Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #15: World Positive Capitalism with Vishal Vasishth: Investing in Hard Things That Matter

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#15: World Positive Capitalism with Vishal Vasishth: Investing in Hard Things That Matter · Love Conquers Fear

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  World positive capitalism kind of investing in that area.
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  And to me what that is just visualize 3 concentric circles,
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  systemic challenges which we face as a society.
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  Second one is like breakthrough technologies and 3rd is like
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  large market. The intersection of those three
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  things is to me building companies in that intersection
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  is what is world positive capitalism.
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  And what we have done is we've created an architecture at
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  obvious to invest in things which matter around 3 N stars.
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  And those three north stars are how to improve planet health,
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  human health and economic health.
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  Do you get any pushback on this thesis of world positive
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  capitalism? If you look at like last
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  hundreds of years, innovation has solved huge problems and
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  life on planet has become drastically better and there's a
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  huge progress which we can see. Of course there are like ups and
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  downs which happened, but there's a consist progress.
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  But like if you look at Warren Buffett's life, I think what one
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  of the biggest take away is it's always thought about not short
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  term, but has thought about long term.
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  How do you kind of assess your probability that we're going to
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  make it? I am 100% I believe the purity
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  of our souls which are interconnected like the good is
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  over going to take the negative. And what that means is it is
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  your and my job to make sure that people are clearly able to.
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  Now 51% people are clearly able to see their souls.
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  And what is that to make you? Welcome back everybody to the
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  Love Conquers Fear podcast. I have just had an amazing time
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  here in Austin over the past three days at the Henry Crown
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  Fellowship Forum. It's an annual gathering, which
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  this year, Josh Baer, who you saw in episode #4 or was that
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  five? I think it was episode 5 was
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  hosting this year and he hosted at Capital Factory and we, like
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  we always do with the Henry Crown Fellowship, went through
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  some really profound readings and then Josh hosted a day today
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  to talk about the fellowship fund and all the amazing things
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  happening with the portfolio companies.
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  So it was a really inspiring day.
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  And I'm here actually with with a very good friend who was also
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  in attendance and is also a Henry Crown Fellow.
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  So really looking for this episode and we're going to get
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  into a lot of fantastic topics. So I'm here with Vishal, he's
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  the Co founder of Obvious Ventures and he is an amazing
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  Henry Crown fellow. And we're going to really get
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  into what Obvious is all about and talk about all different
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  types of things. We've been having amazing
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  conversations here over the past few days, and I'm really proud
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  to call him one of my very, very close friends.
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  So, Vishal, welcome. Yeah, it's good to be here with
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  you. Awesome.
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  I'm so happy, Brett, I'm here and thanks to you and Josh, I
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  know that both of you have been telling me to come to Austin for
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  such a long time. Here you are and here I am and
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  in in your beautiful home. Well, thank you.
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  Thanks for hosting me and just this morning's walk and all our
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  discussions. Yes, has been amazing, some
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  great discussions. Yeah, yeah.
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  So, yeah. And we're so aligned in terms of
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  the positive changes that we want to see in the world.
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  And you're really putting it all out there with obvious ventures
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  in terms of your thesis about world positive capitalism.
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  So maybe we just start with that.
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  What's that all about? Yeah.
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  So I have been like all my life, I've been kind of, it's resulted
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  in this, this journey around around finding my purpose and my
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  purpose I think has has driven me towards investing in
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  companies that matter and, and for, and I've branded that name
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  or I'll be at obvious ventures. I've branded that as world
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  positive capitalism, kind of investing in that area.
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  And to me what that is, is kind of just visualize 3 concentric
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  circles, systemic challenges which we face as a society.
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  Second one is like breakthrough technologies and 3rd is like
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  large markets. The intersection of those three
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  things is is to me like building companies.
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  In that intersection is what is world positive capitalism, and
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  that is my life's work. Yeah, Yeah.
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  That's beautiful. And what are some of the
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  companies over the years that you you backed it obvious that
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  you really feel like fit that mold and have created a really
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  big impact? Yeah.
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  So in this idea of world positive capitalism, the way we
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  just invest in is investing in hard things that matter.
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  And, and what we've done is we've created an architecture at
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  obvious to invest in things which matter around 3 N stars
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  and those three North stars are how to improve planet health,
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  human health and economic health.
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  And in each of these three areas, we are thinking a lot
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  about what are the biggest macro shifts which are happening,
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  which are positive shifts driven by technology, driven by
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  different tailwinds and that's how we make investments, right.
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  So in case of Planet Health as an example, I think there are
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  some of these amazing shifts which are happening.
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  One example would be going from combustion to electrification
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  and to autonomy stack in transportation which is a
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  positive move which is happening.
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  Other would be dirty to clean energy to abundance of an
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  abundance of energy through shift towards nuclear.
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  So that's another kind of shift which is happening.
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  In human health. There are multiple shifts which
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  are happening. One of the shifts which we we
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  see is move from a fee for service to outcome driven
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  healthcare to agentic care where you can provide access to best
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  healthcare for everybody. That shift is happening in
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  biology. We are seeing a shift where a
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  lot of innovations have happened accidentally and, and, and now
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  we are seeing the shift towards more deterministic understanding
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  of human biology, almost biology becoming a math discipline.
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  So that's something which we're very excited about.
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  And similarly in economic health, which is our third area,
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  which which touches a lot of people's lives, daily lives, a
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  move towards bringing manufacturing closer to home
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  through robotics and automation and another big shift around
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  intelligence democratization where everybody could be the
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  best self they can be. So, so we make investments
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  around those those kind of ideas and and some of our successes
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  over the years have been in planet health companies like
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  Diamond Foundry building diamonds in a plasma reactor as
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  a way to get rid of mining and mining has huge lead negative
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  social and environmental negative effects.
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  Including with the human beings often that are doing the mining.
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  Yes, like that environmental destruction, you have to have
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  private armies to manage these these kind of mining sites.
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  So that's kind of 11 company which now this particular
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  company also is is getting a lot of attention from chips because
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  Diamond is a great heat sink and so there could be huge amount of
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  opportunities in that world in terms of energy saving.
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  Another area where we've found a lot of successes, we were early
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  on in a company called Beyond Meat, which is a plant based
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  protein company. I was.
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  Lucky enough to be in that one, yeah.
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  Awesome and. It did.
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  It did really well. It's that category is very
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  challenged now, but it was an amazing, amazing rice.
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  Yeah, no, I think it's the the whole shift was amazing.
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  We were able to distribute our shares to our investors, but
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  like now that category is struggling.
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  You're totally right. But I think.
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  I still love the product though. You know, I'm vegetarian for
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  over 15 years now and that was a game changer because plant based
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  meat prior to Beyond Meat didn't really taste that good.
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  And then Beyond Meat came along and Impossible and so many
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  others. I'm actually investor in Upside
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  Foods, which is trying to make it from the real cells of the
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  animal and literally duplicate the process of, you know,
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  chicken. And the only time I've broken my
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  vegetarian Ness is when when Uma, you know, the CEO and and
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  founder of of upside foods brought over chicken.
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  He was he was serving it at the Co founder of Airbnb's home who
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  lives here in Austin and showing them that it tasted exactly like
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  chicken because it's molecularly etcetera.
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  It literally is just chicken and it tasted exactly like chicken,
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  like at least what I remember. I remember Uma very fondly.
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  Long time ago, the company used to be called Memphis.
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  Meat. It was a Memphis meat.
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  Yeah, yeah, no. And he's been on this kind of
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  amazing journey. Yeah, and he's an amazing human
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  being. Yeah, yeah.
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  So I think like, so in planet Health, hopefully that gives you
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  an idea of like, hey, can we make things in a different ways
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  which are more, less destructive and can, can help in this path
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  towards abundance in human health.
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  We have a company called Verta Health, which is reversing type
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  2 diabetes and they're seeing amazing results.
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  Like think about people you know who are not able to even tie
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  laces and, and, and, and they're changing that the lives of
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  those, those those folks through the street treatment amazing
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  entrepreneur Sami Incan, who who built a company called Trulia
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  before and, and now now he's building Bhutta and.
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  Truly, it was a huge company. Yeah, it was.
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  It was a very successful company.
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  The Park brothers like Todd Park and Ed Park have built multiple
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  companies before and, and they like, including Athena Health,
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  and now they're building a company called Devoted Health.
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  They're ground fellows with us as well.
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  Yeah. I know Todd Park, he, I'll never
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  forget a capital factory moment because we were just a capital
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  factory when President Obama was on the jobs tour.
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  He was there with the CTO of the United States, who was Todd
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  Park, and they were playing this role.
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  It was really fun. Where three companies that were
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  a capital factory got to pitch to Obama and Todd.
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  And Obama, you know, kept on asking Todd what he thought.
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  And Todd was making all these amazing observations.
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  And he's like, you know, maybe after I'm president, we should
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  just go into venture capital together and just do this.
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  And. And then Todd instead, like, no,
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  I think I'm going to start a company and he starts to lose
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  health. Yeah.
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  No, I think he, he's such a a good energy human being.
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  He's a very good person. Yeah, no.
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  And and he's always, he's kind of his life is all about kind of
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  solving problems and like, and I feel like devoted is kind.
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  He's been preparing for this company for forever.
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  And and he wants to and inspired by like, hey, what's the
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  healthcare which his parents deserve?
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  And how do we deliver that in a very convoluted system which we
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  have in the US? So.
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  So that's a, we're very fortunate to be a part of that
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  company. I think on the biology side, we
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  were early investors in a company called Recursion Pharma,
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  which is a fascinating company which is using robotics and
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  machine vision and AI as a way to come up with new drugs.
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  So what it does is and when it started, what it did was you
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  have cells and, and you have on the other side different
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  molecules and you'll connect with each other and, and, and
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  you'll take pictures of these cells and unhealthy cells looks
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  really bad and healthy cells start look, starts looking very
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  nice on a picture basis. And then through that whole
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  process in high throughput experimentation, you will find
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  which cell is getting better and what drug would work for that
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  particular cell. That school.
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  That is just like. I mean, that immediately makes
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  me start thinking about alpha fold and you know, how
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  Dimasisibus won the Nobel Prize for alpha fold and how that's
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  going to just radically change our discovery of all different
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  types of medicines. And then applying that with
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  that, I mean, we're going to solve disease.
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  I think we are going to be our AI in biology is an amazing,
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  amazing place to use innovation and improvement activity.
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  It's just like we don't understand biology really well.
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  And if you can move and make it much more of a math discipline
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  and understand its complications and be able to understand how do
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  we prevent and eradicate disease.
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  We are at the cusp of that and it is going to be so much.
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  And we've been investing a lot like there are a lot of maybe
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  last 10 companies, half of them have been AI and biology based
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  companies. So we're very excited about that
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  domain. Other area which we are very
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  fascinated about is mental health.
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  We we think it's one of our biggest problems which we face
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  as a humanity. And so we've invested in a
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  company called Micromedica, which is using psychedelics as a
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  way to tackle the hardest challenges in mental health.
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  So, so that's another company was started by a guy named Paul
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  Stammet. I met him for the first time at
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  this year's Ted, and he was such a joyous, kind guy.
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  I actually met him and his wife and he was so kind.
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  He, he was really sweet to me. And my niece Chantel, it was her
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  first time going to Ted and it was, it was so great bringing
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  her. She's, she's 29 years old.
• 15:08
  And he asked for our address and we've spent a lot of time
• 15:12
  talking to him and sent me the copy of his newest book, which
• 15:15
  is, which is amazing. I mean, he's done more to
• 15:18
  categorize the different types of mushrooms that contain
• 15:23
  psilocybin than any person in history, unless you go back
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  probably to the to the ancient days where different indigenous,
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  you know, types of people that lived on the land probably
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  actually knew more than Paul Stammons, but but outside of
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  them. I know.
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  I think that we. Lost that wisdom to the ages and
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  he's bringing it back. I.
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  Think he's like he's he's a person who's been consumed by
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  this space for such a long time to understand and experience and
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  how how can he make an impact and.
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  Yeah, he's, he's I, I can tell you for sure, like reading his
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  energy and being there in person with him.
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  He is rooted deeply in love. And he is he really, You can
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  tell he really, really cares about humanity.
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  Yeah, No, I think we've been very fortunate.
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  We're fortunate to be backers of his, his company and, and we do
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  a lot of other work in like, you know, in just to kind of
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  systemically understand our human brain and what, how, how
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  do we make us as a species live, kind of live a joyful life, you
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  know, So that's kind of area of deep interest.
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  And then in economic health, we are very interested in how do
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  we, how do we help SMBs and individual entrepreneurs thrive?
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  How do we give more and more like do innovation in a way that
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  can amplify their, their opportunities.
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  And so we are investors in a company called Gusto, which is a
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  benefits platform. They've been growing rapidly and
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  and it provides like smaller firms, the highest quality
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  software, which traditionally was not available to to them.
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  And and so this particular the company has built a very mission
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  driven company targeted towards long tail entrepreneurs and so
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  that they can thrive. We're very interested also in in
• 17:31
  inquest for abundance quest for to kind of really understand
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  robotics and how how robotics could be utilized in, in, in
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  dirty, dull and dangerous jobs. So we are investors in a company
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  called Dexterity robotics, which is doing some cutting edge work.
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  And more recently, we have just invested in a company which,
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  which is trying to kind of solve, which is a very hard
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  problem in in robotics dexterity.
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  How, how do you build an AI enabled dexterous hand, which is
• 18:06
  an unsolved problem. So, so hopefully that gives you
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  a taste of, you know, I talked about world positive around how
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  how can we solve these problems, hard problems, which moves
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  humanity forward and and we merchandised around that idea. 3
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  broad areas. How do we improve our, our, our
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  planet health, human health and economic health, which are cut 3
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  fundamental building blocks of of society?
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  And how do we move the the world forward through the power of
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  entrepreneur entrepreneurship. You know, I'm a huge believer of
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  people, irrespective whether it's for profit, nonprofit or
• 18:51
  policy folks, people who move things from zero to 1 and then
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  one to thousands, you know, like just those are people who move
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  our society forward. And I'm just so blessed to be
• 19:04
  part of this. So I'm kind of honestly a little
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  bit overwhelmed at how much you just told me.
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  I mean, how broad of an impact that is.
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  And it literally fills me with love to hear about all the
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  different vectors you're addressing with world positive
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  capitalism. And I'm, I'm curious some do you
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  get any pushback on this thesis of world positive capitalism?
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  Does anybody say, because it just seems obvious that
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  everybody, well that's the name of the firm, right, obvious
• 19:42
  ventures that everybody would say, well, of course that sounds
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  amazing. Yeah, I think a lot of these if
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  you look at like last hundreds of years innovation have solved
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  huge problems and and life on planet have has become
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  drastically better and and there's a huge progress which we
• 20:05
  can conceive. Of course there are like ups and
• 20:07
  downs which happened, but there's a consistent progress.
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  But when you brand a farm around this belief that we want to
• 20:21
  invest in in things. Which are solving huge problems
• 20:28
  and, and, and, and that's our kind of thesis.
• 20:34
  There are certain people who always get like, they wonder
• 20:38
  like, hey, do you want to make money or not?
• 20:42
  And, and, and we are a, a traditional venture capital
• 20:45
  fund. So we have to kind of raise
• 20:46
  money from our limited partners. And, and so my work also has
• 20:52
  been, is, is if you in a purest form, pursue purpose and purpose
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  is embedded in doing the right thing for humanity and solving
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  real problems which make life better, right?
• 21:09
  That of course you're going to make lot of money, right?
• 21:15
  But it's hard for some people to understand because in a
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  capitalistic system, sometimes just people want like to hear,
• 21:23
  tell me you only care about making the most amount of
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  returns, right? Not the process of creating most
• 21:31
  amount of returns. I don't know if that makes
• 21:32
  sense. No, it totally makes sense.
• 21:34
  And you know what I would say to those people that are the
• 21:38
  skeptics is, you know, one of the best experiences of my life
• 21:42
  was spending time with Warren Buffett.
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  Thanks. Actually, thanks to the Henry
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  Crown Fellowship. So I get to spend 4 hours with
• 21:49
  him one day, you know, we picked him up in on a trolley called
• 21:55
  Ollie. The trolley went near his home
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  and you know, we see his house and it's very modest.
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  And this is the best investor in the world.
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  And then that led me to, after seeing how much he just is
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  rooted in love and spending that time with him and learning about
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  his habits, I went to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
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  meeting multiple times. And these things, you know, are
• 22:26
  not lost on me as ACEO, but maybe other people would not
• 22:32
  zero in on them. But I really zero in on
• 22:34
  someone's cultural manifestation, you know, that
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  What is the reality they're trying to create in the
• 22:43
  environment that they're in? Are they trying to lead people
• 22:46
  to fear and just like, hey, you know, you don't do that, it's
• 22:51
  like lights out, you know, you're fired, etcetera.
• 22:53
  Or are they trying to lead people with love?
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  And the most delightful part of the shareholders meeting, I can
• 22:59
  tell you is watching him walk the trade show floor with all
• 23:06
  the companies that their investors or owners in.
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  And he is in a state of absolute bliss.
• 23:14
  Like he's in a, he's like a Buddha.
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  He's he's in a state of absolute joy.
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  And it's just shows on his face. It shows on the other people's
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  face. And it actually led me one time
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  to ask a friend of mine who is this guy Sam Taylor, who his
• 23:36
  company, he was CEO of Oriental Trading, which is a kind of a
• 23:41
  tchotchke company like you probably get the catalogues like
• 23:44
  for Halloween, etcetera. And he sold his company to
• 23:49
  Warren Buffett. He was really suffering under
• 23:52
  private equity and sold it. And I asked him in front of
• 23:58
  about 80 people, as we're all trying to learn from the CE OS
• 24:03
  of Warren Buffett for Folio companies, what is it like to
• 24:07
  work with him. And he started crying.
• 24:09
  Kid you not, he started crying. And I'm like, I was really
• 24:13
  struck because this is like a very close friend of mine.
• 24:16
  I've known Sam for a long time. He used to serve on the board of
• 24:18
  directors of shopped at org with him.
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  Very tragically, Sam has passed away from from from brain
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  cancer. Like really, really fought A
• 24:27
  heroic battle. And and you know, he said, I
• 24:33
  want you to understand. They looked at everybody that I
• 24:36
  was suffering under private equity because they did not care
• 24:40
  about a single person at the company, he said.
• 24:43
  But when Warren Buffett bought the company, he would constantly
• 24:46
  come and spend time with us. And every single person there,
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  he would look into their eyes with incredible humanity and
• 24:53
  connection. And he's the manifestation of
• 24:57
  love. And you know, any VC or any
• 25:00
  capitalist watching this, I challenge you to point out an
• 25:04
  investor with a better track record over any similar period
• 25:09
  of time that Warren Buffett, you know, and that is the that that
• 25:14
  is the manifestation of love meeting capitalism like he is.
• 25:19
  He and Charlie Munger, both are the avatars for that.
• 25:21
  I mean, Harley Munger obviously passed away recently, but
• 25:25
  there's so much wisdom that Charlie Munger has given to the
• 25:28
  world. I have, I have for Charlie's
• 25:30
  Almanac, which actually the Co founder of dated out World who's
• 25:35
  now leading it at ServiceNow, Matt Lessig, who's an amazing
• 25:39
  human being. He gave it to me and there's so
• 25:43
  much philosophy in there. It's like watching Plato and
• 25:46
  Aristotle when I watched them go back and forth at the
• 25:48
  shareholders meeting. No, I think first of all I'm so
• 25:51
  jealous that you met him and spent 4 hours because that'll be
• 25:54
  my dream. I think you should do it.
• 25:56
  I need to. I can arrange that by the way.
• 25:59
  I would I would like. I can't, I can't, I can't
• 26:02
  promise you to spend that much time, but I can arrange for you
• 26:05
  the event where you go to the shareholders meeting and
• 26:09
  hopefully that happens as well. I would love that that you'll
• 26:12
  make my my. My good friend Phil Terry, he
• 26:15
  does an annual pilgrimage with leaders and and he has a lot of
• 26:19
  good access. But like if you look at Warren
• 26:22
  Buffett's life, I think what one of the biggest take away is, and
• 26:29
  he's always thought about not short term, but has thought
• 26:33
  about long term. And if you think about kind of
• 26:37
  the biggest suffering of human nature is we are creatures of
• 26:42
  short termism and we want something tomorrow, but it's
• 26:47
  very hard for us to wait for month or years.
• 26:53
  And a lot of things which Warren Buffett talks about in his
• 26:57
  philosophy are very, very simple things which are embedded around
• 27:03
  truth. And but it's so hard for us to
• 27:09
  follow that and execute around that.
• 27:12
  So similarly at obvious, I think we are part of this amazing
• 27:17
  planet, we have this amazing life.
• 27:21
  And if we get an opportunity to to make a planet better, there's
• 27:29
  no business to be done on a dead planet, right?
• 27:33
  We only have one planet. We only have one planet.
• 27:35
  Yeah, of course Elon Musk wants to go to Mars or something.
• 27:38
  But like I think, but like I think we have to protect what we
• 27:40
  have versus go for the greener pastures because we know.
• 27:44
  It's not greener there. Not greener there it was just
• 27:48
  too. I mean, you know, it was Richard
• 27:51
  Garriott who educated me that to have life on Mars, if you're a
• 27:57
  human being, you would you would irradiate yourself on the
• 28:01
  surface of Mars, like the radiation would kill you almost
• 28:03
  instantly. So you have to either build
• 28:05
  underground or you have to have domes that protect you from the
• 28:08
  radiation. Similarly, if we can improve and
• 28:13
  we've already done that, we've improved legitimately, although
• 28:16
  we are struggling now in the US to like it's has declined.
• 28:19
  But but if you're not solving and improving life and quality
• 28:23
  of life, what are we investing around, right?
• 28:27
  And then each family, each individual should have a
• 28:33
  productive work so that every day they show up and, and there
• 28:39
  is some purpose which is driving them, right.
• 28:41
  And, and, and so if you do not have economic help in every
• 28:48
  community and having vibrant communities, then why are we
• 28:51
  doing what we're doing right? So to me, the way I look at
• 28:55
  things, even for the skeptics, is if you're not investing in
• 29:01
  these fundamental truths, then why are we doing what we're
• 29:05
  doing right? Because yeah, that's the arc.
• 29:09
  That's the arc which we are investing around.
• 29:12
  So. You know, I I've known you for a
• 29:15
  long time and I've never understood the name obvious
• 29:19
  ventures as much as I do now, honestly, because this is it.
• 29:23
  I mean, this is completely obvious that this is the way we
• 29:27
  should be. Was it always this way?
• 29:29
  It obvious when you started out? Like what's been the journey to
• 29:32
  get to this point? Or was it from the beginning?
• 29:36
  You know we're going to invest in these.
• 29:38
  World positive companies for for obvious as a journey or my
• 29:43
  journey well for. Obvious.
• 29:45
  Yeah, 'cause you've been, it's, it's 12 years now, right?
• 29:47
  Yeah, 12 years and. And you Co founded it I.
• 29:50
  Co founded it with with two other Co founders, James Joaquin
• 29:57
  and EB Williams. EB has had a Midas touch in the
• 30:02
  world of publishing, building companies like Blogger, Twitter
• 30:07
  and Medium. And then James has been a serial
• 30:10
  tech entrepreneur and, and was at a company called Zoom, which
• 30:16
  was in the money transfer business, where he experienced
• 30:19
  doing the right thing for people, just created this
• 30:24
  cumulative effect of a Better Business.
• 30:27
  And, and so when we all connected and I was investing in
• 30:31
  India before this and when we all connected, we were asking a
• 30:36
  question, why are we not investing in things which
• 30:40
  matter? Why is everybody just chasing
• 30:43
  like 90% SAS deals? And we, we saw an opportunity
• 30:49
  and, and, and we also came to this realization, the beauty of
• 30:56
  venture as an asset class. This is the only asset class
• 31:01
  where we can envision a future and can start building that
• 31:05
  future. There's no other asset class.
• 31:08
  You can't do that in hedge fund private equity.
• 31:11
  The policy is the other one. Like if you can get amazing
• 31:13
  leaders who are futuristic, were thoughtful, they can create that
• 31:20
  kind of a change. But from a capitalism point of
• 31:23
  view, this is the only asset class.
• 31:25
  And so we said like he given this a vacuum and this is the
• 31:31
  only asset class kind of which can deliver the world we want to
• 31:35
  kind of build. And so we we came up with this
• 31:38
  thesis of ball positive and and EV was was a believer and he not
• 31:48
  only as a Co founder, he, he became a big investor in the
• 31:52
  fund. And now we're just closing our
• 31:55
  fifth fund in last 12 years with with six public offerings.
• 32:02
  We have returned over $350 million back to investors, lot
• 32:10
  of M&A transactions, multiple DECA cons all around this idea
• 32:19
  towards this fundamental truth which is like improving life on
• 32:22
  the Internet. Yeah, it's beautiful.
• 32:25
  I mean, I can tell and obviously I've known you that this really
• 32:31
  is something that brings you true joy and and, and it's
• 32:35
  truly, you know, you're, you're living your meaning in doing
• 32:39
  this. And I've always tried to do the
• 32:42
  same. But I've been on the
• 32:44
  entrepreneur side. I have, you know, I do have our
• 32:49
  family office and I do invest in startups.
• 32:51
  But when I tried to start up my own venture capital fund, which
• 32:59
  was called Hurt plus Harbach with this guy, Jeff Harbach,
• 33:05
  who's a great, great guy. He he became the CEO of the
• 33:09
  Kauffman Fellows program and he was a Kauffman Fellow himself.
• 33:16
  You know, I got about a year and a half into it.
• 33:19
  This is after a bizarre voice went public and and I had
• 33:22
  retired for a while and then I decided this could be this would
• 33:28
  be a good thing to do. I'd worked at Austin Ventures
• 33:31
  kind of part time to see what it was like behind the scenes and
• 33:35
  got inspired to think I can do this with Jeff.
• 33:41
  I about two months into it of raising money, which I was very
• 33:46
  successful at raising the money. Like I'd raised like half the
• 33:49
  fund in like 2 months, but I'd never got in the paperwork done.
• 33:54
  I was, you know, I'd gotten the commitments.
• 33:57
  I just felt like this is not for me.
• 34:00
  This is not what I was meant to do.
• 34:01
  I'm meant to be an entrepreneur and stay that course.
• 34:06
  And I met with our rabbi, Rabbi Neil Bloom off, who's an
• 34:09
  amazing, amazing person. And I said, I feel so
• 34:13
  embarrassed. And he said, Brett, you should
• 34:18
  celebrate this because for you, you figured something out in two
• 34:23
  months. He's like some people that I
• 34:25
  meet with It takes them 10 years to figure.
• 34:28
  Out. It's not right for them.
• 34:31
  And so celebrate that. And he's like, I would actually
• 34:35
  even encourage you to celebrate publicly.
• 34:37
  And so I wrote this post. You can find it at lucky 7 dot
• 34:40
  IO, which is my blog called Listening to Your Soul.
• 34:43
  This is a long time ago. And I just let it all out there
• 34:48
  and just bared my soul that this wasn't my calling.
• 34:51
  And you know, I'm sorry, but I never drew.
• 34:54
  I never, you know, signed the paperwork.
• 34:57
  I never never drew capital, but I have immense respect for
• 35:02
  people that do it that, that, that know it's right for them
• 35:06
  and you're doing it for all the right reasons.
• 35:09
  And you're, you've focused it in an area which is really
• 35:13
  inspiring to me and, and I think will be inspiring to a lot of
• 35:16
  people listening to this. So I just want to honor that and
• 35:19
  thank you for that. When you when you go back in The
• 35:23
  Time Machine with, you know, investing in India before and
• 35:29
  maybe we rewind all the way back to your childhood.
• 35:31
  Like, I'm curious, you know, how the young Vishal, like got to
• 35:35
  this point of the Vishal sitting in front of me today?
• 35:40
  I think, Brett, growing up as young Vishal, I would have never
• 35:45
  dreamt that I'll be sitting next to you here.
• 35:47
  And that's God's honest truth. I am.
• 35:50
  I'm sorry, you know. What I would feel the same way
• 35:52
  because because honestly, when I grew up in Austin, it was
• 35:56
  170,000 people. It was the size of Anchorage, AK
• 35:59
  today and it was like Willie Nelson was the biggest thing
• 36:02
  going on here. So so I feel the same way.
• 36:05
  So we are both blessed to be like here today and just
• 36:09
  chatting. Yeah, my my journey.
• 36:16
  I grew up in a small town called Chandigarh which is up north in
• 36:20
  I5 bars north of Delhi. 2 to a middle class family who believed
• 36:29
  in education. My mom side of family was
• 36:38
  doctors and very influential. Senior folks in the army in that
• 36:45
  time kind of worked for the British Army.
• 36:49
  They lived in what is currently Pakistan and, and during during
• 36:58
  the partition, they moved from Pakistan back to India, left
• 37:02
  everything there. I remember like my mom telling
• 37:06
  me like, hey, your grandfather had a Mercedes and like at that
• 37:10
  time and, and, but everything had to be left and just
• 37:13
  everything, everything, yeah, like a huge house and stuff.
• 37:17
  So, and they moved to India and, and my father side of business.
• 37:23
  Oh, sorry. My father's side grew up in
• 37:27
  Delhi and, and he, his father was not very was, was poor.
• 37:36
  And they were brothers and sisters like 6 of them.
• 37:41
  And they would sleep in a very small room and and my
• 37:47
  grandfather's brothers were very successful.
• 37:53
  So part of the family were very successful.
• 37:55
  But my grandfather from my paternal side was not, was, was
• 38:02
  poor. And so that is kind of where I
• 38:07
  that's the circumstances. I grew up my parents were who
• 38:10
  both are no more, which I always miss them every day.
• 38:17
  I grew up a regular middle class life and these guys, my parents
• 38:21
  took care of everything. Like they just never made me
• 38:24
  realize like, yeah, I'm missing anything.
• 38:26
  And, and, and, but there was always this message of study
• 38:32
  and, and, and, but I, I remember I was more careless and I didn't
• 38:38
  study much. And, and, and I remember my
• 38:43
  father always saying like, Hey, you need to kind of study or,
• 38:45
  or, or choose the sport and become best at that sport.
• 38:48
  And I was really not good at that sport, but I was consumed
• 38:51
  by it, which is a sport called cricket, which is very famous in
• 38:54
  India and. Cricket matches are very long.
• 38:58
  They're very, very long and, and, and then like in 12th
• 39:04
  grade, my father passed away. And, and, and that at that time,
• 39:15
  I just feel like as I look backwards was a pivotal shift in
• 39:19
  my thinking. I became much more serious.
• 39:22
  I felt like there was burden on me to kind of build a life and,
• 39:29
  and, and that and everybody looks for like somebody to look
• 39:35
  up to as a mentor. There was a cousin of mine who
• 39:39
  was in the US and had become very successful at that time was
• 39:44
  also building a company and, and, and he would always come
• 39:50
  back to India and kind of give us like small pencils or
• 39:53
  something. And we were like on top of the
• 39:55
  world, like, Oh my God, like our cousin has brought something for
• 39:58
  us. What's it going to be this time?
• 40:01
  What's going to be this time like we were all kids like
• 40:04
  waiting for them to open up their their luggage and.
• 40:09
  This be the Santa Claus equivalent?
• 40:11
  Yeah, Or Hanukkah, Harry. If he lives in San Francisco,
• 40:15
  he'll be like listening to this now.
• 40:17
  I've never shared this with him and, and, and so he kind of
• 40:23
  provided not knowing, he provided me a path saying like,
• 40:26
  hey, maybe there's a better opportunity.
• 40:28
  So I studied hard and got into an engineering school and then
• 40:34
  applied to the US and got got into a master's program here.
• 40:39
  And I'm just so thankful to the US system of people who are
• 40:44
  immigrants who cannot afford, because I came here with almost
• 40:49
  nothing, I was able to get full scholarship and research
• 40:54
  assistantship, which would pay my monthly expense.
• 40:59
  So I'm just very, very thankful for that system.
• 41:02
  And and I had a polymer science background.
• 41:07
  And the most important thing at that point was survival in I was
• 41:13
  not thinking about venture capital.
• 41:15
  I did not know what that was. And, and, and in that quest of
• 41:21
  survival and fascination of understanding what what kind of
• 41:27
  delightful products or consumers why they buy something, I got
• 41:32
  really excited about doing a project where Nike was a
• 41:35
  customer. And then for 10 odd years I
• 41:39
  ended up joining a company called Patagonia, which is
• 41:43
  outdoor lifestyle brand. Amazing.
• 41:45
  Company, an amazing company yeah, that's right, right.
• 41:48
  Ivan Shenard and Melinda Shenard, the 22 Co founders and
• 41:54
  and I remember distinctly how clueless I was.
• 42:00
  Brett is I walked into the company wearing a suit and then
• 42:04
  I for for an interview and I was just looking around and
• 42:09
  everybody's was wearing shorts, right?
• 42:11
  And there's this Yvonne guy walks in with a flip flop and a
• 42:14
  tattered short and my going to be manager interviews or
• 42:20
  introduces me and and I realize I'm like, Hey, I need to come
• 42:25
  make a change. So I tell this guy Joe Welkowski
• 42:27
  was his name. I'm like Joe, I need to kind of
• 42:29
  go change, right, I'm not feeling good, right, right,
• 42:32
  right. And so that decision that
• 42:40
  resulted in potentially be getting hired in a company which
• 42:44
  I did not know much about. And and that company changed
• 42:49
  fundamentally changed me. I came in as a person who was
• 42:54
  trying to survive, was a huge believer in hardcore capitalism
• 43:01
  and, and in 10 years learned the role of business businesses role
• 43:11
  in the context of society, building excellent product
• 43:15
  building and doing it in a way there's amazing culture.
• 43:19
  How do you kind of do it in in the context of building
• 43:23
  stakeholder value? And nothing affected actually
• 43:26
  the bottom line kept on improving.
• 43:28
  So I'm like, so early on, I just learned by doing the right
• 43:32
  thing, you can end up making more money here as well.
• 43:36
  And, and that experience became formative.
• 43:41
  And as I was leaving and I was thinking about after they
• 43:44
  sponsored me for the green card and I, I could be secured in, in
• 43:52
  the USII started as I was coming out, I was more of a refined
• 44:01
  capitalist. What, what in Austin you all
• 44:04
  call conscious capitalist. And, and so that journey of
• 44:08
  hardcore capitalist survival to a system thinker and, and, and a
• 44:15
  more conscious capitalist is, will happen thanks to Paragonia.
• 44:19
  So I'll be always indebted to that company and Shenads for
• 44:24
  providing that, that experience at that formative age.
• 44:28
  And, and, and with that, I started thinking like what next?
• 44:31
  And, and, and there are a couple of my friends who got connected
• 44:38
  to me thanks to Patagonia, and you may know them.
• 44:40
  Joe Welkas, is it not? J Cohen Gilbert and Bart
• 44:44
  Houlihan. Yes, I do.
• 44:46
  Yeah. Jay and Bart, actually, you you
• 44:49
  don't know this about me. I don't think.
• 44:51
  I don't think we've ever talked about this.
• 44:53
  But I went to the awards, the Aspen Institute awards ceremony
• 45:01
  when I was just in the Henry Crown Fellowship and J and Bark
• 45:08
  and Andrew were getting an award for founding the B Corporation
• 45:12
  movement, benefit Corporation movement.
• 45:14
  And I came back from that. We had just started dated out
• 45:19
  world and I told my Co founders I said, hey, I really think this
• 45:25
  is capitalism 2 dot O and we need to convert from AC Corp to
• 45:29
  AB Corp. But we had just gotten a term
• 45:32
  sheet from Jason Pressman Shasta ventures for our Series A to
• 45:36
  lead our Series A. And so I called up Jason and I
• 45:43
  had the blessing of my Co founders.
• 45:46
  They were that that didn't take much time.
• 45:48
  They were like, of course and Jason was very open to it, but
• 45:53
  he said, hey, let's talk about the first board meeting and this
• 45:55
  would be the first B Corp we've ever invested in at Shasta
• 45:58
  Nitrous. And the first board meeting, I
• 46:02
  was all like ready with this big presentation.
• 46:06
  And it was, it was like it carved out an hour and a half of
• 46:08
  time, you know, etcetera. And within 30 minutes of that
• 46:11
  board meeting, Jason's like, this makes so much sense, let's
• 46:14
  just do it. And that was it.
• 46:16
  We converted to AB Corporation, but it was really, you know,
• 46:20
  I've, I've told Jay and and Bart and Andrew that story many
• 46:23
  times. You know, very sadly, like
• 46:25
  Andrew passed away, passed away recently.
• 46:27
  But what they did with that movement is really amazing.
• 46:32
  Yeah. So the corporation movement and,
• 46:34
  and so they, yeah, really want to honor them in the spirit of
• 46:38
  the fellowship too, and how they changed my life.
• 46:41
  That's so cool that that you had that positive impact with them
• 46:44
  as well. Yeah, I know.
• 46:45
  I, I think I remember like as I was thinking about leaving
• 46:48
  Patagonia and Jay had just sold his company and one which was a
• 46:54
  basketball shoe company. And he and I started kind of
• 46:57
  discussing like, hey, what should a new kind of corporation
• 47:00
  look like? And we came up with this name B
• 47:05
  and. And also you were in the room
• 47:07
  where it happened. Where?
• 47:07
  Oh yeah, yeah, first. You actually came up.
• 47:09
  With yeah, yeah, yeah, we have. I have a the first T-shirt we
• 47:12
  made of of B before we were actually thinking about like,
• 47:15
  let's start a clothing company which is going to compete with
• 47:18
  Gap as B and we're going to give a a large part of profits to
• 47:24
  something else. All right, like from like to non
• 47:27
  profits and stuff. So that was the original idea we
• 47:30
  were brainstorming and then as we did more and more thought
• 47:35
  process, we said like, hey, why not make a system exchange?
• 47:38
  And so we up leveled it to a non profit and we had or Jay had
• 47:45
  his, his friend Bart Houlihan, who was part of Andwan joined
• 47:49
  joined us and and Jay left to Costa Rica for some time and
• 47:53
  Bart and I continued to work on it and and once it started kind
• 47:59
  of formulating, they were ready. That's when I think Andrew Kosoy
• 48:06
  came into the picture. As I was going through this
• 48:10
  whole process, I just loved this whole idea, but I got cold feet.
• 48:14
  Like I didn't want to be a full time nonprofit person building
• 48:19
  that that shop. So I decided to not join them
• 48:25
  full time and they just took the whole project and have executed
• 48:29
  so beautiful and with love. And then you meet Jay, you meet
• 48:34
  Bart, you meet. And do you know that they are
• 48:36
  full of love? Full.
• 48:37
  Of love. You know for sure and and and
• 48:40
  so, but I what I started at that point started thinking about
• 48:47
  innovation in entrepreneurship. How can they solve huge problems
• 48:53
  like that got that was something on back of my mind and the CEO
• 48:57
  of Patagonia joined a guy named Steve Case at a fund called
• 49:00
  revolution. So Steve in the 90s was like.
• 49:04
  Founder of AOL. Founder of AOL and and a book.
• 49:06
  Alongside Steve when he was coming out with his new book and
• 49:11
  basically making the case for, you know, that there should be
• 49:15
  this revolution, you know, all over the United States, not just
• 49:20
  in Silicon Valley, that all these communities could
• 49:22
  participate in. Rise of the rest.
• 49:24
  Yeah, start up the rise of the rest.
• 49:25
  Yeah, yeah. And so I was very fortunate.
• 49:29
  I never thought about like investing as a career.
• 49:31
  And so Michael, who is a pharmacy of Patagonia, joined
• 49:35
  Steve and he said like, hey, do you want to come to this side?
• 49:38
  And, and I, I did and, and, and there we got involved in a
• 49:44
  company, a project I worked closely with was a company
• 49:47
  called Flexcar, which we merged with Zipcar and, and, and, and
• 49:52
  Zipcar became a very successful company in that era.
• 49:55
  So I tested some kind of success of like, hey, this is how good
• 50:00
  investment could look like. And and but I was still consumed
• 50:06
  by this idea of how can technology solve big problems
• 50:15
  and can that be a thesis around which you can invest and can
• 50:19
  innovation solve big problems? So at that same time, Jaco and
• 50:24
  Gilbert had nominated me for Crown Fellowship.
• 50:27
  Oh, cool. I didn't know he was your.
• 50:29
  The one that nominated. Yeah, you.
• 50:31
  I mean, Josh Baer was the one that nominated me.
• 50:33
  Yeah, yeah, I know he was he I remembered him and and and
• 50:36
  interviewing with Keith Buick, who was the founder of Henry
• 50:39
  Crown Fellowship and fondly can just remember these amazing,
• 50:42
  amazing. He's no more.
• 50:44
  Keith is no more, but. He was a giant of giants.
• 50:47
  Yeah, he's just amazing, amazing soul.
• 50:51
  And, and so when I joined, I kept on going with this thread
• 50:57
  of like, hey, can technology and innovation and entrepreneurship,
• 51:01
  can you kind of build a pieces around solving these big
• 51:04
  problems? And, and I encountered almost,
• 51:08
  maybe now I think backwards, maybe I was not fully 100%
• 51:13
  confident, but I encountered like people saying like, Hey,
• 51:19
  can this be done? Or like, hey, you will not have
• 51:21
  returns or, but I continued to pursue and, and, and talk to
• 51:26
  everybody who I could. And, and then I remember like
• 51:30
  few folks in the fellowship. Well, you actually, you know,
• 51:34
  Sonal Shah, like she was, she was at Google at that time.
• 51:38
  And and so she connected me to beer mid year's vehicle and then
• 51:43
  George Soros vehicle and, and and, and those 3 entities ended
• 51:47
  up backing a fine targeted towards India to prove this
• 51:52
  hypothesis that you can solve problems using innovation and
• 51:59
  innovative business models. And, and so I dragged my family
• 52:03
  and they were very, very reluctant from a beautiful town,
• 52:06
  Ojai, California to Hyderabad, India, because that was consumed
• 52:11
  by this idea and, and, and ended up investing in India and, and
• 52:20
  it's a tough market at that those days, but all our
• 52:24
  companies ended up doing very well.
• 52:27
  So gave me this courage and confidence that this could work.
• 52:31
  And, and didn't want to live in that part of the world at, you
• 52:37
  know, indefinite place and wanted my son to come, go, go to
• 52:41
  school here. So moved moved back and and I
• 52:48
  was at that point convinced that technology and innovation can
• 52:52
  envision the future. And and I just love these kind
• 52:57
  of serendipity of when you are thinking honestly and clearly
• 53:03
  with great love that you find other people.
• 53:06
  And and that led me to connect with James and EV.
• 53:12
  And here we are after 12 years, having built obvious ventures
• 53:17
  and and just finishing raising up for fun.
• 53:19
  So I'm so cool. I'm blessed.
• 53:21
  I'm I'm really, really blessed, but never thought about I would
• 53:25
  be doing this thing when I was growing up.
• 53:27
  Yeah. Well, it, it very much reminds
• 53:30
  me of that book, the the Celestine Prophecy.
• 53:34
  And one of the things that happened in the way here that
• 53:36
  you and I were like, Oh my gosh, is, you know, we're driving back
• 53:41
  to the house and there's a bumper sticker like right in
• 53:45
  front of us. And what was on the bumper
• 53:47
  sticker? Love greater than fear.
• 53:50
  Love greater than fear, right? And here we are talking about
• 53:53
  love conquers fear. I mean, it really, It really is.
• 53:57
  You put out that intentionality and then the universe started to
• 54:01
  open up to you and more and more people came in your life that
• 54:05
  led to this moment for both of us.
• 54:08
  Yeah, No, I think it's kind of, I hope I had this kind of
• 54:14
  clarity is even clarity comes with time, you know, like
• 54:19
  there's this element of wisdom and.
• 54:23
  What is the Steve Jobs quote that all the dots connect in
• 54:26
  reverse? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 54:29
  And to me, actually, for the longest period of time, I just
• 54:33
  feel I had lived life around fear.
• 54:40
  And but then there was a change somewhere in this journey where
• 54:45
  love went much bigger than fear and was able to conquer fear and
• 54:52
  that feeling of doing things for the right reason.
• 54:56
  Not just worried about like what happens tomorrow, but I'm
• 55:01
  working everyday with that and belief.
• 55:05
  And as, as you and I have talked about, like I think we, we have
• 55:09
  this energy and our, our, our, our souls have this energy that
• 55:15
  if we authentically go out in the world and, and bring 100%
• 55:22
  self in an authentic way, then we find other people who are,
• 55:28
  who want to be on the same journey with.
• 55:30
  With you, yeah. I mean, you know, even just
• 55:33
  starting this podcast, one of the things that I really had to
• 55:37
  weigh is how transparent to be. You know, and I started out
• 55:41
  episode one with just incredible transparency.
• 55:44
  And one of our Henry Crown fellows, he asked me over the
• 55:51
  past couple of days, he said, hey, have you lost friends
• 55:56
  because you're being so transparent?
• 55:58
  And, and I said, actually, I've gained so many more friends,
• 56:05
  like so many people have showed. Me.
• 56:07
  Since launching this podcast, I may have just launched it on,
• 56:10
  you know, Rosh Hashanah on September 24th and so many
• 56:16
  friends have have showed up, have come into my life.
• 56:19
  It's amazing. Like what what actually is
• 56:21
  happening. It's very Celestine prophecy for
• 56:25
  me and I. I told him I said not to my
• 56:29
  knowledge yet. Have I lost any friends?
• 56:32
  But if I do, were they the right friends in the 1st place?
• 56:35
  Like if they see me acting with authenticity?
• 56:39
  Because are we going to act with authenticity and allow love to
• 56:44
  conquer fear within us so that we can then hopefully
• 56:50
  collectively as humanity allow love to conquer fear.
• 56:54
  But it starts individually, you know, it starts individually
• 56:58
  with us overcoming our own fear to then manifest the change that
• 57:05
  we want in the world. And you, you overcame lots and
• 57:07
  lots of fear. I mean, can you, I, it's hard
• 57:10
  actually for an American, even American growing up in small
• 57:15
  town Austin to imagine because small town Austin when I was
• 57:21
  born is very different than India from a wealth level.
• 57:26
  You know, India right now has 1.46 billion people.
• 57:31
  It's the most populous country in the world.
• 57:34
  And you and I are similar age. And back when you were a kid,
• 57:39
  India was pretty poor country. And and with the communistic
• 57:46
  approach to their politics and no free form capitalism at that
• 57:51
  point. And and you only worked for
• 57:55
  government. So it was a very different
• 57:57
  country than what it is today. And it's moving now isn't like
• 58:01
  an amazing growth story, but but at that point kind of leaving
• 58:04
  that country behind in an unknown environment with no
• 58:09
  support system. Yeah.
• 58:12
  But like, that's what I love about us.
• 58:13
  I think like I just was on this walkie-talkie tour with at our
• 58:20
  Aspen event yesterday, and there were these four amazing human
• 58:25
  beings which this this format of walkie walkie-talkie, which I
• 58:30
  described that format, yeah. Is is basically having a prompt
• 58:34
  and for 10 minutes one person talks and everybody listens and
• 58:39
  walks with them and then they talk back or they summarize what
• 58:45
  they heard without any judgement.
• 58:47
  They just served as a mirror. As a mirror, this is what I
• 58:50
  heard and you do it, everybody does it.
• 58:55
  And I just, it was kind of the most interesting experience I've
• 59:02
  had in a long period of time. Like just because I was able to
• 59:06
  connect at A at a deeper level with everybody in 10 minutes
• 59:12
  seems short. But when you're talking about
• 59:15
  yourself for a person like me who doesn't like to like to talk
• 59:18
  too much, is an introvert is daunting.
• 59:23
  And and, and, and, and and so it was I just learned about these
• 59:31
  three people. I had known one of them before,
• 59:34
  two I denied, but the the depth at which I get to know about
• 59:40
  them and all four of us are immigrants, one Italian American
• 59:45
  family long time back, a Jewish family who survived Holocaust
• 59:51
  from Germany and Austria and a Spanish family right, like we
• 59:59
  immigrated from Spain so. America has such an amazing
• 1:00:04
  melting point of best of best coming here and building their
• 1:00:08
  lives and kind of giving back on this amazing.
• 1:00:11
  I wish that we would just honestly open the floodgates to
• 1:00:15
  the best of the best because they want to come here.
• 1:00:18
  And one, I wrote this piece on Doctor Fifi Lee's book.
• 1:00:24
  It's called the world. I think it's called The World I
• 1:00:26
  see. I remember the title, but I
• 1:00:29
  wrote that piece. People can find it on my medium
• 1:00:31
  or well, actually I think that one's just on my medium or on.
• 1:00:35
  It's also on LinkedIn. And one of the things that I
• 1:00:40
  went back in time because core metrics really leverage the H1B
• 1:00:45
  program. I brought people from Pakistan,
• 1:00:47
  from India. It was duringthe.com time.
• 1:00:52
  So talent was very, very tight here and I fell in love with the
• 1:00:58
  people that we brought here. I mean, my wife was, you know,
• 1:01:01
  she helped me start core metrics.
• 1:01:03
  She was helping them find medical care.
• 1:01:06
  She almost like a din mother or two in terms of I mean, she did
• 1:01:09
  a lot for the company. She was doing the user interface
• 1:01:12
  design, the website, the trade show, boost the office, like a
• 1:01:16
  ton of stuff. She's very, very talented and
• 1:01:20
  very entrepreneurial. And, you know, I really fell in
• 1:01:24
  love with them. And we're such a beneficiary of
• 1:01:26
  the H1B program. I looked back on the stats since
• 1:01:30
  core metrics, which I started in 1999, and it almost has not.
• 1:01:35
  I mean, it's stagnated. It's like we have not opened the
• 1:01:38
  floodgates. So, yeah, we need to, we need to
• 1:01:43
  do that because the best do want to come here.
• 1:01:46
  And this is an immigrant nation primarily.
• 1:01:50
  I mean, you know, they're the American natives who are here.
• 1:01:54
  I think it's 1.5 million of the population of around 350
• 1:01:58
  million. So it's primarily all
• 1:02:01
  immigrants. But we spend so much time, you
• 1:02:04
  know, talking about America, American isolationism, and the
• 1:02:09
  best. Want to come here?
• 1:02:11
  And, and great privilege, a position of privilege, because
• 1:02:14
  if the best want to come here and contribute, I think like
• 1:02:17
  it's very hard to design a country like that.
• 1:02:19
  Very, very hard. And it's very hard, you know,
• 1:02:22
  like going back to your family story, it's very hard to like
• 1:02:25
  just leave Pakistan with nothing, leave everything
• 1:02:30
  behind. Like how many people can conquer
• 1:02:32
  that type of fear? Like literally, they just leave
• 1:02:35
  their house, they leave out their possessions and just go.
• 1:02:39
  I mean, and, and the type of roots that that gave you as a
• 1:02:44
  child, like that's real love conquering fear.
• 1:02:49
  Like that's real bravery. And many people that have made
• 1:02:52
  it to this country have have allowed love to conquer fear
• 1:02:58
  that dream for this new promised land.
• 1:03:01
  You know Ronald Reagan said the shining city on the hill.
• 1:03:05
  Yeah, I think yeah. But I think we, we, we, we like,
• 1:03:11
  I, I've just been very, very fortunate to to be in this kind
• 1:03:16
  of place. And, and, and I've been very
• 1:03:22
  fortunate to have met you also, Brad, like, I think thank you to
• 1:03:25
  my, it's just, I think we are now collaborating and you are
• 1:03:31
  working on this kind of new chapter, which is so much
• 1:03:35
  needed. And, and, and if we all were
• 1:03:42
  able to kind of learn how to conquer your fear and kind of
• 1:03:47
  manifest love and love as is not a soft word.
• 1:03:51
  Like love is love for everything, love for humanity,
• 1:03:54
  love for innovation, love for love is like the most powerful
• 1:04:00
  word if you do it from the purity of your heart, right?
• 1:04:02
  And then how do you, how do you manifest that?
• 1:04:05
  And if you are able to do that as nation, as the world, I think
• 1:04:10
  we have this amazing opportunity to come make humanity thrive.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah. Yeah, it's the highest vibratory
• 1:04:18
  force in the universe. You know that the universe is
• 1:04:21
  deeply rooted in love. So to be in alignment to that,
• 1:04:26
  you know, to be, to take the investor sense, to be like
• 1:04:30
  Warren Buffett, I'm quite sure his whole life has been very,
• 1:04:35
  very much like the Celestine prophecy.
• 1:04:37
  I can't imagine the people showed up.
• 1:04:39
  I mean, Sam Taylor showed up. Sam Taylor was the one that
• 1:04:41
  called him to say I want you to buy Oriental trading.
• 1:04:45
  And Sam told me that. He said, OK, well, you know, I
• 1:04:49
  know the business, you know, come over.
• 1:04:51
  How's he know the business? Because he reads over 4 hours a
• 1:04:53
  day. He, he comes, he comes to his
• 1:04:57
  office and he makes the decision in about 30 minutes to buy the
• 1:05:02
  company because he looked into Sam Taylor's eyes and heart and
• 1:05:07
  he knew that he was in front of a good man that really cared
• 1:05:10
  about the company. That was all he needed to know.
• 1:05:14
  Because he already knows the numbers of the.
• 1:05:16
  I mean you when you've spent that much time investing and
• 1:05:19
  reading, you could look at a the numbers and just I can't even
• 1:05:25
  imagine the database of comparisons he's doing.
• 1:05:28
  I, I love, I think I love this idea of living optimistic way of
• 1:05:36
  life versus a more pessimistic way.
• 1:05:38
  Like you can find fault in anything, of course, because our
• 1:05:42
  brains are like, we can kind of find problems.
• 1:05:45
  Hey, this cannot happen for the 17 reasons.
• 1:05:48
  But thinking about why this can happen or what would make this
• 1:05:53
  happen, you know, is the power we have as human, human brain
• 1:05:58
  and and and and then there is this utmost truth.
• 1:06:03
  And thanks to kind of sharing with me is the book sales team
• 1:06:08
  Prophecy and and and. Oh, this is a book you've read?
• 1:06:12
  Yeah. OK, OK, perfect.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah, yeah. No, you, you.
• 1:06:16
  I'm not like a humongous reader, right?
• 1:06:19
  But like you, I have like, I don't know, so many books I want
• 1:06:21
  to read now because of you. I'm like intrigued by, well,
• 1:06:26
  hopefully all of these books will make me better.
• 1:06:28
  Yeah, no. I would love, I love that book.
• 1:06:32
  Actually, I and my wife had the book on Audible together and I
• 1:06:41
  just love that. It's just like it.
• 1:06:45
  It related well to my soul in terms of like, hey, what's the
• 1:06:48
  utmost truth and and and bowl that.
• 1:06:51
  Your wife heard it with you. Yeah, you know, was was a really
• 1:06:54
  good fun way. And we then discussed with with
• 1:07:00
  each other about, you know, life and our souls and yeah.
• 1:07:05
  That's beautiful. That's beautiful.
• 1:07:07
  And you know what? One of the things I found in
• 1:07:09
  reading that book is that I started to notice a lot more
• 1:07:13
  synchronicities. Like it opened me up.
• 1:07:15
  It opened me up to the inner. And actually the book talks
• 1:07:18
  about how to open up to that energy.
• 1:07:22
  Like, you know, we could go go into that for for a long time,
• 1:07:26
  but I would just encourage anybody get it on audible.
• 1:07:30
  It's told really well through Audible.
• 1:07:33
  It's, it's like, it's, it's like listening to a great movie.
• 1:07:36
  Yeah, really. No, it was it was yeah, captured
• 1:07:39
  your imagination like what comes next?
• 1:07:40
  And they they rated it really well.
• 1:07:43
  And, and it also kind of related well, or I started actually
• 1:07:48
  thinking a lot about my, my like how I grew up as a Hindu and,
• 1:07:56
  and kind of and, and the Vedas and, and this kind of the notion
• 1:08:03
  of soul, our soul and how it's all connected.
• 1:08:07
  And this is 1 soul and what is the eternal truth, which is
• 1:08:15
  love, yes and where everything is connected.
• 1:08:19
  That's the that's the eternal truth.
• 1:08:23
  Yeah, yeah. And if you think about all the
• 1:08:26
  things which have happened thousands of years, I think
• 1:08:28
  that's where we are moving. And that's what the book
• 1:08:30
  captured for me is just. We are on this journey, yeah, in
• 1:08:36
  pursuit of the. Fundamental truth, yeah.
• 1:08:40
  I mean, that's that. That is what my science fiction
• 1:08:43
  book, The Lattice is all about. I want to read this.
• 1:08:46
  There really is. I mean, it's it's it's the
• 1:08:48
  pursuit, you know, the protagonist is Doctor Alexander
• 1:08:51
  Bliss, you know, no mistake on mind getting that new.
• 1:08:55
  And he wants to fearlessly pursue the truth, but he doesn't
• 1:09:02
  realize how to prove what the reality actually is.
• 1:09:08
  And he has this audacious idea to use brain computer interfaces
• 1:09:13
  with this company. This is in the year 2030 called
• 1:09:16
  Neurofire. And he plugs in, you know,
• 1:09:21
  psychonauts, like people who are expert at navigating with
• 1:09:24
  psychedelics, master meditators, the Dalai Lama, like spiritual
• 1:09:29
  masters, and uploads all of this data.
• 1:09:34
  This is at a point in time where you can see exactly what's
• 1:09:37
  happening inside of the brain in terms of what it's seen, like a
• 1:09:41
  three-dimensional, you know, movie, and looks for the
• 1:09:46
  commonality in terms of what is our reality and discovers the
• 1:09:51
  lattice. And the lattice is the
• 1:09:54
  interconnectedness of all things.
• 1:09:56
  And, you know, at the end of this, I quote from ancient
• 1:10:01
  scripture, and in Hinduism, you know, this is called Indra's
• 1:10:06
  net. But it's all the same thing.
• 1:10:10
  And it's all, you know, anybody that's done a psychedelic
• 1:10:13
  journey or really become good at meditation or just has a
• 1:10:19
  spiritual awakening sees that our actual reality is deeply
• 1:10:23
  rooted in love and that there is this interconnectedness, which I
• 1:10:26
  think is incredible. Yeah, and I've not read the
• 1:10:28
  whole thing, but I did read the last few pages and and all the
• 1:10:32
  religions and the interpretation of kind of one Ness is very
• 1:10:37
  similar in it's, you know, interpretation.
• 1:10:41
  And so it just kind of yeah. And, and what I love, the reason
• 1:10:47
  I have just, I'm enjoying to getting to know you and becoming
• 1:10:52
  a really good friend here is because you are going deep on
• 1:10:58
  yourself, but also you envisioning this kind of world.
• 1:11:01
  And, and, and I clearly see this too.
• 1:11:05
  I know that a lot of people talk about AI is going to kind of
• 1:11:09
  kill us all and, and, and there's a doom and gloom coming.
• 1:11:14
  But like the trajectory I see is very similar like to, to kind of
• 1:11:18
  what you talk about with, with the brain computer interface,
• 1:11:23
  like all these technologies are going to unlock things which
• 1:11:29
  were not possible and, and, and will provide us the power to
• 1:11:37
  kind of get, as you call it, closer to heaven and life, you
• 1:11:40
  know, and, and heaven and earth converging, You know, so I, I,
• 1:11:45
  I, I do believe in it because I'm, you know, I in Silicon
• 1:11:51
  Valley, I'm very, very technology curious in everyday.
• 1:11:54
  Like I just keep on thinking about how these things are going
• 1:11:57
  to kind of shape and how they're evolving and, and so many things
• 1:12:02
  are coming, whether it's robotics and automation to come
• 1:12:08
  build things for US 24/7, whether it's abundance of energy
• 1:12:15
  that could yield enormous amount of water.
• 1:12:18
  Yes, there's enormous amount of water.
• 1:12:21
  There's no end of agriculture and and there's all the science
• 1:12:27
  around synthetic biology, which can improve the quality of our
• 1:12:34
  soil. There is this huge opportunity
• 1:12:39
  like, and you've talked about Chad in other countries where
• 1:12:42
  like intelligence democratization would mean like
• 1:12:45
  a surgeon in Chad would be able to kind of tap into the best
• 1:12:50
  wisdom and tools to treat people and save lives in Chad who
• 1:12:57
  cannot even dream of coming to Stanford.
• 1:13:01
  And we are at that cost. This is this convergence
• 1:13:04
  happening. And what we need is a force of
• 1:13:08
  all amazing people who believe in love or fear, who shaped this
• 1:13:15
  for the good of humanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:19
  I completely agree. You know, one of the things just
• 1:13:21
  since you brought up Stanford, that was really that really
• 1:13:25
  jumped out at me. This is quite a while ago, maybe
• 1:13:29
  8 to 10 years ago, Stanford started to open up their classes
• 1:13:33
  where anybody could take them while the students were taking
• 1:13:36
  them in the classroom. And you may know where this is
• 1:13:38
  going. And one of the computer science
• 1:13:41
  classes, they opened up and I think they were like maybe 40 to
• 1:13:45
  80 students in the class. I can't remember the number, but
• 1:13:47
  it was less than 100. But there were 30,000 students
• 1:13:52
  that took the class with them virtually.
• 1:13:55
  And for the final exam, I think it was only one or two that were
• 1:14:01
  in the class that scored in the top, in the top, you know, 5%.
• 1:14:07
  It was all these other people. So Genius is like very
• 1:14:10
  distributed. Distributed, you know, a lot of
• 1:14:12
  things depend on luck, like getting into a place like
• 1:14:16
  Stanford. You know, I got into Warden.
• 1:14:19
  I think the only reason I got into Warden, you know, where I
• 1:14:23
  went here to UT Austin was because of the weirdness of my
• 1:14:28
  background. Really the programming since age
• 1:14:32
  7, creating this Internet game at age 18 or just like this
• 1:14:36
  guy's so different from the investment banker types that are
• 1:14:39
  applying here. Like what is going on?
• 1:14:42
  I, I honestly think that's what got me in just that, that weird
• 1:14:46
  background. So just that weird for that
• 1:14:49
  time, you know, that that ability to harness luck
• 1:14:54
  sometimes is, is really, you know, and I, I believe that's
• 1:14:59
  part of the divine too. It's.
• 1:15:01
  Kind of interesting, but you were one step ahead because now
• 1:15:05
  that has become the dominant cool person which every
• 1:15:08
  university. Trust me, I did not feel cool
• 1:15:10
  growing up in Texas at all. I was picked on a lot growing up
• 1:15:15
  in Texas. It was like, why aren't you
• 1:15:17
  playing football? Why aren't you doing this?
• 1:15:19
  Why aren't you doing that? And all I was doing was
• 1:15:20
  programming. You were way ahead, my friend.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah. Well, I will give myself some
• 1:15:27
  credit that I that I have been able to see the future pretty
• 1:15:30
  clearly throughout my life and I am, I am very confident that
• 1:15:37
  humanity is going to make it to this age of abundance for all,
• 1:15:43
  but I also am very clear eyed that it's not going to be easy.
• 1:15:47
  Yeah, No, I think there's always, there is goodness and
• 1:15:51
  there is evil and has that has existed forever and good and bad
• 1:15:59
  both coexist and and eventually I think good has won over bad.
• 1:16:08
  And, and if you look at history and, and it ultimately is based
• 1:16:14
  upon people like you and me and folks that they use the position
• 1:16:22
  of strengths, whatever they are really good at to come manifest
• 1:16:26
  that. And, and that's the, that's the
• 1:16:29
  opportunity and, but also so fascinating to live in this time
• 1:16:39
  where you could start seeing abundance.
• 1:16:44
  It's so cool to like, I'm just like as a like I'm like, I can
• 1:16:48
  totally see like these things happening, you know, in energy
• 1:16:56
  and food and help and proving Lynch activity and disease cure
• 1:17:03
  and and and making stuff 24/7 with a lot of kind of less
• 1:17:09
  footprint and extractive kind of nature going down and biological
• 1:17:15
  materials taking over oil and basement materials.
• 1:17:21
  And just like I it's it's at the class.
• 1:17:25
  A lot of these things are going to converge and we'll be able to
• 1:17:28
  concede this build this new world and and the 0 sum thinking
• 1:17:34
  is to it could be the seeds of destruction.
• 1:17:40
  So that is what we need to overcome that if we all grow,
• 1:17:47
  humanity cannot get uplifted, you know, so.
• 1:17:51
  So let me ask you, it sounds like you're pretty positive
• 1:17:56
  we're going to make it to this age of abundance for all you
• 1:17:58
  know, how do you kind of assess your probability that we're
• 1:18:02
  going to make it? I am 100 percent, 100%.
• 1:18:08
  Yeah, OK, Yeah, I I believe the purity of our souls, which are
• 1:18:16
  interconnected like the good is over going to take the the
• 1:18:21
  negative. And what that means is it is
• 1:18:25
  your and my job to make sure that people are clearly be able
• 1:18:31
  to connect. 51% people are clearly able to see their souls.
• 1:18:36
  And what is the ultimate truth? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:39
  And we need to kind of bring those folks together.
• 1:18:42
  Yeah. And work on these things in a
• 1:18:46
  way which enables humanity thrive.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah, I do worry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not like
• 1:18:56
  there is and you and I have talked about this nuclear based
• 1:19:01
  wars and nuclear based destruction.
• 1:19:04
  There is AI interconnected if we give agency to it that it
• 1:19:11
  destroys us rather than helping us.
• 1:19:13
  There is automated wars where life becomes like hell living in
• 1:19:21
  it because there's no destruction and just people like
• 1:19:24
  destruction of humans that like it becomes a technology warfare
• 1:19:28
  and and has less friction. But all of that I think is
• 1:19:34
  around around the 0 sum mindset. And we need to kind of as
• 1:19:42
  leaders get people into this abundance mindset.
• 1:19:50
  If you even think about America and the growth of America and
• 1:19:54
  globalization and how that has helped the US and its economy,
• 1:20:03
  there are people who have not have suffered, don't get me
• 1:20:08
  wrong. And we need to consult that.
• 1:20:12
  But in general, like being a great leader, global leader, and
• 1:20:16
  how that has positively affected our GDP over the years shows
• 1:20:22
  clearly to in my head, like I think it's not a 0 sum game.
• 1:20:26
  It's like if you lift and peace and trade that everything goes
• 1:20:31
  up. Yeah.
• 1:20:34
  What do you think is the nature of our reality?
• 1:20:37
  Like, how do you look at our reality?
• 1:20:42
  Something I think about a lot. Share a little bit more about it
• 1:20:46
  what what your views? Are well, I discussed this a lot
• 1:20:51
  on episode 1, but I think that my personal distillation of the
• 1:21:02
  books, if I was to try to summarize, like all the reading
• 1:21:05
  I've done, it's probably like 50 books now since the beginning of
• 1:21:08
  this year. No, it's, it's it.
• 1:21:11
  And honestly, the reason it's like my soul is very animated.
• 1:21:16
  I've got a lot of energy as a result on this quest, you know,
• 1:21:22
  and you know, my friend Tarot, who is on the podcast, he's the
• 1:21:27
  founder of four Sigmatic. He he, he and I agree.
• 1:21:30
  It's it's like a soul quest. You know, it for him, it
• 1:21:33
  happened very young. It was like he was 18.
• 1:21:35
  He wrote over 130 books. I ask him what his favorite book
• 1:21:39
  was. It was Awareness by Anthony
• 1:21:40
  D'mello, which is like the George Carlin of spiritual
• 1:21:44
  teachers. It's such a such a fun book.
• 1:21:47
  I really think that this whole thing, the reason we're here,
• 1:21:52
  the purpose is to manifest love. I think we are in an earth
• 1:21:59
  school and our actual reality is rooted in love and our souls are
• 1:22:09
  having a physical experience. And the reason we're born and
• 1:22:14
  have amnesia is that we, if we had all the answers to the test,
• 1:22:22
  we would feel kind of cheated and we wouldn't grow.
• 1:22:26
  You know, if you had gotten into the schools you got into and the
• 1:22:31
  professor said, hey, Vishal, don't worry about, I really like
• 1:22:34
  you. Here's the cheat code.
• 1:22:36
  You would be well, hold on a second.
• 1:22:38
  Like I came here actually to learn like I'm curious about
• 1:22:41
  this subject. And and so I think that this
• 1:22:45
  amnesia that we have of why are we here?
• 1:22:49
  Why did we Incarnate? What is this lifetime all about
• 1:22:54
  is to lead us to that discovery. And then once we find it, you
• 1:23:00
  know which the best book on that is Man's Search for Meaning.
• 1:23:04
  I write a lot about Man's Search for Meaning and the
• 1:23:06
  Entrepreneur's Essentials, my first book.
• 1:23:09
  Once we find it, it animates us and it gives us a boundless
• 1:23:12
  level of energy. And you know, Viktor Frankel, he
• 1:23:16
  survived 4 concentration camps. You know, we're recording this
• 1:23:21
  actually on the week where we just passed the two year
• 1:23:27
  anniversary of October 7th, you know, which is a really that was
• 1:23:32
  how what happened on October 7th in in Israel when Hamas
• 1:23:36
  attacked. And you know, we we're we're in
• 1:23:41
  this earth school to ultimately manifest love.
• 1:23:45
  And so that tells me that our actual reality is is rooted in
• 1:23:51
  love. And no matter what spiritual
• 1:23:54
  text I've dove into, you know, I've read the Bhagavad Gita,
• 1:23:58
  I've read the Dao de Ching, you know, I've read a lot of the
• 1:24:03
  Zohar, you know, ancient, you know, Jewish mysticism.
• 1:24:07
  I've studied Vedanta in India under Swamiji Parthasarathi.
• 1:24:11
  Amazing person actually is from Swamiji Parthasarathi.
• 1:24:14
  One of the things you were saying earlier, he quotes from
• 1:24:17
  Abraham Lincoln and he's talking about raising children in this
• 1:24:22
  part of the lecture. But he says, he quotes Abraham
• 1:24:25
  Lincoln, if you want your children to walk in a certain
• 1:24:28
  path, you must walk in that path.
• 1:24:30
  And I would actually broaden that out to say if we want
• 1:24:33
  humanity to walk in a certain path towards love, we ourselves
• 1:24:37
  must walk in that path. Genuinely have to conquer our
• 1:24:41
  own fear, to be an embodiment of love, to actually show that it
• 1:24:47
  can be done. And again, I look up to Warren
• 1:24:50
  Buffett. He's done that.
• 1:24:52
  He's definitely done that. I mean, when he did that deal in
• 1:24:56
  the financial crisis with Goldman Sachs, you know, for $10
• 1:25:00
  billion loan, he made that decision in 30 minutes on the
• 1:25:05
  phone with this year of Goldman Sachs.
• 1:25:07
  And he was absolutely demonized on CNBCI mean they people were
• 1:25:12
  just laughing at him and he knew it was right.
• 1:25:17
  He believes in capitalism, he believes in America.
• 1:25:21
  And so I think that we have to discover over and over again how
• 1:25:25
  to become better human beings. And you know, some people are
• 1:25:31
  simulation theorist and say, well, that's that's part of the
• 1:25:34
  video game is the video game is like you, you're kind of
• 1:25:38
  climbing humanity's levels. And certainly there's a lot of
• 1:25:43
  books I've read like Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, which
• 1:25:48
  do say there are these 7 levels of heaven, and those have been
• 1:25:52
  glimpsed in ancient spiritual text as well.
• 1:25:55
  But you know, no matter what I've read, it all comes back to
• 1:26:02
  our actual reality is rooted in love and that the world of form,
• 1:26:07
  the if we get trapped there, then it becomes a constant
• 1:26:13
  comparison machine. And that can be the roots of a
• 1:26:19
  lot of the suffering. You know, Swamiji Parthasarathy,
• 1:26:22
  he said he tells this story about one of the wealthiest
• 1:26:25
  people in India, and he's on his yacht.
• 1:26:28
  And this is a ridiculous shot. I mean, it's just, yeah, I mean,
• 1:26:32
  some of the wealth in India, like for the wealthiest, it's
• 1:26:35
  unbelievably wealthy. And he's on the shot and and
• 1:26:39
  he's showing it to Swamiji Parthasarathy.
• 1:26:41
  And he's like, look at this shot, it's so amazing, etcetera.
• 1:26:44
  And Swamiji's like, yeah, you know, you, you should be very
• 1:26:47
  happy, you know, you've, you've, you've achieved this shot, you
• 1:26:50
  know, and the guy says, you see that one over there?
• 1:26:54
  It's like 1 twice as big. He says that's next.
• 1:27:00
  He can't even be happy on. The up that he's on.
• 1:27:04
  So that's that's the problem with being trapped in the world
• 1:27:07
  of form is there's no end to the amount of accumulation right
• 1:27:12
  there. And the only happiness is found
• 1:27:14
  inside. And to love humanity, you
• 1:27:18
  actually have to start with loving yourself.
• 1:27:21
  I love love what you just said. I think to me you have to love
• 1:27:30
  yourself and get to know yourself.
• 1:27:36
  You then have to find your purpose and work and diligently
• 1:27:45
  work against all odds against that purpose and and and balance
• 1:27:54
  wins and losses and continue to move forward without this
• 1:28:03
  attachment to success, but enjoying the process and being
• 1:28:09
  in consumed by the process. And then some of the things
• 1:28:14
  which I've learned through my upbringing is that if you are
• 1:28:24
  able to figure out who you are and you are able to come go
• 1:28:28
  deeper in to you, your soul, to me, it's very clear that we are
• 1:28:38
  all one soul and connected. Yeah, I've been an atheist of
• 1:28:45
  sorts, but I hugely believe that God is within you.
• 1:28:51
  So it's not a deity or something to to go and do a prayer to a
• 1:29:03
  physical object. But but it's if we are all
• 1:29:07
  together and it's all one consciousness.
• 1:29:11
  That's the reason when you and I are talking about some universal
• 1:29:14
  truths, like where is it coming from?
• 1:29:17
  This is why I believe in God actually.
• 1:29:20
  But I am. I'm not professing to know what
• 1:29:25
  God is. I do want to be clear of that.
• 1:29:28
  Like the personification of God, I think is what turns people off
• 1:29:34
  of the word. You know, the, the Dao De Ching,
• 1:29:38
  they call it the Dao. You know, in quantum physics,
• 1:29:45
  you know, they start to call it the field.
• 1:29:48
  Like, you know, Doctor Joe Dispenza, he writes great books.
• 1:29:51
  He has amazing workshops. You know, his his book, which is
• 1:29:57
  breaking the Habit of Becoming yourself, was introduced to me
• 1:30:00
  by John Mackey, you know, founder of Whole Foods.
• 1:30:03
  And he said this is a very divine read.
• 1:30:05
  Like this is a very wise individual.
• 1:30:08
  And throughout the book, you know, the book actually starts
• 1:30:12
  out with the quantum you and it starts out with quantum physics.
• 1:30:15
  It's a great distillation actually of quantum physics.
• 1:30:18
  Trust me, I've dove into quantum physics and up to know what.
• 1:30:20
  We're talking about. And, and it's a, it's a
• 1:30:26
  phenomenal distillation. And he essentially calls
• 1:30:31
  whatever it is God, he calls it the great intelligence of the
• 1:30:36
  quantum field. And whatever it is, it's, it's
• 1:30:42
  rooted in love. And I don't know what it is.
• 1:30:45
  I mean, in, in Judaism, we have to be so humble in God that we
• 1:30:54
  don't know what God is like. We can't profess to understand
• 1:30:58
  the nature of the power that can create a universe.
• 1:31:01
  And one of the things that any materialist has to grapple with
• 1:31:06
  is they have to grapple with the fact that the universe was
• 1:31:11
  compressed in this most infinitesimally small point
• 1:31:15
  possible with no entropy and then.
• 1:31:19
  Yeah, Bone, it happened, Yeah. Right.
• 1:31:22
  And, and as far as we know, it's just spreading out constantly.
• 1:31:27
  The rate of expansion is insane. And if you look at the math,
• 1:31:30
  it's it's incredible. Like that is mind boggling.
• 1:31:33
  And as far as we know, it's infinite.
• 1:31:34
  You know, I mean, I certainly would like to, to when we
• 1:31:39
  conquer faster lights be trouble, like see if there's a
• 1:31:41
  border. That would be interesting, you
• 1:31:43
  know, But as far as we know, it's, it's, it's, it's infinite.
• 1:31:47
  And you know, it's, it's, it's, it's so incredible this reality
• 1:31:54
  we're living in, even if someone isn't spiritual, to realize how
• 1:32:02
  miraculous it is that we're even here at all and that we can do
• 1:32:07
  something like meditate or do psychedelics and have that
• 1:32:13
  communion with something. You know, I think that is our
• 1:32:18
  soul. I think that is God when we can
• 1:32:21
  get the ego offline. You know, there, there's a, a
• 1:32:27
  guru in India. This story is like really blew
• 1:32:30
  my mind. Who he had reached a state of
• 1:32:33
  enlightenment through meditation to the point where you know,
• 1:32:37
  some enterprising like psychonauts were like trying to
• 1:32:41
  entice him to take 600 micrograms of LSD and you know
• 1:32:46
  the book LSD in the mind of the Universe by Chris Bosh, one of
• 1:32:49
  the best books. I'm going to read that.
• 1:32:51
  I've written that, yes. It's so good, chapters 9 through
• 1:32:54
  11 about the birth of the future human and what what happens, how
• 1:32:58
  the how we're in this evolutionary process is mind
• 1:33:00
  blowing. And they give him 600 micrograms
• 1:33:04
  and he takes it and has no effect because he's already
• 1:33:08
  there. He's already can go there.
• 1:33:11
  He doesn't need it at all, which is amazing.
• 1:33:15
  I think the thing what just fascinating to me is, and you
• 1:33:18
  and I have discussed about this thing a lot is that I think like
• 1:33:21
  as as in, in living in a material world, I think like we
• 1:33:25
  create all these things, which basically starts creating these
• 1:33:31
  like layers on top of our soul and it starts covering and and
• 1:33:36
  suddenly you find that there is like a huge amount of distance
• 1:33:39
  between your thoughts and your soul, right?
• 1:33:41
  That's I think because it's just we've created this boundaries
• 1:33:45
  and stuff and and, and the process of 1st and, and some
• 1:33:51
  people do it through psychedelics or some people who
• 1:33:54
  meditate the process of getting rid of all the stuff so that you
• 1:34:00
  can talk. Yes.
• 1:34:01
  And then my upbringing kind of just tells me like, Hey, if that
• 1:34:06
  is the truth and if we are all connected through the spar and
• 1:34:14
  the spar of soul collective, one's soul is cumulative and
• 1:34:18
  it's and that knowledge is getting accumulated.
• 1:34:22
  And you and I have talked about reaching in these kind of
• 1:34:25
  states. The answer is not like, hey, I
• 1:34:29
  want one more house, right? The answer is love over fear,
• 1:34:36
  right? Like the answer is like, hey,
• 1:34:38
  like let's manifest and connect with people at a deeper level.
• 1:34:42
  It's just hard in a capitalistic system sometime because we get
• 1:34:46
  consumed on different things, but that is a system.
• 1:34:50
  Of our making. And it's a system of our making,
• 1:34:52
  too. Yeah, and, and two things can be
• 1:34:55
  true at the same time. The system of our making has led
• 1:34:58
  to a massive alleviation of poverty, a massive alleviation
• 1:35:02
  of starvation. I mean John Mackey gives a full
• 1:35:05
  throated defense of capitalism. If you ever get a chance to see
• 1:35:10
  him give a presentation at the conscious capitalism summit,
• 1:35:13
  which is now grown into a worldwide event like people
• 1:35:15
  flying from all over the world for this into Austin.
• 1:35:19
  It is, it's, it's a wonder to behold because he, this lays out
• 1:35:23
  the data and he compares it to other forms like socialism,
• 1:35:27
  etcetera, and just lays the data.
• 1:35:28
  Just the data tells the story. And at the same time, when you
• 1:35:35
  can, when you can just focus it a little bit more on something
• 1:35:40
  that's not extractive and think a little bit differently about
• 1:35:45
  it, rooted a little bit more in love, you know, treat the team
• 1:35:51
  members that work with you with love.
• 1:35:53
  You know, one of the things John told me one time that stuck with
• 1:35:57
  me for a long time, and I really practice this a lot, is he said
• 1:36:04
  every single employee at Whole Foods, when I sit down with
• 1:36:09
  them, I'm, I put in my head that I am sitting in front of the
• 1:36:15
  most enlightened person and they have something to teach me and
• 1:36:20
  it just changes my. Curiosity.
• 1:36:22
  Yeah. No, I think.
• 1:36:24
  I think the thing what I was you and I are saying same thing, I
• 1:36:27
  think. Then when, when.
• 1:36:29
  When you, that is a lot of good things about capitalism, but the
• 1:36:35
  extractive nature of capitalism has also negative externalities.
• 1:36:41
  And, but the power of capitalism, of forward motion is
• 1:36:45
  very, very powerful, right? And, and then if you go into
• 1:36:50
  this, you and I believe on this fundamental truth that if we all
• 1:36:57
  go deeper into whether we call it God or, or a soul or a
• 1:37:01
  collective one soul, that the answer is, is, is manifesting
• 1:37:07
  love. So to me, like people like us
• 1:37:10
  who are capitalists and we've been beneficiary of the system,
• 1:37:13
  how do we merge these two concepts together to use the
• 1:37:18
  power of capitalism and and build a world which are kids and
• 1:37:27
  their kids would be proud of that they'll inherit.
• 1:37:32
  That's a responsibility. That's it.
• 1:37:34
  I mean, that's that's you just laid out the thesis for why I'm
• 1:37:38
  writing Love Conquers Fear with the subtitle You know, Humanity,
• 1:37:42
  AI and age of abundance for all. And by all, I really mean for
• 1:37:45
  all. It has to start with this deep
• 1:37:47
  love for all of humanity, for the divinity, the soul, the
• 1:37:51
  oneness, the connectivity between all of us.
• 1:37:55
  And it's just clear to me, you know, what's what's in your
• 1:38:00
  heart. And it's it's just a real honor
• 1:38:04
  to know you. I mean, really is like this is
• 1:38:07
  the beginning of many, many more conversations.
• 1:38:10
  You know, we we've had many conversations out here and many
• 1:38:13
  conversations before. But I just want to say thank you
• 1:38:18
  so much. And, and I know that people
• 1:38:20
  watching this are going to be inspired because, yeah, a lot of
• 1:38:24
  people, they have in their mind, like, what is AVC?
• 1:38:29
  And sometimes they have negative connotations, sometimes they
• 1:38:32
  have positive connotations. But you really are the
• 1:38:37
  manifestation, in my opinion, of what venture capital should be,
• 1:38:43
  which is just like any capitalism, it should be rooted
• 1:38:48
  in love. And wow, what an honor.
• 1:38:52
  What an honor. I am just like, I'm so excited
• 1:38:56
  that we are building this kind of deep relationship an are on
• 1:39:01
  this amazing journey together. An I wish my son will be hearing
• 1:39:07
  all your kind words about VCs because he keeps appointing to
• 1:39:11
  me. He's an entrepreneur and he
• 1:39:14
  keeps appointing to be like, you know, what do you guys do?
• 1:39:18
  But but hopefully he's going to listen this and he'll he'll go
• 1:39:21
  till the end to listen it. He just reminded me of the most
• 1:39:26
  humbling thing Deborah and I have ever done is have children.
• 1:39:29
  So it's just like anytime, anytime you want to get humbled,
• 1:39:33
  have children. Have children you'll.
• 1:39:35
  Get humbled very quickly but but I really look forward to
• 1:39:39
  spending time with her son and it's very cool that he's, you
• 1:39:44
  know, gotten in AY combinator is doing this business now and you
• 1:39:48
  know, my children are right behind him.
• 1:39:50
  You know they're younger, but it's I know that will be there
• 1:39:55
  to trade notes when the time comes, so.
• 1:39:58
  Yeah. No, this is again.
• 1:40:00
  Thank you. Thank you, brother.
• 1:40:01
  Yeah, this is this is amazing. Thanks.
• 1:40:04
  So thanks everybody for tuning in to Love Conquers Fear.
• 1:40:08
  Oh my gosh. Amazing, amazing lineup coming
• 1:40:11
  up. You know, I said in the last
• 1:40:14
  episode, podcast is about to hit the road.
• 1:40:17
  We're going to New York City as well as to San Francisco, but
• 1:40:24
  Mark Gober manifested a guest, you know, he was on episode #2
• 1:40:29
  And as I said, a lot of new friends coming into my life.
• 1:40:33
  So actually, the next episode you'll watch is with a really
• 1:40:38
  incredible spiritual teacher. So that's going to be a lot of
• 1:40:40
  fun. So I'm doing that, and then I'm
• 1:40:43
  hitting the road the day after. So the next episodes were
• 1:40:47
  largely be from New York City and San Francisco.
• 1:40:52
  Thanks again, everybody. And I just want to also thank
• 1:40:55
  you for all the heartfelt comments I'm getting on the
• 1:40:58
  podcast. It really means a lot to me.
• 1:41:01
  I've got a lot of new friends coming in my life.
• 1:41:03
  But one of the things that's incredible is I'm getting lots
• 1:41:08
  of text messages, messages via LinkedIn, emails.
• 1:41:13
  And it's clear that this is having an impact.
• 1:41:16
  And this is just the beginning. There's going to be many, many,
• 1:41:19
  many episodes, dozens and dozens more to come.
• 1:41:23
  I'm having a blast and trying to do what I can to create an
• 1:41:28
  impact so that humanity makes it.
• 1:41:31
  And I appreciate you being on this journey with me.
• 1:41:33
  If you're enjoying this, share it with a friend.
• 1:41:36
  You know, share it out there on LinkedIn.
• 1:41:38
  I'm not making any money on this.
• 1:41:40
  I'm just spending my own money on this.
• 1:41:43
  There's no advertising, and I would appreciate your help in
• 1:41:46
  amplifying it. Thanks a lot.