From PayPal Intern to Starting 4x Billion-Dollar Companies | Joe Lonsdale Interview

1. 0:00 – 3:18

   The One Reason strategy

   1. SPShaan Puri0:00

      You have now created, by my count, at least four billion-dollar companies directly, probably more than that. What would you say you are doing different than the average good founder?

   2. JLJoe Lonsdale0:11

      So, just like I have some unfair advantages, right? [upbeat music]

   3. SPShaan Puri0:23

      Okay, Joe, thanks for doing this, man. And thanks for, uh, inviting me into the, the morning workout, the cold plunge, and, uh, and everything in between, breakfast.

   4. JLJoe Lonsdale0:30

      It's good to have you here, Shaan.

   5. SPShaan Puri0:31

      So I wanna start with lessons learned. You, y- one of them that we were talking about this morning when we were doing our workout was, um, making decisions on blended reasons or having like a blended strategy for how you're... We're gonna win, we're gonna win doing these five things, and why that sounds like a good idea to the average person, but is actually a very bad idea. Can you explain that?

   6. JLJoe Lonsdale0:49

      Yeah, and I wrote this piece online, like nine lessons from Peter Thiel I sent to all of Palantir that's been like sent out to my other companies as well-

   7. SPShaan Puri0:54

      Right

   8. JLJoe Lonsdale0:55

      ... and it's one of my favorite pieces, and that's one of them. And the... I think it's one of these logic things where usually there's like one reason that dominates everything else. And, and that's just, that's just the nature of the world is that, is that when something's successful, it's, it's kinda like the power law rule, right? Like in a venture capital like fund even, there tends to be one thing that's successful that's like bigger than everything else, and that's true inside of companies as well. It's, it's very unusual, like extraordinarily unusual for there to be like two similarly equal like, like, like products or revenue lines or something like that.

   9. SPShaan Puri1:23

      Right.

   10. JLJoe Lonsdale1:24

       Um, especially early on in a company. So usually if you, if you think you have like two or three reasons for doing something or five reasons for doing something, what that means is that you actually haven't figured out-

   11. SPShaan Puri1:32

       You have no reason

   12. JLJoe Lonsdale1:33

       ... the actual reason.

   13. SPShaan Puri1:33

       You have no strong reason.

   14. JLJoe Lonsdale1:33

       You have no strong, you have no strong reason yet.

   15. SPShaan Puri1:35

       Yeah.

   16. JLJoe Lonsdale1:35

       Like these, that means you have five weak reasons-

   17. SPShaan Puri1:36

       Right

   18. JLJoe Lonsdale1:36

       ... which is not good. You wanna find like what's like one really strong thing you're driving towards, and that, that's how startups work. And this is, it's a really seductive tri- trick. I mean, first of all, you have to be taking a big risk to even do a startup it feels like, rather than like, you know, most people, a lot of people like do incubators 'cause they're like, "Oh, I don't wanna do one company."

   19. SPShaan Puri1:51

       Right.

   20. JLJoe Lonsdale1:51

       "I'm gonna do 10 companies."

   21. SPShaan Puri1:52

       10, right.

   22. JLJoe Lonsdale1:52

       And like by the way, that's like much less likely to have a big success 'cause you're not focused. And then, and so, but so even within a company, they're like, they're trying to do the same thing. They're trying to be like, "Well, here's five ways I'm gonna make money." And like, no, no, no, man. If you really wanna do a company, figure out the way you're gonna make money, and that, and that tends to be how it works, you know?

   23. SPShaan Puri2:07

       Right. And that applies to revenue streams. So eight revenue streams means you probably don't have one awesome revenue stream.

   24. JLJoe Lonsdale2:12

       Yeah, exactly.

   25. SPShaan Puri2:12

       Growth strategies. If you have seven things we're gonna do for growth means you haven't figured out the one-

   26. JLJoe Lonsdale2:16

       Yeah, which one's actually the one that's gonna work

   27. SPShaan Puri2:17

       ... the one that's gonna just compound like crazy.

   28. JLJoe Lonsdale2:19

       And it may change, it may change over time-

   29. SPShaan Puri2:21

       Right

   30. JLJoe Lonsdale2:21

       ... but like what's the thing that's working now now?
2. 3:18 – 5:35

   Learning Global Macro Finance from Peter Thiel

   1. SPShaan Puri3:18

      Well, what are some of the other things? Like do you remember, I mean even at the beginning, one thing I, I kind of wonder is you've been around a bunch of special people, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, all this stuff. Is it clear in early, like in the early days? Like do you remember the moment where you're like, "Oh, this person's kind of different"? They are that five standard deviations-

   2. JLJoe Lonsdale3:35

      Yeah, no, I, I-

   3. SPShaan Puri3:36

      ... in intelligence or conviction or whatever.

   4. JLJoe Lonsdale3:38

      One of the, I mean we all try to like set strategies for ourselves and goals and whatnot, and like I remember in college I thought, "Wow, this is a really good opportunity at Stanford to reach out to a bunch of successful people and kinda learn from them, see who I, see who I w- admire, see who I wanna be like." And you know, I, I, I've met some of the legends of global macro finance who I'm still in touch with. I met a bunch of other big business people and run Fortune 500 companies. And Peter to me had by far the most interesting intellect. He was, he was clearly just one of the smartest people I'd ever met, and he was interested in some of the same things I was interested, interested in, and he'd taken some of the logic farther than I ever had. So, so, so I al- always learned the most from conversations with him. So that, so that to me was one of the reasons he was the most attractive to try to work with and try to build with.

   5. SPShaan Puri4:14

      Right. And so before you start mul- uh, multiple other companies, you do Clarium, which is his hedge fund I guess-

   6. JLJoe Lonsdale4:20

      Yeah

   7. SPShaan Puri4:20

      ... is the way you-

   8. JLJoe Lonsdale4:21

      Global macro fund, yeah.

   9. SPShaan Puri4:22

      Global macro.

   10. JLJoe Lonsdale4:22

       It's the, it's like the most fun part of finance. There's always, there's lots of parts of finance. Finance is like all sorts of areas. Global macro is looking from like the highest possible perspective at everything going on in finance. It's like the, the bond yields around the world, the flows of money around the world, how equities are being valued. You basically just like just from very top down, like what is happening in the world of finance, and how do you map it out? And how you, and you look at relationships and you understand, you know, of course like, you know, the Australian currency is gonna be really correlated with the price of metals, and there's different ways in which they can get way off, and you can create a regression trading system if they're way too far off where you can make money based on the reversion.

   11. SPShaan Puri4:55

       Right.

   12. JLJoe Lonsdale4:55

       And but then you say, "Oh, normally I would trade this, but actually this is happening 'cause, 'cause China just like, you know, invaded this thing over here. So actually it's not a-

   13. SPShaan Puri5:02

       Right

   14. JLJoe Lonsdale5:02

       ... good time to do it." And it, it's just, it's this really, really fun map of the world, and we, we were really interested in like long-dated oil prices and what was happening with oil. We were very interested in how, uh, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are the two big giant housing groups, they'd gotten to be much, much bigger in the US in the early 2000s, and the, and they, they're pr- they had these giant mortgage-backed security portfolios that are worth trillions of dollars, and they had to hedge these portfolios basically. And, and, and, but, but, and I, I won't go into all the details, it's a little bit esoteric. But based on how they were hedging their portfolios was completely changing the global fixed income market, completely changing the pricing of bonds, and we found some really interesting ways to do things there. I,

3. 5:35 – 8:43

   Taking multi-million dollar bets at 4:30am

   1. JLJoe Lonsdale5:35

      I, actually my, my fa- my favorite story that I'll give you is just to give... So, so we were working at the hedge fund. The markets open. We were in San Francisco. We're in 555 California, right? It's that-

   2. SPShaan Puri5:42

      Yeah, I know

   3. JLJoe Lonsdale5:43

      ... big building downtown. Like, uh, after, after 9/11, I think Peter had a parachute in his room, and I always told him he should have parachutes for us, too, but anyway. [laughs]

   4. SPShaan Puri5:49

      That's like, there's one parachute. Okay. [laughs]

   5. JLJoe Lonsdale5:51

      That was just a joke, but it's probably there anyway. But, uh, no. So it's like this cool office on the 42nd floor and, and, and the markets open at 6:30. So the traders are supposed to be in at 6:30, except the first Friday of every month you had to come in at 5:30 because the non-farm payrolls come out still now the first Friday of every month at 8:30AM on the East Coast. And it turns out this is a very important number 'cause it shows you what's going on in job growth and the whole economy, uh, you know, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers. And, and, and what was really cool is Kevin Harrington was our head of research. He's like genius, crazy physics, biology, interesting guy. He's, he's, uh, and he ended up being on the National Security Council later, like super interesting, smart guy. And, and he like had mapped out this thing I'd helped him with where we realized- That they were adjusting the numbers wrong, uh, based on seasonal adjustments. And so we were able to predict whether the number would hit or miss. And, and th- this thing would move bond markets like crazy. Like, like, h- hundreds of billions of dollars would move around based on this number, and we figured out they were systematically mis- misdoing it.

   6. SPShaan Puri6:43

      Hmm.

   7. JLJoe Lonsdale6:43

      And this is totally legal. You're allowed to do this in finance. So we figured, okay, this is a mistake. 75% of the time we can make money trading this, and then we can adjust it and make it even better based on where the p- market was positioned. So the market's gonna be surprised, and we could kinda tell there's a good chance it might be. We'd take a big position-

   8. SPShaan Puri6:56

      Right

   9. JLJoe Lonsdale6:57

      ... like the night before or whatever-

   10. SPShaan Puri6:58

       Yeah

   11. JLJoe Lonsdale6:58

       ... and then like make a ton of money that morning when it worked. And it was-

   12. SPShaan Puri7:00

       F- at 4:30am in the morning. It's like the best time ever. [laughs]

   13. JLJoe Lonsdale7:01

       It's like with about 75% chance. And so, so you do it enough, you're gonna do well over time. And it was the most fun thing, 'cause we'd take these like giant positions on this thing, and you'd be there with like Peter and, and Kevin and Ralph.

   14. SPShaan Puri7:11

       Is this just like the highest stake, highest stakes game of poker you've ever played? [laughs]

   15. JLJoe Lonsdale7:13

       And it's, it's the, it's the most fun high stakes game of poker. And you're like literally personally have like a few million dollars riding on it at a time. It was early in my 20s. These guys, you know, Peter probably had $100 million riding on it every time.

   16. SPShaan Puri7:22

       Right.

   17. JLJoe Lonsdale7:22

       And, and you're just, and you, and you're like high-fiving if it goes right, or you're depressed if it goes wrong.

   18. SPShaan Puri7:25

       Yeah.

   19. JLJoe Lonsdale7:25

       It was, it was the most... It was like it's just the most fun high stakes game of poker.

   20. SPShaan Puri7:27

       Is he sweating? Or how, what's his, uh, demeanor like?

   21. JLJoe Lonsdale7:29

       Oh, yeah, everyone was like, everyone was like [laughs] "What's gonna happen?" And it's like so exciting, and then it ha- And you're like ex- I remember so many like celebrations. We'd all like go to like our favorite breakfast place afterwards if it worked out. It was, it was, it was pretty cool.

   22. SPShaan Puri7:39

       [laughs]

   23. JLJoe Lonsdale7:40

       It was a pretty fun game.

   24. SPShaan Puri7:40

       Yeah, what'd you do if it didn't work out? [laughs]

   25. JLJoe Lonsdale7:41

       It's like, yeah, sometimes we'd go there anyway, but-

   26. SPShaan Puri7:43

       Yeah. [laughs]

   27. JLJoe Lonsdale7:44

       ... but, uh, I, for some reason in my mind, this is maybe who I am, I remember all these times it worked out. I barely can remember the times it didn't. I know it didn't sometimes.

   28. SPShaan Puri7:50

       Interesting.

   29. JLJoe Lonsdale7:50

       But like maybe this is like a serial entrepreneur sort of thing where you just-

   30. SPShaan Puri7:53

       Right
4. 8:43 – 10:33

   Hire for raw IQ over expertise

   1. JLJoe Lonsdale8:43

      this is... We talk, we talk about lessons from Peter Thiel. I think one of the most important ones I've seen from him that I've definitely taken to heart in what I have done is I'd much rather hire, hire... I'd much rather hire for talent and ambition and hard work than hire for expertise. So al- almost... And, and there's exceptions, right? So if, if you have a company that's already really working and already really scaling, and there's like a machine that has to be run, you wanna hire the guy who knows how to run the machine. That's fine. That's like, that's like, that's the operator who knows what they're doing already. But when you, before you've actually built the machine or when you're doing something with a group in like kinda high finance or whatever, you wanna hire for raw IQ and hard work and just iterating and figuring it out, and that's, that's a different skill set than the people who run the machines.

   2. SPShaan Puri9:24

      Right. Hey, real quick, as you know, we're big on ideas here. We love bringing new ideas, business ideas, brainstorming ideas for the podcast. Well, a lot of people ask, "What do you do with all those ideas? Can we go find them? Is there a list somewhere?" The great people at HubSpot have put together a business ideas database. It's totally free. If you just click the link in the description below, you can go download a collection of over 50-plus business ideas that are from the archive, listed out for you, curated. And so, uh, what are you waiting for? Go download it. It's free. Check it out. It's in the description below. All right, back to the show. What's your way of filtering for that IQ? What, uh, you know, how do you interview or what are the signals you look for?

   3. JLJoe Lonsdale9:58

      This is like super hard. I think you start with like-

   4. SPShaan Puri10:00

      Like do you just throw hard math problems at people? What are you doing?

   5. JLJoe Lonsdale10:02

      We used to do that at Clarian. We had these really hard problems. I remember, uh, my friend Suji who ran Dropbox, one of his partners there at his new, at his new venture, Chan Lee, was like the highest scorer on, on these tests that I gave. He's a smart, smart, smart guy. I, I, uh, yeah, we had to do really hard tests. But, you know, once I already had around me a bunch of people who were really top talent, it's like they knew people. Like, "Oh, who's the smartest guy in your physics PhD at MIT? Who is..." You know, just things like that.

   6. SPShaan Puri10:25

      Yeah.

   7. JLJoe Lonsdale10:25

      So it's like, it's like you kinda, you kinda get a network that's already really solid, and then you go out from there.

   8. SPShaan Puri10:30

      And so let's go more on that. So, uh, two things. One,

5. 10:33 – 12:24

   Nurturing employees into unicorn founders

   1. SPShaan Puri10:33

      Ben told me something that, like, there's some number, I don't know the exact number, 20, 30 people who have worked at your companies that have then gone on to start like unicorn companies. Do, what is the-

   2. JLJoe Lonsdale10:43

      Oh, yeah

   3. SPShaan Puri10:43

      ... what is that number roughly?

   4. JLJoe Lonsdale10:44

      Oh, gosh, you know, I don't actually keep track of the official number.

   5. SPShaan Puri10:46

      [laughs]

   6. JLJoe Lonsdale10:46

      But there's over 20 people who've worked directly for me who've started huge companies, and it's something I'm really proud of, is that we've had a lot of super talented people. And, you know, in some ways it's like I like to like, in the back of my mind, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I'm a great guy. I take credit for shaping them." But in some ways it's like s- they were already really amazing and, and, you know, and, and, and so I was like maybe I'm just good at convincing them to have worked for me ahead of time, you know? [laughs]

   7. SPShaan Puri11:04

      Right.

   8. JLJoe Lonsdale11:05

      So it's like there's a, there's a nature-nurture.

   9. SPShaan Puri11:05

      Well, there's a nature-nurture thing, right? So let's-

   10. JLJoe Lonsdale11:07

       There's, yeah, there's, and there's some of both. I, I do like to think that we've given them useful frameworks. Just like I learned from Peter, they might have learned some of these things from me, too. But, but, uh, I mean, one, one of the one... Uh, uh, you know, not all of them I've even backed. Like, some of them I backed, some of them went off and then did it themselves.

   11. SPShaan Puri11:18

       Right.

   12. JLJoe Lonsdale11:19

       You know? Which, you know, usually they let me back them, but-

   13. SPShaan Puri11:21

       Yeah. [laughs]

   14. JLJoe Lonsdale11:22

       [laughs]

   15. SPShaan Puri11:23

       Yeah, that's the worst when they, when you don't, you didn't get the call.

   16. JLJoe Lonsdale11:24

       And, you know, actually I'm still proud, I'm still, I'm still proud. Like, I'll tell you, the, the guy who came right out of school to help run Addepar with me, and, and I, and I was like, he was becoming president of the company, super talented guy, and, uh, I did not know what I was doing. Uh, even though I'd just already done Palantir, there was all these mistakes I was making, 'cause there's like things I didn't realize I had advantages at Palantir. And, you know, Addepar's a multi-billion dollar company now. It's great, but there's things that took longer. There's mistakes, but there's also obviously good things we did, 'cause the company worked out really well. And I think he had s- he had like, went off on his own, and he had like, uh, you know, his own tough time or whatever for a little while afterwards, and then he ended up partnering with someone, and he started the company that became worth $3 billion in like four years, and he sold it.

   17. SPShaan Puri12:00

       Wow.

   18. JLJoe Lonsdale12:01

       Which then I'm like, "Oh, wow, that's pretty fucking cool."

   19. SPShaan Puri12:02

       Yeah. [laughs]

   20. JLJoe Lonsdale12:02

       So it's, but I was like... And, you know, I, and I, and I, he didn't have, they didn't bring anyone else into that company, but I was still really proud of the fact that I'd worked with this guy-

   21. SPShaan Puri12:09

       Right

   22. JLJoe Lonsdale12:09

       ... and then he'd gone on and had like crazy success. I mean, that's a cool feeling, you know?

   23. SPShaan Puri12:12

       Right. But for the record, it's always, I'm more proud if I got to invest, too, right? [laughs]

   24. JLJoe Lonsdale12:16

       I know. Come on. Take care of your buddies.

   25. SPShaan Puri12:17

       Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

   26. JLJoe Lonsdale12:18

       No, I mean, it was most of the, like, like 95% of them, it's like people will bring me in and I'll still like help them. We'll c- coach and work with them

6. 12:24 – 13:53

   Solving hard problems with Addepar

   1. JLJoe Lonsdale12:24

      together and stuff, so.

   2. SPShaan Puri12:24

      So let's do, uh, big hit number two, Addepar.

   3. JLJoe Lonsdale12:27

      Yeah.

   4. SPShaan Puri12:27

      Um, you, uh, explain, like- Explain in layman's terms what even is Addepar, and then I want- I have some questions for you. But let's first do the, the... Explain like I'm five years old, what is Addepar?

   5. JLJoe Lonsdale12:36

      So Addepar is, uh, is the leading wealth management technology company in the US. And so there's people who work at what are called RIAs, registered investment advisors. There's tens of thousands of these, and they will help you or your parents or whoever kind of manage their wealth. They'll give you reports. They'll do your trusts and estate. They'll just do everything d- around kind of the wealth planning. Man, it was really freaking hard. We built all this stuff, and we, like, hooked up to Schwab and Fidelity, 'cause those are, like, two of the biggest... Everyone's heard of those, right?

   6. SPShaan Puri13:02

      Right.

   7. JLJoe Lonsdale13:02

      The biggest custodians. And we had all this wrong data in the reports, like, "What are we doing wrong?" And it turned out the data coming from Schwab and Fidelity was oftentimes wrong. We're like, "What is wrong with this space?"

   8. SPShaan Puri13:11

      Yeah.

   9. JLJoe Lonsdale13:11

      It's like the whole thing's a mess. So it, it was, it was a hard company to build. Took about three or four years before we really got to the point where, where it was useful to people.

   10. SPShaan Puri13:17

       And so you didn't give up, though, during that time? Um-

   11. JLJoe Lonsdale13:20

       Oh, no. That's like the last... Like, you have to have a personality where you're not gonna give up. I mean, I'll give up if it turns out someone else has already solved it perfectly. Like, if Addepar already existed, it would've been a stupid thing to do, then... And I learned that. Then, then maybe you give up and pivot. But the fact that it's just a hard problem, you're not gonna give up. You're just gonna, like, double down and, like, fix it, you know?

   12. SPShaan Puri13:34

       Interesting. So you're, you're a... You, you don't give up if it's too hard, too messy.

   13. JLJoe Lonsdale13:39

       But it's like that's better. That means once I do solve it, it's gonna have this giant moat. Like, Addepar has the biggest freaking moat. We were talking earlier about guys like Rocket Internet will, like, go around copying things and annoy people. Like, good luck if you wanna try to copy that. You gotta go take a billion dollars in 10 years, you know?

   14. SPShaan Puri13:51

       Right.

   15. JLJoe Lonsdale13:51

       Like, no chance. No chance.

7. 13:53 – 15:32

   Always “Being on”

   1. SPShaan Puri13:53

      You talk about hard work. I, uh... When I was doing research for this, I, I called somebody who works on your team and I said, "Tell me about him. What's he like? What's it like to work with him?" One of the things they said was, like, "He's always on. I've never seen him just go, like, go dark, go off, or just, like, turn his brain off, or be like, 'I just wanna chill on the beach and just drink my Thais and not do anything.'" Is that-

   2. JLJoe Lonsdale14:12

      Well, this is like my-

   3. SPShaan Puri14:12

      ... accurate for you?

   4. JLJoe Lonsdale14:13

      This is, like, my game, though. I mean, I think you have to love what you're doing, right? So, like, you shouldn't play games you don't, you don't like, you know?

   5. SPShaan Puri14:18

      Right. [laughs]

   6. JLJoe Lonsdale14:19

      If you're not playing, you're not enjoying the game, you gotta switch it up.

   7. SPShaan Puri14:21

      Yeah.

   8. JLJoe Lonsdale14:21

      So this is, this is, this is, this is what... I'm doing this because I really enjoy it. It's really fun. I'm really good. I think one of the... You know, Aristotle would talk about how, like, one of the highest pleasures is, like, is, like, using your mind in, in its highest capacity, right? So that's like he explained, like, you actually enjoy chess more than checkers if you're good at both-

   9. SPShaan Puri14:37

      Hmm

   10. JLJoe Lonsdale14:37

       ... because chess is, it has more levels to it.

   11. SPShaan Puri14:38

       Right.

   12. JLJoe Lonsdale14:38

       It's a more complicated game. And so you, you want your mind to be engaged in interesting, complex, useful things that are getting things done. It's, uh... It's, like, a positive part. I think it's, it's how humanity works.

   13. SPShaan Puri14:47

       Right. How do you still, um, recharge or just get clarity of thought? 'Cause one of the challenges is if you're always on, uh, you might not have that t- chance-

   14. JLJoe Lonsdale14:56

       You gotta-

   15. SPShaan Puri14:56

       ... to step back and-

   16. JLJoe Lonsdale14:56

       You gotta pause

   17. SPShaan Puri14:57

       ... and reassess.

   18. JLJoe Lonsdale14:57

       You do need open time for creativity. I, I've noticed when I overschedule myself, I'm not nearly as creative then. And I think the cold plunge helped, right? I don't know.

   19. SPShaan Puri15:04

       Yeah. [laughs]

   20. JLJoe Lonsdale15:04

       Does that clear your mind?

   21. SPShaan Puri15:05

       That was a quick, uh-

   22. JLJoe Lonsdale15:05

       You were, you were in there for a little bit

   23. SPShaan Puri15:06

       ... six- 60 second-

   24. JLJoe Lonsdale15:07

       Yeah

   25. SPShaan Puri15:07

       ... 51 second reset we had. [laughs]

   26. JLJoe Lonsdale15:08

       Yeah. [laughs] I think I stayed in for the full minute.

   27. SPShaan Puri15:10

       Yeah. You, you, you actually did two plunges. That was pretty good. What is a s- a typical schedule like? Uh, what's a day in the life? 'Cause you got your fund, you got companies, you got a- all kinds of stuff. You got your podcast.

   28. JLJoe Lonsdale15:19

       Yeah. My nu- my number one, my number one is 8VC, and 8VC has a build program, which is my favorite part of it. A third of our money now goes towards building new companies. So my favorite thing is, like, the strategy for recruiting talent and, and then strategy sessions with, with... you know, to figure out what we're gonna build.

   29. SPShaan Puri15:31

       Right.

8. 15:32 – 21:10

   How to spot opportunities for new businesses

   1. JLJoe Lonsdale15:32

      Yeah.

   2. SPShaan Puri15:32

      And so when you, you said strategy for talent, what was the other one? Strategy for building the companies? Is that-

   3. JLJoe Lonsdale15:36

      Yeah. You're basically-

   4. SPShaan Puri15:37

      ... company strategy?

   5. JLJoe Lonsdale15:38

      When you're... The way I look at, the way I look at opportunities for new businesses is you're looking for conceptual gaps in the world. You're saying, like-

   6. SPShaan Puri15:44

      Hmm. What is that?

   7. JLJoe Lonsdale15:45

      ... "Here's, here's where this industry is now," like, "Here's how this thing is working. Here's how this process is done in the economy, and here's where it could be if it was using, like, the right new technology or the right new incentives or this, or this right new effective cultures," or what- whatever it is that, like, could be better about it.

   8. SPShaan Puri15:59

      Yeah.

   9. JLJoe Lonsdale15:59

      And the question is not just... It, it's actually very easy to find conceptual gaps in the world. I'll, I'll put forward, you spend some time with, like, a few smart friends and you, like, study an industry and talk to people, you're like... You usually will find, "Oh, wow, this thing could be done this way." And so the, the harder question is not just what could be done, but, like, what's the path to get there? What could we put in place that would allow us to get it there? How do we build this thing? How much is it gonna cost? How do we, how do we make the people want this? There's a lot of things, for example, on, like, healthcare and hospitals that are done completely wrong, but it makes the hospitals more money. So, so, so, so it's like, so even though-

   10. SPShaan Puri16:29

       Right

   11. JLJoe Lonsdale16:29

       ... it's, like, clearly not the right way of doing things, they're not gonna just fix it. You have to find some way to get from here to there with the actors being willing to do it.

   12. SPShaan Puri16:35

       Right.

   13. JLJoe Lonsdale16:35

       You know?

   14. SPShaan Puri16:36

       So let's do an example. So, um, give me an example, either maybe something that you're just top of mind because you're thinking about it right now, maybe it's not all figured out-

   15. JLJoe Lonsdale16:43

       Yeah

   16. SPShaan Puri16:43

       ... or a recent one.

   17. JLJoe Lonsdale16:44

       Yeah, so a recent one-

   18. SPShaan Puri16:45

       What was a gap and a path that you kind of figured out?

   19. JLJoe Lonsdale16:47

       100%. So, uh, it turns out that there's tens of thousands of loading yards around the country in logistics. These are places where trucks come, they get in line, they drop things off, they move things around. They, they, you know, pick things up. And it's just, it's a pretty interesting area. And, like, the biggest warehouse company in the country is Prologis, and it turns out the founder's investor with me is based in, based in, you know, nearby in California. We're, we're back there. And, and then it turns out there's, like, a handful of the biggest carrier companies, like Ryder you've probably heard of, and others. And we've actually sold a company to Ryder, so we're close to those guys too. And so, so because we knew a bunch of these guys, we started analyzing what can we do with AI to make your yards better? And we, what we figured out is that if you put a, just a couple cameras in it... First we thought we'd need six, but just a couple cameras you can kind of watch and map out where everything is, map out how efficient the gate is, map out the processes, create accountability and incentives for people to go faster, uh, create ways of pinging the carriers if it's backed up to, like, to use other loading yards nearby. Just, like-

   20. SPShaan Puri17:39

       Right

   21. JLJoe Lonsdale17:39

       ... basic little ways on the margins of, like, making these things work better and, and, and timing them and creating... 'Cause you want a little bit of competition. People always respond well-

   22. SPShaan Puri17:45

       Right

   23. JLJoe Lonsdale17:45

       ... you know, if you do it properly. And so we've mapped this out, and we ended up founding a company with a really strong AI team. Uh, and, and, and we ended up kind of co-founding it with the b- this, these, like, you know, the warehouse companies, the carriers and others based on their needs. And it's really cool 'cause the way we built it with them is we have, like, a few hundred million revenue already built in that we can scale up into their, into their yards they already own, and then we can have something all the other yards wanna use as well.

   24. SPShaan Puri18:08

       Let's do more detail. So you, you're already kind of in adjacent to that world 'cause you've done stuff.

   25. JLJoe Lonsdale18:12

       Yeah.

   26. SPShaan Puri18:13

       But how does the brainstorm work inside your office or wherever? Like, where, when does somebody ask the question "Hey, could you use AI for these loading yards?" Like how did, how did... Like take me all the way to that. Like where does a question like that even come from?

   27. JLJoe Lonsdale18:24

       So-

   28. SPShaan Puri18:24

       Where does the nugget of insight come from?

   29. JLJoe Lonsdale18:26

       So my partner Jake's in charge of logistics and supply chain. He's the, he's the kinda biggest driver here, and he's, you know, done some strategy sessions with, you know, our, our friends who are running these different companies. We're close, so we'll get together. I, I have a vineyard in, in Napa Valley, and we like bring every year like the hundred top logistics CEOs-

   30. SPShaan Puri18:40

       Interesting. Okay
9. 21:10 – 27:09

   How Epirus landed a military defense contract

   1. SPShaan Puri21:10

      seconds? Can we do another example?

   2. JLJoe Lonsdale21:11

      All right.

   3. SPShaan Puri21:11

      Another gap or another st- uh, origin story of, of one of these, uh, ideas that, that I think is, it makes sense?

   4. JLJoe Lonsdale21:16

      I'll give, I'll give you another crazy gap. I mean, these, these are, these are... I'm, I'm, I'm taking big swings right now, so these are gonna sound a little crazy, but like I was pretty bullish on China like 15 years ago. A lot of us were. I like thought it was opening up. A lot of my friends there were like reading Milton Friedman and, you know, free economy stuff. I'm like, "This is gonna be great. There's so many smart people there." So we start making bets there. We start working there, doing a bunch of stuff. And then this guy Xi Jinping takes over, and then like I'm told by all these different senior people there like, "Joe, yeah, none of this stuff that you wanna work on here is gonna be allowed. It can't be foreign." And then we're like, "Oh, that's too bad." So, so I just stop working there as much. And then I kind of hear from them like terrible things are happening, and then a couple of them disappear. And then I hear he's making all these engineers work on defense. I'm like, "Okay, this is pretty effed up. I'm kinda, I'm kinda nervous about this now."

   5. SPShaan Puri21:55

      Right.

   6. JLJoe Lonsdale21:56

      And we start mapping, start mapping it out. And at the same time, you know, we'd done Palantir, started in 2003, so this is now like 2015, 2016, and I wasn't... I'm not running Palantir anymore, but I'm still an advisor watching it. And like a few of my guys there are noticing that defense, the defense world in the US has gotten to be like a lot more dysfunctional, a lot more broken. There hasn't really been... So what happened to defense is all these companies consolidated in the 1990s after the Cold War spending went down. So they all merged and became like these giant primes, and these primes started acting a lot more like government agencies themselves, like not super nimble, not super adaptive. Kinda like the way they get the contracts is by having the right lobbyists, not necessarily by... And they have to, they have to convince con... We call it innovation theater. They have to pretend they're innovating, but they're not necessarily great at innovating 'cause that's not, 'cause they're so big.

   7. SPShaan Puri22:37

      Right.

   8. JLJoe Lonsdale22:37

      There's no competition. And so we're like, "Oh, this is kinda scary. All this stuff, like none of the best engineers are going into these primes. Their stuff's getting worse. Meanwhile, China has the best engineers. They're getting better. This is, we better do something." And so, so three of my best ex-Palantir guys, they partner with Palmer, of course, start Anduril. You've talked to him before. So, so I backed them early along with Peter. And I'm like, "Okay, guys, we're back in defense. Let's figure out what the hell else to do here." So we, so we basically mapped out like what are 20 new possibilities in defense? I want, I wanna find 20 from just to see, and then we're gonna choose what's the most important one.

   9. SPShaan Puri23:05

      Right.

   10. JLJoe Lonsdale23:05

       And, and we-

   11. SPShaan Puri23:06

       And by the way, is that something you tell your team? Like, "Come to the table. I wanna hear 20 ideas."

   12. JLJoe Lonsdale23:09

       Yeah. Well, you put, you have to have like a guy whose job it is. You have to have the guy who's helping him. You have to have like advisors who are able to like get them-

   13. SPShaan Puri23:14

       Right

   14. JLJoe Lonsdale23:14

       ... into the right places to talk and explore. But let's, yeah, let's talk to our, let's talk to our smartest friends in this space. Let's talk to our network. I wanna hear, you know, I wanna hear, you know, about 20 ideas of new things, like, and I wanna see where we think gaps might be. And we come back, and there's like eight or nine pretty good answers. There's a few things that I thought were bad answers, but, but, you know, I find some interesting stuff. And one of the areas that's pretty cool is it looks like there might be new possibilities in, uh, in, in EMP, in electromagnetic pulse space. And it's really directed EMP, of course. You don't just wanna set one of these off and, and screw up all your stuff. But what this do- what an EMP does is it fries electronics, right? And so it turns out that if you can direct these, what it is, is you're taking microwave energy and you're shooting it in a blast. You can actually turn things off. And the government has spent billions of dollars on this stuff, but they hadn't really applied any of the new, uh, p- any of the new chips basically at all.

   15. SPShaan Puri24:00

       And, and you want that to protect against like drones, for example? Or would that be one-

   16. JLJoe Lonsdale24:03

       That's one, that's one of the really good ways of doing it. So ba- basically, you can have a chip. You can, you can basic- control power on very small time scales. You could take, you know, take, you know, the gallium nitride emitters, and you could b-build this correctly with the top talent. It turns out there was like a co-founder who's a f- a friend of a friend of mine from Stanford who's just a genius who helped figure a lot of this out also. And, and, and, and you could shoot down things like 10 times farther away. And, and you, you know, theoretically, you could use this against missiles and turning their guidance systems off. You could use it against a truck coming to your base really fast. You just blast it. You know, it might be that the truck has a terrorist coming to shoot you, and you wanna turn it off. It might be there's a pregnant lady there trying to get to the base to give birth. Like you don't wanna necessarily have blown it up, right?

   17. SPShaan Puri24:38

       Right.

   18. JLJoe Lonsdale24:38

       So it's good to by blasting it, and you're not turning a truck off, you're not killing the person, so-

   19. SPShaan Puri24:41

       Right

   20. JLJoe Lonsdale24:41

       ... pretty cool like non-lethal way of like stopping stuff that's giving you trouble.

   21. SPShaan Puri24:45

       Right.

   22. JLJoe Lonsdale24:45

       And, and long story short, we were able to- Put together money, put together a prototype, and, you know, with about, with less than $30 million in this, in the second round, we got to the point where we were, we were... We fought our way into a contest against the other primes. And so, so basically one of the key things in government is, like, we're always trying to get them to have contests. The primes do not want contests. They-

   23. SPShaan Puri25:03

       They're like, "How do we compete-

   24. JLJoe Lonsdale25:03

       Yeah

   25. SPShaan Puri25:03

       ... on merit, not on-

   26. JLJoe Lonsdale25:04

       Yeah, exactly

   27. SPShaan Puri25:05

       ... longevity relationships?"

   28. JLJoe Lonsdale25:06

       I'm not gonna be better at playing golf with a senator.

   29. SPShaan Puri25:08

       Right. [laughs]

   30. JLJoe Lonsdale25:08

       But if you can let me into the contest, then maybe we can win, right? That's the-
10. 27:09 – 28:24

    Getting hits in hard domains

    1. SPShaan Puri27:09

       So what's fascinating to me is that not only have you had multiple hits, but they're in areas that are different, but also just hard areas where I don't even s- those are not even idea... I don't think about these, like, uh, the, the logistics yards or EMP pulse technology. Like, these are so i- in different domains. I'm curious, um, is that, uh, is that intentional? Meaning do you like... 'Cause most of the entrepreneurs around me in Silicon Valley were like, "Oh, B2B SaaS," you know, "What's a problem? Oh, let's make a to-do list app," because I know that problem. I'm so familiar with it.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale27:41

       Yeah.

    3. SPShaan Puri27:41

       Is it a strategy for you to go where, fi- fish where other people are not fishing-

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale27:44

       Yeah

    5. SPShaan Puri27:44

       ... or is that just what happened?

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale27:46

       No, what I think it's definitely, definitely a strategy of sorts, where you don't wanna build, like, yet another, like, restaurant app or yet another to-do list app-

    7. SPShaan Puri27:53

       Yeah

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale27:53

       ... because it's like, that's what every other 21-year-old's thinking about. Like, like it, it's probably why I missed Stripe early on is we'd been at PayPal, and I had to, like, see every payment app. There's, like, literally-

    9. SPShaan Puri28:01

       Right

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale28:01

        ... hundreds of payment apps, and it's like, "Oh, God," you know?

    11. SPShaan Puri28:03

        Right.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale28:03

        'Cause it's like, 'cause Peter would make me take the meetings after-

    13. SPShaan Puri28:05

        [laughs]

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale28:05

        ... he didn't wanna do anymore.

    15. SPShaan Puri28:06

        [laughs]

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale28:06

        So it's like, no, you wanna... Listen, there's, there's parts of the world that are big parts of the economy that are very important that, that are not as exposed to technology cultures. And so you wanna kind of take your... Our, our advantage is we have a really top technology culture, is figure out how to expose it to something that's, that's not likely to, to have seen that before, and then find ways to work together to fix problems.

11. 28:24 – 29:19

    Business Idea: AI-powered Estate Planning

    1. SPShaan Puri28:24

       And what are some other ideas? Either, um, uh, I wanna either hear ideas that, um, you're not doing just 'cause you can only do so many things at once, or it might be that would work, but it's too small for me, or it's j- it's not, like, kind of using my-

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale28:36

       Interesting

    3. SPShaan Puri28:36

       ... my current platform can do bigger things. But this happens to me all the time. I see ideas that somebody could do that. I'm tempted to do it 'cause it's so clear to me, but it's like that would be not the right game for me to be playing right now.

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale28:49

       There's, there's so many things. If I had the right talent, I'd be doing more. Um, you know, I do a lot in the wealth management world. I think that the process of starting a trust and, like, the actual legal work around this stuff could be very automated with AI. You could have, like, a smart lawyer and, like, a few smart engineers. You could, like, have a whole new trust company and a whole new, like, estate management company. We, we have SaaS software for estate stuff you'd plug into. And I have a lot of distribution for this ready, but I would need, like, the right engineers-

    5. SPShaan Puri29:13

       Right

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale29:13

       ... and AI people, and I'm not sure if it's bigger than a billion dollar or $2 billion business, but it's like, it's still worth it, you know?

    7. SPShaan Puri29:17

       Right.

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale29:18

       And, and it saves a lot of time, so.

12. 29:19 – 30:58

    Business Idea: Business Process Outsourcing for local government

    1. JLJoe Lonsdale29:19

       But I'll, I'll give you a really big one I wanna do, but I don't have the right people around me. Um, local government. So we just sold OpenGov for $1.8 billion, and, and local government, there are a lot of lessons from this company, a lot of mistakes. So it took us 12 years. Zach Bookman, the CEO, my co-founder, did a great job. Um, we learned that you only can really do things they already have a budget for. So there's about 90 things local governments pay money for software to do, and OpenGov does about 40 of them. So we, we learned this-

    2. SPShaan Puri29:42

       [laughs]

    3. JLJoe Lonsdale29:42

       ... space really well. Like, and this is like, it's, like, big, right? It's a lot of processes. And, and anyway, the idea is that there's trillions of dollars spent by local governments, and a lot of them can't find the right staff for certain processes, and a lot of them have people retiring soon too. So I think, I think a BPO, a Business Process Outsourcing thing for certain tasks for local government, uh, that are, 'cause augmented by AI could be, like, just a huge business to basically help them with this. And I, right now it's not a standard way they work, but I could see if we do it really well, it could become a standard way. And that's the kind of area where you can make tens of billions of revenue before anyone even notices you, 'cause it's such a big part of the economy. So I, that's, that's another idea.

    4. SPShaan Puri30:15

       So what would the first, like, six to 12 months of that company look like?

    5. JLJoe Lonsdale30:18

       You'd basically have to find early partners willing to trust you and work with you on outsourcing some, one of those 90 processes, and it'd be, it'd be something like where you, like, augment their ability to do licensing and permitting faster, or you're, you're augmenting some of their grunt work on tracking their assets and asset management, or you're doing something for their budget for them automatically that's way faster. The CFO doesn't have to hire three people. They can only hire one person, which is you. Or so- something like that. Like-

    6. SPShaan Puri30:41

       Right

    7. JLJoe Lonsdale30:41

       ... but, but you have to go in and figure out what processes are cities even willing to let you do. And it's, it's a very unnatural thing because it's not how they work right now, but it's one of those things where there's, like, a secular trend towards, like- You know, local government not having enough money. So if you can find ways to save them mass amounts of money and make a higher quality service, there could be something there.

13. 30:58 – 31:49

    Big swings vs. base hits

    1. SPShaan Puri30:58

       Right. All right, I wanna play a little agree or disagree game.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale31:01

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SPShaan Puri31:01

       So I wanna say a statement, and I wanna hear you agree or disagree with it. Um, so the first one is on, on this idea of big swings that are solving, like, huge problems-

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale31:09

       Yeah

    5. SPShaan Puri31:09

       ... you know, mission-oriented things, uh, versus, like, getting... just getting your first win, uh, under your belt. A guy came on the podcast and he said, "My theory is you... first you go get your nut and then you work on your noble mission." And he's like, "You know, you go and you develop your skills, you get- make a few million bucks, you get personal autonomy, and then you should pick a noble mission, a noble quest, and go on that." Agree or disagree with that philosophy?

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale31:33

       I, I agree. In general, I think it's a really good thing to do. You wanna have a solid base before you do something that's, like, a huge, crazy, risky quest. You don't wanna be, like, poor for 12 years while you're-

    7. SPShaan Puri31:42

       [laughs]

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale31:42

       ... while you're doing something if you can help it. I mean, I'm not saying that's gonna be the path for everyone-

    9. SPShaan Puri31:45

       Right

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale31:45

        ... but if you can do what he said, that's a really great way to do it.

    11. SPShaan Puri31:48

        Okay. Another

14. 31:49 – 32:38

    Idea vs. execution

    1. SPShaan Puri31:49

       one. Um, a lot of people say that ideas are cheap, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. And I agree that execution is very important, but I think ideas really matter, too. I think that project selection, picking the right market to go after is a, um, is, is a huge lever. So I think that the execution is everything philosophy is BS. Agree or disagree?

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale32:11

       That's a tough one because I've seen a lot of good ideas with the, with the... they actually aren't worth that much because they couldn't actually bring together the talent-

    3. SPShaan Puri32:18

       Right

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale32:18

       ... to do them. So I, I, I... you, you, you, you... it's necessary but not sufficient. You do need both.

    5. SPShaan Puri32:23

       Right.

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale32:23

       The execution is the harder part. But you're right, you can have amazing execution, and I've seen this in people going after the stupidest ideas and it, and it's not gonna yield something. So-

    7. SPShaan Puri32:31

       Right

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale32:31

       ... so, so you, so you need both, but the ideas by themselves are not that valuable.

    9. SPShaan Puri32:35

       Okay.

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale32:35

        That's what I'd say.

    11. SPShaan Puri32:36

        Another one. Um,

15. 32:38 – 33:33

    Focus vs. diversity of thought/attention

    1. SPShaan Puri32:38

       focus is a superpower, and I would say that, like we were talking about this earlier, you, you recognize the value of focus and just compounding one thing. Um, but you've also done a variety of things. Agree or disagree that, you know, focus is the way to go, focus should be the strategy.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale32:55

       Focus is clearly the right strategy for the most successful people in the world. If you look at the wealthiest people in the world, they nearly all focused and compounded over a very long length of time. Uh, if you look at Palantir and Addepar, the two companies where I focus full time on them, they're my two of my most important companies. It's, uh... I, I think when you're having impact on the world in different ways, sometimes it's okay to, to do different things. I think, I think philanthropically, I think for me, coaching entrepreneurs is something I enjoy. Uh, I think I'm, I think I'm obviously creating a lot of value right now. But I think, I think as an entrepreneur, as a business person in general, it's... you, you... especially if you haven't already had, like, a giant win, you should just focus and get that giant win and compound.

16. 33:33 – 35:36

    Insights from Elon’s inner circle

    1. SPShaan Puri33:33

       Um, you're friends with Elon. What, um, what's something you've learned from him or something you admire about him?

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale33:39

       Uh-

    3. SPShaan Puri33:39

       Maybe that the rest of us don't know by, you know, we, we only know him from the outside.

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale33:42

       Yeah. I, I mean, I guess I'd say I really admire his boldness and his, like... obviously, it's, it's, he's really good at focus. He's really good at saying no, even to friends about anything that's just not, like, tied to what he's, like, really passionate about and focused on to win. And he's just really, really bold at, like, clearing, like, nonsense out of the way and clearing mess out of the way and just, like, going right for the thing that, that matters, right for the substance. So I just think, I think most people in my life would be, uh... think I'm maybe too bold or too direct or too extreme, and Elon's like a whole step further-

    5. SPShaan Puri34:13

       [laughs] Right

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale34:13

       ... which I, which I think is great to see. I'm like, "Okay, I could do better at this."

    7. SPShaan Puri34:16

       There's more here, yeah. [laughs]

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale34:17

       I could be, I could be more myself in that direction and, and I'd be more successful if I would... You know, I'm obviously, have done very well, but, but, but I think he's a whole other level of bold, and that's something that it's good to see that from me 'cause it reminds me that that's, like, a-

    9. SPShaan Puri34:28

       Right

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale34:28

        ... that's a good direction for entrepreneurship.

    11. SPShaan Puri34:30

        Um, you know, is he focused though? 'Cause he's got like five things. You know, he's got Twitter, he's got SpaceX, he's got Tesla, he's got Neuralink, he's got Boring Company. He's got so many things. Um, w- is, how do you square that? Is that, is it focus or is it-

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale34:44

        I mean, I think he was insanely focused for a very long time on, on the things he, he was doing and on scaling them. And I guess, yeah, sure, there were two companies for a very long time-

    13. SPShaan Puri34:51

        Right

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale34:51

        ... after doing one company for a very long time. And, uh, you know, he's at a level of success, again, societally, where there's things that really matter-

    15. SPShaan Puri34:59

        Right

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale34:59

        ... for society that only he can do. So it makes sense he would expand that. I think I told you, uh, w- earlier, you know, my partners are allowed to work on up to six things at once. And I think when you're, like, coaching and, like, managing things and stuff, I think that's about the right am- right amount. I think if you're just operating, you wanna do, like, one or two at most.

    17. SPShaan Puri35:15

        Right.

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale35:15

        Yeah.

    19. SPShaan Puri35:16

        Uh, last question because I think we gotta go, but what... the whole s- my whole thing when I come to an interview like this is: What's the one question that really matters? Like, forget the hour. Like, what's the one question that really matters? And all the questions I've asked you have been beating around the bush with this one thing. So now I'm gonna ask you it directly, which is

17. 35:36 – 38:48

    Joe Lonsdale’s unfair advantages

    1. SPShaan Puri35:36

       you have now created at, by my count, at least four billion-dollar companies directly, probably more than that. I call that the entrepreneur's Grand Slam.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale35:44

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SPShaan Puri35:44

       Um, you have done something that anybody who wants to make one successful company would be, would be envious of how, wow, how does he do it? You know, you see also a lot of other founders. You meet them through your fund or just people who probably come up to you. What would you say you are doing different than the average good founder?

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale36:03

       So listen, I, I have some unfair advantages, right? And, and, and it's, it's actually not that hard once you've been really successful to, like, to do it again relative to the first time. Um, but what am I doing differently? Uh, I have a ma- huge talent apparatus, so we have people at, like, dozens of universities. We have all sorts of, you know, things we do to attract this-

    5. SPShaan Puri36:22

       What does that mean, you have people at universities? What, who, who?

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale36:24

       It's like you'll have-

    7. SPShaan Puri36:24

       What are they doing? [laughs]

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale36:25

       It's like you'll have fellows who apply, and you'll have people who run your program there. You'll host parties and meet talent. You'll, you'll have a certain playbook we've built since Palantir of knowing how to show up and scale up.

    9. SPShaan Puri36:34

       So you have, like, a scouting department almost.

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale36:35

        Yeah, you have, like, a huge talent scouting department, and it works in different ways, different places, and, and it's really talented people that we spend a lot of time. And each of our partners and, and I, that's our job is to scout for talent and to use our network. And the more wins you have with smart people, the more you get to meet their smart friends. And so, so we have a huge advantage in talent, first of all, 'cause that's really key. We have a huge advantage of, like- Knowing the people who run a lot of big industries and, like, having good relationships with them, having them as advisors, having them as being part of things we've done where we can, like, understand what's happening in those industries, get quick feedback and iterate on ideas. Like, like one of the biggest mistakes founders make is they have an idea and they're afraid someone's gonna copy it. They're afraid the idea is valuable. It's, it's really dangerous to think that ideas are too valuable 'cause then you just don't share them. You think that they're yours. And so one of our advantages is that, is that... I mean, one of the Peter Thiel thought experiments was imagine there's five founders who each have an idea, and like four of them are, like, secretly working on it and, uh, and one of them is, like, talking to everyone and iterating. Like, which of the five is gonna win, right? So it's c- clearly the guy who's iterating a ton.

    11. SPShaan Puri37:29

        Right.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale37:29

        And so if five people have the same idea, we're able to have that same idea and then, like, iterate faster than anyone else 'cause we know everyone running everything and, and we, we know how to get back, back, you know, how, know how to get to the right answer much, much more quickly. So not only do we have the best talent, but we are able to iterate on ideas with people who respect us, with people we involve. And then whenever we start a company, and maybe this is a mistake 'cause maybe I could've had a lot more money, but I've always been, like, a minority owner of my companies. I've always been, like, someone who might have, like... Like when we start out the build program, our fund might take 20% and our, and when my team and I might take 10%, so we might have 30 total, and like maybe 35 or 40. But, but, like, but we have something where it's less than half, and we're very generous with the founders, with the early employees, with the advisors, with the partners. So, like, when we start these things, like just even from the beginning, I don't have to wake up in the morning being the only one worried about this thing. There's like a, there's another 30 smart people waking up who, who that's their focus and they're, and they're on it, and that's such a big advantage to, like, have other people, like, obsess over this thing and are people who truly feel like co-founders, by the way. I think it's one of the big mistakes. You're like, "I'm the founder and you guys are the people working." Like, like what are you getting from that other than your, other than your ego? Like I'd much rather... There's so many companies that people don't even know I'm the founder of, and, and the people... And that's way better 'cause first they're not gonna harass me [laughs] about stuff. And, and like there's people who are proud founders who get to be out in the press doing it, and, uh, and, and they're, what they're going to sleep worried about 'cause this is their reputation and

18. 38:48 – 40:40

    How to invest your time to make your first $1M

    1. JLJoe Lonsdale38:48

       their focus.

    2. SPShaan Puri38:48

       In the intro, I'm gonna say something like, "This guy has started more billion-dollar companies than anybody in America," which I think is an amazing claim to fame. Uh, but forget about a billion. Let's talk about a million. The name of the podcast is My First Million, and I went and read a Quora answer that you did. Somebody said, "If I wanna make a million dollars, how should I invest my money?"

    3. JLJoe Lonsdale39:08

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SPShaan Puri39:09

       And you said something like this. You said... I'll pull it up. You go, "If you wanna make a million dollars, it's not about how you invest your money. It's about how you invest your time." And you said, uh, it, it's about how disciplined you are with investing your time. Um, how should somebody who wants to make a million dollars invest their time?

    5. JLJoe Lonsdale39:30

       You know, it's... Yeah, it's right. Uh, you can't just make a million dollars from investing if you're probably the average person. Maybe you can over, like, 50 years or something.

    6. SPShaan Puri39:36

       Right.

    7. JLJoe Lonsdale39:37

       My, my grandma passed away at 103 last year and she was a multimillionaire having grown up in the Depression just from saving money and cutting coupons and that could, that could work for 100 years.

    8. SPShaan Puri39:44

       Being thrifty.

    9. JLJoe Lonsdale39:44

       Being thrifty. Like that, that is a thing, like, over a very long time horizon.

    10. SPShaan Puri39:48

        I think you'd said, like, she bought one stock or something also. Like she's-

    11. JLJoe Lonsdale39:50

        My grandfather worked for Abbott and she held it for like 60 years.

    12. SPShaan Puri39:53

        [laughs]

    13. JLJoe Lonsdale39:53

        It happened to work really well. Great, you know. Really good for my, for my cousins and their inheritance. But you know, she was a wonderful lady. But you know, in general that's not probably how you wanna make, make money. You wanna make money especially these days. I mean, gosh, going back, back then it was probably a lot harder. But these days there's so many places with your time you can learn how to help build things, how to help create things, how to help be useful to other people, and like that's what you wanna be doing. You wanna be finding what are you passionate about? What are you good at? You have to figure out what you're good at. There's... You have to be willing to say, "This is what I'm not good at. This is what I'm good at. And then who else is good at this too who I could maybe learn from, who I could be like?" And spend your time trying to find a way to help those people. Try to find a way to learn how their businesses work. Uh, be part of a business and growing it and that's, that's how you see how everything works. And you know, if you're talented enough, then that, the people you succeed with are probably gonna be able to help you do something new later.

    14. SPShaan Puri40:38

        And that's what happened to you, right? That's how you spent your

19. 40:40 – 43:15

    Working on an A+ problem as an intern at PayPal

    1. SPShaan Puri40:40

       time. Uh, my understanding, if we, if we walk back in the journey, it's you're in college, you go to Stanford, and you, um, you end up working at PayPal. You become an intern at PayPal.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale40:50

       I, I tried a couple times. They rejected me the first time I applied actually.

    3. SPShaan Puri40:52

       What, what, what happened? Why did they reject you?

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale40:54

       I was a freshman at Stanford, and I remember being at a whiteboard with Max Levchin, and he probably doesn't remember this. He was the co-founder with Peter on the tech side and arguing about some tech thing.

    5. SPShaan Puri41:01

       Was PayPal already a big deal? Is that why you wanted to work there?

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale41:03

       It wasn't that much of a big deal yet. Like Peter Thiel wasn't who he was. Elon Musk wasn't who he was. Like those, you know, their companies combined to start it. Um, but I saw like all the smartest people, all these people I admired, and all these kind of iconoclasts going there, like people who thought differently, you know?

    7. SPShaan Puri41:16

       Hmm. And so you, you try one year, rejected. Try again the second year, you're in. What's your job? You're an intern at PayPal. What are you doing?

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale41:22

       Oh, it's not very glamorous at all. They basically had me setting up the PeopleSoft instance which is terrible.

    9. SPShaan Puri41:27

       [laughs]

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale41:27

        But I, you know, I sat next to this guy. We were in like... So Roloff, who's now like a star partner at Sequoia, was the CFO, and we were kind of in his domain at first. And I sat next to this guy who was managing all the money on, on Bloomberg at like a treasury thing. So I got to learn finance and treasury. And then, and then what was happening is, is the big challenge in the company is we were going bankrupt 'cause the Chinese and Russian mafia were stealing all of our money at the time. And so I ended up like hanging out after work and with these, all these guys who were like working on how do you stop the bad guys.

    11. SPShaan Puri41:51

        'Cause PayPal's like a honeypot. It's got all the money.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale41:53

        So like you go to 7-Eleven and the clerk there is like maybe having a, maybe having a bad year and like, you know, angry at capitalism, who knows. And so they're writing down secretly the numbers on the credit cards, and they write down 500 of these numbers. They can sell them each online for five or 10 bucks. The Russian mafia's buying them up.

    13. SPShaan Puri42:08

        Right.

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale42:08

        And then all of a sudden you get a chargeback that says $200, uh, on PayPal to something, and you're like, "I didn't do that." So, so you, so you, you charge it back, and then PayPal's left with the bill.

    15. SPShaan Puri42:16

        Right.

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale42:17

        And this was like costing PayPal several million dollars a month, and a lot of our competitors went bankrupt. And so we got to learn at the time how to basically stop the bad guys which was a kind of a fun problem to do.

    17. SPShaan Puri42:25

        And so w- I like what you did there which is, uh, one of the pieces of advice I give in, in, on the pod is you gotta work on the A+ problem at any company. So regardless of what your role is, you should try to at least know what is the A+ problem at this company right now.

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale42:35

        Yeah, try to be helpful to the real problem.

    19. SPShaan Puri42:36

        And then try to be helpful on that. That's like... 'Cause that's the needle mover and that's where you're gonna get the most learning, the most action.

    20. JLJoe Lonsdale42:42

        And I, and I didn't necessarily do this on purpose. I actually wanted to quit at first because the PeopleSoft thing was so dumb and so horrible.

    21. SPShaan Puri42:47

        [laughs]

    22. JLJoe Lonsdale42:47

        And I couldn't figure it out. And my dad convinced me, "Don't quit. Just like do what you can to be helpful otherwise there." So that was, that was a good dad advice to an 18-year-old.

    23. SPShaan Puri42:53

        Yeah, a good dad move. [laughs]

    24. JLJoe Lonsdale42:54

        Yeah.

    25. SPShaan Puri42:54

        You, uh, uh, I almost quit college for the same reason, and my dad was like... 'Cause I was like, "You know, I'm pretty mediocre here." I was like, "I'm used to being good." Then you go to a goo- like, you go to a top school-

    26. JLJoe Lonsdale43:04

        You didn't feel like you were one of the best

    27. SPShaan Puri43:05

        ... now I'm just, these were all the best high school kids, now I'm kind of in the middle. So I was like, "You know, may- it's too expensive. Maybe I shouldn't be here." And he's like, "That's exactly why you should be there." He was like-

    28. JLJoe Lonsdale43:13

        You gotta be challenged

    29. SPShaan Puri43:13

        ... "You wanna be surrounded by people who are

20. 43:15 – 44:14

    Be within 2 standard deviations of top talent

    1. SPShaan Puri43:15

       better than you."

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale43:15

       So one of the things Alex Karp had an insight on, my co-founder of Palantir, who was really good, is you can't really appreciate a talent unless you're within two standard deviations of it. So you, so you can think of talent as being on a normal curve for any typal- typical skill. Could be for math, could be for podcasts-

    3. SPShaan Puri43:28

       Right

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale43:28

       ... whatever it is. And like, so the- you just kind of have a natural level of talent, you could shift slightly. And so the very best people in the world at something might be fourth or fifth standard deviation, but if you yourself are second or third standard deviation, you can at least start to appreciate that.

    5. SPShaan Puri43:40

       Right.

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale43:40

       Whereas if, if, if, if let's say you're not great at physics, I don't know-

    7. SPShaan Puri43:42

       That's a terrible idea

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale43:42

       ... if you meet, like, Albert Einstein versus a top physics professor, you're gonna have no idea which one's Einstein, right? So it's the same thing in any other area. But if you rec-

    9. SPShaan Puri43:48

       You can't even differentiate.

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale43:49

        Exactly. But once you can recognize that talent, that lets you then harness it for things you're building and doing. So it, so it actually is very useful to be very good at something even if you're not the best.

    11. SPShaan Puri43:57

        Right. 'Cause, okay, 'cause you can notice what that-

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale43:58

        'Cause you can understand

    13. SPShaan Puri43:59

        ... this is actually the five standard deviation talent.

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale44:01

        I was good enough at computer science. Like, I got able to get A+es at Stanford. I had friends who were way smarter than me at computer science, but I was good enough to know who those kids were and how to harness them-

    15. SPShaan Puri44:09

        [laughs]

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale44:09

        ... and how to hire them, right?

    17. SPShaan Puri44:10

        Right.

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale44:10

        So just things like that.

    19. SPShaan Puri44:11

        That's interesting. So now you, the next thing

21. 44:14 – 46:56

    Early days at Palantir

    1. SPShaan Puri44:14

       you do, you go and you start Palantir, which-

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale44:16

       Well, yeah, well act- well actually I worked for Peter's family office for a while.

    3. SPShaan Puri44:19

       Okay.

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale44:19

       And he was the first investor in Facebook. And it was just his family office. There's tons of crazy shit going on. It was really fun.

    5. SPShaan Puri44:23

       [laughs]

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale44:24

       It was, like, you know, a really expensive restaurant that went bankrupt. There was, like, a spam company someone was starting. There was like, there's all sorts of crazy shit. And I was there, and like, Peter's a genius but he's not really a manager. So I started, like, I just like, "Oh, okay, I'll just, I'll take charge here." [laughs]

    7. SPShaan Puri44:37

       Right.

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale44:37

       So I started hiring people with him and, and kinda helping him run things. And some of the older guys are like, "Who the fuck is this 21-year-old kid?"

    9. SPShaan Puri44:43

       Right.

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale44:43

        So we ended up working on a project that summer to map out, like, what if we'd taken all this stuff we did at PayPal for anti-fraud and we, and we generalized it to like, for the intelligence community, what would that look like? And, and my roommate Stefan and I from Stanford at the time were, like, sketching up all these cool products and we were building prototypes, and that was kind of the, the genesis of Palantir.

    11. SPShaan Puri45:00

        Oh, interesting. Okay. So you guys, you basically had the... PayPal showed you a bit of a, bit of the problem.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale45:06

        It was like, so they like showed us a solution to a problem. They're like, "Wait a second." 'Cause, 'cause basically what happened is, like, I'd seen all these guys at PayPal, they're in the Secret Service and FBI. Those are the two groups that are in charge of anti-fraud, of like arresting the mafia guys. And these guys would come to us and ask us for advice on other things 'cause it was like, you know, it's kinda fun. It's cops and robbers. Like every, uh, I don't know if every young man likes this, but I-

    13. SPShaan Puri45:22

        Yeah, of course

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale45:22

        ... you know, it's the intel world, of course. You wanna help get the bad guys. So we're like, so like we were teaching them about cyber fraud or whatever you call internet fraud in 2000, 2001. And they start coming to us. And then 9/11 happened, and then the government started spending billions of dollars on, like, supposed solutions to catching bad guys, watch what's going on. And, and we knew these guys and we watched what they were spending money on, and we were like, "Oh my God, this is stupid."

    15. SPShaan Puri45:42

        Mm.

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale45:42

        Like, "This is way behind Silicon Valley." Not that like I'm so smart, but Silicon Valley itself-

    17. SPShaan Puri45:46

        Right

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale45:46

        ... had gotten way ahead just because it brought talent from all over the world. So whatever was being done in what we call, like, the, the, the Beltway, basically, in DC with the old integrators, they're still doing stuff from 20 years ago. And we're like, "Oh my gosh, this is like, our nation's under attack, uh, and we're wasting billions of dollars on stupid shit." So that's, that's when we said, "Okay. W- let's get together. Let's draw up, like, what we could actually be doing here if they did it better."

    19. SPShaan Puri46:06

        What happens next? So, like, walk us through. 'Cause t- okay, we see today, so I think I looked this morning, it's a $50 billion market cap company. That's in- amazing, but it's also 20 years later. So let, if we rewind the clock-

    20. JLJoe Lonsdale46:17

        [laughs]

    21. SPShaan Puri46:18

        ... to where most of the people who are gonna listen to this are, early stage, trying to figure things out, unclear which pathway to go, unclear if this is even gonna work. Take me back to that. What, what did you do to... What was it like and how'd you figure out, like, the first few steps?

    22. JLJoe Lonsdale46:32

        Well, there's lots of different ways to build successful companies, right? So I don't, I don't ever wanna be like, "This is the path." But-

    23. SPShaan Puri46:36

        Right

    24. JLJoe Lonsdale46:36

        ... our path was we were kinda watching all these companies come out of PayPal. So I was very lucky to be sitting there seeing, like, these guys, you know, doing IronPort and LinkedIn and YouTube and Yelp and et cetera. So, like, watching these, and the ones that I could tell were more successful, uh, that was, we were obvious at the time, were the ones that were attracting the very best engineers. It's almost like engineers were lined up trying to get into these companies,

22. 46:56 – 48:31

    Building a top engineering culture

    1. JLJoe Lonsdale46:56

       right?

    2. SPShaan Puri46:56

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JLJoe Lonsdale46:56

       So you, you think of, like, a lot of times people have a business idea and you're like, "How do I hire an engineer?"

    4. SPShaan Puri46:59

       Right.

    5. JLJoe Lonsdale46:59

       And like, and like it's the opposite. It's like the ones that-

    6. SPShaan Puri47:01

       A nightclub [laughs]

    7. JLJoe Lonsdale47:01

       ... are crushing it, it's like a nightclub where the engineers wish they could follow those people in. And w- and, and, and just those cultures, something about them, it's just the whole... It was just so dynamic. It was like they were able to try 10 times as much really quickly. You can just kinda tell, like, wow, like you can be really smart at business, but, like, if you could try, like, 10 times as many things, like you can be, like, slightly less smart at business [laughs] and still succeed, right? 'Cause you get to iterate. So, so we're like, "Okay, we need to build somehow a really top engineering culture." Like, that was, like, one of our core principles early on, is how do we... We used to say the engineer is king. Like, how do you, how do you have a culture that h- that attracts the very, very best and, and respects them and, like, makes them partially in charge of the company, you know, with, with you? And so we spent a lot of time on that. Um, it's a little bit chicken and egg. We obviously, I was lucky to have a bunch of my friends from growing up who were national math and chess champions-

    8. SPShaan Puri47:46

       Right

    9. JLJoe Lonsdale47:46

       ... all these smart guys. And like, so we bring this really core culture together, convince some of these really top PhDs from MIT and Stanford-

    10. SPShaan Puri47:52

        What, what was your pitch to them? Like, what's, what was the quick version that was getting them excited?

    11. JLJoe Lonsdale47:56

        Uh, it's-

    12. SPShaan Puri47:58

        'Cause you need a magnet, something to bring the talent in

    13. JLJoe Lonsdale48:01

        ... the government's spending tens of billions of dollars in this area. They're way behind what we figured out how to do in Silicon Valley. It's clear there's going to be, uh, a multi-billion dollar company that solves this problem. And they describe the problem to him as this very hard technical thing that if we have the best engineers, we're gonna be able to do it. And, and we're iterating closely, you know, with the national intelligence, with defense agencies and, and you get to go and solve this problem. And if we succeed, we're gonna save thousands of lives and, and we're gonna protect civil liberties. That was, that was, that was the high level.

    14. SPShaan Puri48:28

        [laughs]

    15. JLJoe Lonsdale48:29

        It's like, you know, it's, it's a fun, big mission.

23. 48:31 – 52:22

    Borrowing trust as 21-year old defense contractor

    1. SPShaan Puri48:31

       One, one of those things you said is we're working closely with these agencies. Like, how easy was it to work with them? 'Cause, you know, you're young. Uh, how do they even take you seriously? You're young and you're different.

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale48:39

       Yeah.

    3. SPShaan Puri48:39

       Right? You have a different approach.

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale48:41

       Yeah.

    5. SPShaan Puri48:41

       Uh-

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale48:41

       So, so, so maybe it wasn't entirely the case that they were iterating as closely as, as I'd like them to be with us for the first year or two. So Alex Karp was very good at this. Alex was, Alex was at first just an advisor to us helping us, and then, and then, and then Peter, uh, kept trying to, like, get us to hire a CEO 'cause Stefan and I were 21, and you couldn't really have a 21-year-old running something working with, like, senators and the-

    7. SPShaan Puri49:00

       Right

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale49:00

       ... Defense Department. But, like, these guys, these generals or former admirals would come in, and they just did not understand tech culture. And I'm sure they were great guys, they just wouldn't have fit at all with us. And so finally, Alex Karp, uh, had been, like, helping Peter raise money for things, they're friends from law school, and y- you know, he was, uh, he was a PhD in philosophy in Germany And in, in Europe a lot of the billionaires like to pretend they're philosophers. It's like the high status thing to do. Kinda like here they like to pretend they're podcasters or something.

    9. SPShaan Puri49:24

       Yeah. [laughs]

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale49:24

        I don't know. So, I don't know. But, but so basically, basically like he knew all these wealthy people, and so he started advising us how to talk to them, how to meet them, how to think about how institutions worked. And he had all these like casting things in terms of like how you had to approach people to take you seriously, which ki-

    11. SPShaan Puri49:37

        What do you mean by that? I, I don't understand.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale49:39

        Like if we show up and we're like these like quirky 21-year-olds from Silicon Valley, that's like, that's like, that's the wrong casting. Whereas if you show up and you h- walk in the door with you the former head of the CIA and, and, and Peter Thiel's made the intro after the being at PayPal, and another one of his friends who's senior has like, has explained to them that this is a project that they're helping and that it's gonna help in this way based on this big advancement made in Silicon Valley and they've been, and that they've already been talking to a bunch of people at the FBI and et cetera, and they want your feedback, like that's like a, that's like a high status way to come in the room.

    13. SPShaan Puri50:09

        Right.

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale50:09

        Whereas if I come in the room and be like, "Look how smart I am and look how right this is. This is better than what you're doing."

    15. SPShaan Puri50:13

        Right.

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale50:13

        Like, "Look at how smart it is." Like-

    17. SPShaan Puri50:14

        While you're wearing a hoodie and like, yeah.

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale50:15

        Yeah, exactly. They're like, they're like... Yeah, it, I, I guess, I guess a lot of young people maybe underestimate the substance is important, but it's, you can't lead with substance because substance is not taken seriously.

    19. SPShaan Puri50:25

        Mm.

    20. JLJoe Lonsdale50:25

        So you have to have the substance to win, but you have to have all the trappings of why they're taking it seriously and why they're comfortable doing it and why they're, why, you know, why it makes sense. So, so anyway, there's these things like this about how the real world works and, and who to talk to in c- an institution, who to get your help. So Al- Alex just had like this wisdom about like people and institutions and how to navigate that like the rest of us, we had the best tech culture, we didn't have that. And so we actually convinced him to pretend to be CEO for a few years so that, so that Peter would stop trying to hire like a really like senior like military guy. But then he was such a good CEO, then he actually, he actually was. He's still CEO 20 years later.

    21. SPShaan Puri50:55

        Right.

    22. JLJoe Lonsdale50:55

        So it, it worked out.

    23. SPShaan Puri50:56

        And you mentioned Peter. Peter was not active day-to-day necessarily.

    24. JLJoe Lonsdale50:59

        No, but he was critical for the company.

    25. SPShaan Puri51:00

        He was cri- What was he doing?

    26. JLJoe Lonsdale51:02

        Peter was like, first of all he's the financial support that no one would give us crazy kids. Like I told you, there's all these crazy projects going on. Like a lot of people around him are like, "This is the craziest thing you're doing. Like it's one thing to waste money on a restaurant, but like you're sending these kids to pretend to be spies and build things in-

    27. SPShaan Puri51:13

        Right

    28. JLJoe Lonsdale51:14

        ... intel. Like what are you thinking? There's no such thing as a company that does this." So, so like you have to give him credit for like being willing to bet on a crazy idea.

    29. SPShaan Puri51:19

        Yeah. He put a lot of money into it, right? Like-

    30. JLJoe Lonsdale51:21

        It was, it was several million dollars early on.
24. 52:22 – 54:45

    Peter Thiel’s biggest contrarian bet

    1. SPShaan Puri52:22

       And, um, Peter is, uh, he's an interesting guy for sure. He, you said restaurant. Curious, like-

    2. JLJoe Lonsdale52:28

       I mean, there was everything. I think, so this is, this is like not unique to Peter by the way. This is a really common rule, is that whenever someone becomes very successful for the first time, um, they usually become more expansive if they're an entrepreneur. I mean, all of us, we like to build things or we like to create things, and so, so once you have success you're like, "Okay, I'm really good at that. I probably could be really good at these six things as well." And then I think we all forget, okay, the reason I was really good at this first thing is 'cause I was like obsessively working on it for 80 or 90 hours a week.

    3. SPShaan Puri52:54

       Right.

    4. JLJoe Lonsdale52:54

       And I brought like 30 of my smartest friends into it, and we all iterated like crazy, and then we almost died multiple times.

    5. SPShaan Puri52:59

       Right.

    6. JLJoe Lonsdale52:59

       So we barely made it work.

    7. SPShaan Puri53:00

       Right. You kind of forget that [laughs] .

    8. JLJoe Lonsdale53:01

       You kind of forget that part and you're just like, "Oh yeah. Oh, I did this."

    9. SPShaan Puri53:03

       Right. [laughs]

    10. JLJoe Lonsdale53:03

        And you, so you, so you do all these things.

    11. SPShaan Puri53:05

        I can snap my fingers and do it again.

    12. JLJoe Lonsdale53:05

        Exactly. Like we're gonna do this, this, this, this. It's like, it's like playing Risk, you know, where you're conquering. And like it turns out that's not, that's not a good way. But this is what I've seen almost everyone go through this.

    13. SPShaan Puri53:13

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JLJoe Lonsdale53:13

        Like unless, I, I'm lucky to have watched multiple other friends go through it, so I, I still made the mistake in different ways, but you, but so, so there was very expansive and there were some things that maybe didn't make as much sense. And, and, and then, then of course, but then, you know, he's so freaking smart that some of them did make a lot of sense. He wrote the first check into Facebook at that time, so I mean-

    15. SPShaan Puri53:28

        Right

    16. JLJoe Lonsdale53:28

        ... give me a break, you know? You can, you can... I mean, everyone in venture is not gonna have 100% hit rate, and so, so, so you learn from your mistakes.

    17. SPShaan Puri53:34

        Were you around when he wrote that check into Facebook?

    18. JLJoe Lonsdale53:36

        Yeah. I mean, I, I get no credit for it and like-

    19. SPShaan Puri53:38

        Yeah. At the time, did it seem like a big deal or was it just like one of many things that he was doing and it was unclear that that was a, that that was Facebook?

    20. JLJoe Lonsdale53:44

        It was one of m- it was one of many things. They seemed particularly smart and interesting and I, you know, I, I can't say I thought it was gonna be as big as it was. I don't think anyone realized that.

    21. SPShaan Puri53:51

        Right.

    22. JLJoe Lonsdale53:51

        But, but it was, it was clear they were really smart, really interesting guys who were very aggressive. And, and so it was, it was a fun thing to be exposed to. I think one of my good friends who actually helped Peter write the check is played in the movie by, by an African American guy I think, which he jokes about. But it's like, you know, it was a good [laughs] ... It was, it was a good time to be there. It was fun. [laughs]

    23. SPShaan Puri54:05

        He's like a 5'4" white guy just-

    24. JLJoe Lonsdale54:06

        He's exactly, the little Jewish guy. [laughs]

    25. SPShaan Puri54:09

        [laughs] That's the ultimate compliment.

    26. JLJoe Lonsdale54:11

        He's like, "Sorry James, no credit for you."

    27. SPShaan Puri54:12

        If anyone out there wants to rewrite me as like a, a super handsome Black guy, I would love that.

    28. JLJoe Lonsdale54:16

        Exactly. Exactly.

    29. SPShaan Puri54:16

        That'd be amazing. Thank you for doing this.

    30. JLJoe Lonsdale54:18

        Awesome. Thanks, Shaan.

Episode duration: 54:50