthe time, trademarked. It was
implied, wow. So it's like, CocaCola, like they would win. I
didn't stand a chance. I got anattorney who was just out of
university, freshly minted torepresent me, and he managed to

(23:29):
negotiate $500 film crew jacketthat was supposed to fit me, but
it was like a three XL that theysent me. I wanted a life size.
Boba Fett, yep, and they did notsend that. And then a tour of
Skywalker Ranch, wow. Andinstead, I got $500 a film crew
jacket and the ability get this.This is the best part. They told

(23:53):
me I could register. Theywouldn't register it for me. I
could register, and I could,lawfully, with permission,
operate a fan site at these twodomains that they picked for me,
which is feeling the power.com,and not a Jedi yet.com. Wow,

that's be the craziest negotiation I've heard.

Yeah. I mean, it was, it was nuts, um, Whirlpool
I had, and it was just takenfrom me. They didn't even
bother. They just took it. Theywrote to I can and was like, GE.
Was like, we own the Whirlpoolbrand, but Whirlpool is a thing
that occurs in nature, right?They shouldn't have been able to
take it, but they did. Yeah, soI lost that one. But anyway, my

(24:33):
boss came over to me, and hethrew a book on my lap, and he
said, you know, you might makesomething of yourself if you
don't sit around and registerdomains all day, right? And I
looked at him, and I'm like,What are you doing spying on me?
How do you know what I'm doing?And he's like, Well, if you read
this book, it'll tell you. And Iwas like, hmm. And at the time,

(24:53):
I really didn't like authority,and, you know, older people, and
so I just threw the book in thecorner, and I was. Like, I'm not
reading this garbage, you know?So I don't know. It's about
three months later, book iscollecting dust, and I had some
time to kill, and I was like,Oh, what the heck, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna read it. So I read it.I think it's like, on page eight

(25:13):
or nine, it's called TheEssential Guide to System
Administration. It's an O'Reillybook. Around page eight or nine,
there's a whole thing aboutwhat's called Shell escapes. So
a shell escape is when you arerunning a command as root that
does something that root woulddo, which is a super user on

(25:34):
Unix, as someone who is not asuper user. So it gives you very
temporary abilities to dosomething as an administrator on
a computer, and then it ends.But while that command is
running, if you escape out of itinto a shell and you type, who
am I, you are suddenly root withall the permissions of root,

(25:57):
wow. And so I was like, Huh. Andso I started thinking about all
of the programs that our leadsys admin and our C our CTO had
set up for us as dial up techsupport people, and one of them
was we didn't have a webinterface, because this is early
in the internet for people tochange their passwords for their
accounts. So if they lost theirpassword, they had to call so I
was like, we reset people'spasswords with a command line

(26:20):
command that has to be runningas root, so I'll try it on that
one. So I did it. Sure enough,I'm root, and I'm like, well,
the only next thing I should dois change my boss's password,
because that seems like thecoolest thing to do. So I read
about how to change passwords,and so I change his password,
and I walk into him with his newpassword written on a piece of

(26:41):
paper. And I said, try to log inas root onto the server. And he
tried, and it didn't work. Andhe goes, What's going on? And I
was like, I locked you out. I'vegot your new password right
here. And I put it in front ofhim, and he's like, that's not
possible. That's just notpossible. And then, like, that
book he gave me is amazing. AndI was just smiling, and he's

(27:01):
like, what? And I said, Yeah.Page eight, shell escapes. And
he goes, oh man. And he startedthinking. He goes, let me guess
the Change Password script. AndI was like, yes. And he's like,
okay. He's like, go get a chair,pull it up next to me. You're
now a sys admin, a junior SISadmin, and I'm going to take you
on as my padawan, which he did.And from there, I learned how to

(27:22):
provision T ones, track T ones.I set up all of the dial up
modems. Worked on DSL. I did webhosting, learned about DNS
network engineering, all fromhim. And during this time, a
whole bunch of really coolthings were happening in Silicon
Valley. And so I used tosubscribe to this magazine

(27:44):
called ISP con, or somethinglike that. And Mark Andreessen
was on the cover one year. And Ithink at the time, he started
something called, maybe this ispretty loud cloud, post
Netscape. But anyway, peoplewere talking about him as this
pioneer, interesting person, andI was reading about him, and I
was like, someday I'm gonna meetMarc Andreessen. And I was very

(28:06):
young. Then I was like, I'mgonna meet that guy. And then
there was a another thing thatcame out about a company. It was
an open source project thatbecame a company called Send
mail, and I used to write themfam letters, and they would send
me swag. But eventually I wasjust like, Google came out, and
that's what sealed the deal.When Google launched, I realized

(28:27):
I'm going to go nowhere in thisfield if I'm stuck in Arizona, I
got to move right. So I told Leethe news that I had decided to
leave, and I gave him my twoweeks, and I threw everything in
my car. I didn't have a plan. Ididn't have a job, and I just
drove West and arrived in SanFrancisco and then landed my
first startup job almost rightaway. Actually, the

(28:51):
employability then was insane,until 99 when the.com crash
happened. Like, if you couldspell Unix, you could have a job
right then it was kind ofinsane, and people were hiring
like crazy. Is

there a point from being homeless where you
have a job that's paying you andyou realize you're not going to
be homeless again? Is that amoment, or is that not a thing?
Yeah.

I mean, once I realized that I could the
biggest hurdle that you have tocross first is the lack of a
high school diploma. You knowthat was, being homeless is one
thing, but not being having anaccreditation of this, you know,
you can't. There are some fastfood restaurants that will not
hire you if you do not have ahigh school diploma. And I

(29:37):
wanted to see as an experimenthow far I could get without a
GED, without anything, and so Iwould only work places that
would not care about those sortsof things. And luckily, the tech
industry didn't care. You know,the ISP didn't care. No one
cared. And so I found my fit, soto speak. But sure, once I was
at the ISP and I realized. Thatthe knowledge that you could

(30:01):
obtain to be in this world wasvast and endless, and still is
like you can never learneverything there is to learn in
our industry, you just can'tthat. I knew I would never be
homeless again. So as long as Ikept learning and as long as I
refreshed my skills, I wouldalways be employed. My husband
laughs at me, because every timeI learn a new skill, I'm like,

(30:23):
I'm going to add that to myresume. You know, just in case,
someday I'm not a VC anymore.

So do you do you always just have that sense of
it? I mean, obviously you'vebeen incredibly successful as an
investor, and there's probablyanother point in your life when
you realized you didn't have towork. Like, is that a point too,
where you I feel like, I've hada lot of people on this podcast
who are, who are in that state,is that a moment too, where
you're like, wow, I just made somuch money on that thing. I

(30:53):
really don't have to, yeah, turntheir computer off and on, or
whatever you do. It's so

hard because I'm so driven to work, and I love
working, and I love learningthat I feel the atrophy of
sitting still and not becauseour industry, like I said, if
you were to tune it out for ayear or two and come back, the
rate of change is so vast, youwould be left behind in a

(31:20):
heartbeat, and so I am hesitantto take a break longer than a
month or two, and I have not. SoI've not had any major gaps in
unemployment pretty much mywhole life for that reason, and
it the thought terrifies me.Actually, I don't know that I'll
ever quit working. I know I can,but I feel that I am a steward

(31:45):
of capital. I feel that I have ahigher purpose and calling in
this life, and it gets me upevery day and gets me excited
about what I do. And so I don'tsee that in the cards for me
anytime soon. When

did you meet Mark Andreessen? I assume it
happened at some point. It did

happen. And you know what's weird? It happened
in the last couple years,really? Yeah, so Wow, I have
this rule that if there'ssomeone I really want to meet, I
don't usually reach out and askfor a meeting unless I have
something very valuable to addto their lives. And I wanted to
be Mark Andreessen peer when wemet, and that was my goal. It's

(32:22):
quite a goal. And so he tried tothink about, oh, it was when I
was raising money for my fundthat I co founded with Lee. Long
journey. I reached out to himbecause I wanted to talk to him
about it. And when I came in, wehad lunch, and the very first
thing he said was, why haven'twe met before? Seems like we

(32:43):
should have met. And he's like,why did it take so long? And I'm
like, I don't know. But what hedidn't know? And I still, I
think he still doesn't know.Maybe he'll find out from this
podcast, but he was a hero ofmine, and he was one of the
number one reasons I came toSilicon Valley, and what even
drew me to this world in thefirst place was seeing him on

(33:03):
the cover of these magazines,and seeing the interviews with
him and how he was such apioneer in the way that he
thought was so vastly differentthan everybody else. And so to
sit in that room with him, andfor him to say that, and to see
me as a peer was prettyprofound. That's

amazing. My partner, Jonathan Abrams came to
Silicon Valley from Canada,immigrated because Mark
Andreessen. I love Jonathan.Meet him and work at Netscape.
And he did, like, just, yeah,over and so at some point you
become, you go from, you know,typing and, you know, creating
code to investing and how, how'dthat happen?

Yeah, so I I basically went from startup job
to startup job to startup job,and then the.com boom and bust
happened. And at that time, alot of my friends just decided
to give up and pack up andleave. They didn't want to take
a job at Starbucks, or to take ajob that they felt was beneath

(34:04):
their experience level, and sothey would go any place else in
the world where they could get ajob which wasn't Silicon Valley.
And instead of doing that, I Ibasically decided I would take
any job that would come my way.And I ended up working at a
nonprofit called the women'seconomic agenda project, and I
was their CTO for a while. Andwhat they did was they worked

(34:25):
with Cisco to re educate womenin a Welfare to Work program who
either had gone to prison or,you know, they had a brush with
the law, or they were victims ofsome sort of, some sort of
crime, and I had about 30 ofthese students that enrolled in
the program I was in, and I wassupposed to teach them, by the

(34:48):
end of it, how to route packetson a Cisco router. When I
stepped into that classroom,there was no one who knew how to
type. That's where I had tostart from. They didn't know how
to type on a keyboard, right? SoI was like, wow. And Cisco
didn't prepare me for that. Theywere, you know, they expected
everyone to be able to walk intothat classroom with at least

(35:09):
some knowledge of how a computerworked. So I had to start with
Mavis Beacon. Teach these womenhow to type. I had to teach them
binary math. Many of them hadnever had math skills taught to
them, right? To get to the pointwhere I could even teach them
about the foundations of how theinternet works. So that took

(35:30):
probably three or four months byitself, and this allowed me to
weather the storm of thedownturn and the bust is I just
buried my head in this problemof, how do I teach these women,
or how do I teach this period topeople? And I became obsessed
with obtaining knowledge onteaching, and so I set up a

(35:52):
computer lab for kids, for afterschool, working with hearing
impaired kids. And they wouldstop by and they would use my
lab. And this was in downtownOakland. At some point, I
started to see some signs oflife, that jobs were coming
back, and I applied for a job atthis email service provider,
which basically is they'respammers, and they wanted to

(36:15):
hire me as their standards,standards and compliance
managers, which basically I hadto write scripts to monitor bad
behavior. And this was probablymy first tip toe into the
InfoSec world that I was alreadyinvolved in at DEF CON, but this
is my first InfoSec job, so Iworked there, and as people were
losing their jobs, I started amailing list called techlist.org

(36:35):
and the idea was that, and I dostill believe this is true, that
the best jobs never get postedto websites. They're obtained
through referrals. And so thiswas a referral network that I
created where, if you had a jobwhere you could get a bonus or a
referral, and you were able tohand walk someone in, we could

(36:57):
do job placements that way.Well, one day, a job for a
company called Ironport ended upon my own message board, and I
really liked the sound of it. Iwas like, hmm, I want to
interview there. And so Iapplied for a job there. I
applied for an entry level jobbecause I didn't see any other
jobs that fit me, but because Iwas hand walked in by a guy

(37:19):
named Shane who was in their QAdepartment, they decided to put
me in a whole other positionthat wasn't even again posted on
the on the website, because itwas a referral. And I ended up
running something there calledbonded sender, and then running
that, we acquired spam cop, andI ran spam cop, and then I ended
up running support globally forall of our our customers, and at

(37:43):
some point I'm managing throughtime, hundreds of employees. I I
decided to get equity instead ofcash for every bonus, because
this was this company that Iworked at by far, and still to
this day, was the best companyI'd ever encountered. And the
leadership was just top notch.And I was just like, if there's
going to be a company that goessomewhere, it's this one, yeah,

(38:06):
so when, probably I worked theretwo, three years before Scott
and I started dating, whichtoday is scandalous, you know,
to marry someone you work with,back then, it was kind of
normal. And, you know, I justthought that my husband was and
he's not an engineer. He's neverwritten code. A lot of people

(38:27):
think he's a coder or anengineer, but he's not. He's a
product guy. But I just kind ofthought of him as a product guy,
and I didn't know that he was aninvestor. And so when we had we
sold Ironport to Cisco. I got myfirst financial windfall of my
life, and I remember sittingaround with him saying, Well,
what do I do with this like, doI put it into real estate? Do I

(38:50):
put it into the public stockmarket? Like, and he's like, no,
no. As a matter of fact, you'reyoung and you are employable,
and we have a little bit of asafety net, so you should take
incredibly high risk swings atsomething that could have
outsized returns and make moremoney with that money than you

(39:11):
would ever make sleeping under adesk at a startup, right? And I
was like, Well, how do you dothat? And he's like, it's called
angel investing, so let me teachyou about it, right? So what he
noticed this is, Scott,actually, I wish more husbands
would get their wives or theirfamilies involved in their
businesses, becausepredominantly, this is a male
dominated field. But, and henoticed that I was an early

(39:35):
adopter, and I was showing up athome saying, like, check out
this site called Yelp. I'm nowand part of the Yelp Elite
Squad, and he's like, what? Andthen, you know, interestingly,
he was involved with Yelp, and Ihad no idea like he had, he
actually helped name Yelp, andhe started to take notice of
this. My My wife is constantlycoming home with some new

(39:58):
investable thing. And. And so hesaid, Well, why don't you become
the scout for us, and you becomethe front of house. I hate
meeting people. I hate going toconferences. I hate all of this.
And he's like, you go out andyou do this stuff, meet all the
people, do all the things, andthen come back and tell me what
you find, and we'll start makingdecisions together. So we

(40:18):
started that way, and my firstcheck that I wrote was into
space x. And how that happenedwas all because, again, my
husband went to school atUniversity of Illinois, and he
went to school with Luke Nosekand Max Levchin. Interestingly,
Mark Andreessen also went tothat school, but he's their

(40:40):
senior. Michael Bucha, yeah,yeah. A bunch of people went
there. And when they dropped outof school, they came out west
and they, you know, co createdPayPal altogether. And my
husband, you know, had a coupleof success stories where he had
built and sold companies by thetime he was in, you know, 20
years old, and he was one of thefirst angel investors. He

(41:03):
started investing in his early20s, and his one of his first
checks was into PayPal. So LukeNosek and him go way back to
college, Luke, I mean, obviouslythere's the famous story of Elon
getting involved with PayPal,and so they all had worked with
Elon in some capacity, but Lukehad reconnected with Elon and

(41:24):
was helping him raise money forSpaceX. So at the time when I
invested, the rockets were stillblowing up on the launch pad,
and they needed a bridge roundto survive, and so they went
out. Basically, Luke came to ourhouse, and he got on his knees
and he was like, I am hitting upevery friend for every dollar

(41:47):
that they have. Like, what doyou have? Look in your couches.
Look wherever you are. Just findit. Sell whatever you need to
sell. Do you have property thatyou can sell? Like, we need it?
And Scott looks at me, and hegoes, Well, there's an
opportunity. And I was like,what? And he goes, you could put
everything into that. And I, Iwas like, hmm. So I went and

(42:11):
talked to a couple of NASAfriends. I've talked to Barney
Pell, who was a dear friend ofours, anyone that I knew that
had any connectivity to space.And most people at the time were
like, no private individualshould have the right to do what
Elon was trying to do. NASA hasit covered. We don't need
reusable rockets. We're nevergoing to launch this many

(42:31):
satellites like the objectionswere long, but the conviction
that Luke had was what got melike seeing a person get on
their knees and basically say,I'm going to dedicate my life.
And he has, he has neverwavered, like Luke continues to
this day. He's on the board ofSpaceX, and continues to raise

(42:53):
money for that company, and hehas dedicated his life to
helping Elon. And it was soclear just this love and
conviction that he had for thismission that I just wanted to
invest in, oddly. And Luke,yeah. And so I did. I just
basically took everything I madeat Ironport and rolled it into
SpaceX. And so that was myfirst, my first investment. So

right out the gate, your first investment is
better than basically anyventure capitalist or a career
maker for any venturecapitalist. Now

it is, but at the time, if I told people I'm an
investor in SpaceX, everybody'slike, who cares? Yeah, like, it
didn't buy me anything. Youknow, no one cared. And they
actually thought it was thestupidest investment of all
time, and that I would just, Iwould lose it all. But now it's
like, it's impressive. But backthen, it was not,

you know, that theme where it was a little bit
like you really shouldn't bedoing this, PayPal kind of
started breaking the laws in abunch of places, and Reid
Hoffman kind of ran around allthe attorneys general and
cleaned it up. But you investedin Uber, which had a little bit
of a phase of violating taxilaws,

oh yeah. So they definitely did. They violated a
lot of things. And

Uber is kind of famous for being the deal that
anybody could have gotten into,and everybody kind of passed on
it, and you didn't. And there'stwo concepts that I've heard
like. So two things I've heard.One is a lot of people are like,
look, this is just a black carapp for Silicon Valley, and it's
not going to go anywhere. Theother one was that Travis wasn't
going to that. I think today Iwould still, as a VC, wouldn't

(44:23):
invest in that Travis wasn'tgonna be the CEO, that the
founder was actually working onsomething else and put an ad on,
like, how did you pick this outwhen everyone else was famously
passing on

it? So the first time I heard about Uber was I
had the livery driver that woulddrive me to the airport, and his
name's Roger, and he handed meRyan Graves business card, and
he said, Have you ever he'slike, I'm not an investor, but
if I was, I would invest in thisthing called Uber cab. You
should reach out to this guy,Ryan Graves, and get a pitch.

(44:59):
And he said, Because. Reallythink it's going somewhere. And
I was like, Well, tell me aboutit. And at the time, he was
working for them, but being paidby the hour, and he was the only
driver, and so you would summonhim using a phone number that
you would text, I don't know ifyou remember, but it was not an
app, right? It was a phonenumber. And so I said, Well,

(45:19):
that's interesting, but thisRyan Graves guy is, like, in
Chicago or something, and Ilooked at the business card and
I was like, I don't invest incompanies with their CEOs or in
Chicago, you know, I I onlyinvest in Silicon Valley
companies, because anytime thatI had made an investment outside
of Silicon Valley, I was neverable to help them raise

(45:39):
subsequent funding if theystruggled, because everything
was ecosystem dependent at thetime, that's changed like now I
can invest in a company in NewYork, and I know 20 other
investors who would co investbeside me in location. It just
doesn't matter. But at the time,it mattered, and so I dismissed
it. I was like, I don't know. Sothe next time I got into the
car, he's like, saying, Did youcall Ryan Graves? And I was

(46:01):
like, No. And he's like, Well,we now have seven have seven
drivers. You know, my wife isdriving, my uncle's driving, my
cousin's driving. I'm bringingin people from Brazil. And I was
like, Well, are you guys allstill making, you know, money by
the hour? Because themarketplace wasn't working yet.
And he said, Yes, we're stillUber, still paying us. And I was
like, Okay, well, let me knowwhen they stop paying you, and

(46:21):
when the customers are payingyou, because that's what I want
to know. And he said, sureenough, okay. And several other
rides, he keeps trying to pushRyan Graves. I have a collection
of Ryan Graves business cards. Ishould frame them from Roger.
And I didn't reach out to himagain because of this weird
thesis that I had, but I went toAugust. Capital has this event

(46:43):
called the lobby, and I went tothe lobby, and that's when I met
Travis the first time. And I sawhim at a dinner, and then I saw
him, you know, at various talksthere. But one of the things I
noticed about him was thisinsane gravitas, this insane
intensity every singleconversation, he would
eventually reframe it orinterject into it. It didn't

(47:08):
kind of matter what we weredoing, like if we were at the
buffet line. He seemed to be incharge of the buffet line. He
had this natural leadershipability that people just didn't
seem to mind, but it was alsoaggressive. And so he declared
at one point at a dinner that hehad left red swish and he was
looking for his next thing. Andany good investor worth their
salt is going to notice thatsomebody is interesting is

(47:29):
looking for their next thing. SoI just tucked it away and made a
mental note of it. And I justthought, I like that guy. I'm
going to see what he does next.And what he did next was Jason
calcas invited me to this dinnercalled Open Angel Forum, where
he was sharing deal flow fromhis friends and and his network.
And lo and behold, TravisKalanick gets up and presents

(47:53):
Uber cab. And that's when I knewI was like, He's going to be the
CEO. I know it because hispersonality is such that he
would never, ever, ever letsomeone else be the CEO. Right?
Based on what I saw in Hawaii.And I wrote to my husband. I
have an email that I sharedpublicly at one point where I

(48:15):
said, Uber Cab, we need to getin. And he said, Well, how much
do you want? And I said, Well, Idon't know, 75k and he's like,
Okay, go get all the informationin the docs and set up a
meeting. So at that time, I hadto set up a meeting with Ryan
Graves, who I we eventually metat a coffee shop. And he's
delightful, a wonderful humanbeing. He ends up becoming the
COO and then Garret camp, whowas, who you mentioned, was

(48:36):
running a whole other company.The whole thing was bizarre. If
you were a disciplined investor,of course, you would pass on it,
right? Because it made no sense.You've got a CEO in Chicago, a
co founder, who's runningStumbleUpon, and this other guy,
Travis, and like, coming in outof the blue, it just doesn't, it
didn't make a lot of sense,right? But the moment I saw

(48:57):
Travis, I was like, I know howall these ships are gonna fall,
yeah. Like, and I'd already beenthinking about taxi regulation,
regulators and the the medallionsystem, yeah. And because I'm a
libertarian, I think about thesesystems and how they work or
don't work, and had beenevaluating them for a while as
as a bit of a racket in which itis. And so when it was pitched

(49:21):
as as it was by Travis. Irealized if someone's going to
fight those regulators, it'sgoing to take someone feisty.
It's going to take someone likehim, yeah, and he was just the
right person for the job.Everything just aligned. And
sure enough, I sent it to, youknow, at the time that I
invested, they still had room,and I sent it to probably 20
other investors who all passed,and their reasons were, you

(49:43):
know, no one wants to get in ablack car. No one wants to ride
with a stranger. No one wants astranger in their car. No one
wants people to throw up intheir car, right? You know, the
list was just long, long, long,long, long. And yeah, and I
don't think I successfullyconvinced anyone other. Then we
convinced Matt Kohler frombenchmark to finally take a

(50:05):
look, and so we sent the deal tobenchmark, and then the rest is
history for benchmark.

That's crazy. I want to wrap up, but one
question I was just thinkingabout the past few days on Uber,
What was the rush to get rid ofTravis that happened because,
you know, we'd gone through aphase where we replaced the
CEOs, but then, you know,Andreessen had come along, and
the whole thing was founderfriendly, and he seemed like a
great founder. Why the rush toget rid of him at that at that

(50:33):
time in history, it

was the beginning of the metoo movement. So what
happened was, there was a woman,I think her name is Sarah
Fowler, who is an engineer atthe company who experienced
sexism or something on somesort, on some level, and a story
was written about it, whichlaunched an investigation, not

(50:54):
only into Uber but many techcompanies, about whether or not
there was unfair practices inthe workplace if women were
treated differently, the believeall woman women, sort of
movement launched after that.And the one thing that was great
that helped Uber succeed was hisaggressiveness. The downfall of

(51:16):
Uber and him not being able tocontinue to lead. It was his
aggressiveness. The other thingwas, they acquired, or were in
the process of acquiring, acompany called Auto with Anthony
Lewandowski, who ended up havingto be pardoned by Donald Trump
in his last administration, whohad self driving, autonomous

(51:40):
like uh, trucks, I don't know ifyou remember them, um, and he
was accused of taking code fromGoogle and trying to bring it
over to Uber, right now,interestingly, had that all not
happened the way it happened,Uber would be leading the way
here, not Waymo, right? Um, theywould have the lead in

(52:01):
autonomous vehicles, and I dothink that the company be wildly
more successful if Travis wasleft at the helm. But there was
a contingent of reporters backat the time. It was Sarah Lacy
and all of these people thatwrote for TechCrunch and had
their own independent blogs thatbasically made it their life's

(52:23):
mission to take down Travis. Andit got so fever pitched and so
crazy that at some point, youknow, people were out protesting
the Google busses protestingUber there was a very strong
anti tech sentiment at the time.And I think the most horrible
thing that happened to Traviswas he'd lost a parent in a

(52:44):
boating accident, right? Andthat's when they ousted him from
his role as CEO. They took, youknow, in my opinion, took
advantage of this tragedy tothen make their move and remove
him. Now I wasn't in theboardroom. I don't know what was
said or what was done, but I didthink it was such a tragedy to

(53:06):
lose him and then to lose Emil.Michael, yeah. And when you lose
the heart of your company, then,then at that point, it was just,
let's stabilize it, keep it kindof the same. They stopped being
innovative. They startedacquiring companies. They, you
know, acquired Postmates to fixUber Eats. And in my opinion,
they haven't done anythingreally innovative or new ever

(53:28):
since. And

now it looks like Waymo or Tesla is going to
kind of take over the selfdriving world. Yeah,

I think Tesla, it would be wise if they bought
Uber. I've stated this before. Ithink it's a natural move. You
know, they're worth so muchTesla that this would be just a
drop in the bucket. And then allof the customers that Uber has
and the network that they builtcan automatically just sort of
move into self drivingeventually. And maybe even

(53:57):
something like comma AI, orsomething like what George
Holt's worked on where you cando an aftermarket kit for your
car. Maybe these drivers aren'tdisplaced with their jobs right
away. They can put their cars ina fleet, and then they start
self driving or something likethat. But that's how I kind of
see it playing out.

I know a secret living in San Francisco, which
is it takes about five timesseeing a Waymo to get over it,
right? The idea that no one'sever going to get in a robot car
and all that stuff, five rides.Or everybody took to them. They
love them. They prefer them toanything else. Like, as

soon as you can start dancing in the car, that's
what gets you. You're like,dancing, and you realize, you
realize, like, Oh, I wasshielding or masking myself
because there was a driver,

yeah, and nobody's smoking. Or if it's
late at night and you're awoman, the whole it's, they're
gonna be it's, they're a hit. Ifyou're sitting in Chicago
thinking to yourself, no one'sever gonna get in a robot car,
you're wrong. Everyone's

gonna get in a robot car and wait until they
have robot RVs and you know,robot long distance travel,
where you could just get in yourcar and go to sleep or play
games with your friends. Andit's going to be superior to
flying. Yeah, people are goingto love it. It's incredible.

I want to wrap up with, you know, I just saw
the kind of going back to thebeginning in terms of, what are
you optimum I mean, the SilkRoad guy just got pardoned by, I
was,

I was, I worked on that pardon for a long time.
And what Americans? Yeah. Well,I'm only one of hundreds, maybe
1000s of people who helped him.But, you know, during the last
trump administration, I hiredlobbyists, I hired anyone that I
could to try to get in front ofDonald Trump, and we got it to

(55:36):
Donald Trump, but for whateverreason, he didn't pardon him on
his way out with Biden. It was alost cause. We didn't even
really try it. It there would.They had no incentive, no
political incentive, to do it.But Lynn, his mother, I mean,
she's a fighter. She Sherelocated. If they moved him
from one prison to another, shewould uproot her life and go

(55:56):
live next to that prison, andshe would see him every chance
she got and talked to him everychance she got. Wow. You know,
it just, it's a remarkablestory, and it's just a miracle
that he's free. And I can't waitto see what he does next.

That's great. Well, what you know, what are
you optimistic about now? Howare you compared to, you know,
the first time you heard themodem connecting to the
internet. Where are you now, interms of being optimistic,
facial computing,

I am obsessed with it. I've been obsessed with
it since I was at Founders Fund.It's just the time to strike as
an investor. That's a timingissue. You know, it's very, very
difficult to figure out. Youknow, a lot of people put a ton
of money into VR thinking thatwas going to have its moment,
and its breakout success storieswere beat saber, Gorilla tag,

(56:44):
and that's about it. So, youknow, the metaverse is supposed
to be a thing. It didn't becomea thing. I don't you and I
aren't having a meeting inMetaverse right now for this
podcast, you know, but I justsaw the Orions. I went and saw
them, got my hands on them. Iwas obsessed with the meta Ray
Ban glasses and as an MVP, asjust a pair of glasses that you

(57:08):
walk around and you can ask AIabout the world around you.
It's, it's obviously AI has tobe part of this for it, for the
moment, to happen. It had somuch utility without an overlay
of a fake environment onto thereal environment. So AR is not
even necessary for these glassesto be magical, but the Orions

(57:29):
add the AR component, wheresuddenly there's an overlaid
world onto your world. It'slight, it's not a heavy lift,
but it's a point solutiontowards the end game. And the
end game is that we're going tohave a where a wearable that re
renders your world around you,and everything around you
becomes an interface. And atthat point, the ly world that we

(57:50):
with, Windows and flat worldsthat we work in are going to go
away. UI will be incrediblydifferent. And I do think we're
going to head that direction,and it's going to happen, and
it's going to be the mostmagical thing that anyone has
ever experienced. I'm convincednow that meta is the next Apple,
because Apple came out with theApple vision Pro, everybody was
so excited about it, butbasically it's an iPad you put

(58:12):
on your face. There's nothinginnovative about it. There's
nothing new, and that's why it'sflopped and most people aren't
using it. It doesn't matter howbeautiful it is, you know, it's
going to take a whole new changein user behavior. And I think
metas approach of boiling thefrog, which is first we're going
to give you the Ray Bans. We'regoing to get you used to wearing

(58:33):
a wearable so that you can'tlive without it. It's kind of
like the iPod moment, right?They've just introduced an iPod,
and in the beginning it was justa thing, a device that you would
carry around that had your musicon it, and that's all that the
meta Ray bands are. It's adevice that you carry around
that has your music on it, butpretty soon, you're going to be
able to do all kinds of magicalthings with them that are just

(58:59):
remarkable. And in the formfactor like they're light,
there's not this big old batterythat you're tethered to with a
cord. It looks nothing likeMagic Leap. It looks like a real
consumer product, and this isjust version one. So I think
that the timing to startinvesting in this space is

(59:20):
probably in the next couple ofyears. And then I think that
it's going to end up being kindof like the Atari. When the
Atari came into the home and yousuddenly had video games that
came out of, you know, thelaundromat are suddenly
available to you. The firstecosystem of applications are
going to be very, very minimalbut very powerful. And then over

(59:41):
time, that's going to become areally rich ecosystem of things
that you can't imagine. Whatit's going to be like. It's just
going to be wonderful. So I'mgetting excited about it. I'm
trying to figure out where thefoundational investments are. I
tend to like to avoid trends. Solike, right now, everybody's
investing. You. Yeah, in a lotof the application layer of AI,

(01:00:02):
and I'm doing some of it, butfor the most part, I'm sitting
out this hype cycle because it'slike a Cambrian explosion. As
soon as you see a cool companythat you're excited about, seven
other founders show up, right?With a very similar thing, and
it's very difficult to figureout which one's going to be the
winner, unless you index themall right, yeah. So that's not
where you want to play. That'snot where the alpha is, unless

(01:00:23):
you're incredibly lucky and youjust happen to hit one, but at
this point, it's likespitballing. So I invested in
mostly the foundational layer,which is, you know, compute
power, you know, inference andthings like that. And staying
away from also data centers, butbasically staying away from
what's going to come from it.And then, what is the next layer

(01:00:45):
I'm looking out now, like, whatis the next foundational layer
for for this spatial computing,and what's it going to take? I
think Nvidia is going to enterthe space. They've already
announced that they're going tohave a wearable. You know,
everyone's going to have awearable,

Kent Lindstrom (01:00:59):
right? So future, the future is cool.
Again, the future is cool.

Cyan Banister (01:01:03):
I mean, if you think about it like there's so
many things to be optimisticabout. I mean, the people are so
worried about AI and jobdisplacement, but jobs are not
going to be necessarilydisplaced. They're going to be
reconfigured. They're going tobe different, right? You're
going to be able to have multimillionaires, a new type of
entrepreneur is going to emergethat might not even be

(01:01:24):
investable from a venturestandpoint, for what we do,
right? It's going to be thesemicro entrepreneurs that can
spin up agents and launch acompany for a consumer product
that makes a few milliondollars, and then suddenly they
become angel investors. So Iactually see a wave of angel
investors coming like we'venever seen before. So platforms
like AngelList Republic, youknow, syndications of deals,

(01:01:46):
that sort of stuff, I think isgoing to take off even more than
it already has, which is goingto make early stage venture
harder and harder and harderover time. So I do think that
our jobs are going to get moredifficult, but I'm excited about
it. I like difficulty, andthat's cool, you know, I want
to, I want to keep my battingaverage high, and so I just have
to adapt and change and not begloom and doom about it all.

(01:02:09):
But, you know, venture as weknow it could change, and I
might be architected out of ajob at some point, or it may
morph into something totallydifferent, yeah,

well, as long as the technology keeps evolving.
It doesn't really matter. Imean, that's what's cool. That's
what you started doing. Youdidn't start trying to get rich.
You started trying to meetpeople on the internet and
figure out how to become theroot Yeah,

exactly. I never. Money was a side effect, but it
was never the goal. Yeah, youknow, I wanted to see these
products exist in the world, andI wanted people to use them, and
then I wanted it to reshape howhumanity works. You know, if the
other thing I'd love to talkabout is because I was homeless
in the past, there are a fewthings that really harmed me

(01:02:53):
when I was younger. One wasminimum wage, high school
diploma requirements, soaccreditation, and basically,
anytime you create a bar or aline, there's someone who can't
cross it, right? And when I sawUber, one of the first things I
thought about was, if I had acar that was worth anything,
suddenly the asset that'ssitting around in my garage or

(01:03:15):
in the parking lot or on thestreet becomes a way for me to
make money that I didn't havebefore. And you know, if I have
a bicycle or feet that operate,I can be a post mate and I can
deliver a sandwich, and suddenlyI have meaningful income and
it's flexible. On top of it,these are how I formed my thesis
around a lot of theseinvestments was, how can I

(01:03:35):
enable entrepreneurs to maketechnologies that transform the
human experience and helpalleviate suffering and poverty.
And then it turns out, when youalign your purpose with what you
love to do, and you can picksome of these companies
correctly, that there's outsizedreturns as a result. Yeah,

it's an incredible story. How thanks so
much for doing this. How dopeople find you like if they
want to follow your thinking orwriting or Yeah,

so I am. I'm launching a new website. I think
it comes out today, the MVP,which I'm really excited about.
It's Cyan banister.com and itactually ties into what we're
talking about. The interface ofit looks like an old Mac. And so
the very first version, it justhas a couple icons. I think it's
going to launch today, at two or3pm but it has a couple of icons

(01:04:24):
that look like old Mac icons.And then the next version, we're
launching a command lineterminal, and so you'll be able
to like type things, and you'regonna have easter eggs that
launch games. The phone numberon there, we're creating a phone
tree where it's an endless phonetree, but you can hack into the
voicemail boxes and getinformation and for clues on how
to pitch me. So I'm turningpitching me into a little bit of

(01:04:47):
a game, because I think it'sfun, and I want to see who makes
it through the games. I'mintrigued, and so that's one way
to reach me. The other way is,I'm scientist, c y, a n, t i s,
t on I. Dot com and those aretwo, probably the two primary
ways to reach me at this point,I don't really hang out on any
of the other social networksyet. Cool. All right.

Well, thanks so much. My guest today has been
signed banister. Talk to younext time.

Yeah. Thank you so much. You

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