The asymmetric upside of being positive

a very good job, most startups fail. Yeah. If you look at the numbers, we know a lot more about failing and failed startups Yes. Than successful ones. By, you know, order of magnitude. Yeah. Yeah. That's just how the numbers work.

Right? That's how the numbers work. And so we see failed startups every day. We live it. We breathe it. This is just the this is the job that we have Yes. Is we're experts on failure. Well, and just so you don't think, oh, well, you know, they're gonna be optimistic because they're, like, rolling in the dough.

The ones that work take like twelve years to work. Right? So it's like Yeah. Even for the ones that do well, like, don't make money fast being an early stage sharp investor. So why is a situation where it takes a long time to make money and a lot of startups are dying all around us every day? Why are we optimistic?

I I think it's this. I think if you zoom all the way back all the way out, it's weird to talk to young people and have them be pessimistic about the future. Yes. It's weird. It is weird. And so, part of the reason, you know, we wanna do this video is to give you some reasons to be optimistic yourself. Yes. And, I think it comes down to perspective, Michael.

Yes. I think it's all about perspective where if all you do is read the news every day, you get bombarded with negativity, especially around technology. Yes. There's a lot of the biggest technology stories right now are some version of like, this is bad, these people are bad, like, I don't I'm People are being exploited. Bad, bad, bad, bad. Alright.

And so, it's not hard if you're just consuming the news and not zooming out to be like, yeah, you know, things were better back fifty years ago or a hundred years ago. Don't point to me. I wasn't around. You.

know?

And, I'm I'm again, I'm not sure that's true. I think it's a perspective thing. So, again, like so walk with us here. Let's let's talk about perspective. Yes. Let's talk about the things that have improved since the nineties when we were like teenagers. Yes. Let's go through the list.

We we we thought Let's go through the list. Go ahead. Right. So the nineties were supposed to be boom time America.

And if we think about what's better now than the nineties, I think I would start with, like, availability of information. I remember in the mid nineties getting this CD ROM called Encarta. Yep. And I remember my uncle who's twenty years older than me being like, oh my god. The encyclopedia is in your house versus having to go to the fucking library? This is incredible.

And, you could just search it. Was on one disk. Exactly. It was easy to search. And, like, that now, god knows how much more information than that is like for free that's.

textual information Yes. Is a search away. Yes. And video. Freaking YouTube itself. Crazy. There's a website where anyone can record any video of like Awesome. Any link on any topic for free Yes.

And you can watch it for free forever. That is like mind blowing to me Yes. How incredible this is. Again, if you zoom out, if you think like you're an alien and you you just have no context on this stuff Yes. This is incredible.

Incredible. And none of this existed. Well, and this isn't like, we're not talking about fifty years ago. Right? We're talking about, like, twenty, twenty five years ago. Yep. This didn't exist. Right?

Alright. Next, communications. I don't know about you, but we started with one phone line in the house. Yep. And that's it. That was communications.

And again, people are like, woah. But it was must been so great. There were no phones and, like, it was so much easier to be a teenager and all that. I mean No. Maybe. No. Maybe. No.

Wasn't great. Look,.

you know, you couldn't be, like, on the Internet and on the phone at the same time. I don't know if anyone's ever taken that for granted. Like, so now when people like, you know, I open up the messaging app folder on my phone and there's, like, 17 apps with video, audio, text, I can text people all over the world for free. I can call people anywhere in the world For free. Free. Like,.

that was better. It's like a lot better. It.

used to cost money. We were living in New Jersey. It used to cost money to call New York. Yeah. It's like right next door. You gotta talk fast when you call it. That was long distance.

So, yeah. So communications, little better. Transportation, freaking Uber, ride sharing, travel. Crazy. Maps? Do you remember printing out MapQuest?

Dude, do you remember just having to buy maps? What physical maps to drive around a city? And your dad would have a bunch of maps in the car for all the places you might wanna drive to in the future. So, transportation's gotten a little better. Yep. A little better.

What else has gotten better? Health care. I mean, people are living longer. They're living better lives. Yes. Standard of care, infant mortality Yes. Life expectancy around the world Yes. People making more money, being raised out of the poverty line.

I mean, just look at all the stats. You can look it up, viewer. Actually, like, zoom all the way up out and look at this stuff for yourself. Yes. It's pretty cool. The number of people living in extreme poverty.

is less. The number of kids living longer. Once again, we're not talking about the difference between like the civil war era and today. This was like twenty, thirty years ago. This isn't even our whole lifetime. Yep. We're living half of our lifetime. Alright.

What else? So, got entertainment. Yeah. I mean, think about there's like an infinite supply of things to look at all day.

Infinite. Infinite. Any movie you wanna see, any television show ever created, any book ever created. If you wanna pirate things, like, if we include piracy in here It's literally everything for free. Sum of all human creative content in the history of time is available at your fingertips for free. Yes. And, the only thing limiting it is your willingness to go find it. Yes.

Like, it's it's your appetite is the limiting factor, not It might have watch Yeah. It might have to watch It's post scarcity on this stuff. You're the only limiting is your imagination of what you wanna watch. Exactly. You know? It's all there. Okay.

So, we're we sound like boomers here, but the point the reason to enumerate this stuff is that in the moment when all this stuff was happening, it wasn't immediately obvious that the world was changing. No. It was just kinda normal. Like, oh, this new thing came out. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

And, even at the time, some of this stuff was people were against it or they're like, this doesn't seem so great. No. And, but when you gain perspective of looking back twenty, thirty years later, it's way more obviously earth shatteringly awesome. Yes.

And, so Well, and I think what's cool is that that wasn't a particularly special period of time. I think they were on the cusp of a bunch of new interesting stuff. Right? You know, hilariously, like, I remember when Starlink was like an idea. Yeah. And it was kind of a funny idea. An internet access anywhere going to satellites?

And it was like, theoretically it's possible, but it was I just remember it being like, well, first Elon has to figure out how to make his rockets not explode. But once he does that, he's just gonna launch satellites around the earth throughout the entire I I remember that being like, oh, sure. And then, like, I remember the day Starlink launched and I was like, oh, I guess the rocket's work.

It worked. It Yes. Like You can use it. You can use it. Cruise, perfect example. I remember getting into a cruise car with Kyle driving down 101, and he said to me, uh-oh. There's a shadow in the road. Let's see how we handle this.

And I'm like, I oh, fuck. This is an MVP. Shadows, ave? Yeah. Haven't thought about that. Yeah. Haven't thought about shadows in ever when driving. And I remember when Cruise did their kind of first open launch, and I got into a cruise car with my wife and it just drove us to where we were going.

Yeah. And I remember for the first minute thirty being like,.

I can't believe this is the same. Yeah. I can't believe this is on a continuum that started with me being afraid of shadows and now it's like Well, any of I I actually care about that stuff a lot. If I just think about, you know, growing up about just the number of people that I knew that died in car accidents. Yeah.

And, the number of people that every day get seriously injured or die in car accidents. I think we're gonna look back and be like, that was crazy barbaric. Was like having surgeons that didn't wash their hands Literally. In that era Yes. Is I think how we'll look at some of this transportation Yes. Right? And we're right on the precipice. It's happening now.

It's not like everyone's even excited about self driving. No. It's like it's like, oh, I don't know about this whole self driving car thing. Drunk drivers aren't that bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's only tens of thousands of people who die a year in America. It's like, whatever.

And so, you should I would expect people to be like pretty excited about this. Yeah. But it's seen as sort of this like neutral or divisive issue instead of something that's.

kinda awesome. It's happening. I mean, another one's renewable energy. I I had a friend who was working on a startup and he said something to me that I thought was a lie. He was like, oh yeah. Based on like where you live in America, you can choose to just buy your energy from like a renewable source like hydroelectric or solar. And I was just that doesn't exist. He's like, yeah.

It's it's here. And I'm like, well, it must be, like, 10 x more expensive. He's like, no. Like, right now, it's, I think, like, 10% more expensive. And I was like, what? Like, that it's that's happening. Like, we went from solar being the future in the nineties to Just being the commonplace reality that no one thinks too much about. And and it and it feeling economical for a lot of people.

It's like, oh, you live in a sunny area. Yeah. You're gonna save some money. It did not feel that way in the nineties. Well, we're in a solar powered building right now. Yeah. Like like.

and this is solar power powering this lighting. It's there's solar panels on the roof. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Whatever. Do we care? No.

No.

It's like, it's happening right now. So, you know, and to me, the one that's like we're probably a little bit more off the cusp on, but, like, when this happens, I'm gonna be so pissed. Right? Everyone talks about rockets and going to space. The whole, like, when rockets are reliable, you can go anywhere in the world in forty five minutes. Like, we could commute to Tokyo. Yep.

Like, when that happens, like, it changes the world in so many ways. And that was like in the nineties, we were watching space shuttles Yeah. Go up. And, like, half of the shit in that space shuttle basically, like, getting ejected into the freaking ocean. And whenever you did the math, was like, oh, that cost us more than building a rocket from scratch and blowing it up.

Like, that's where we were in the nineties. And now, like, we actually.

have a path to I can go anywhere in forty five minutes, like. It's pretty cool. Again, what this makes me think of, I don't have this graph handy so I hope I'm not misquoting, but I remember the graph being references of the cost per pound to put something in space. It looks like Moore's Law. Where what's happening is that there's this Moore's Law looking graph Yeah.

On how cheap how much cheaper it is getting to put something into orbit Yes. And how if you just believe in the Moore's Law continuing to happen here,.

the amount of cool stuff that will happen in space in five, ten, twenty years, it's just mind blowing. Yeah. And we're at that we're at that moment. It's happening today. Yeah. It's getting really cool. Yes. So I think what's so cool is, like, not only have things gotten so much better since the nineties, things are getting better.

So if all of this stuff's great, why are people so pessimistic?

Well, I think it's hard to have perspective, man. Yes. I think when you're really caught up in the moment, everything gets polarized into political stuff or tribal warfare about who's on what team. And so if it if your team is the thing pushing for the thing, you celebrate it. But if the other team is You know, screwing people. You tell them. Yeah. So it's very.

everything is polarized. Yes. I also think there's this weird expectations game. Right? Like, it's magical thinking to think that we get all the things we spent the first chunk of the video talking about and there's nothing bad. Yep. That's magical. That's like that's not being an adult.

There's gonna be trade offs. There's gonna be trade offs. Right? Like, the trade off on having, you know, sixty second videos that are exactly what I want that I can swipe anytime I want is like, you know, maybe two hours of swiping I should be going to bed. Yep. You know? Like, there are a lot of different trade offs. And, like, I just feel like when people treat themselves like children Yeah.

Versus treat themselves like adults, it's like, you know, a child doesn't acknowledge the trade offs exist. Right? A child can think matching They want only the perfect you know, it has to all be good with no bad. With no bad. Yes. Cut the crust off. Exactly. Cut the crust off.

Right? And for a while adults kinda create that world, and then after a while adults explain to the kids, like, that's I can't cut the crust off the world. Or like, you need to cut your own crust off. I mean, you wanna do that, you can, but I'm I'm not doing that anymore. No. World is crust. And, like, you know, technology has crusts. Yeah.

Right? Technology with the good comes some bad. Right? So that's a big one. I also think that, like, there's this weird thing where the pacing is inconsistent. Right? Like, sometimes you get a lot of innovation in one part of the economy economy, and then sometimes you get a lot of innovation in other part of the economy. It's not reliable.

Yep. And so, you know And it's so easy. It's this it's this debate thing where you can say, well, what about x problem? Like, no matter what good thing happens Yes. And they're not wrong. What about it? Like, you're right. X is a problem.

Like, that's totally fair. But, if if you wanna tear down anything interesting that happens by saying, well, x over here isn't solved yet, it's easy to just get trapped in the mud. You tear down everything. Yeah. Right. So, I'll say this. Right? In reflection,.

you know, we both have young kids and I am super excited that my kids get to grow up now. I I cannot wait for the day where my daughter and son say like, oh, forty five minutes to Tokyo. That's so fucking slow. I can't wait. You know, in my day. This isn't so great. What's so great about that? Michael.

It's really rocky. It's really it's really it's a bumpy ride. I, like, I am so excited about the world that they're gonna join, and I'm confident they're gonna get even more over the next, you know, eighty years than we're we're getting, which is which is really fun. And think about it.

We all, you all, get to create this future. Yes. And, there's this thing where it's cooler and edgier and more punk rock Yes. To be like everything is bullshit. And, that's a good high horse to be on if you wanna be cool. Yep. But, if you're actually building things and you wanna be a part of creating it Yeah.

It's much easier and more fruitful to be optimistic and think about all the things you can do and think about what you personally can do and what you can work on Yes. Versus just being like burn it all down Yes. Because of x. Well, you know, was thinking about it. If you really care about those problems,.

you have to be optimistic to try to solve them. Like, some of the people who are, like, the biggest social critics or the biggest revolutionaries or the biggest change agents in our society.

were default optimistic. Yep. Because they believed it could work. They believed it wasn't a waste of time. No. You have to believe enough to to invest yourself into something. Exactly. And so I'm willing to bet none of your heroes.

were the cool snarky folks who never did anything and just bitched about how the world was ruled. Like, none of your heroes were that. And so don't be one of those people. Like, you can choose to not be one of those people. Alright. Great chat. Great. Thanks.